Flicker (2 page)

“When did Tessa or Lexi or Dev ever want to be friends with you before now? What’s changed?” Lee sighed. “Nothing but you. You were completely shameless with Tessa, flattering her into inviting you, then dragging me into it.”

Kendall narrowed her eyes. “I’m not dragging you anywhere.”

“Then why do you want me to come with you so badly?” Lee asked, frustration bubbling up in her like fizz in a shaken bottle of pop. “Just because you think popularity will magically rub off on you or something if you hang around with Tessa long enough doesn’t mean that I—”

“I’m sick of everyone calling me Kelcie or Kelly because they can’t remember what my name is,” Kendall broke in. “Aren’t you tired of being known as that redheaded girl with the sketchbook?”

Lee began shaking her head. “Kendall—”

“That’s why I want to go to Tessa’s party, okay? And I want you to come with me because you’re my best friend. I thought you would be
happy
, Lee. I didn’t realize you were still terrified of everyone but me.”

“I don’t car
e if anyone knows my name
,” Lee
insisted
. “You ought to know that by now.”

“I do know,” Kendall sighed. “And that’s just it.” Her eyes were suddenly hard as stones. “You’ve always been so distracted by your drawings and your books that you never once stopped to think about what you were doing.”

“And—” Lee swallowed, hard, but she couldn’t force down the anger that choked her. “What was I doing, exactly?”

“Isolating yourself!” Kendall
cried
. “It’s like you spent so much time constructing your own little worlds that you completely forgot you’re living in this one. And I stuck with you because I’ve known you forever, and I understand that you’re smart and cool and funny, but Lee—other people don’t
know
that, and they’ll never know if you can’t put away all the stupid junk and show them that you can be more than a geek.”

“There’s nothing wrong with me,” Lee said firmly, as if saying it that way would make it so. “There’s nothing wrong with liking books, or che
esy sci-fi shows, or superheroes
. Those things don’t make you any less than you are.”

“But they make you different,” Kendall bemoaned. “And I’m so
done
wi
th being different all the time
. It’s exhausting. I mean, how nice would it be to be included in conversations larger than tw
o people every now and then? What if
boys actually
liked
you, instead of pretending you don’t exist?”

“Boys like me just fine.”

“No, Lee. Joe M
artinez liked you,
for a month in eighth grade.”

“
He
moved away,” Lee protested. Joe was a nice boy—cute and smart and funny—but Lee had always figured his moving away was for the best. They’d had some fundamental ideological differences. Joe liked Marvel; Lee preferred DC. Joe dug Norse mythology; Lee preferred the Greek pantheon.

Kendall shook her head. “The point is,” she said, “in all your sixteen years, only one boy has ever given you the time of day, a
nd he was a nerd, too. I mean, y
ou only starte
d talking because he caught you
reading a copy of
Flash Comics
behind your history book!
God, Lee, why don’t you get it?”

Lee felt a sudde
n, powerful urge to pick up her sketchbook
and hurl it at Kendall’s head. “Sorry I’m not good enough for you anymore, Kendall.”

Kendall said nothing to that.

Lee turned her head and stared very hard at one of the sketches hanging on the wall, one of the two of them together. Lee had drawn it a few years ago, while they were in middle school. Looking
at it now, it seemed hideous: I
t was a piece from before Lee had acquired any style, yet Kendall refused to take it down.

As much as Lee liked to think that life had been
easier
then,
simpler,
in the years before Bluewood High, she knew that it hadn’t been. Nothing had changed. Maybe it never would.

Maybe she would always be the same Lee Capren, the same redheaded girl with the sketchbook, and maybe that wasn’t something to be proud of. Maybe she would always feel this way—different from other people, but not necessarily in a good way. The only difference was that in a couple of years, when she graduated high school
and went off to college somewhere
, she wouldn’t have Kendall to cling to anymore
. S
he might not even have Kendall tomorrow. Then where would she be?

The dregs of anger still lingered in her. She wanted to shout at Kendall,
to
make her understand that there was more to life than gossip and boys.
At the same time, she wanted to throw her arms around Kendall and remind her of why they’d always been friends, and why they should always be friends:
T
hey fit together
, like two puzzle pieces of different design that somehow combined to make a whole picture
.
But she
couldn’t seem to find the words
.

“I’m leaving,” she said, her voice thick.

Kendall
just
shrugged
her narrow shoulders
and sat
down
on her bed
, not looking at Lee.

Lee couldn’t help the scowl that crossed her face. She grabbed her backpack from its usual place on the floor next to Kendall
’s bedroom door
. “I guess I’ll see you around. Have fun with Tessa,” she added bitterly. “You two deserve each other.”

The redheaded girl with the sketchbook stepped into the hal
l and closed the door behind her.
She didn’t look back.

* * *

Lee
strolled
through Kendall’s neighborhood
, h
er backpack thumping
between her shoulder blades, the late-afternoon sun throwing her shadow onto the pavement before her.
There was no rush—
Lee’s
house wasn’t
far away, and it wasn’t like she had anywhere important to be. Not anymore.

