Page 64 of The Art of Us

A toxic match.

Kal scrubbed his hand over his head as his brain put those words on repeat.

He had screwed everything up for everyone. He saw the custodian pushing a garbage can on wheels down the hall. He’d even screwed things up for her by letting Ireland be mad at her. But that was one thing he could apologize in person for. He hurried to catch up to her. “Hey, um, Janice.”

She stopped and leaned on the can while she waited for him to speak.

“Sorry to bug you.” He stopped. She didn’t know Ireland had ever been mad at her. Was he making things worse by bringing it up? “Just wanted to say you do a great job. Thanks.”

Janice pursed her lips in confusion before she said, “You’re welcome.” She patted him on the shoulder and started walking with the rolling can again.

Kal breathed a deep, cleansing breath and went back to work on the mural.The issue doesn’t revolve around me,he thought.It revolves around Mara and Ireland.He would work to fix things a little at a time.

It wouldn’t change what happened, but maybe it would change how everyone felt about it. Maybe it would change how Mara and Ireland felt about it.

Maybe it would change how Ireland felt abouthim.

Chapter Twenty-one

Ireland

Five days later, Mara still wasn’t talking to Ireland. Ireland didn’t blame her. She’d made a promise and broken that promise. Her total hypocrisy was not lost on her. She wanted Kal punished for doing the same thing she had done. She hoped for forgiveness in the same way he hoped.

She was denied in the same way he was denied.

But her situation was different. She had told accidentally. He had gone out and told on purpose. Premeditated betrayal.

Everything had come to a crashing crescendo the night of the clambake. Ireland and Mara arrived home at the same time that night. Or close enough. Grace asked why they’d driven separately, and then Mara dumped the whole tale about the assault and the clambake.

Mara told them everything because, as she said when she was talking to them, they were going to hear about it one way or the other, and she owed it to them to have the information come from her and be completely true instead of rumor.

Mara left out one thing: she didn’t tell her parents that Ireland had betrayed her trust. Grace and Jarrod couldn’t figure out what exactly had happened between the girls, and Mara never volunteered the details. Ireland wasn’t sure if it was because Mara had reached deep inside herself and found some compassion and didn’t want Ireland kicked out of the house, or if she was so done with Ireland that she thought Ireland wasn’t even worth the mention.

Ireland hovered in the background as the conversation happened because she didn’t want to be alone in her bedroom with only her thoughts to keep her company.

After Grace heard what had happened to Mara, she insisted that they report the incident “for the safety of other girls.” Mara protested. She didn’t want the drama. She didn’t want her family to have to deal with the drama. Her life wasn’t anybody else’s business. She hated Rowan and didn’t want to ever have to deal with him again. She hated herself and what people would think of her. She’d gone to Redwood Park with him. She’d known he had a reputation as a player. She’d made the mistake.

Grace was exactly what her name described her to be. She held her daughter in her arms and stroked Mara’s hair while whispering words of encouragement, comfort, love. She gave Mara a safe space to say whatever it was she wanted to say. No judgment. No derision. Except when Mara tried to blame herself—then Grace defended her daughter with a ferocity that made Ireland envious.

What would it be like to have a mom hold her like Grace held Mara? To protect her the way Grace protected Mara?

Jarrod was on the other side of his daughter. He held her hand and told her she would be okay. He told her that whatever happened, she had them.

What would it be like to have a dad who said, “Whatever happens, you have me?”

Ireland had gone to bed that night feeling like someone had hollowed out her insides and placed them up on a high shelf where she couldn’t reach, leaving her empty and numb.

She crept to Mara’s door in the bathroom and knocked. “Mara? Mara, I’m sorry. It was an accident. It slipped out by accident. Mara? Please talk to me.”

“Boundaries! We are not friends, Ireland.”

Ireland hated that days later they still weren’t friends. Thepolice had come by and taken a statement. Rowan’s parents had also come by. That had been weird. Ireland expected them to defend their son and to insist Mara take it all back. But they did the exact opposite. They apologized for him, said they were putting him into counseling, and asked what they could do to help Mara.

It was classy of them to take responsibility for what they could. Not everybody did that.

It had been on the third day after the clambake blowup that Ireland was cleaning in the kitchen. She’d hoped that she could Cinderella her way into not being kicked out of the house. They hadn’t been back to school. Thank the stars because Ireland could not take the back-and-forth drive with Mara’s frosty silence, only broken by the word “Boundaries!” thrown in intermittently.

Grace and Jarrod were letting Ireland do at-home study because Mara told them that Rowan had said some demeaning things to her as well. On top of that, they knew Tinsley had announced Ireland’s homelessness to everyone, and they also didn’t want Ireland to have to deal with all the drama of trying to answer questions about Mara. Ireland didn’t have a driver’s license, either. Because of all this, they figured both girls needed a break from in-real-life school. So they were keeping up on schoolwork from home, instead.

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