“Then why did he leave her?”
Mia raised her hand. “He said he was too young to know how to love her.”
Mr. Tollin shrugged. “What does that mean? Isn’t love just a feeling?”
I had to try another sketch, to figure out what made them prophetic, why some worked and some didn’t.
“It’s a verb, too,” Mia said.
“How do you verb-love somebody?” Mr. Tollin asked.
Jimmy answered before Mr. Tollin even called on him. “You give the person what they need. You give up your own happiness to make them happy.”
Mr. Tollin smiled and tipped his head. “That is a very mature answer, Jimmy.” He walked down the aisle between the desks. “If love requires sacrifice, what do you gain by loving? What’s in it for you?”
What did the pictures that came true have in common? I did the airplanes and Damon’s T-shirt on my bed. The moss on the front steps came out of art class. And I sketched Amica’s fall at my desk.
“Maybe love is its own reward?” Kim suggested.
Mr. Tollin put the chalk down in the blackboard’s tray and tapped his book into his palm. “But what is the reward? What is anyone’s motivation to love someone else?”
The bell rang.
“Assignment for tomorrow. Read chapters fifteen through seventeen, and write a 100-word essay on this prompt.” Mr. Tollin picked the chalk up again and wrote on the blackboard. “My Rose Is.”
I scribbled the sentence in my notebook and joined the chorus of protests.
“What does that even mean?” Kim asked as she swung her bag over her shoulder.
“It means tell me what you love and what it means to love it.”
More groans.
I just had to make it through gym to get to art class. Hopefully I could work on my research with whatever assignment Miss Downey gave us.
Mr. Tollin called after us as we filed out the door. “If you don’t know what you love and why, you’ll never know how.”
* * * * *
Drew caught up with me in the hall on the way to gym. “J.B. Juliet. Julietina.”
“What do you want, Drew?”
“You look cute today. I like your shirt.”
I’d worn one of the T-shirts Ginger gave me, a navy one with matching eyelet panels around the hem and the sleeves.
I squinted at him.
“Seriously.”
“Okay. Thanks.”
He circled me with these goofy moves and I almost tripped. “More square-dancing today, yeah?”
“I think what you’re doing is called The White Boy Can’t Dance.”
He laughed and elbowed me. “You’re pretty funny, you know that?”
We got to the gym and he stopped me before I could go into the girls’ locker room. “I’ve got an idea,” he whispered. He looked at me with a big, stupid grin on his face. He wanted me to ask.
“Okay. What?”
Jimmy came around the corner just as Miss Sweeney pulled open the locker room door and blew her whistle. “Get to class, both of you!”
When Drew leaned over and kissed me on the cheek I stumbled backwards and bumped into the wall.
He grinned at Miss Sweeney, all teeth and squinty eyes. “Just wanted a quick smooch before class.”
“Drew!” I yelled.
He ducked around Sweeney with a basketball-court move. Jimmy stared at me like he’d just seen a UFO. Drew ran past both of them into the gym. “See you on the dance floor, babe,” Drew called back.
Sweeney’s eyes bulged as big as the vein that throbbed in the middle of her forehead. “Get dressed for P.E.!” she rasped at me.
When I got into the gym, Drew and I were paired with other partners.
* * * * *
I walked into the art room to find Miss Downey face-down on her desk.
“Is she okay?” Tammy whispered when I slid into my seat.
Miss Downey raised her head and propped it on one hand. “Headache,” she croaked. “Free sketch.”
“Why doesn’t she stay home when she gets these?” Tammy asked.
I shrugged and opened to a fresh page. I twirled my pencil around between my thumb and first finger. “Maybe she’d miss Mr. Tollin too much.”
“Maybe she’s afraid Miss Sweeney will steal him.” Lula giggled.
Tammy and Lula both laughed, then muffled it when Miss Downey gave them a dirty look.
Mr. Tollin and Miss Downey loathed each other. “My bohemianism offends his classical sensibilities,” she said once, when I asked her about an argument they’d had in the lunch room.
Tammy moved her chair around to the other side of the table. “I’m going to draw you, okay?”
