He followed me to my easel.
“I don’t know. I’ll probably just start it over.” I tilted my head as I looked at my drawing, searching for something good in it.
Trey studied it for a bit and then said, “I like this part here, where these two lines meet.” He ran his hand over the bottom of the page, where the edge of a vase met the rounded side of a pepper grinder. I was drawing from a still life Mrs. Holm had set up for me.
“I like the shading you did, too,” he said. “That looks pretty cool.”
I looked at it and tried to see what he saw. With his hand in front of it, pointing, it suddenly looked cool to me, too. “Thanks,” I managed to say. And then I wanted to say his name. “Trey. Thanks a lot.”
He smiled and shrugged, then walked back to his easel.
I couldn’t understand how Trey and Trina could be siblings. Trey was as soft-spoken and modest and genuinely nice as any eighth-grade boy could possibly be, while Trina was loud and attention-hungry and brash in every move she made.
Vic had her own goofy theory to explain it: “Trina clearly swallows a whopping handful of mean-girl pills each morning with her no-pulp orange juice. Maybe she’ll run out some day and become human again. Maybe she won’t. But Trey—he doesn’t even know how to be mean. He’s just a really decent person. He can’t help it.”
I totally agreed with her there. I had seen him leave his easel in a snap to help other kids who were struggling with a drawing, and I’d also seen him stay after Art Club on Fridays when everyone else took off so he could help Mrs. Holm wash the tables and organize supplies.
Trey was better than decent. Trey was the guy who would give you half his sandwich without a second thought after Eddie Gazerro knocked your entire lunch tray to the floor. Trey was the guy who looked the crossing guard right in the eye and said thank you every single morning when she stopped traffic so we could cross the street to get to school.
Or this told it best, how beyond decent Trey was: When Cassidy Carter showed up at school with scabs and scratches all over the right side of her face in sixth grade and kids bombarded her all day with, “Oh my God!” and “What happened to your face?” Trey was the one person who simply asked her, “Cassidy, are you okay?” It honestly made me want to be the one who fell off my bike and came to school covered in gross scabs and peeling skin.
How could you not fall completely head over heels for a guy like that? Who was so wonderfully kind. Who could also draw. And who was also cuter then cute.
I was in deep.
I never missed an Art Club Friday the entire school year. Until the end of May. Part of my consequences was that I couldn’t attend my club. I missed the end-of-year show, where the best of our work was displayed in the auditorium like an actual gallery opening, with author tags taped to the wall under our pieces and lace-covered tables of crackers and cookies set out for refreshments. Trey never missed Art Club either, except for once. He wasn’t at Art Club the day after Trina posted my letter. He didn’t even come to school that day. To know that something I wrote embarrassed him that much hurt like crazy. It hurt probably just as much as a bad husband taking credit for his wife’s artwork, like in that movie Wally just returned.
Wally would spend a solid half hour now poring over the DVD collection, sliding out cases to inspect the front cover, read the description on the back, and then flip back to the cover again. Sometimes he even pulled up a chair. It bothered Beverly because the chair blocked the aisle and made it difficult for other patrons to get around, but she let him do it anyway. Because it was Wally.
“Thanks for the movie recommendation, Wally,” I called to him. “I think I’ll take it home.”
“Oh, you’re welcome, dear. It’s a good one. All about art. Love and art,” he called to me from his perch.
“Love and art,” I repeated under my breath, but I guess I was louder than I thought, because Wally responded to me.
“Yep, a great combination,” he said, “love and art.” He cleared his throat, then added, “Until it’s not.”
He laughed then, deep and guttural, and then starting coughing into his fist.
Lenny
“Let me help you with that, Jamie.”
Lenny was already in the staff kitchen when I came down with two big boxes of supplies that had just arrived. Deliveries always came on Monday afternoons. I had been spending so much time at the library that I now knew this kind of information. Sonia even let me sign for the delivery today, which made me feel like a pretty big deal.
Lenny took both boxes out of my hands in one swoop.
