“What?” I shook my head in confusion.
“I was so glad when I was suddenly flying backwards through the air,” Andy said. “Even with the broken bones, I was relieved you pushed me away.”
I sat in stunned silence for a few moments. Andy wasn’t angry that I’d hurt him. He was more upset that things could’ve gone too far.
“You have to know what it’s like,” Andy said. “It was like a drug or something.”
“What do you mean?” I said.
“I’ve never felt anything like it. It was amazing and terrifying at the same time.”
“I was so worried that I’d hurt you, I didn’t think about what it might’ve been like for you.”
“It was strong. Powerful. Please, don’t ever touch me again.” His words were gentle but pleading. “Unless . . . unless sometime in the future you want that to happen.”
I stared at him.
His face turned pink, and he fidgeted with his headphone cord. “I’d be okay if that is what you wanted.”
“Okay,” I said finally.
“So, is that Liam guy your boyfriend?”
I wished. No never mind. With all the people I’d almost killed in the last week, I did not need to get involved with anyone.
“No, he’s just a friend,” I said.
Andy raised an eyebrow. “Riiiigghttt. Well, be careful.”
“I will. So what bones are broken?”
“My collarbone and a few ribs. But I’ll be fine. I’m a fast healer.”
“Sorry about that,” I said. “I didn’t know how else to stop. I really had no idea that would happen. Please don’t put all the blame on yourself.”
“What do you say we call it even?” Andy said.
“I’d like that,” I said.
“Friends?”
“Friends,” I said. “But please don’t ask to shake on it.”
“Wouldn’t dream of it,” he said.
“Anyway, I better go. Glad you’re okay.”
“See ya, Aya.”
I stepped back out into the hall. Liam was waiting for me upstairs. Well, unless he decided I was acting insane and went back to New York instead of dealing with me. Maybe that would be better for him.
“Aya,” Leslie said.
Oh. Great.
16
I sat painting that cottage, two sheep and a goat came and started to graze on the roof of the house. The goat climbed up on the ridge and looked down the chimney. The woman who had heard something on the roof, rushed out and flung her broom at the said goat, which leapt down like a chamois.
—Vincent van Gogh
“Hi, Leslie.”
She smiled, but something seemed off about it. “So, Liam was it? He seems nice. How long have you known him?”
“Not too long. I met him at art school before coming here.”
“So you knew him before your first Aolian Release?”
“Yeah, I haven’t been back to school since then.”
“That’s right. Hopefully I don’t need to remind you that this is a place for Aolians, a place where we can be ourselves, where we can be safe.”
“I understand.”
“And sometimes we have to let the other parts of our lives go, not only for our sakes, but for the sakes of those around us.”
There was too much to let go of, too much I wasn’t willing to live without.
“Thanks for your concern.” I turned to go.
I was almost to the stairs when Leslie called out, “Just be careful.”
Careful.
“Hey, Liam.” I opened the door to my room.
He was lying on my bed, one of my Van Gogh books in his outstretched arms above his head. He swung around to a sitting position.
“Hey.” He put the book aside. “No more pajamas? I liked them.”
“Seeing how I was almost at a whole twenty-four hours of wearing them, I think it was time for a change.”
“Well, you can get too much of a good thing. Are you obsessed with Van Gogh or what?”
He had no idea.
“Yeah.” I sat by him, looking over his arm to the painting on the page, but I was careful to avoid touching him. “He’s always been my favorite artist.”
“Speaking of which,” Liam said, “didn’t you say you wanted to go to the MoMA?”
“Oh, yes!” I’d learned nothing so far from all these books or my online searches. Maybe seeing some of his work would help. “More than anything.”
Liam smiled at my enthusiasm. “You want to go now?”
“That would be awesome, let me check what time it closes.” I asked my phone for the hours. “It closes in 10 minutes—no way we’d get there in time.”
“I should’ve brought my time machine.”
“We can go tomorrow. I can just take the train and meet you there.”
“That sounds gre—” A loud knock on the door interrupted him and before I could answer Kendra burst in.
“Are you coming down to—” But then she caught sight of Liam. “Well, hello there. I don’t think we’ve met. Are you new here?”
“No,” I said with a warning look. “This is Liam. He goes to my art school in New York. He heard I was sick and came to visit. Liam, this is Kendra.”
“Oh,” she said with a mischievous gleam in her eye. But I could tell she understood what I was saying. He wasn’t a Talent. “No wonder you were able to resist Andy’s charms.”
“Kendra!”
“You know I don’t have a filter, Aya.”
“Wait, was Andy that guy with the . . .” Liam waved his hand in front of a squinted eye to mimic Andy’s bruises. “What happened to his face?”
“Nothing,” I said. “Just a water skiing accident.”
“Is Andy back?” Kendra asked.
“Yeah, we just saw him.” I sighed.
Liam turned to Kendra. “Wait, what do you mean she was able to resist his charms?”
“I think,” Kendra said with a wink, “you know exactly what I mean without me having to say it out-loud to embarrass Aya anymore. And judging from her splotchy red face and neck, she’s already had enough embarrassment.”
