The Art of Adapting

by Cassandra Dunn

  16

  * * *

  Byron

  Byron needed to figure out how to use the Gabe thing to his advantage. He had no interest in soccer, and no clue why Gabe would be hanging out with Abby, but Gabe was in the most popular group of kids at school. He was one of the lucky ones who fell into it naturally and didn’t have to earn his way in. He was so casual about his popularity, like it didn’t even matter to him, and that just made him even more popular. He never tried. He just was. Byron needed to be like that.

  He’d almost told Gabe about the parkour group, but he didn’t want to sound desperate for Gabe’s approval. Maybe he could convince Abby to put in a good word for him. Byron drew some of the cooler moves he’d seen at the last practice: thin outlines of guys scaling walls and skimming railings, launching across benches and over tables. Dale was a good coach, despite his bossy nature. Byron was learning a lot about what parkour was and what his own body could do.

  Trent was playing a video game that Byron had no interest in, and Betsy was out with a friend, but her laundry was in the middle of Tilly’s floor. Byron was dying to ask when she’d be home, but he knew Trent wouldn’t like that, just like he wouldn’t like that Byron was trying to figure out how to make Gabe his new best friend.

  “So are you going to call that Chelsea chick?” Trent asked.

  “No way. She’s Dale’s girl. I’m not getting in the middle of that.”

  “But she likes you. And weren’t you just whining about how no girls like you?”

  Byron threw a wad of paper at Trent’s head. “I wasn’t whining.”

  Trent eyed the wad of paper like it was giving off a foul stench. “Is that another Betsy drawing?”

  Byron unfolded it and showed him that it was a bunch of lame attempts to draw a guy in the various stages of doing a backflip, and Trent shrugged. The Betsy thing was getting to be a sore subject, and it wasn’t even a thing. How come life had to be so complicated?

  Tilly came home and started cooking dinner, invited Byron to stay as usual, and it wasn’t until they were sitting down to eat while Tilly gossiped about the new neighbors with the Mercedes that Betsy came home. She was flushed and giggling, like maybe she’d been running. Or drinking. It was six o’clock on a Wednesday. She patted Byron’s head as she walked by him and Byron couldn’t miss Trent glaring at him.

  After dinner Byron started to help with the dishes, but Tilly wasn’t having any of it. She shooed him away and he headed for the living room to find Betsy watching TV and Trent nowhere to be found.

  “Phone call,” Betsy said, holding her thumb and pinkie up to her ear and mouth to imitate a phone. “Very mysterious. Whispering, and then he ducked into that bathroom. What’s he up to?”

  “No clue,” Byron said. He felt a little miffed that he didn’t know. Was Trent keeping secrets from him? They usually didn’t hide stuff from each other. But as Byron sat down near Betsy, he realized their friendship was already changing. Parkour, the college crowd, Betsy, Gabe. Byron was leaving Trent behind. And maybe Trent was ditching their friendship, too.

  Betsy used her painted toenail, purple this week, to point at Byron’s stack of drawings of parkour stunts fanned out on the coffee table.

  “You know you’re a badass, right?” she said.

  Byron smiled at her, not sure if she was teasing or being serious. “Because they’re all badasses, like you said, and now I’m one of them?”

  “Not the parkour, dummy. The art.”

  Byron shook his head. “It’s nothing. Just a way to kill time.”

  “You’re an idiot if you think parkour and hanging out with my loser brother are more important than this.” She leaned forward and picked up the pages. She flipped through them slowly, taking her time to look at each one. “You blow me away,” she said. “How is it that you’re so insanely talented and you don’t even know it?”

  Byron didn’t know what to say. She was looking at him. Not like she used to: like he was some smelly extension of her brother, some fungus she needed to step around every time she saw him. She was looking at him like she actually saw him, the real him, and liked what she saw.

  “Thanks,” he said. He wanted to say more, to tell her that Matt had helped him on one of his sketches so he figured he must get his talent from his uncle, because his parents were not artistic in any way. To explain that his dad thought art was a waste of time and that he’d never felt passionate about it until Graham suggested he give it up. But then Trent emerged from the bathroom, still on the phone, and took one look at Betsy and Byron side by side on the couch, Byron’s art between them, and headed upstairs without a word. It was a nothing moment but it ruined everything.

