Words and Their Meanings (9 page)

Daily Verse:

You can't ever let yourself think anybody's too interested.

21

T
hree days later, Nat and Mateo and I are sitting around a small, square table in Third Eye coffee shop. My latte is getting cold. Mateo's hot chocolate was gone ten minutes ago, and Nat's still sipping her green tea with two squirts of honey. I recheck the buttons on one of my dad's old white Oxfords. I'm only wearing one extra twine necklace today,
its black feathers matching the raven patch on my ripped-up jeans.

“Is whoever we're spying on here yet?” Mateo leans over while he whispers this. Nat rolls her eyes and flicks the bracelet on my arm.

I shake my head, but keep watching the front door. Thanks to some serious social media searches, I flushed out the schedules of four potential suspects. This is stop number one.

Mateo doesn't know the bracelet is evidence of Joe's cheating, though, because he still doesn't know about Joe. I told him Nat's worried Alex is messing around and that we found a bracelet in the backseat of his car. Today is supposed to be about trying to catch the owner by surprise. Nat wasn't pleased that I used her as cover, but she forgave me because that lie was only a tiny fraction of the words Mateo and I exchanged during our three hours on the phone last night.

“Here she comes,” Nat says, twitching twice in the direction of the front door. Five minutes early for her shift, Helen glides into the Third Eye looking every bit like the perfect, hip coffee-joint barista. Flowing skirt, jingling anklet, black hair held back by a flower headband, tiny silver ring in her nose. She's obviously not allergic.

“Hey, Helen,” I say, waving her over. She jingles toward us, hips swaying.

“Hey, y'all.”

I forgot this about Helen. She talks like she's from the South, but she was born in Czechoslovakia. Her smoky eye makeup and bright-red lips have Mateo leaning back in his chair, just taking her in like some painting in a museum. I accidently step on his foot. Hard.

“I was hoping I'd run into you,” I say, sticking with the script. Nat, to her credit, is sulking. Her suspicious stare sells the whole thing, I think.

“I was in here the other day and I picked this up off the floor,” I say, unclasping the
bracelet. “One of the dudes behind the counter thought it might be yours, but you were already gone for the afternoon. I told him I'd just hold on to it until I saw you next.”

Helen takes the bracelet from me, but she's already shaking her head no. “Nope, not mine. Pretty, though. I can tuck it into our lost and found box—”

“No, no, that's okay. Now that I think about it, I actually remember my friend Sarah has one just like this. She left here before me. It must have fallen off her wrist.” I snatch the bracelet back and smack my forehead. “I'm such a space case.”

Helen touches my hand.

“No worries. How is your family? How are y'all doing?” She uses the I-feel-sorry-for-you tone and I wince because Mateo is tilting his head and blinking like he's trying to figure out why she's asking
.

“Oh, fine. Fine,” I say. My hands are doing this weird manic waving thing. I can't get them to stop. I bump the table with my knee. Latte splashes on my shirt.

“Uh, I just remembered I have a voice lesson in ten minutes,” Nat says, hopping up.

“Right. We better go.” I give Nat a silent thank you.

Outside, a car is stopped in the middle of the road. The driver leans over the right front tire. There's a dead something at his feet. A cat. White with one black paw. The driver scratches his head and gets into his car. Backing up, he arcs a wide turn around the cat.

“Okay, that's awful,” Nat says, her hand on Dolores's door handle.

“Don't you wonder why there's never a big pool of blood?” I ask.

Nat stares at me. “Don't be weird,” she mouths.

“What?” I shrug.

Nat glares and thumbs toward Mateo. He's not paying any attention, though, because he's jogged into the street. He waits to make sure the white Cadillac cruising toward him slows to a stop. He reaches down, picks up the dead, half-squished cat, and carries it to the curb.

There is blood on his hands when he gets back to us.

“I'm going to run inside and wash this off,” he says, flipping his palms up for us to see. “Do we have time?”

“Huh?” Nat says, glancing back and forth from the curb to Mateo. “Uh, oh. Yeah. I don't have a voice lesson. I just said that so we could keep going, since, eh, she obviously isn't the one.”

“Ha. I figured.”

He opens the door with his elbow and disappears inside.

“What just happened?” Nat asks.

“I have no idea,” I say, shaking my head. “He has soft spot for roadkill?”

“That wasn't like a squirrel or a rat or something, Anna. It was probably someone's pet.”

“Or a starving stray.”

Her face starts to fall, like she's just remembered how screwed up I am. But then she stares at the empty space in the road and smiles a little.

