I try to ignore the burning sensation in my chest. “I don’t know,” I mumble.
“It’ll be fun!” Angie insists. “I’ll talk to her about it. I—I want you to be okay with us.” She sounds tentative, as if she were asking for my blessing.
“Why wouldn’t I be okay with you?” I ask gruffly.
Her face goes blank and she stiffens. “No reason. We’re best friends, and sometimes friends just—well, I mean you thought she was a shoplifter.”
“She was a shoplifter,” I snap, and instantly I know I shouldn’t have said it. It’s as if Margot had entered the room and was standing between us, arms crossed, judging me for my shitty friendship. I can’t look at Angie, so I stare at the wall over her bed. There’s a Maxfield Parrish print of a color-saturated countryside that she took from her sister Rachel’s room; an 8x10 painting of the Virgin Mary her mother framed for her; and all around it are color printouts of comic book art, including an illustration of Kestrel I drew especially for her. We spent a whole day one summer picking out the comics to print at the local copy shop, fifty cents per sheet, which Angie said made the Virgin Mary painting tolerable.
It’s been five days since their date. I picture them in my head, sitting at a café together, Margot’s hands cupped around a coffee mug, Angie with her head leaning against her hand, her hair brushing against her arm. The image in my mind’s eye jumps, and now I imagine them together in a car, and it’s dark. Light from a streetlamp cuts across their faces, and Margot is leaning toward Angie, and they kiss. My stomach twists.
“I have to go,” I say, standing up on wobbly legs.
“Jess.” Angie holds out her hand to me.
I don’t touch her. “My parents will be mad if I’m late.”
“Don’t be upset,” she pleads.
“I’m not.” I take a few halting steps toward the door.
“You don’t like her. You think I’m stupid for liking her.”
Now I look at her. Her eyes are bright, as if she were about to cry. “I have never thought you were stupid,” I say vehemently. “Why would you think that?”
Her shoulders crumple. “Whatever.”
I stare at her. She’s sad. I made her sad. I’m such a jerk. I feel like I’ve tainted our friendship. I know I should walk this back, but all I can do is walk out.
I’M ALMOST LATE TO SCHOOL. I SPRINT DOWN THE hallway into first period, sliding into my seat as the bell rings. Angie, who is sitting in front of me, glances back at me briefly. The disappointment in her eyes makes me shrivel inside.
She called me last night, but I didn’t pick up. I stared at her name on my phone until the alert disappeared. Missed Call: Angie. Every time I hit the home button it flashed up again, and every time I watched it until it vanished.
—
At lunch, I stop by the vending machines outside the cafeteria to buy a bag of Doritos and a Coke to go with my homemade turkey sandwich and apple. The machine sticks on the soda, and I’m banging the side of it to loosen the can when Courtney shows up. She gives the machine a kick with her combat boots.
“Hey, Jess, you coming to lunch?” she asks.
“I have to do something first,” I hedge.
“Angie told me, you know.”
The Coke finally rolls out of the machine, and I scoop it up. “Told you what?”
“About the Peeb girl.” She smirks. Her black lipstick has worn off in the middle, as if she’d been sucking on a straw.
I brace myself. “What about her?”
She cocks her head, and her dangling black crystal earrings clink. “Don’t you think it’s a little weird for some Peeb to be into one of us?”
“I don’t talk about Angie’s business,” I tell her curtly.
Courtney’s eyes narrow. “I would’ve thought you’d have an opinion, seeing as how that Peeb basically stole your girlfriend.”
My face reddens. My throat clogs up. As I watch the corner of Courtney’s mouth creep up, I realize she’s about to start laughing at me, frozen in place like a dumbass.
Turning away from her feels like wrenching my feet free of wet concrete. I clutch my Doritos and Coke and brown bag lunch in my arms and walk away from the cafeteria, toward the exit. I’m sweating.
“See you at lunch, Jessica!” Courtney calls, and the curl of laughter on the edge of her words mortifies me. I walk faster.