“Thanks. Beverly said there’s a closet down here for all this stuff?” I asked.
“There is, right here.” He slid a half-full file cabinet a few inches to the left and then swung open a partially concealed door. The door was peeling paint in long strips and the doorknob didn’t turn. Lenny had to just pull it, really hard, to get the door open. “We’re a little pressed for space here, and maintenance funds, if you hadn’t noticed.”
“Oh, I noticed,” I told him.
“They don’t build ’em like this anymore, though.” Lenny looked up at the ceiling above us and spun in place, slowly. “I mean, look at the detail in the woodwork on this door. And look at this doorknob. You can’t buy these anymore. We even have a dumbwaiter! No one has a dumbwaiter!”
“There’s a dumbwaiter here? Like in Harriet the Spy?” I asked.
“Absolutely. On the other side of the stairs you just came down. It still works. It’s a bear to pull up and down, but if you’ve got the muscles, it works.”
“That is too cool!”
“I’ll show you when we go back up. Sonia showed it to me when I first started here. She knows all the secrets of this place.” Lenny’s voice got all sweet-sounding when he mentioned Sonia.
“She does, huh?” I couldn’t keep the smirk off my face.
Lenny’s cheeks flushed a rosy pink that matched the new spatters of pink paint on his shoes.
“Wait, how long have you even been here with us? Three weeks?”
“This is my sixth week,” I answered in a huff, throwing my hands on my hips dramatically.
“Really?” Lenny asked, surprised.
“I started right after school let out.”
I remembered my first day well. I was on the front steps that Monday morning way before the library opened, my stomach squeezing my nerves from the inside out. I had packed my sketchbook to draw in until the doors opened, but I was way too nervous to focus on it. I just wanted to put in my hours and get back home, where I could climb into my bed and hide and pretend this wasn’t happening to me.
Maybe if I knew back then that I’d be working with people like Lenny and Sonia and Beverly, I wouldn’t have been so nervous.
“Six weeks, huh?” Lenny was still trying to absorb it.
“I’ve been here long enough to notice that Sonia knows all the secrets around here and that you notice everything Sonia knows, let’s just put it that way,” I said.
Lenny looked at me and smiled. “Fair enough.”
“Sonia’s great,” I told him.
“Yeah, she is great.” He sighed.
He tucked the boxes into the closet and closed the door on them. “I’ll organize that later. That’s an hour’s job at least.” He shimmied the file cabinet back in place. “So, are you hungry? You gotta try these,” he said, before waiting for my answer. “They’re my newest masterpiece.” He gestured to the rickety table behind me. In the middle of it sat a square plate piled high with some kind of unrecognizable food.
“What is it?” I asked, trying to hide my confusion.
“They’re cookies, of course.” The smile vanished from his face like a drop of water on a hot skillet. He furrowed his brow. “Why? What did you think they were?”
“Cookies,” I said unconvincingly.
“No. Really. What did you think they were?” he tried again.
“Um,” I shifted my weight, stalling
.
“Tell me,” he insisted.
“They look like nests.”
“Birds’ nests?” He was incredulous.
“Really small ones, but yeah, that’s what they look like.”
“Nests? On a plate?”
I shrugged as apologetically as I could. “That’s why I was confused.”
“Will everyone think that?” I bet he was really just asking about Sonia, if Sonia would think that.
“I don’t know. Are they good? What’s in them?”
Lenny proceeded to list the ingredients, which included a lot of different seeds and nuts and nut flours and dried fruits and some things I’d never even heard of. But he definitely said chocolate, and I’m always a big supporter of chocolate, even if it’s mixed in with a whole lot of strange healthy stuff.
I tried one. It was sweet and salty and crunchy and chewy all at the same time. And the chocolate was there, like an old friend.
“Lenny, these are actually good.”
Lenny smiled big and then got serious again very quickly.
“So you think Sonia will like them?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know what she likes to eat. I only ever see her drink gallons of coffee.” I thought for a second, then offered, “I have an idea! I could give her one to try, and if she loves it, I’ll tell her you made it and send her down here to get more. If she doesn’t like it, I’ll just say I got them from that bakery in town.”