“Remember when we tried to start a roadkill cemetery in your backyard?” She laughs. “Here lies Chuck, his life cut short by a semi-truck.”

“And here's Daisy, a chipmunk who didn't realize the middle of the street was a bad place to get lazy,” I add, glancing over at the limp shell of the cat. “We were weird.”

“You were weird. I was precocious.”

“Hey guys,” Mateo says when he reaches the car. “Want to take a little break from super sleuthing?”

“No,” I say at the exact same time Nat says, “Yes!”

“I think this lady wins,” he says, nodding toward Nat, “considering we're on the chase for her possible … you know. Problem.”

Nat sort of snorts, before adding, “Yeah, Anna. I think that's only fair. So do you have something else in mind?”

“Anything else works for me,” he says. “No offense.”

“None taken. I can only imagine how boring it would be to spend a day trying to prove my boyfriend is cheating on me.”

I give her laser beam death eyes.

We end up driving in circles. Or squares, since we just keep going around and around different variations of the same city blocks. Nat hums along with the radio. Driving with no destination like she doesn't seem to mind one bit.

“Okay, how is this better than solving our Very Important Mystery?” I ask.

“Because sometimes solving the mystery isn't a good thing?” Mateo tries.

“No. Wrong. The ‘Very Important' part clearly makes it necessary to solve.”

“Did you guys ever play Clue growing up?” Mateo tries. Again.

“I love Clue!” Nat says. “I always want to be Miss Scarlett.”

“Dude. She's kind of a hussy,” Mateo says, laughing.

“What? She's Hollywood glamour at its finest.”

“Are you guys kidding me right now?” I bite down hard to keep from yelling.

“What's wrong with a little cruising?” Mateo asks, reaching forward, between the seats.

He brushes his fingers against my arm.

I hold firm.

“It's not like there's anything interesting to see. I know every inch of this city already, thanks, and all driving around does is remind me I don't want to be here anymore.”

“Whoa. A little harsh.” Mateo sits back when he says this. “Anna, you really think you know this area? Every part, huh?”

“My Gramps used to have a shop one block over. And I've lived in this town my whole life. So, yeah, I'm sure.
Every part.”

“If you say so,” Mateo says, leaning up again to push my shoulder, like a challenge. To Nat, he says, “We're only two blocks from the coolest
spot in town, and I bet neither of you even know it exists. Think Anna will allow me the pleasure of proving her wrong?”

Nat clucks her tongue. Looks at me an extra-long second, and says, “Show me the way, my friend.”

He gives Nat directions to go two blocks east. It takes us into Old Town's gut, past The Repair Shop. My Gramps is a literal guy. Since nothing else ever went in the space, his gold lettering is still in the window. Except the R and E are peeled away, so it looks more like The Pair Shop. Underneath, someone spray painted what appears to be big white boobs.

“Stop here,” Mateo says, motioning toward a line of empty parking spaces. He jumps out and opens my door. On one corner, there's a guy painted metallic silver. When I say painted, I mean, like, painted from his top hat to his wing-tip shoes. He's standing statue-still on top of a milk crate. Mateo digs a couple crumpled dollars from his pocket and drops them in the bucket next to the crate. It only has one other dollar inside it. For a moment, it seems Mr. Living Statue is having an epileptic seizure; he shakes and convulses and twitches, but never falls from his silver box. A flow of crazy dance moves follows. And then, as abrupt as those shimmies started, they freeze. His closed eyelids glitter like metal beams after a rainstorm.

“Cool,” Nat says behind me.

“Yeah,” Mateo agrees.

“Except it's not like this is a super busy part of town. Why would he waste his time?” I ask.

“He can hear you, you know,” Mateo says, walking away. “Come on, we're going to the alley over here.”

I hear them leaving together, chatting like old friends. Nat laughs three times. I don't turn around and follow, though. I'm staring at statue dude. Not because I think he's cool. Truth be told, he looks ridiculous. I stare because I want to see him blink. I wait to see his chest rise or fall. I stiffen too, open my eyes wide.

But then Mateo is beside me again, and his fingers are warm when they lace through mine.

“Come with me. I want to show you something,” he says, lips against my ear.

I hesitate, searching the statue's face. The blank stare I've been trying to master is there, effortless. Instead of staying and trying for nineteen minutes at least, to find the same emptiness, I let Mateo pull me away. And that's when it hits me: no matter how much I want it to be true, I can't be dead and alive all at once.

22

W
ow. Wow. Wow. Wow. Wow.” Nat's a tape recorder stuck on one word as she walks up and down the alley.

