by Carrie Arcos
• • •
After Ezra leaves, I bypass my parents on the couch in front of the TV. Mom offers to make popcorn, but I fake like I have homework to do. They’ve never seen me so studious before.
“You sure everything’s all right?” she asks.
“Yeah, just got a lot to do.”
“You’re not feeling sick, are you?”
“No, Mom. I’m fine, really.”
“Okay. But I’m going to check in on you later,” she says.
My dad doesn’t say a word.
Once I’m upstairs in my room, I close the door and lean against it. Even though it’s small, I feel safe; I don’t have to hide anything here. I find the pages with Callie’s eyes and practice drawing them all night.
For the first time I think I understand The Poet’s words about his lover having oceanic eyes. It’s not about the color. Callie’s eyes aren’t blue, but they are deep and full of something. They pull me in and make me want to know more and see more.
That night I dream of the ocean.
I HAVE GONE MARKING
My phone buzzes. It’s Callie.
Can you come over?
When?
Now. Need help with something.
Sure.
In twenty minutes I’m at Callie’s front door. Her mom answers on the second knock with Lucy right at her heels. I reach down to pet her.
“Callie’s up in her room. Good luck—she’s in one of her artistic moods. She tells me you’re an artist.”
Callie’s talking about me to her parents? That’s got to be good.
“I am, yes.”
“That’s nice. The world needs people who aren’t afraid to express themselves.”
“Neruda. You coming?” Callie yells.
I stumble up the stairs.
Callie’s door is cracked just a sliver. She pulls it all the way open just as I’m about to knock.
“Finally! So, what do you think?”
She stands with her hands on her hips, and her face is covered in patches of red, yellow, and blue makeup. Her mouth is pursed like she’s either upset or trying to look like a model.
“Umm . . . good?”
“Liar. I thought I’d at least get the truth from you.”
She slumps down in the chair in front of her makeup mirror. Color and brushes are strewn all over the bed and floor.
Taped up to the mirror is a picture from Picasso’s cubist period. It’s called Seated Woman.
Callie’s trying to imitate more than just the woman’s makeup, but her facial expression too.
“It’s a good attempt,” I say. “It just doesn’t look like the Picasso piece yet.”
“It’s not working. The dimensions are all off because, you know, my eyes are the right proportions and so are my nose and mouth.”
“Well, what if you try being less literal? And maybe use your whole face.”
“Can you try it?” She hands me a tube of black eyeliner.
She turns her face toward me, and I’m suddenly so nervous, I have to shake out my hand first.
“You’ll want to look at the planes of my face and draw a line down the middle and then across, like this.”
Callie shows me what to do and I make a faint line starting at her forehead. She studies the lines for a second. “Nah. Let’s start over.” She takes a cloth and wipes her face clean.
“Sorry. I don’t have experience doing makeup,” I say.
“It’s okay. I do and I still can’t make this work.”
“Well, maybe you’re focusing on the wrong thing. I don’t think you can have your actual eyes be the eyes of the piece. What if your right eye is over here instead?” I touch the upper part of her right cheek with the makeup brush. “If you paint over or put makeup over your eyelids when you have them closed, that’s when it’ll look like the painting.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought too, but it’s hard to do this one on my own. Can you help me?”
“I don’t really know how to use all this stuff.”
“You can help direct me. Please? I’ve already been at this for a couple of hours. Here, grab that chair.”
She doesn’t let me give another excuse.
I pull over the chair and sit next to her while she puts on some kind of a base. “Is that your primer?”
She laughs. “Yeah, something like that.”
I watch as she begins to apply a coat of makeup across her forehead.
“So, what did I pull you away from?”
“Nothing,” I say.
Callie’s mom peeks through the door. “How’s it going?”
“Fine, Mom.”
“Good. Here’s some almonds and granola bars in case you guys get hungry.” She leaves a tray on Callie’s bed. “I’ll be out back, okay, sweetie?” She gives Callie a kiss on the top of the head and a hug that goes on a little too long. Callie pats her.
“Okay, Mom. Thanks.”
She leaves and Callie says, “Sorry.”
“Why?”
“For my mom being weird. It’s because I have a boy in my room and she doesn’t want any funny business.”
I blush thinking about what kind of funny business I could get into with Callie. Is she flirting with me?
Callie starts applying black liner to her face.
“Wait, no, draw the lid here,” I point to her cheek again.
“Can you do it?”
I try to draw the eye, but it’s hard on skin. I have to hold the bottom of her chin to stabilize her. Or maybe I have to stabilize myself. Callie doesn’t even flinch as I hold her face, like she’s used to me touching her. I try to move past the fact that I’m touching Callie, that I’m physically closer to her than I’ve ever been to another girl, and just keep working.
When I’m finished, she looks super creepy, like a lopsided three-eyed creature with one eye under and to the right of her real eye.
“Cool. Can you do the other eye?”