My face burned. Desperate to change the subject, I asked Kendra, “Were you saying something just then as you came in?”
“Yeah, I was just seeing if you were headed to dinner. Are you going to join us, Liam?”
Dinner. I’d forgotten about dinner. Liam had come all this way, and I wanted to spend time with him, if all these embarrassing interruptions would just stop. Could I really take him down to dinner with a room full of Aolians and my fight with Cate still on everyone’s mind?
“Sure, I’d love to come.” Liam rose to his feet. He and Kendra headed out the door, but then he poked his head back in. “You coming?”
“I guess.”
As it happened, word traveled fast we had a “normal person” at dinner so everyone was on their best behavior. I noticed some of the other girls sat up straighter when Liam walked by. A group crowded around Andy, and he waved and smiled at me. The others at his table stared open-mouthed at the interaction. By the confused looks on their faces, they now thought they’d heard the wrong story.
We gathered our roast chicken with some kind of basil gravy on mashed potatoes. It smelled wonderful.
With so much red in my blood, I sat across the table from Liam instead of next to him.
“This is a strange bed and breakfast.” Liam glanced at the others around us. “I always think of those as where old people go to knit and stuff.”
And my lie came back to bite me. I wracked my brain for a reason all of us teens would be at a place like this.
“I did call it that,” I said, “but it is probably more like a summer boarding school, but without the school. A lot of the kids here have rich parents that need a place for them to stay for the summer if they are out of town. Maybe we could call it a summer camp?”
“And your aunt sent you here?” Liam asked.
“Yeah,
she thought I would have more help here than at her house.” I hated lying. Hated it.
We finished dinner with a piece of chocolate silk pie each. People trickled out of the dining room.
“Hey, did you want to come to the MoMA with us tomorrow, Kendra?” I asked. Maybe it’d be better if I weren’t alone with Liam.
“Uh, visit an art museum with two artists?” Kendra grimaced. “Are you like those people who have to stare at one painting for a full three hours?”
“I’m not really an artist,” Liam said.
At the same time, I said, “We’re not that bad!”
“I’ll think about it.”
“Come on,” I said. “It’ll be fun, right, Liam?” I turned toward him and found him shaking his head and pretending to have a noose around his neck at Kendra. Then he feigned innocence.
“If that is how you feel about it.” I acted insulted. “I’ll go tell Leslie I’m headed to the museum tomorrow. Alone.”
“No, wait, I’ll come with you.” He hurried to leave his dishes in the bins.
Leslie probably wouldn’t like me going all the way to the city, not that I blamed her. Maybe she wouldn’t say no if Liam were right by me. Fingers crossed.
“Hey, Leslie. Liam and I are planning on heading to the MoMA tomorrow.” I didn’t want to pose it as a question, more just a statement.
“Don’t you have class tomorrow, Liam?” Leslie asked.
“I don’t have classes on Saturday, ma’am,” Liam said.
“How were you planning on getting there, Aya?” Leslie asked.
“I thought I could take the train and meet Liam there.” A thought popped into my head and out of my mouth before I could stop it. “Or Liam could stay in one of the extra rooms, and then we could drive together in the morning?”
“Hmmm.” Leslie seemed like she was trying to find a way to say no.
Liam was a guy, but there were a ton of other guys here, so I didn’t think she could use that excuse.
“I think that sounds great,” Liam said.
“If it’s okay with your parents, of course,” Leslie said hesitantly.
“My dad won’t mind.”
“You can just take one of the empty rooms across the hall from Aya then.”
“You seem to be feeling much better than the last time I saw you,” Liam said as we wandered to the rec room.
“I do feel better, but not quite one hundred percent,” I said.
“That’ll probably take a while.”
The rec room was on the main floor and had a projector, theater seating, and pool tables at the back. Some of the other kids were settling down to watch a movie, and seeing how Liam was staying here, I needed something to take up the time. They chose an action flick and we sat in the dark, Liam on the sofa next to me without touching me. Well, that was not totally true. His hand brushed my knee, but he didn’t have the same reaction as Andy’d had. Having fabric in between wasn’t the same. It was a good thing too. The last thing I wanted was a repeat of what happened. Or maybe he wasn’t attracted to me. If he weren’t, at least a little, he wouldn’t have driven all this way, would he? Maybe he was really just a concerned friend.
I didn’t watch much of the movie. So many ideas and questions swirled around my head. The color had driven Van Gogh mad. He knew what it felt like to be alone, haunted by the color that surrounded the world. Red. Could he control the other colors? What was Liam thinking about? He had driven all this way to bring me soup. No, back to Van Gogh. He didn’t paint much with the color red, except when painting his self-portraits. Did Liam want to hold my hand? His lay only an inch from my thigh.
Ignore it!