“Brilliant. Let’s do it.” His smile returned. And then he went from normal to supremely overexcited in half a second flat. “Move it then, kiddo. Up you go, right now. Take her this one.”
Lenny handed me a cookie on a bright pink napkin. Then he took it back. “Should we put two on here? How about like this? Does this look better?” He was arranging cookies on the napkin as if he were assembling a bride’s bouquet.
I couldn’t help laughing. “Oh my God, Lenny, you’re a little bit flipping out. It’s just a cookie.” Even though he was an adult, and a gigantic adult at that, it was easy to feel really comfortable around him. Being with him was a lot like hanging out with an older, smarter, really cool friend. It was easy to forget he was older than my own mom.
“If you really wanted to win Sonia over, you would brew her a whole pot of coffee,” I told him.
“Way ahead of you there, darling,” Lenny answered back with a smirk of his own. And right that second, as if on cue, the Mr. Coffee machine on the counter behind him let out a hiss, and a stream of fresh, hot coffee trickled its way into the glass pot waiting below.
Black Hat Guy
The next day, at 4:18, there was no sign of Black Hat Guy. I felt like filing a missing person’s report. His chair looked wrong, almost sad, to be empty at this time of day.
Maybe he lost track of time. Maybe he was hanging out at the Bean Pot today instead. Or maybe he got a job. I had overheard him telling Lenny that he was out of work, that he was desperate to find a job somewhere. Anywhere.
A spear of sunlight beamed through the window, highlighting part of a quote on the chair: tread on my dreams.
Those four words echoed inside my brain, taunting me, because tread sounded like Trey, and Trey was my dream. That didn’t come true.
Hadn’t I dreamt it, how it would all play out so perfectly, in that quick instant that the book opened in my hands and revealed the treasures inside?
Back in May, cocooned between two stacks in the middle school library, hadn’t I just planned to check out a copy of Jane Eyre to read after watching the movie for the third time? Hadn’t I selected the only copy left on the shelf, worn and tattered, the front cover falling open gently in my hand? Hadn’t my intentions been good? But then the notes, all those answers, scattered across the end pages and chapter breaks and margins: questions printed, page numbers circled, quotes underlined, essay points outlined, all in super-neat handwriting. Probably all the answers to the eighth-grade language arts final right there, pulsing like a heartbeat, prodding, pushing me to action.
It all played out like a movie in my mind, like a dream: anonymously delivering the book to Trey, Trey acing his exam, Trey puzzling over his book fairy’s identity, Trey piecing together clues, and then that time-stopping moment when Trey figured out it was me. Next, my phone ringing, or a text buzzing, or maybe even a knock at my door after running through town to get to me, to thank me, to profess the feelings he didn’t know until that moment he had for me.
God, it sounded so stupid now.
It sounded ridiculous.
Because it was ridiculous.
Because Trey would never cheat. He would never have used the book with all its easy-access answers. He wasn’t that kind of player—that’s the one thing I knew about him for sure.
And it was ridiculous because the whole idea was a stupid riot of movie romance, which, my mom had taught me, was nothing like real-life romance. But I didn’t think about that in the moment.
I didn’t think at all.
I didn’t think about turning the book in.
I didn’t think about the Honor Code.
I didn’t think about who I was and what I knew was right.
I didn’t think about tucking my feelings for Trey down deep into my back pocket long enough to clear my head.
I didn’t think about anything except how much I liked Trey.
I hurried out of the library, cradling the book under my sweatshirt, and left the building through the first door I saw. I circled to the playground in back, where kids hung out after school, where backpacks were lined up against the brick wall. I spotted Trey’s immediately. It was shiny black, clean, standing perfectly upright, every pocket zipped closed. It had that one patch on the arm strap, that patch I read to myself at every Art Club Friday: Creativity is allowing yourself to make mistakes. Art is knowing which ones to keep. It was thoughtful, and original, and deep. Like Trey.