This one I draw a little higher, more on the side of her left eye, but it doesn’t look right. “I think you can just use your real eye, but let’s make it slant here at the corners and give it the illusion that it’s drooping,” I say.
Her face is turned up toward me; her eyes are closed. It’s almost like she’s inviting me to kiss her. At least, that’s what we would do if this were a movie or TV. I wonder what kind of kiss it would be. Would it be the slow, drawn-out kind, where two people stare at each other for a long time and slowly lean in and kiss each other while the music swells all around them? Or the I-can’t-do-anything-else-until-I’ve-kissed-you-first kind, where the couple runs into each other from afar? The kind where the guy pushes her up against a wall or a tree because the need and passion are too great to be gentle?
I haven’t experienced this kind of kiss before, or any kind actually, but I can imagine what it might feel like. That perfect, right moment. The magic and poetry of it.
Callie’s breath falls on my hands as I work. My heart races and my own breath is hot on her face. This could be my moment. I start to lean closer, but she opens her eyes, and I flinch. If she’s weirded out by how close I am to her, she doesn’t show it.
“Sorry, got an itch.” She crinkles up her nose and scratches just to the side of it. She looks at herself in the mirror and giggles. “Awesome. Keep going.” She tilts her face up toward me again and closes her eyes.
“So, do you and your mom get along?” I ask. Anything to keep my mind off of her lips, her eyes. How perfect this moment could be.
“For the most part. Sometimes I get so irritated with her when she tries to analyze me. But she has gotten better with that.”
“She tries to analyze you?”
“Yeah, like I’m one of her clients. She wants me to talk everything through with her. And she doesn’t
get that she’s my mom. I’m not going to tell her everything.” She sighs. “You can’t choose the family you’re born into, right? What about your mom? You guys close?”
“We’re not not close. We’re normal, I guess.”
“What about your dad?”
“He’s okay.”
“You guys don’t get along?”
“No, well . . .” I’m not sure if I’m ready for Callie to know about my parents. But she’s being open and honest with me, so I decide to be open and honest with her. “I overheard him on the phone the other day talking to another woman. I’m pretty sure he cheated on my mom.”
She opens her eyes. “Neruda, that’s horrible.”
“Yeah, well. It happens, right?”
“Are you okay?”
I shrug. “No, but there’s nothing I can do about it, so . . .” Telling her helps let out some of the pressure that’s been building inside me. It’s different from telling Ezra, more of a risk, and there’s such deep concern in her eyes.
She puts her hand on my arm. “Thank you for telling me. I’ll pray for you guys. I hope you don’t think that’s cheesy.”
“No. But I thought you weren’t religious.”
“I’m not. It doesn’t mean I don’t pray.”
“Thanks,” I say, touched.
“You’re welcome.”
I work on Callie’s left eye, trying to make it droop. A comfortable silence settles over us as I turn her face into a cubist painting.
A few minutes later, I finish. “There. Why don’t you take a look.”
She examines her reflection for a moment before exclaiming, “I look like a freak show!”
“Pretty much,” I agree.
“You could be a makeup artist if you wanted,” she says while she turns this way and that to take it all in.
“No way.”
“I’m serious. It’s not just a women’s field, if that’s what you’re worried about. Plenty of men are makeup artists,” she says. As if that’s the reason holding me back.
“Is that what you want to do? Become a makeup artist?” I ask her.
“Depends. I’ve got my top five schools picked out and a few others as backups. I’m really hoping for a volleyball scholarship, but I know that’s a long shot. The reality of me getting in somewhere like USC is pretty slim, but there’s all kinds of private and small schools that are looking to improve their athletic teams. Also, if I go out of state, I have a better chance. I’m looking into some makeup academies too, but my parents want me to do the traditional school thing first. How about you?”
“I’m thinking about art school.”
“You haven’t started researching?”
“I mean, a little. There’s the Art Center in Pasadena.”
“Great school. It’s super competitive, though. You’ll need a portfolio. You should definitely put the mural thing in there. Any school would be super impressed.”
“It’ll happen if it’s meant to, I guess.”
“What does that mean?”
“I just mean if I’m supposed to get in, I’ll get in.”
She looks at me as if in shock. “It doesn’t just happen that way, Neruda. First, you have to fill out an application, then do an in-person interview, visit the school, get the right grades, get the right test scores, volunteer. And sometimes that’s still not enough. It’s not like you can just sit around and expect it to happen. You have to make it happen.”
It’s the quickest I’ve ever heard Callie speak. Her words rush at me like a river. I hold the back of the chair as if not to be swept away.
“Have you even visited a campus?” she asks.
“No.”
“Neruda, this is serious. You need to go as soon as possible. You should also schedule a meeting with an admissions person too. And bring your parents. And dress really nice. I can help you pick something out.”
“Have you always been this intense?”
“This is not intense. This is reality,” she says.