“Me?”
She nodded.
“Why?”
“Why not?”
Jimmy came in right before the bell and flopped into his seat across from Lula. Two people walked through the door right after the bell, but Miss Downey didn’t even look up.
“Free day,” I told Jimmy.
I couldn’t think of a single thing to draw.
Soon a rhythmic tapping shook my body and made my sketchbook quiver. Jimmy’s foot bounced hard against the leg of his desk. He stared out the window and rubbed his thumb back and forth across the rounded pink eraser at the end of his pencil.
“You okay?”
He turned his head toward me and for just a moment the cold anger in his expression withered my stomach. Then it evaporated and he smiled with a shrug. “Yeah.”
Jimmy shrugged again and shook his head. He pulled a straightedge out of his backpack and made a box at the top of a fresh sheet of paper.
Lula looked across the table. “Do you ever do anything besides comics?”
“What is to you?” Jimmy slammed his pencil on the desk and it broke in half. “Can you draw anything besides horses and unicorns?”
Lula’s chin started to quiver. You can’t talk to her like that.
“Geez, Jimmy.” Tammy frowned at him. “Who peed in your Wheaties?”
He scowled at Tammy. Then he scowled at me.
“What’s wrong?” I whispered.
Jimmy shoved the broken pencil halves into a pocket in his backpack and gathered up his stuff. “Like you care.” He moved to an empty seat by the door.
“What did I do?” I asked Tammy and Lula.
They shook their heads. Lula wiped a tear on her shoulder.
“He seemed okay in English,” I said.
Lula wiped her other eye with the back of her hand. “He didn’t talk to me at all during science. I didn’t know he was mad at me.”
Tammy looked across the room at Jimmy. “I think he’s mad at all of us.”
Miss Downey moaned and turned her head to the other side. If she took one of her headache pills, she’d be asleep any minute.
I put my knees up on the edge of the desk and pressed my sketchbook against my lap.
“You moved.” Tammy pressed her lips together.
“It’s hard to draw and be drawn at the same time.”
She looked over the table at my empty page. “You’re not drawing.”
What did I want to sketch? What could I try to make happen?
“Do me,” Tammy suggested.
No, Pam was right. I should try to do something totally crazy.
But I tried that, and nothing happened. School didn’t close. Why did that one fail when the one of Amica worked?
Think, Juliet. Think.
“Hello?” Tammy tapped her pencil against the top of my sketchbook.
“Yeah, yeah.” I started to sketch.
Jimmy said I shouldn’t mess with this, that it was too much power for one person.
But I don’t even know if I have a power. And anyway, Jimmy’s mad at me. He’s right, what do I care what he thinks?
As I pushed the tip of the pencil around the white paper it started to move as if on its own. I loved this part of art, when the picture seemed to draw itself. I sketched her leaning back,
tipped off balance. I drew his arm around her waist, one hand behind her head.
Nothing could be crazier than this.
“What are you drawing?” Tammy asked and craned her neck to see it.
“Pam and Mark.”
Her eyebrows disappeared into her bangs. “Your brother, Mark? And Pam? What are they doing?”
“He’s dipping her and kissing her square on the mouth.”
Tammy put her hand over her mouth. “She’s going to frame that and hang it above her fireplace. No, above her bed.”
“If this works, I’ll frame it for her.”
Tammy squinched up her eyes. “If what works?”
I just shrugged.
If I could make my brother kiss a buck-toothed thirteen-year-old, I could do anything.
CHAPTER 9
Mark pulled up to Ginger’s house and honked the horn.
“Shouldn’t you go up to the door?” I asked.
“Her parents are away for a couple of days. It doesn’t matter.” He slid the gearshift into neutral and pointed to the backseat. “Beat it. Ginger sits up here.”
I scowled at him but climbed into the back. Ginger came out of her house and waved, then turned to lock the door.
“Who all’s going to the movie?” Mark looked back over his shoulder.
“No one.”
“You’re going alone?”
“No. Duh. Pam’s going. Lucas, and a couple of other people. No Damon, don’t worry.”