Both sides are covered with graffiti, from ground to rooftop. It isn't gang tags or boobs on a window. It's blended color and portraits of people. It's the dirty brown river cutting through town. Giant, empty auto factories cast shadows against painted waters. Cars once made here are reborn on brick. There are full moons and silhouettes. Street dances. This is a story, mapped across walls, created by many different hands.

A row of real picture frames, sprayed white and drilled into the bricks, runs along at eye level. Inside, art is stacked on top of art: paper drawings and charcoal smudges and acrylic
canvases
and dimpled watercolors. Each frame has something in it—a sunset; a girl standing by a tree; an abstract piece my Gran would love; a couple, eyes cast down and toward each other. The frames run the length of the wall.

“What is this place?” I ask when I find my breath.

“Ha. Told you.”

“Yeah, yeah.”

“Admit it.”

“I don't have a clue what you mean.”

“Is ‘wrong' not a word that exists in your vocabulary?”

I roll my eyes. Mateo grabs my hand and holds it to his chest. My skin glows, matches a painting of sun on the river. I try to pull away, but he holds tight.

“Fine. Okay. I've never been here.”

“It's the best spot in town,” Mateo says with obvious appreciation. He stops and catches my eye. “And right now, it's more beautiful than ever.”

As I walk, Mateo stays a few steps behind. He's telling us how the alley got transformed from some garbage-strewn, no-nothing place. A bunch of street artists got together and did a blitz paint one night. More and more people started coming and adding all their best and most detailed works, and then the frames got added and now all these non-spray-paint artists come down and tack up their work.

“It's this totally organic, anonymous art show. Every so often someone else comes and covers up what was there before,” he says.

There are pages upon pages of art tacked into the glass-less frames. The one I'm standing next to has a watercolor farm on top, with a tall tree and a tire swing and tiny specks of wind visible in the sky. When I go to pull it off, Mateo pulls my hand away.

“Unwritten rule.” He smiles. “No peeking. The past is the past, you know what I mean?”

“She might not know what you mean,” Nat calls from a little way away. She reaches up and traces some of the spray-painted sky above her. “But she could sure use a lesson.”

“You could spend a lifetime here and not see everything,” Mateo says, not pressing the point. “Or you could come back tomorrow and it might look totally different.”

“What makes you such an expert in the underground art world?” I ask. I walk to the next frame. Inside it is a pencil drawing of a guy a few years older than us. He's got this unfiltered mischief in his face, the kind that disappears after age ten or so in real life. I can't help matching his smile.

“Wow,” I murmur, stealing Nat's phrase. “This one is so … real. I almost feel like this guy is going to open his mouth and crack a joke.”

I motion for Mateo to come look, but he stays rooted where he is.

“You don't think I know art, huh?”

“What do you mean? You cook. You're a chef.” I stare at him.

“Right. Okay.”

“Huh?”

“Maybe I know about this place because art is art. Cooking. Painting. Drawing.” He stares past me, to the alley's dead end. His hands shove deep in the pockets of his jeans.

“That sounds stupid,” he adds. “Look, we better go. We all have to be at work in an hour.”

I watch him walk away, wanting to memorize everything. But he turns the corner before I get the chance.

–––––

We drop Mateo back at his Jeep and dash over to my house, where Nat left her work clothes. My dad's red Corvette is in the driveway. It's the most clichéd part of this mid-life crisis he's having. Normally, I don't miss an opportunity to tell him so.

“Shit.” Right now, I don't feel like telling him anything. “Ten bucks says he's been here an hour and still can't find Bea. Will you just go get our clothes? Or go change and grab mine? I don't want to see him.”

Nat doesn't say anything, but she gets out and walks toward the front door. When it opens, I see my dad give Nat a quick hug before ducking his head outside. His shaggy black curls are unkempt. His green O'Mally eyes lock on the car, and me. I drop my gaze to the floor. When neither of your daughters will show their face for you, it's time to take the hint.

“Well, that was fun,” Nat hisses at me ten minutes later, tossing a shirt, skirt, and shoes in my general direction. “Your mom followed me into your room peppering me with questions about how you are doing. I was so flustered I accidently stepped on Bea's hand. She was under your bed, and gave me a good kick in the shin for busting her hiding spot. And then, to top it all off, your dad invited me to Sunday dinner at his house next week, adding it would be very nice to bring you along. He looks sad. I know that's not what you want to hear, but it's true.”

“You're right, I don't. But thanks. I know I owe you one,” I say, shimmying out of my jeans as she pulls away from Dysfunctional Central.

“We'll never be even,” she replies with a sad smile, pulling a fistful of bobby pins out of her tiny skirt pocket and tossing them into my lap.