Page 62 of Possession

Me, the one they’d taunted. I was the one who needed to be sent away.

School let out during the summer, of course, and my mother hadn’t had a clue what to do with me. I didn’t need remedial classes. Far from it. Somehow I’d ended up at an art camp at the Beacon School in Marblehead, miles away from my own district in Lynn. The two towns weren’t far apart geographically, but when it came to money and opportunities—well, they might as well have been at opposite poles of the Earth.

I’d shown some aptitude for art at my own school, mainly because it was another way to segregate myself. Most of the other kids—especially the boys—wouldn’t have been caught dead with a paintbrush or a ceramic piece, but I’d found the intricacy of creation quieted my mind.

When I was involved in a project, I wasn’t thinking about my mother working three jobs to make the rent, or my father breezing in and out with some trinket when it suited him, or the neighborhood criminal types who knew I’d eventually give in and join up with them.

What did I have to lose? I was so fucking alone.

Glass work had been my first class at art camp. My mother had signed me up, hoping I’d turn my vague interest in art into a usable skill. At the very least, maybe I’d meet a girl. I was so angry back then that even the opposite sex barely got my attention.

When I needed relief, I saw to myself.

The class in glass design had shown me a whole new avenue in artistic exploration. It had also given me Grace.

She’d been small for her age, with eyes too big for her face. Eyes she kept riveted on her demo pieces even as she tried to instruct the class in her low, halting voice. I’d had a feeling that she too had been sent there for a reason other than her own desires. Surely not to keep her out of trouble. She’d seemed about as dangerous as a rainbow. A million different colors, diffused by the light.

Utterly untouchable.

Her grandmother came up to me one day as I stood outside smoking and generally being pissed at the world. She’d asked polite questions.

Was I enjoying the class? Did I feel like I was learning a lot? What kind of art did I gravitate to?

I couldn’t figure out what her angle was. Even at that age, I’d known she had one. Everyone did, especially the fucking rich. But even after Grace’s brief time assisting the teacher ended, Annabelle returned and spoke to me.

Once or twice, she gave me a ride back to Lynn.

Eventually, she admitted she knew my father, rat bastard that he was. She’d been aware of my existence before I’d ever showed up at camp.

In fact, she’d purposely contacted my mother and paid my tuition for the summer, offering to serve as my patron of sorts.

My mother hadn’t questioned it. She knew I was a gifted art student, and she’d been eager to get me out of her hair and off her troubled mind.

I’d known right away Annabelle felt sorry for me. She was obviously a very wealthy, connected woman, and I was the poor wrong-side-of-the-tracks son of her supposed friend.

Of course, I’d suspected that friendship was more than that. But she’d never said, and I’d never asked.

The following summer, Grace had come back to teach again. She helped teach two different glass classes that time, one basic and one more difficult, and I’d taken both.

Once, she’d glanced at me with questions in her eyes. How could I be both a beginner and an advanced learner at one time?

By that point, I wasn’t a beginner by any stretch. What I happened to be was a sixteen-year-old boy who was falling for a girl he could never have.

The camp was big enough, the number of students diverse enough, and Grace’s tenure as student teacher brief enough that we barely spoke. A few fractured conversations here and there, the imparting of a technique, a question when I managed to stifle my shyness and actually speak to her.

But she was totally engaged in her art, and I was completely immersed in her.

Like a good little stalker, I found out everything I could about her. I knew she was Annabelle’s granddaughter, obviously, and that she’d been mostly raised by the woman. I knew she had no siblings. I knew she tended to dress young for her age, wearing the kind of knee socks and plaid skirts made famous in porn videos, but in total innocence.

There was no feigned purity in Grace Copeland. Not then. She’d been truly untainted.

Once, I saw her grandmother push her on the swings at the playground beside the school. She was far too old for it, of course, and had protested heavily until her grandmother’s teasing encouragement had quashed her resistance.

When Grace hadn’t been able to go high enough on her own, she’d begged her grandmother to help push.

Watching them laugh together, their joy palpable, had been like another kind of knife. Except this one had been fashioned from want.

I had little family. My mother loved me, in a distant, tolerant way. She was far too occupied with basic survival to think about the warm, fuzzy stuff she probably thought I didn’t need.

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