He shrugged. “It’s none of my business.”
“That’s right, it isn’t.”
Ginger opened the door, climbed in and turned around with a puzzled look on her face. “Hi, Juliet.”
“Hi.”
Mark slid his hand under her hair and pulled her toward him for a kiss. I looked out the window. The front door of the house next to Ginger’s opened.
“Hey! That’s Miss Downey.”
Ginger nodded. “She’s our neighbor. It was great when I was at Parnell. She drove me to school every day.”
Mark put the car in gear and we pulled out of the driveway. “We’re dropping Juliet off at the movies.”
“What time do you need us to pick you up?” Ginger asked.
“It’s fine,” I said. “Mom or Dad will get me after.”
Mark kept his hand buried in her hair.
“Thanks for the clothes,” I said. “They’re really great.”
She pushed Mark’s hand away and twisted to face me. “I’m so glad! Did everything fit okay?”
I nodded.
“Juliet looked pretty hot at breakfast the other day.” Mark bounced his eyebrows at me in the rear view mirror.
“Knock it off, Mark.” I wanted to hit him in the back of the head with one of my new shoes.
“I think she’s discovered boys,” he sang.
I wanted to kill him.
Ginger turned forward in her seat. “Why wouldn’t she? I’m sure they’ve discovered her.”
I love you, Ginger.
“Is this a movie date?” she asked.
“No. Absolutely not. A bunch of us are going to see Tron. I can’t date yet.”
Mark looked back at me again. “Says who?”
“Says me.”
“That’ll change when the right guy asks you out.”
“Whatever. Mom and Dad aren’t going to let me date yet.”
“It doesn’t take much to get around Mom and Dad these days.”
Ginger looked over at him. “Mark.”
He shrugged and tried to kiss her again.
“Watch the road,” Ginger and I both said at the same time.
I leaned forward and squeezed Ginger’s arm. “Pinch, poke, owe me a Coke!”
She laughed.
Mark scowled at me in the mirror. “Grow up, Juliet.”
“Shut up, Mark.”
We pulled up to the Holiday Theaters, just across from the bus and train depot. Mark inched the car forward through the line at the curb, dropped me off, then drove away.
The theater’s thousands of miniature bulbs scalded the dusky evening and drew the crowds toward them with hypnotic circles and flashes. People drifted past me toward the theater’s poster-plastered windows: couples with arms and fingers twined around each other, mobs of black-clad boys with spiky hair and shredded jeans, pairs and trios of painted girls who clung to each other’s arms and giggled whenever a boy went past.
I wished I’d brought a purse to have something to hold onto.
The line at the ticket booth crept forward and I tried to ignore the conversations around me.
Then I was like, omigod, and I totally called her a tramp.
Jenny is a babe, dude. She’s never going out with you.
I love you. I love you more. I love you even more. I’m in love with you. I’m madly in love with you.
I dug some crumpled bills out of my jeans pocket and pushed them under the glass. “One for Tron.” A green ticket slid out at me.
On the side of the booth, in the corner formed against the adjacent door to the theater, a pair of high school kids made out against the wall. I cupped my left hand against the side of my head and moved down to the next door. Two boys from my school, seventh-graders, knocked into me when they pushed through the door. I followed them in and looked around.
“Juliet!” Lucas and Pam waved from the other side of the room, in front of the snack bar. Lucas hugged an extra-large bucket of popcorn. As I made my way past the ticket taker and across the foyer I saw that his jumbo drink had two straws jammed through the lid.
“Where is everybody?” I waved off the red and white cup Lucas thrust at me.
“I got you some Milk Duds, too. Do you want some?”
I shook my head. “Where’s Charlie and Dale?”
Pam took a handful of popcorn from Lucas’s bucket. “Dale’s in the bathroom. Charlie couldn’t come.”
Lucas glared at Pam. “I got that for Juliet.”
“There’s enough for everybody,” Pam said. She leaned in to whisper in my ear. “Dale bought my ticket.”
I turned on Lucas. “This is not a date.”
His caterpillar eyebrows went wavy.
“I told you, I can’t date yet.”
