Fan Art (13 page)

“I hear you,” I say.

Instead DeMarco and I head to the kitchen in search of more drinks. We both get fresh sodas and munch on pretzels with Brodie and Kellen, while complaining about the upcoming exams.

When I go to find Mason and Bahti, it’s after three. I’m getting tired and don’t want to fall asleep at the wheel—that’d pretty much cancel out my designated-driver status. The music on the back deck had been turned down due to the hour, and the dance floor had dwindled from mosh pit to country club. The remaining couples slow dance
under the strings of white Christmas lights, some of them locked at the lips. I didn’t see Mason and Bahti, so I pan the fenced-in yard from the apple trees to the fire pit. No luck.

Until I see them.

Kissing.

My body runs cold as my heart stops pushing warm blood to my extremities.

His wide, tan hands are cradling her face—his thumbs on her delicate cheekbones, fingers in her hair.

Oh God.

Their lips move over each other’s.

I shouldn’t be watching this.

There’s tongue involved.

I can’t look away.

She presses closer, wrinkling his tuxedo jacket—that she’s wearing.

His thumbs slide toward her ears, deepening the kiss.

All of a sudden I want to look away.

Want to run, hide.

Cry.

I study the laces on my Converse, how they’ve gone gray near the eyelets. I wonder how much string I’ll need to tie up the hole in my heart. Because, even though I know Mason doesn’t like me like I like him, I haven’t had proof before tonight. And, if I am honest with myself, I don’t just like him. Or have a Darren-Criss-look-alike
crush on him. No. This is more than a bruise. There’s some major breakage. I love him.

When I look up, Bahti notices me standing there.

Mason turns, sees me.

“Hey,” I manage. “I was thinking of, um, uh, leaving.”

Bahti runs the back of her hand over her moist lips. “So soon?”

“It’s three in the morning!” I snap, my voice cracking on “three.”

“Past someone’s bedtime?” she asks, equally bitchy.

“Easy,” Mason says slowly. “We can go.”

Bahti shoots him a look.

“Or we can walk,” he replies with a shrug.

“Okay, okay,” Bahti says. “Let me find my shoes.”

And when she’s busy, Mason mouths the word
sorry
, nodding his head in Bahti’s direction.

Is he apologizing for Bahti’s attitude? Or for making out with her?

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

TWENTY-ONE

It’s Monday, and the
Gumshoe
proofs
are here: a color print of the cover, and a stapled dummy of the inside—that’s black-and-white. Deaf to the bustle in the hall around me, I thumb through it, turn to the subject of my moment of insanity. It’s there. Complete with the new title page we designed at the last minute.

“Everything okay?” the printers’ rep asks me. We are standing outside the main office and the second bell just rang. The noise fades as if someone turned down the volume.

“Yeah,” I assure her. It’s not her fault I sent her these files and not, well, the ones I was supposed to send.

“Okay, so look everything over and have your adviser sign here.” She points to a sheet of paper labeled
PROOF APPROVAL
.

My stomach spins as if I just stepped off a Tilt-A-Whirl. “Does Dr. Taylor have to sign this?”

“It gives us the go-ahead to print the magazine. It’s a contract.”

“I’m eighteen,” I tell her. “So I can sign it, right?”

She isn’t expecting this question. “I think Dr. Taylor signed off on it last year, but maybe just because it was new. So whatever your editor says, okay?”

Crap.
I’m not the editor, either.
Damn it. Why didn’t I think of this?

“I’ve got the cover on press Thursday. Last job of the day—I wanted you to come press check. So four thirtyish?”

“Yeah!” I say, psyched about seeing my work on an honest-to-goodness-sheet-fed-offset printing press.

“Call me if you have any changes—or if we’re ready to print—and I’ll come get the proofs.” She smiles at me.

I pull my lips into a smile and nod. The gesture brings back the tilt-o-swirl feeling—or maybe it’s because I am holding in my hand proof that I am an idiot.

I duck into the bathroom, find a stall, and lock myself in. I set the rolled-up color proof on end and open the dummy. I sit on the toilet and spread the pages on my lap. With a car key, I pry open the staples and then ease out the offending pages.

They’re only coming out now so that they can be in there later—without Michel and Lia censoring them. I can’t let them do it.
Gumshoe
isn’t theirs and only theirs. It belongs to all of us, the football players and
the marching band, the chess club and the cheerleading squad, the brainiacs and the dorkestra. Even the art-geek girls, and maybe especially the art-geek girls because they each submitted something.

I page through the proof and feel a little distant. Maybe because I haven’t see it in a few days, or maybe because it seems to have a life all its own, as if the artwork grew roots and the poems grew branches with little
e
and
o
leaves. And, even as the designer, I can’t smother it. Can’t stop it from growing. Can’t force it to be something it isn’t.
Gumshoe
just has to be. Even if it drags me kicking and screaming from the safety of my closet.

My eyes catch on a poem that Kellen submitted months ago—before Hailey Beth Johnson became his other half. Holland insisted we put it in. And Lia had whispered, “Proof he’s single.” It was about breaking up with his previous girlfriend after she had made out with some other guy. I read it and wonder how he could walk away when he still loved her. Wonder if I’d ever get over Mason and Bahti and that kiss.

Evidence removed, I press the staples closed again with the flat edge of my key. I slide the pages between the screen and keyboard of my computer and head back to the office for a late pass to my last morning class before lunch.

A Million Things

by Kellen Zabala

It was a bonfire summer night.

It was a million stars in her eyes.

It was her skin warm on mine,

the taste of lemonade on her lips.

Then it wasn’t a text on my phone.