People are streaming in the opposite direction, and I bump into a guy who mutters, “Hey, jerk!” I don’t look at him. I don’t look back. I head directly for the main exit, walking faster and faster until I finally reach the heavy front doors and push them open, bursting outside.
I gulp in the air as the doors slam shut behind me. It smells like pavement and gasoline residue and burned french fries from the cafeteria. The school security guard is heading toward the parking lot. I wait till he disappears around the corner of the building, and then I walk off campus.
—
In Ellicott Park, the overcast sky turns the trees’ red and gold leaves into rusty splotches of decay. The main trail is deserted, and the farther I walk the more relief I feel. I cross the bridge, but I don’t cut off the trail. I can barely hear the traffic anymore. The loudest sound is my breath, because I’m walking pretty fast and I’m definitely not in shape. But even as sweat drips down my back, I don’t slow down. I keep going until I see a big white oak tree, so big its roots have risen up out of the ground like giant knobs of ginger. The tree is at the base of a small rise, and the exposed roots make it easier to climb up the hill. At the top there’s an outcropping of reddish-brown boulders, and I carefully edge around them. Beyond the rocks the ground slopes down again, creating a kind of hollow that’s protected by trees encircling the top. The sky is a clear shot above: a dome of gray clouds scudding across patches of dusty blue.
I take a deep breath. I wipe the sweat off my forehead with the sleeve of my sweatshirt. I slowly make my way down the slope, almost dropping the Coke when I slip on moss. At the bottom, I set my lunch on the ground and sink down beside it. I crack open the soda, the sound of its fizz unnaturally loud in the quiet of the woods. When I take a drink, my gulps seem to echo.
My phone buzzes as I finish my sandwich. It’s from Angie. Where r u? R u ok?
I stare at the message for a while. I eat the last few Doritos and crumple up the bag, the plastic crackling loudly in the stillness. I throw the bag across the clearing. It’s past lunch now. Angie’s probably in study hall, where we usually sit together.
My phone buzzes again. I decide not to answer.
—
I’m grounded for two weeks. Mom was so furious with me she even got Dad to lecture me about how much worse my life would be if they hadn’t sacrificed so much to move to the US, scrimping and saving to buy this house in this school district, and now I disrespect them by cutting class. Even Jamie looked freaked out by how mad they were.
I lie on my bed and try to read the latest Ms. Marvel, but the pictures and words swim together into a mess of color and shadow, and eventually I’m staring up at the popcorn ceiling, thinking about Angie. She has sent me six more texts, each one getting increasingly panicked.
R u sick?
Where r u? Teachers have noticed
They’re going to call ur parents
R u getting my txts?
What r u doing??? I’m worried about u
R u still mad at me?! Plz tell me
It’s satisfying to know that she’s thinking of me, concerned about me. I want her to worry about me. I pick up my phone and gaze at her messages. They’re evidence that she cares about me.
I don’t respond to any of them.
ANGIE HAS STOPPED TEXTING ME. ONLINE SHE POSTS A picture of herself hanging out with Courtney at theater rehearsal. They’re both pouting at the camera, wearing matching black lipstick and extra-thick eyeliner. Courtney
has commented: Drama! It has sixteen likes so far.
ANGIE’S AT HER LOCKER. I’M GOING TO SAY HI TO HER. I’M going to tell her I’ve been grounded, that my parents took my phone. I hear the blood pulsing in my ears as I walk toward her, and it feels as if I were moving in slow motion underwater, pushing against the tide.
She sees me coming, and her eyes meet mine. She looks sad, and I’m overcome with tenderness toward her. She’s sad because of me. She misses me.
“Hi,” I say.
The furrow on her forehead deepens, while her nose wrinkles slightly. I realize that I miscalculated. She’s not sad; she’s angry. She closes her locker and turns her back on me, her shoulders stiff as a wall between us. She walks away.
I stare at her in shock, my skin buzzing with heat. Her curly hair bounces in its ponytail as she moves. And then she turns the corner and I’m still standing beside her locker, and everyone else is moving around me as if I’m a rock half submerged in a river, barely even parting the current.