  “Uh-oh. Is he not speaking to you? Lover’s spat?” Betsy asked, and she was back to being the bitchy big sister of his best friend and not the girl of Byron’s dreams. He sighed and got up.

  “Tell him I had to run and I’ll see him tomorrow.”

  “Tell him yourself,” Betsy said. “I’m no messenger.”

  Byron left it alone, ready to ditch both Trent and Betsy. He thanked Tilly for dinner, turned down her offer to drive him home, and headed out. He was all of two houses down when Betsy caught up to him.

  “You forgot your drawings,” she said. She was breathless and flushed, like she had been when she first came into the house. She tossed her hair, laughing, as she tried to catch her breath. She was barefoot and beautiful as ever in the fading sun.

  “They’re nothing. Recycle them,” he said.

  “They’re not nothing,” she said, holding them up for him to see, pointing at them emphatically. “Don’t ever say that about your art.”

  “I don’t get you,” Byron said.

  Betsy laughed, shook her head, her dark wavy hair bouncing around her shoulders. “I don’t get me, either.”

  He was torn between the urge to kiss her and the urge to walk away from her and never come back. She was a maddening kind of girl, hot and cold and able to stir something deep in his belly every time she bothered to look at him. She was heartache waiting to happen. He knew it, but he was powerless to do anything about it.

  “I have a ton more just like those at home,” he said, gesturing to the drawings. “I really don’t need them.”

  “So can I have these?” she asked.

  “Sure.” He shrugged. He peered at them over her shoulder. He was trying to capture the sense of movement, but the images felt stagnant. He wasn’t sure what he was doing wrong. “Only a couple of them even came out close to right.”

  Betsy swatted him with the stack of pages. “Stop! Stop putting yourself down and acting like this isn’t a big deal. I don’t have a single skill. Not one. Undeclared freshman college girl. Life of the party by night and utterly forgettable by day. You know how lame that is? You’re . . .” She flipped through the papers openmouthed. “Ridiculous.”

  “Um, thanks?” Byron said. It kind of sounded like a compliment.

  “You’re welcome.” Betsy spun on her heel as if to leave, then turned back to face Byron. She grabbed his upper arm and yanked him down toward her, hard enough that he felt his shoulder pull against the socket. She kissed his cheek, a firm, almost angry kiss, and shoved him away. “Ridiculous,” she said. She ran back toward her house, her bare feet slapping on the pavement, his sketches flapping in her hand. Byron couldn’t move for a few minutes. He stood there rubbing his shoulder where he could still feel the force of Betsy’s pull.

  He walked into his house still in a daze. They were just finishing dinner, the smell of roast chicken enough to make Byron hungry all over again. Lana carried plates to the sink while Matt waited patiently for his ice cream. Abby was nowhere to be found.

  “I’ve got the dishes,” Byron said, nudging his mom aside. “You can take care of Matt.”

  Lana stopped rinsing plates and stared at Byron for a minute. Then she leaned over and kissed his cheek, just above where Betsy had. “You’re the best son ever,” she said. Byron smiled and f
elt a hint of defiance against his father. Who was Graham to judge him? Graham didn’t even know him.

  After he finished the dishes Byron hovered outside Matt’s door. He’d never really talked to him before, more than necessary. He wasn’t sure what he wanted to say to him now. He’d just decided to give up when Matt spoke through the closed door.

  “You can open the door,” Matt said. “If you need to talk to me. I can hear you out there.”

  Byron, feeling like an idiot, opened Matt’s door. Matt was sitting in front of his computer, entering something from his notebook into a spreadsheet.

  “My mom said you like to draw, too. I wondered if I could see your artwork sometime.”