Van Gogh used mostly yellow, blue, and the combo of the two: green. Did he purposely avoid red? On one of the other sofas two people I’d seen in my yoga class were making out. What were their names? Oh yeah, Jana and Preston or something. Could they be any louder with their kissing? Maybe I could hold Liam’s hand if I wore gloves. What would it feel like to control blue? It wasn’t the same as red. But was instead calming and grounded. Every time Liam moved, I wanted to reach out and touch him. He put his arm on the sofa behind me, and I wondered what it would feel like to have his hand brush—
Calm down! Maybe I should go to the MoMA by myself. Spending all this time with Liam was a bad idea. Thinking about kissing him like I had kissed Andy made the red on the surface of my skin tingle. Red flooded into my vision.
“I’m going to pop some popcorn.” I leapt off the sofa before the passion swirling inside my blood could get the better of me. “Did you want anything?”
“I’ll come with you,” Liam said.
“No!” Oops, too harsh. “I don’t want you to miss any of the movie. I’ll be back in three minutes.”
“Uh, okay,” he said.
But I was already out the door, and in a few seconds I was in the kitchen with my head in the freezer, trying to get the red in my body to slow down.
I was out of control, and that made me even angrier. Why couldn’t I just be normal? I wanted to hurt something, make something explode, and make out with Liam all at the same time. I lifted up the sleeve of my shirt. So much red swirled.
Popcorn. I needed to focus. I grabbed a bag out of the snack cupboard and threw it in the microwave.
What had they said in the few yoga classes I’d been to? Breathe in through your nose and out through your mouth. Clear your mind. I closed my eyes and instead of the emptiness they told us to find, there was only red. All the red had built up in my body with nowhere to go. If only there was a way to get rid of it. Back at Scarborough train station, I’d used red, the only time it actually left my body. Perhaps I could do something like that again. I really just wanted to hit something.
Could I use that? When I was at home, my mom and I would go to kick boxing class once a week at the local gym where we used punching bags. It always felt so good to hit something. Maybe that could work. What if I let my anger take over, but in a controlled way? I’d noticed a punching bag in the gym where we did yoga. This whole yoga thing wasn’t helping, but maybe hitting something would. If I was going to spend the whole day with Liam, even if Kendra was there, I needed to do something with all the red in my blood. Having a plan made the red in my vision fade a bit. I grabbed the popcorn, headed back in to the rec room, and firmly wedged the bowl in between Liam and me. I didn’t have a clue what was going on in the movie. Oh, well.
The ending credits rolled up the screen and someone flipped on the lights.
“Did you want to play pool?” Liam asked.
“Sure, although I kind of suck.” Most of the room cleared out, except for the two still making out on the sofa. “You should probably break.”
“You can’t be that bad.”
“Yes, I can. I make sucking at pool an art form.”
He broke and not one, but two stripes went into the pockets.
“Now that shot was luck,” he said.
“Sure, it was.” I lined up my shot. I didn’t hit the ball squarely with my cue and it ricocheted off the ball so it went to the side instead of forward.
“I thought you might be kidding when you said you sucked.” He lined up another shot and hit it in the pocket.
“Yeah, we could probably just call the game right now.” I hit the white ball again and again it flew in the opposite direction than I intended.
“I could show you how to hold your arms.” Liam strode around the table to me. I imagined one of those scenes in the movies when the guy is teaching a girl to swing a bat or play golf, and he puts his arms around her. I couldn’t be thinking stuff like that with Liam in the room and so much red in my blood.
“No way.” I skirted around the table from him. “Maybe I like sucking at pool. I’m not going to let you take that away from me.”
He took his shot and missed.
“Maybe this will make up for me being such a terrible painter.” He missed his next shot.
“You can’t be that bad. Yes! I
made one in. I think that’s a record for me.” I did a little victory dance, and Liam laughed.
“You haven’t actually seen anything I have painted. I’m so the worst artist in that school.” He hit the next one in. “But I really don’t mind.”
“What?” I said, his words making my shot even worse than it already would’ve been. “What do you mean you don’t mind?”
“I do love working with metal, but my dad really signed me up because he thought I needed ‘a more well-rounded education.’”
“Your dad can afford to send you to the most expensive art school in the nation, just to round out your education?” In a wink the passion inside me snapped to anger.
“Uh, I’m not sure what you mean.”
“I dreamed of going to that school my whole life, knowing I’d never be able to afford it. And you just get to go because your dad thinks it would round out your education? How is that fair? I had to freaking win a national art competition to go.” I gripped my cue so hard my knuckles turned white. But still the red swirled as my fury flared. The solid red ball rolled across the green velvet surface toward me. Liam looked ashamed, and I turned my back on him, leaning against the table. I needed to stick my head in the freezer again.
“I’m sorry, Aya,” Liam said. “I never thought about it.”
What was I doing? Liam was one of the nicest guys I knew, and here I was yelling at him.
“No, I’m the one who should be apologizing. I totally overreacted.”
He came to face me.
“Are you okay, Aya?” He tried to grab my hands, but I pulled my sleeves over them, so he shoved his hands in his pockets. “You’re different. Is something going on?”
“I’m not okay.” I didn’t know what else to say.
“Did you want me to go?” he asked.
“No! No, please don’t go,” I said. “I just have some crazy things going on right now.”
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