KIM PORES OVER THE KESTREL COMICS I’VE BROUGHT TO show her, spread out on one of the long worktables in Studio B. There are twenty-two black-and-white pages. They chronicle Kestrel’s arrival at Blackwood Hall School, where so many strange paranormal things happen that Kestrel begins to suspect something is going on. I’ve also brought concept sketches for all the main characters.
“This is the Warden,” I explain, showing Kim a scarecrow-like guy with a mop of white hair. “He seems really creepy to Kestrel at first, but he’s going to be sort of her mentor, or teacher. He’s in charge of maintaining the Doorways between the real world and Faerie. The problem is, the Doorways are breaking down, and Blackwood Hall is located right on top of one of the crumbling ones.”
“Who’s this?” Kim asks, pulling a sketch of a girl in black toward us.
“That’s Raven, one of Kestrel’s classmates. Her nemesis, really.” Raven is tall and beautiful, with long black hair that I love to draw flying through the air.
“Tell me more.”
“Laney and Kestrel suspect that Raven is practicing black magic and trying to get into Faerie, but it’s going to be revealed that she’s actually competing with Kestrel to be the Warden’s apprentice.”
“What does the Warden’s apprentice do?”
“I haven’t totally figured that part out yet, but it’s basically training to be a new Warden. He’s really old and needs to retire, but he hasn’t chosen who to train yet.”
Kim lays one of the panels featuring Kestrel next to the sketch of Raven. “They’re both very striking,” Kim says. Kestrel is a little shorter than Raven, but not by much, and she has wavy brown hair as well as a splash of freckles across her face. She’s still pretty, just not as femme fatale as Raven. Kim picks up a sketch of Laney and sets it next to Kestrel. “Tell me more about Laney.”
“She’s Kestrel’s best friend. She’s normal—I mean, she’s not in the running to be an apprentice or anything.”
“She’s very different from Kestrel and Raven.”
“Well, yeah. Not everybody can be the superhero.”
“But Kestrel doesn’t know she’s going to be a superhero, does she?”
“Um . . . what do you mean?”
“Kestrel is just discovering these paranormal events, right?” Kim says. “She doesn’t know what they mean—unlike Raven—or what her role in all this is. Not yet.”
“I guess, yeah.”
“It sounds to me as if you’re telling the story of Kestrel discovering her own identity as a superhero.”
“Well . . . yeah.” I can’t decide if Kim thinks I’m stupid. “Kestrel’s story has to start somewhere.”
Kim smiles tightly, nodding her head. “Yes. And these comics are a wonderful beginning. You’ve set up some really interesting characters and a fascinating world. But how much do you know about how it ends?”
“I guess I’ve sort of just been going with it, like I don’t have a plan.”
“And that’s fine. If you were continuing to do this on your own, you’d probably figure things out along the way. But for the program, I want to push you a little.” She leans one elbow on the drafting table, bending toward me as if we’re best friends. “You’re already talented, Jess. You wouldn’t be here if you weren’t. I want you to put that talent to work a little more consciously. Do you know what I mean?” Her eyebrows draw together as she gazes at me earnestly.
I take a half step back, crossing my arms. “You think I should plan it out before I draw it? I don’t really do that. I want it to be natural, you know?”
She straightens up and gives me some room. “Sure, I get that. And I don’t want you to feel like your artwork is becoming forced in any way. Just keep in mind that having a vision of the end—knowing what story you want to tell, even if it’s only in broad strokes—can help a lot in determining what happens in the middle.” She reaches for the character sketches, shuffles to the picture of Laney and pins it down with her finger. “You’ve obviously given some thought to how the characters should look.”
“Well, you have to do that before you can draw them.”
She gives me that tight smile again. “Yes. Exactly.”
I know what she wants me to say. “Yeah, okay. I get it.”