It wasn’t sweet nothings in my ear.

It wasn’t her hand warm in mine,

but the taste of his beer on her lips.

It was a bitter winter’s night.

It was a million sorry excuses.

It was the end of our relationship,

the taste of our last kiss on my lips.

It wasn’t that I couldn’t forgive.

It wasn’t that I was jealous.

It wasn’t that I didn’t love her,

but the taste of his beer on her lips.

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

..................................................................

TWENTY-TWO

“We should go to McCall,” Mason
says over school pizza and french fries. He has his geektastic day planner open and his glasses in his hair as if he’s seventeen going on forty-two.

I thought I’d talked him out of this. We went to prom instead.

“Just for the day—your mom won’t kill you if it’s just for the day,” he says. “We won’t set foot in Frank’s precious condo.”

“But when? We have exams coming up.”

I watch Mason’s lips as he says a single word. “Friday.”

Mesmerized, I fall speechless. When I recover, I ask, “Friday? This week, Friday?”

Mason taps the day on his calendar as if it’s already planned.

Thursday is the senior prank and Friday is senior skip
day, so I tell him, “No one will want to go, not after being up all night with the prank.”

“Not everyone,” Mason says. “Just us.”

And the way he says it, with his voice soft and his brown eyes both molasses and serious at the same time, has my heart expanding like a balloon filling with air; one dub beats louder than the others. “Okay,” I say, not because my brain thinks it’s a good idea, but because my heart tells me to.

Mason flashes me a grin and flips his glasses down onto his nose.

I catch myself before I fall off my chair then hold my ground. “If it’s just for the day and not in Frank’s condo, my mom will be cool with it.”

“But we’re not going to tell her,” Mason says. “Remember?”

I nod, even though I thought we weren’t telling them because of the overnight aspect, and the possible kegger.
But now?
I’m not sure I get it.

“It’ll be our thing,” Mason says. “A trial run on getting out of here.”

And I like the sound of that.

We hash out the plan over a plate-size puddle of ketchup and the rest of our fries. It’s pretty simple, really: A) Tell our parents that we won’t be going to school because it’s senior skip day. B) Say that Gabe and Londa
invited us out on a friend’s boat and we’ll be out at Lucky Peak—and yes, we’ll have life jackets, and no there won’t be any beer. This is the perfect lie. Because if they find wet towels, a cooler of soda and sandwiches, and sand in my car—it’ll all be explainable. And Gabe and Londa will totally back us up—except for the fact that Gabe will be working at the garage and Londa will be buried nose-deep in schoolwork.

I’m calm, cool, and collected at the
Gumshoe
meeting after school, but then again, I have removed the evidence from the proofs. No one suspects a thing. Michael even thanks me for all of my hard work while Holland gushes over the layout and DeMarco points out my illustrations of a pipe, magnifying glass, and footprint that I’ve put in the short stories to indicate time skips. “Looks awesome,” he says.

“Yes, Jamie,” Dr. Taylor says, handing me the signed proof approval sheet. “It looks good. Lincoln High will be proud.”

I smile weakly, knowing that after I put the offending pages back in, he’ll probably have something else to say to me.

“Jamie,” Lia calls to me as I scoot toward the door, hoping to leave the meeting before I meet my end.
Damn it.

“Wait up,” she says. “I’ve got prom pictures.”

So I turn and walk back to where she and Holland are sitting.

She has a stack of prints in her hand and she lays them out on a desk as if they are tarot cards. “Oh my God,” she says to Holland. “DeMarco looks sooo cute in this one!”

I peek at the picture. He does look cute, even upside down.

“You are so lucky that DeMarco is tall. I mean, you got to wear those amazing heels and everything,” Lia gushes. “I mean, with a shorter guy . . .” Her voice drops to a whisper and then silence, as if the rest of her sentence was too horrible to mention.

“I know!” Holland says, taking the cute DeMarco photo from Lia.

I don’t get it.
What does she know?
But I don’t ask. Nope. I am too busy salivating at the next photo. I mean, trying not to salivate.

“I always thought Mason Viveros was such a dork,” Lia says, turning the photo of Mason toward Holland. “But he dresses up nice.”

I have to stop myself from grabbing it from her hand. I stuff my hands in my pockets.

“Brainiac, maybe,” Holland says. “Did you know he has the second-highest class rank?”

Huh?

“Bahti is so pretty,” Lia says, ignoring Holland, and
talking about the next photo. “She should wear makeup more often.”

“God,” Holland says. “She looks great in that dress. I could never wear that—I am way too fat.”

Holland isn’t fat.

“Yeah, me neither,” Lia agrees, flipping to another photo.

Eden is in it and Lia doesn’t make a comment; she just adds the photo to a small stack off to one side. When she’s through sorting, she takes the stack with my friends’ pictures in it and presses it into my hands, as if she wants me to destroy the evidence that she ever went anywhere with Eden. I figure it’s for the best. Because after she sees
Gumshoe
, I’m sure the pictures of me will be used for target practice.

Stopping by my locker, I pull a picture of Mason and me from the pile. We’re smiling at the camera with our arms around each other’s shoulders. He looks happy and I look dazed. I hang it in my locker—proof that we were once friends. Because after
Gumshoe
is printed-folded-stapled-trimmed with those pages in the centerfold; and after Mason opens it and reads Challis’s comic about the boys falling in love he’ll look at me. And wonder. Wonder why I put it in—I’m sure no one will conceal that fact—and he’ll know all about me and my secret. The secret I’m not sure I can tell him because I’m afraid he’ll drift out of my life, leaving me with only pixilated memories.