“So don’t call it a date.” He pushed the soda back toward me, like a forlorn puppy who hopes you’ll throw the ball instead of kick him.
I took it. “Which straw is mine?”
“Whichever you want.” He smiled, so big.
Dale walked up behind Pam and put his hands on her shoulders. “Hey, Juliet.”
I didn’t like this. Not at all. But I couldn’t get out of it. Mark and Ginger left, and even if I wanted to walk that far home, I wouldn’t do it in the dark, alone.
Dale squeezed Pam’s shoulders and leaned up against her, and she let him. He kept looking back and forth between Lucas and me, with this stupid grin like he knew something I didn’t.
Lucas handed me the Milk Duds. “They’re your favorite.”
“Lemonheads are my favorite,” I lied.
Dale moved his hands down to Pam’s waist and pushed her toward the hall. “Let’s go in.”
Lucas tried to get his hand on my back again, but I stepped the other way. “Actually, I want a lemonade. You guys go ahead. I’ll be there in a second.”
“I’ll wait for you,” Lucas said.
Pam giggled and shrieked as Dale tickled her all the way down the hall.
“Go.” I got into line and turned away from him. “They need a chaperone.”
He came up right behind me and whispered into my hair. “Who’s going to chaperone us?”
I spun on my heel. “Knock it off, Lucas!”
“Just kidding!” He tripped backwards a few steps and smacked into a very tall high school guy.
“Watch it, dork.” The guy flicked Lucas on the top of the head with his middle finger.
Lucas flushed radish-red and fumbled the popcorn and soda. “Sorry,” he said with as much attitude as an eigh
th-grader is allowed to give a high school guy, then scuttled down the hallway after Pam and Dale.
The guy looked at me then, and I wished I’d stayed home.
“That your boyfriend?”
I shook my head.
He had to be over six feet tall, with reddish-blond hair and freckles to match. Acne scars pocked his forehead and jaws. But I recognized those eyes.
“Good thing. You can do better.”
He looked me up and down, and sort of squinted at me. I should have gone in with Lucas.
“You go to Parnell?”
“Adam!”
He looked at me for another second, then turned toward the sound of his name. “Over here.”
I wanted to hide behind the pudgy kid ahead of me in line. I wanted to run screaming out of the theater.
I wanted to die.
Damon and I hadn’t talked since that afternoon at the Academic Olympics. I came to homeroom with the bell each morning and dashed out before the second bell ended, so I’d managed to avoid him for the last couple of days. Now he came across the room toward me and I had nowhere to hide.
“Julie!” Damon stopped beside Adam, and then they both stood there, two matched pairs of indigo eyes focused on me.
“It’s Juliet.”
Adam shook his head and shoved his hands into his jean pockets. When he slouched, he and Damon looked about the same height. “Doesn’t suit you. Damon’s right, you’re a Julie.”
“No one calls me that.” I shuffled forward in line.
Adam elbowed Damon, kind of hard. “Her boyfriend left her to get her own popcorn. What a jerk.”
Damon smiled, a half-hearted grin that brought out the dimple but didn’t get to his eyes.
“He’s not my boyfriend.”
“He’s not her boyfriend. Buy her popcorn, Bro.” Adam elbowed Damon again.
Damon shoved his brother back. “Go watch your movie.”
Adam sort of cackled and pursed his lips at me in a kiss that made me want to duck. “See ya.” He headed down a different hall, then turned back around. “Tell Dad not to wait up.”
Damon snorted and muttered, “I’m pretty sure he already knows that.” He turned back to me and smiled again. “Hey.”
“Hi.” I inched forward with the line and mangled my ticket in my fist.
“What are you seeing?”
I swallowed all the spit that had built up in my mouth. “Tron.”
“Hey, me too.” He held up his ticket stub.
The guy at the counter asked me what I wanted. I pulled two bills out of my pocket and ordered a soda.
“Are you here with anybody?” I sounded jealous.
“Just Adam. He wanted to see Fast Times, but I’m not old enough.”
I took my change and my cup and we walked toward the Tron hallway. “You could pass for seventeen.”