She visibly relaxes, her smile broadening, her shoulders loosening. “I’m not saying you have to do anything in particular. If you want to do this the way you’re used to, go ahead. I just want you to consider what kind of story you’re telling. If it’s an origin story, what would an end point feel like?” She pulls the scene of the mutant farmer toward us. “That will help direct the other scenes in the story. For example, how does this farmer scene fit into the bigger narrative? It might not. But maybe it has some significance you haven’t figured out yet.”
I spin the mutant farmer panels around. I nod as if I were agreeing with her. “Okay, sure. I’ll think about it.”
—
Emily and the other Brooke buddies are waiting in the art lounge outside the studios. Paintings and sculptures are displayed on the white wall across from the floor-to-ceiling windows, and they all have little white cards next to them, like in a museum. We’ve been invited to stay at Brooke for dinner tonight, courtesy of the arts program. We’re supposed to get to know our assigned Peebs better, but judging by the scowl on Emily’s face and the slouch in her shoulders, she’s not into this.
“Hey,” I say when I walk over to her.
“Hey,” she replies.
Emily and I stand near each other in awkward silence while everyone else mingles. It’s only five o’clock, and dinner at Cooper Commons doesn’t start until five thirty. Kim said this was an opportunity to show our works in progress to our Brooke buddies, but I don’t want to show my comics to Emily.
“Do you want to wait here or go over to the Commons early?” Emily says abruptly. “The café is open if you want to get some coffee.”
“Sure.” I try not to sound too eager, but I don’t really want to hang around the art lounge saying nothing. “Let’s get coffee.”
Outside, Emily steps off the brick path to cut across the grassy quad. The sun is low in the west, stretching our shadows across the green, our legs like stilts. Emily and I trudge toward Cooper Commons in silence. Strangely, it feels less awkward to be walking together, even if we’re not talking. At the corner of the quad we take the path that leads around the library. A pack of girls is coming toward us, all dressed in athletic gear, and Emily and I move over to the right side of the path so we can edge past them. They’ve almost passed us when one of the last few girls stops right in front of me and says, “Hey! Hey, I know you.”
I look up, startled, into Margot’s face. She has a sheen of sweat on her forehead, and her Brooke jersey is damp around the collar. She’s carrying a gym bag over one shoulder, and a few strands of dark hair have worked loose from her ponytail and ar
e plastered to her neck.
Ahead of me and behind Margot, Emily stops and turns back. There’s a weird expression on her face, somewhere between impatience and worry.
“Aren’t you Angie’s friend?” Margot asks. There’s something accusatory about her tone that rubs me the wrong way.
“Yeah,” I say curtly.
Margot’s eyes are unusual; the irises are surrounded by a golden-brown circle that shades into an outer ring of brownish-green. “What are you doing here?” She sounds genuinely confused. “Do you go here now?”
Her entitled tone is grating, and the intensity of her gaze rattles me. “I’m in the arts exchange program,” I explain, and somehow it comes out sounding defensive.
Margot’s confusion clears. “Oh.” She shrugs her gym bag into better position on her shoulder. The simple gesture has a bluntly athletic grace to it, and I’m suddenly aware that I can smell her: metallic sweat over crushed grass and a hint of powdery deodorant. I back away.
One of the girls she was with comes running toward us. “Margot, what are you doing? We have to go.” It’s Ryan. She glances at me, at Margot, and then back at me. “You were in Ellicott Park that night. What are you doing here?”
“She’s in that art program for the local high school,” Margot says.
“Oh.” Ryan’s gaze flickers past Margot, and I know that she sees Emily because Emily visibly stiffens. “What are you lurking around for?” Ryan asks Emily.
“Fuck off,” Emily snaps.
I flinch at the unexpected loathing in Emily’s voice. Ryan acts shocked but I can tell that she’s actually pleased by Emily’s reaction. As Margot turns to look at Emily, Ryan says, “You’re the one who should fuck off. You’re not supposed to hang around us.”
“Are you actually hoping for a restraining order?” Margot taunts.
Emily’s expression is cold as winter. “You go ahead and try that,” she says, then glances at me briefly. “Come on. Let’s go.”