I walked right up to his backpack like it was my own, unzipped the largest compartment, dropped the book in, zipped it back up, and turned to leave. I stutter-stepped to save myself from a fall over a mound of backpacks and gym bags, and when I looked up I saw Trina, her eyes locked onto me. I lost my footing for a second, almost falling again, but saved myself, threw my shoulders back, and quickly walked away.
Maybe she didn’t see. Maybe she didn’t see. That was the chant that matched my footsteps as I hurried home. Maybe she didn’t.
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams. That was the whole quote on the library chair.
Trey was my dream, and Trina was the big iron boot that trod on it. Hard.
Because she did see.
Of course she did.
And of course she went to the principal to turn the book in, to turn me in.
It all unfolded painfully after that, like the stickiest Band-Aid in the universe peeled away one tiny decimeter at a time.
On a stage.
Under a spotlight.
For everyone to see.
There had been a strange buzz in the air the next morning at school, an energy that was different from normal. On my way to the lunchroom, I passed a group of girls clustered by the first-floor bathroom, Izzy among them, whispering and gesturing furiously. I hurried past them and beat Vic to lunch.
I wasn’t hungry at all but chewed quickly, tearing into my sandwich, as if making it disappear would make the eerie feeling in the air disappear with it.
Vic nearly landed in my lap when she scrambled over to our table, late, bursting at the seams to discuss the news.
“Can you believe it?”
“Believe what?” I asked, my face as blank as the paper bag I’d thrown my lunch in that morning.
“How did you not hear?” Vic wanted to know. “I do everything humanly possible to avoid all drama at this school and even I heard.”
I shook my head to show I still didn’t know what she was talking about.
“Trina”—she ripped open the Velcro seal on her lunch bag for effect—“is in the principal�
��s office.”
My face froze. My jaw muscles forgot what they were doing, and I nearly choked on the wad of bread in my mouth.
“And her parents just got here, too. My entire gym class saw them waiting in the office when we were coming back inside. She must be in big trouble,” Vic explained. “You know all the cheating on the midterms they never could pin on anyone?” she prodded.
My eyes dried up in an instant. I couldn’t blink and I couldn’t swallow and my ears suddenly felt clogged, so every word Vic said next sounded elongated.
“Everyone’s saying it must have been Trina. Why else would her parents be here?” Vic’s dark hair was frizzing out of her ponytail in every direction, the way it always did by this time of day.
“Trey’s in the office, too,” she added, “but we know he didn’t do it. No way would Trey cheat.” Vic made her duh face. “You would never fall for that kind of guy.”
The small bits of sandwich left in my mouth turned to sand and lodged in my throat like a warning.
And then the vice principal walked into the lunchroom, scanned the space, and zeroed in on me.
“Jamie Bunn, we need you in the office. Right now.”
Vic’s eyes nearly popped out of her head, and her mouth fell open so wide I could see the fillings in her molars. Every set of eyes in the cafeteria was fixed on me.
I stood up slowly, my limbs moving as if underwater.
Vic put her hand on my wrist. “Jamie?” she questioned, my name sounding foreign, even to me.
I shook my head and opened my mouth, but nothing came out. Then I tried again and managed to get out one sad, simple word: “Sorry.”
The bells on the library door jingled and broke my train of thought. I looked at the clock to orient myself. It was 4:22 now, and still no Black Hat Guy. I looked at the chair again. The sun would keep moving across the sky, the ray of light would keep shifting. It would soon fall across a different collection of words that might or might not be another comment on my life.
I was starting to really hate that chair.
I took the opportunity to dust the shelves behind the empty chair, the windowsill next to it, and the baseboard molding. Then I brushed off the thin line of dust that had collected on the top edge of the new outlet where Black Hat Guy plugged in his phone. What would he do if he didn’t recharge his phone today? He was so dependent on it, as if it kept him alive as much as food and water and oxygen did. I felt a small panic for him and hoped he was somewhere with an outlet.
A Kind of Paradise Page 9