  “You can see my artwork,” Matt said. “You usually use a pen, just a ballpoint. I don’t usually use pens. I like drawing with pencils, colored or shades of gray. Some artists like charcoal, but I don’t. Too messy. And pastels are so . . .” Matt waggled his wrist, made a motion of smearing something. “I like watercolor. Oil paints when I’m outside. I can’t stand the smell indoors. Do you paint?”

  “No,” Byron said. How could he call himself an artist if he never painted? “Not yet, but I’m interested.”

  “Interested is good. Interested is how everything starts,” Matt said. Byron waited for him to get some of his artwork to show him but Matt didn’t move from his data-entry task, so Byron gave up. He sure was a strange person to deal with. Byron headed up to his room and started gathering his sketches together. They weren’t organized at all, just strewn around his room like dirty laundry. He needed someplace to keep them, some way to sort his works in progress into garbage and good stuff.

  “A few examples,” Matt said from the door, startling Byron. He was holding a nice big blue leather portfolio. That was exactly what Byron needed. “Since you’re interested.”

  Byron reached for the portfolio and Matt withdrew it. He was funny about people touching him, but how else was he supposed to hand people stuff? Matt gestured for Byron to move and he stepped aside. Matt opened the portfolio on Byron’s bed and slowly flipped through a series of pictures. There were a lot of tadpole ones. Some of lizards and birds. A series of dog ones. Several landscapes. Some funky shadow people that looked real and dreamlike at the same time. Byron really liked those. There were a few paintings of a person’s upper body, the broad chest overflowing with contrasting colors. They were creepy and fascinating, just like art should be. Art was supposed to make you feel something, Byron thought, and those did.

  “These chest ones and the shadow people. They’re so interesting. I like those the best.”

  “Oh, the animal ones are my favorite,” Matt said. “Those other ones are . . . they’re the feelings I get sometimes in my chest. They get too big and then I do stuff I’m not supposed to.” He pointed to a painting where red, black, and yellow streaks exploded out of the chest area, turning into shrapnel pieces.

  “And the shadow people?” Byron asked.

  “That’s us,” Matt said, as if it made perfect sense. Byron didn’t see it, but the simple statement gave him chills. Matt wasn’t just a guy who sketched random stuff. He was an artist. And suddenly Byron wanted to be one, too.

  “Thanks,” Byron said. “For showing me.”

  Matt snapped the portfolio shut and left without saying anything. Byron shook his head. Had he said something wrong? Matt was just as confusing as Betsy. Byron wished he had a few more predictable people in his life, so he wouldn’t always feel so confused. A few minutes later Matt was back, with a black plastic toolbox and a small blank canvas stretched over a wooden frame. He set the toolbox down and opened it up. It was full of paints and brushes.

  “You can’t have these, but you can use them. The canvas you can have. But you can’t paint in here. It’s too messy. I mean, your room is messy already, but the paints are messier. Your mom would get mad if you got paint on the carpet. She says I can only paint in the garage. So you should only paint in the garage, too. You can sketch on the canvas in here, but you have to paint in the garage.”

  “Wow, thanks,” Byron said.

  “And you need to be able to drive,” Matt said. He rubbed his face and looked around the room. “You can take the driving test once you’re sixteen. You’ll be sixteen in two weeks.”

  “I don’t have enough hours yet,” Byron said. “Nobody around here has time to take me out to practice.” He sounded like a whiny kid, which he was.

  “Okay,” Matt said. “I’ll get a car. Maybe a red pickup truck. And I’ll take you.”

  “You will?” Byron was confused. How had they gone from art to driving, and why was his uncle suddenly talking to him?

  “Yeah. I can’t drive. They haven’t given my license back. But they will. Soon. And I’ll need a car. And you need to drive. So for now you can drive, and I can show you the tadpoles. And then later I can drive.”

  “Oh. Great,” Byron said. He had no idea what tadpoles had to do with any of it, but getting his hours and getting his license sounded good. If he had his license and a truck he could borrow, maybe he could even ask Betsy out on a proper date. If she’d ever agree to that. Maybe he could take her to a park or down to the water to sketch her against a pretty backdrop. She’d probably like that.

