Page 4 of The Art of Us

Her art teacher, Mr. Wasden, had given her the book at the beginning of the year. He said everyone, artist or not, needed a sketchbook, a place where they could jot down their ideas, their worries, their thoughts, things that made them laugh, things they were grateful for. He didn’t care if the art students drew pictures or wrote words. He just wanted to see them fill the books with their own ideas.

She had to admit it had been pretty therapeutic, and it had taught her to focus in a way she’d never been able to do before. She was getting good grades for the first time ever.

She felt Kal’s stare on her as she filled in the lines of the sketch she’d made of the bathroom she now lived in. Did he always stare like that?

What did he think of her sketch?

She sucked in a hard breath and quickly flipped to the next blank page where she began doodling a spiral design. She didn’t want him to have clues about her circumstances. The longer the teacher went on and on and the more intently Kal stared, the more she worried.

Because there was a chance hehadseen her stealing pizza. And there was a chance he understood her sketch of the bathroomwasreallya sketch of her new home. She suddenly regretted that today was the day she had decided to open up and make friends. She should have stayed silent and continued ghosting through the school.

Because now there was a chance Kal knew her secret, which was the absolute last thing she wanted.

Chapter Two

Kal

Staring was rude. Especially when Ireland was trying to pay attention to Mr. Nichols as he pontificated on the highlights of World War II. But Kal couldn’t help it. Ireland Raine just looked so much like his friend Brell. Not from the front so much. When he looked at her straight on, the differences were enough to spoil the illusion. But from the side?

They could be twins from the side. Their espresso-brown hair was the same. The slight, barely noticeable upturn of their noses was the same. The pale, oval-shaped face. The glacial blue eyes. He’d stared at her for the first several days after transferring schools and sitting next to her in the history class they had together.

He couldn’t help it.

It was like seeing a ghost.

He’d expected her to turn to him and ask to borrow a pen or paper or some other random object that she’d forgotten because the thing about Brell was that she was never prepared. If they were going out in cooler weather, she would need to borrow a jacket. If they were going out when it was too sunny, she would need a hat or sunglasses or sunscreen.

Ireland never turned to him to ask for anything because she wasn’t Brell.

Brell was gone.

He’d moved to California. The distance had been too much forher to deal with and their only contact had been the occasional likes, hearts, and smiley faces online.

She moved on to new friends. Friends who sucked the life out of everything they touched.

When he’d got the news that Brell had been in a shooting accident while she was out drinking with those new friends, he’d felt destroyed. He hadn’t been there for her. And now she was gone. He could logically say it wasn’t his fault. He hadn’t chosen those friends for her. But even though he didn’t believe in ghosts, he was pretty sure Brell was haunting him.

He sucked in a hard breath and tried to focus on what Mr. Nichols was saying.

Ireland was not Brell. He’d told himself that in the beginning when Ireland had rather pointedly ignored him, indicating she wasn’t interested in getting to know him. So he’d moved on.

Except he apparently hadn’t moved on because he’d noticed Ireland again a couple of weeks back. He’d seen her slip through the shadows of Geppetto’s while he had been in the middle of a set. He’d seen her, thought it was Brell, and almost forgotten the lines to the cover he was singing.

She wasn’t Brell. He had to remember that. It wasn’t fair to impose his emotional baggage for one girl on the other. He’d forced himself to look away so he could finish the song. Once done, he looked back in time to see Ireland tucking a piece of pizza into her bag from off a table that hadn’t yet been cleared by the busser.

He suddenly wasn’t as worried about how she looked like a blast from the past. He was curious why she would need to steal someone else’s abandoned food. He’d watched her slip out of the restaurant through the side door, and then he’d spent the rest of the night wondering what that had all been about.

Kal liked having a mystery to solve.

When he saw her again in school, he’d gone back to surveyingher, trying to figure her out. He felt okay about the staring because he was pretty sure she didn’t notice him at all.

Now that she was talking to him, he found he wanted her to keep talking. And he also figured she noticed the staring.

She had a look in her eyes he didn’t really understand. Wariness. Fear. Worry. Anxiety. He knew the names of those emotions—had spent years working to perfect capturing them in ink and paint—but he didn’t understand them on her. Ireland Raine was haunted. He just didn’t know what was haunting her. Basic high school drama, like friends or no friends? Trying to figure out college? Maybe she had an actual ghost floating along behind her every step. Or maybe she was haunted by an old boyfriend like he was haunted by an old girlfriend? Memories of people were sometimes painful specters.

Brell had said she understood when his parents had moved him out of Phoenix, Arizona, to Arcata, California. She had held his hand when he told her that his grandma died. She’d made it seem like no big deal when he’d told her that his family was moving so they could help take care of his grandpa. His grandpa was becoming far frailer and struggling to do basic things for himself, and with Grandma gone, there was no one to help him. She had been the one who’d held Grandpa’s life together in any organized kind of way.

Moving had made sense to Kal logically. But emotionally? Emotionally, he was wrecked. He had thought he and Brell could make a go of the long-distance thing. But, apparently, that wasn’t going to happen. Brell dropped him and didn’t look back. She’d gone off to a different life. And that life had killed her.

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