S
he cut through a grassy lot a few
streets over, the tall grass tickling her legs. She climbed onto the makeshift bike ramp some of the neighborhood
boys had built
and
crossed it like she would a balance beam, her arms outstretched,
then
hopped off of the other end.

A few minutes later, she turned onto
Fa
i
r Wind
Avenue, passing the mostly-quiet houses of her neighbors. The guy next door was watching TV—she could see the silver and blue light through the curtains of his living room window—and the
gray
cat that belonged to the old woman across the street watched her from the edge of the lawn.
Lee trotted up the gravel drive
, noticing that her mother’s car was gone. She
must still
be
at the bookstore.

Lee slipped thr
ough the front door and
hurried
through the living room and
down the hall,
into her bedroom
.
After a long day, Lee preferred to return to a room where everything was in its rightful place.
When she needed something, her belongings could always be relied upon to be where she could find them.
The order helped her feel calm, secure.

Countless books lined shelves and cases, meticulously organized
. The maps
,
posters
and paintings
tacked carefully to her walls
fit together like a perfect game of Tetris.
On her dresser,
what
little makeup she owned was
grouped together in one corner,
and the
dresser
drawers were filled with more pens and spare sketchbooks than combs and jewelry.

As she passed the full-length mirror on her wall, Lee caught a glimpse of herself and couldn’t help but frown at her shorts and faded blue Aquaman shirt. She suddenly wondered how she’d ever thought of wearing such a geeky getup to Tessa’s party.
Not that it mattered anymore.

Sighing, Lee plugged in her shiny red CD player and flopped down onto her neatly-made bed. The first track
of Crooked Pavement’s second album began to play:
a mournful tune
about reading signs in charred bones and keeping time with metronomes. She
squeezed
her eyes shut—she loved Crooked Pavement, but they were a shade too melancholy for her right now. She needed something less depressed than she was. Something distracting.

She reached down and popped in $5 For Valentines, soaking in their
sound
.
They were an interesting group:
half-rock, half-folk, all whimsy. Perfect for getting her creative juices flowing.

Opening her sketchbook
,
Lee
chose
a pencil at random and
relaxed
her mind, letting the music fill it with colors and shapes.
She sketched freely, not trying to capture any particular image.
Already she could feel the nervous
tension melting from her neck and shoulders. Drawing always had this soothing effect on her, like she was stepping back from all her anger and fear.

Lee’s hand moved almost of its own volition, as if urged by an artist wiser and more talented than Lee—an artist that sometimes borrowed her body this way. She was only dimly aware of herself as lines and colors spread across the page.

As she drew, Lee became fascinated by the muscles of her hand and arm, the way they contracted with each small movement, the way they fit so neatly beneath her skin. The joints of her fingers and wrist seemed like architecture, the bones of her forearm like elegant archways
leading into some unknown museum
.

In her mind’s eye, Lee watched her muscles work and her bones hold her up, then pulled back and watched her whole body, as operated by the artist: confident, intuitive, each pencil stroke a deliberate act.

Lee tasted color in the air
, changing with the pencil in her hand—vermillion, fuchsia, midnight blue. The sound of her hand sliding
across the page was like music. Each
line of color whispered to her in a d
ifferent tongue, urging her
.

Lee blinked and woke up.

She lay stretched out on her back, sketchbook
fallen onto the floor
, pencils strewn around her. Her wrist was sore and her fingers
cramped
. The Valentines CD had stopped.
When she glanced at the bedside clock, she saw that nearly two hours had passed since s
he came home. Lee sighed. She’
d been dreaming again.

Sitting up, Lee rolled her shoulders and
grabbed her
sketchbook. Seven pages that had been blank before were now
completely filled
. On one page, a girl made of smoke danced with a tree. On the next, birds soared upwards from the pages of open books, their feathers dark with print that fell away as they gained height, trailing stories behind them. A boy
with curled ram’s horns
stood at the edge of a boardwalk,
gazing
at a blue swan, big enough to ride, that glided over the water.

It was always this way when she sank deep into her drawing. She would drift away into her own mind, then snap back to attention, unaware of how much time had pass
ed while she was filling pages. For Lee, drawing was like sleepwalking in a land where everything that lived in her imagination was at her fingertips.

Shaking her head to clear it, Lee
gathered the
pencils and sketchbook
, zipping them into her pack. She needed to get out of the house. The backpack’s weight was familiar as she slung it over her shoulder, crossed to the door and stepped into the hall.

Her mother appeared at the other end of the hall
way
, peering curiously at Lee through pale green eyes.

“Mom?” Lee
blinked
. “You’re back early.”

Her
mom
shook her head. “No,” she said, “I’m right on time.”

Then Lee remembered. Her mother wasn’t early; it just felt that way because Lee had lost almost two hours somewhere in the pages of her sketchbook.

“
Lose track of the time again?”
her mom chided gently.

Lee nodded. Though
she
had long considered herself lucky to have one of the most tolerant mo
thers in the world, she worried.
Lee didn’t think
she could bear it if her mom
started looking at her differently.
So
she
allowed her mom
to
believe the easiest thing:
Lee
was prone to daydreaming and was perpetually late because her mind wandered and she forgot the time
, not because unexplainable trances sometimes came over her
. It was best for everyone that way.