  Matt left and Byron looked through the toolbox. Matt was right, the oil paint tubes gave off a stinky oily smell. The whole box reeked of it. He checked out the various brush sizes, imagining the fine or broad strokes he could make with each one. He picked up the canvas and felt the smooth texture, the tautness, the promise of something. He drummed his fingers against it and got a nice hollow sound. He got a pencil, took his time sharpening it to a fine point, and started sketching on it.

  17

  * * *

  Lana

  Lana was out front attempting to trim the hedges with the unwieldy hedge clippers, missing her unaffordable gardener desperately, when a police car pulled up behind her. She knew without looking that it was Nick, and that she looked like a hot mess in her dirt-streaked jeans and the Hawaiian shirt that she’d inherited from Graham years ago.

  “I think what you really need there is a machete,” he said. “Take out your aggressions and trim the hedges at the same time.”

  She laughed. What was the point of always wishing she looked better? She’d succumbed to daily vanity rituals to keep Graham’s attention, and he’d still left.

  “Not a bad idea,” she said. She dropped the clippers on the lawn and headed toward the car.

  “We still friends?” he asked. He swung the passenger-side door open and Lana took a seat.

  “We are,” she said. “Old friends.” She’d never sat in a police car before. It was terribly busy in there with a radio, a computer, a shotgun, papers, food, water, coffee.

  “Welcome to my office,” he said. He started to clear some papers from the floorboard to give Lana more legroom, but she waved him off. She wasn’t planning to stay long. They sat in silence for a moment before he cleared his throat. “So is Matt okay?”

  “He’s fine,” she said. Matt was sitting in the front window watching them. “I’m sorry I wasn’t more grateful for your help that day.”

  “You’re a protective big sister. You always were. It’s a good thing. Matt needs that. I get caught up in everything needing to be on the up-and-up. It worked in the Marines. It works on the job. It works against me in personal relationships.” His radio bleated something incomprehensible and Nick turned it up to listen, then back down again. “What I’m really saying is, I’m sorry, too. I shouldn’t have yelled at him, or you.”

  “Forgiven,” Lana said. She looked him over. He was so handsome, so steadfast, so proper, so contained. But he wasn’t the man for her and never had been. When they’d dated, his self-possession made her crave silliness and mess. He still had that effect on her. She thought she wanted a reliable, orderly life. But now she realized that wouldn’t be enough. “You remind me of who I used to be,” she said.

  “I’m sorry
, and you’re welcome,” he said. They both laughed.

  Just then Matt banged on the front window, startling them both. Lana was out of the car and headed for him before she had time to think. Matt pointed wildly behind her, shouting something she couldn’t make out. It looked like he was saying “dog.” She turned to see a petite blond woman running down the street with a reddish dog on a leash. The dog was beautiful: trim and graceful, narrow-waisted and leggy as a dancer. Its color was like polished mahogany. Matt opened the front door and came out on the steps.

  “Hungarian Vizsla,” Matt said, pointing, nearly dancing with excitement. “Or Magyar yellow dog. They’ve been around since the 1300s. They were nearly extinct after World War II. There were only about a dozen Vizslas left in Hungary then. They used them to bring the breed back. Vizslas were the hundred and fifteenth breed added to the American Kennel Club.”

  “It’s a beautiful dog,” Lana said.

  “You scared me there, Matt.” Nick laughed. He was out of his car in full-alert mode, arm flexed, hand near his gun. He relaxed his arm and sighed. “So you want a dog?”

  “No,” Matt said quickly. “Not a dog. A Vizsla, yes, but an ordinary, slobbery, ugly dog, no.”

  “I see,” Lana said, laughing as the tension dissipated.

  “You do? You see? Can we get a Vizsla?” His enthusiasm nearly did her in. Matt wasn’t good at subtlety, so Lana had to pull out the sledgehammer.

  “No, I don’t think getting a dog would be a good idea.”

  “Not a dog,” Matt insisted. “A Hungarian Vizsla.” He pointed down the street at the place where his dream dog had been.

  “Even so, I’m afraid the answer is no. A dog is a lot of responsibility and we’re still adjusting to—”