Suddenly I feel completely overwhelmed. What have I been doing? I don’t even have a portfolio ready to go.
“Sorry. I didn’t mean to scare you. It’s just . . . I take this stuff really seriously and I’ve been under a lot of pressure lately. I didn’t mean to lay all that on you.”
“It’s okay.”
“Would you mind taking my picture?” She hands me her camera and faces the lens square on, serious. I show her the photo so she can approve. She stares at it awhile, then turns away from me.
“Are you all right?”
She shrugs her shoulders and wipes her eyes. “You ever feel like . . . it’s all just a lot? I practice every day till five, plus schoolwork. I work really hard, but I’m just not that straight-A student, or B or even C.”
She glances at me. Tears streak the sides of her face and blend the colors together.
“Sometimes I wish I could just go to sleep and wake up in some magical place. Like Dorothy in Oz.” She laughs. “That probably sounds dumb.”
“No. It sounds like . . . a great escape. I’d go with you,” I say.
She smiles, then looks at herself in the mirror. “Ahh. Well, at least you took the picture before this.” She starts to clean off the smears of her makeup with a wipe.
Even if I was only Toto, I’d go just to be near her.
“Thanks, Neruda. You’re a really good friend.”
I smile. I suppose I should be happy with that label, considering not long ago we had barely even spoken. Somehow, though, the word is hollow and echoes against the walls of my chest. It’s a good word, but here in her bedroom, it’s the last thing I want to be.
THE WEARY ONE
After leaving Callie’s house, I’m confused. I think about calling Greyson for advice, since he is my friend with the most relationship experience, but decide I need more of a man’s opinion on the situation. I call Ezra.
“If a girl invites you to her house to help her with something and you have a great time and she says that you’re a good friend, do you think that means she just wants to be friends?” I ask when he answers.
“Maybe.”
“I just don’t understand girls. I mean, how do you know if they even like you?”
“Have you talked to this girl?”
“Yes, we talk all the time. And then she calls me and I come over and help her and touch her face and everything and she says we’re such good friends.”
“You touched her face?”
“She asked me to help her with some makeup painting thing.”
“Hmm.”
“I don’t want to be just friends.”
“Does she know that?” Ezra asks.
“I mean, I haven’t exactly come out and told her.”
“Maybe you need to be a little bolder, get some ganas, let your actions speak for themselves. Ask her out on a date. What does she like?”
“Movies.”
“Take her to the movies, then.”
“I think I’ve waited too long. There’s the initial getting-to-know-you stage where you determine what kind of relationship you’re going to have, and Callie’s clearly put me in the friend zone.”
“Nah, you just gotta ask her out. Be direct, man. Girls like that instead of playing some game.”
“Is that what you did with that girl from high school? Daisy?”
He pauses for a minute. “I don’t remember.”
“Come on. How did you even meet her?”
“We were part of the same group of friends. I don’t remember the first time I met her; it was more like suddenly I noticed she was there.”
“That’s how it was with Callie.”
“She used to babysit for this family with twins on Friday nights, and she was always whining about how hard it was. This one night I got the a
ddress from her sister and showed up with a pizza and flowers.”
“What kind of flowers?” I ask.
“White daisies.”
“Ha.”
“I was very clever,” he says.
“So . . . ?” I say, urging him to continue.
“So, she didn’t let me inside because boys weren’t allowed without an adult present, but she did take the flowers. I think I stood in front of that open doorway for like five minutes before I finally bailed. But it broke the ice. I was persistent, and three weeks later we were going out.”
“Did you ask her out or did it just happen?”
“Nothing just happens. I probably said something smooth like, ‘You want to go out?’”
“Did she say yes right away or did she have to think about it?”
“She said yes and then I kissed her.”
“Where did it happen?”
“At her cousin’s house in the backyard.”
“How’d you know you were in love with her?”
“I knew it the moment I kissed her.”
“But how?”
I want to ask him if it was an epic kiss. Did it stop time and space and knock the breath out of him? I imagine this happening with Callie, that it’ll be one of those moments that will forever change my life.
“You just know.”
“That’s what everyone says.” I sigh. But what about when you think you know and it doesn’t work out? I thought I knew with Autumn, but I realize I never even knew Autumn, not like I know Callie. Autumn was just a crush, a pretty face. Things with Callie are . . . different.
“You should go for it now, man, while you can,” Ezra says.
I can hear the regret in his voice, and it’s then I remember our deal. So what if nothing ever happened with Autumn; I’m definitely trying to put myself out there. Big-time.
“You think any more about contacting Daisy?” I ask.
Ezra doesn’t respond.
“Do you ever think she might have been your soul mate?”
“Neruda,” he sighs. “I haven’t seen her in ten years.”
“Don’t you think you owe it to yourself to at least see if there’s still the possibility? At least look her up and check if she’s married. What if she’s been waiting for you all this time?”