Night Owls

by Jenn Bennett

  Crap. He was definitely checking me out. What should I do? Earth to Beatrix: This was the night bus, not a Journey song. Two strangers were not on a midnight train going anywhere. I was going home, and he was probably going to knock over a liquor store.

  When it came to romance, sometimes I was convinced I was cursed. Don’t get me wrong: I’m not one of those “woe is me, I’m so plain Jane, no boys will ever look my way” kind of girls. Boys looked (like now). A few even stared (seriously, like right now). It was just when they got to know me—or saw my oddball medical artwork—that things usually went south.

  Too weird for jocks, and not weird enough for hipsters, I was neither freak nor geek, and that left me stranded in no-man’s-land. I was fine being a misfit—really, I was, even when someone scribbled “Morticia Adams” on my locker with a Sharpie this winter. I mean, first of all, even though we sort of share a last name, Morticia’s is spelled with two Ds, and I doubt whoever defaced my locked had the brain capacity to know the difference, but whatever. And second, I actually look more like the Addams daughter, Wednesday—the apathetic girl with the headless dolls—than Morticia, mostly because of my hair. I always braid it, and I know a thousand and one quirky styles, from Princess Leia buns to Swiss Miss to Greek Goddess, or tonight’s masterpiece: Modern Medieval Princess.

  But the funny thing is, I actually like The Addams Family, so whoever christened me with that nickname wasn’t really crushing my feelings. I definitely didn’t lose sleep over it. And it’s not like I’m completely socially inept, either. I have a couple of friends (and by “a couple” I mean exactly two, Lauren and Kayla, both of whom were spending the summer together in a warmer part of the state). And I’ve had a couple of boyfriends (and by “a couple” I mean I dated Howard Hooper for two months, and Dylan Norton for two hours during an anti-prom party in Lauren’s basement).

  So, okay. My calendar wasn’t exactly full, and I could never wear black dresses at school without people snickering behind my back, asking me where Gomez was. But I figured I could ditch all that in college, where I could reinvent myself as a sophisticated art student, bursting with wit and untapped joie de vivre. My limitless conversation starters about skin and bones would seduce the heart of some roguish professor (who almost always had a British accent and was also a former Olympic-trained swimmer—but only for the body), and we would run away together to some warm and fabulous Mediterranean island, where I would become the most celebrated medical illustrator in the world.

  In this daydream, I was always older and more clever, and it was always sunny. But here I was, on a cool, foggy night, sitting on an Owl bus feeling . . . I don’t know. Feeling like maybe I didn’t need to wait through senior year to make it to some fantasy island on the other side of high school.

  Maybe I could seduce a dangerously good-looking boy on a bus right now.

  His gaze lifted and met mine. We stared at each other.

  And stared.

  And stared . . .

  A strange heat sparked inside my chest and spread over my skin. It must’ve been contagious, because two pink spots stained his cheeks, and I’d never seen a boy like him blush. I didn’t know what was happening between us, but I honestly wouldn’t have been surprised if the Owl had burst into flames, veered off the road, and exploded in a fiery inferno.

  Bus stops came and went, and we didn’t stop staring. The older, wittier me was one second away from leaping across the aisle and throwing myself at him, but the real me was too sensible. He finally broke the silence and said in a soft, desperate voice, “What’s your name?”

  The woman with the umbrella made a low noise. She gave me a disapproving frown that put my mother’s to shame. Had she been watching us the whole time?

  “Shit.” Jack pulled the yellow stop cord drooping across the window and bent over his backpack. Irving and Ninth. A popular stop. Mine was still several blocks away, which meant one thing: My night bus fantasy was ending. What should I do? Ignore the umbrella lady’s warning and give him my name?

  What if I never saw him again?

  The bus jerked to a sudden stop. Jack’s backpack tipped sideways. Something rolled out from a gap in the zipper and banged into the toes of my boots.

  A fancy can of spray paint with a metallic gold top.

  I picked it up and paused. The way he tightened up and ground his jaw to the side, there might as well have been a neon sign over his head that flashed NERVOUS! NERVOUS! NERVOUS!

  I held the spray paint out. He stuffed the can in his backpack and slung it over one shoulder. “Good luck with your cadaver drawing.”

  My reply got lost under the news ticker of recent headlines scrolling inside my head. All I could do was quietly watch his long body slink into shadows as the door shut and the bus pulled away from the curb.

  I knew who he was.

  3

  SINCE SCHOOL LET OUT IN MAY, GOLD GRAFFITI HAD been popping up around San Francisco. Single words painted in enormous gold letters appeared on bridges and building fronts. Not semi-illegible, angry gang tags, but beautifully executed pieces done by someone with talent and skill.

  Could that someone be Jack? Was he an infamous street artist wanted for vandalizing?

  The remaining leg of the ride blurred by as I recalled everything I’d heard about the gold graffiti on local blogs. I wished I’d paid better attention. I definitely needed to do some research, like, right now.

  When the bus got to my stop on Judah Street, I raced off, eager to do just that.

  I live in the Inner Sunset district, which is the biggest joke in the world, because it’s one of the foggiest parts of the city. Summer’s the worst, when the nights are chilly and we sometimes go for weeks without seeing the sun. But apart from the fog, I like living here. We’re only a few blocks from Golden Gate Park. There’s a pretty cool stretch of shops on Irving. And we’re just down the hill from the Muni stop. We live on the bottom two floors of a skinny, three-story pale yellow Edwardian row house and share a small patch of yard in the back with our neighbor Julie, a premed student who rents the unit above us. She’s the one who got me the appointment at the anatomy lab.

  I jogged up a dozen stairs to our front door. As I fumbled for the house key, a taxi pulled up to the curb. My brother jumped out and quickly paid the driver before spotting me.

  “Mom’s on her way home!” Heath called as he raced up the stairs, imitating an ambulance siren. He was dressed in a tight jacket, tight jeans, and an even tighter black shirt with silver studs that spelled out 21ST CENTURY METAL BOY. He also reeked of beer, which is why I didn’t believe him.

  “Where have you been?” I asked.

  “Me? Where have you been?”

  “Picking up criminals on the night bus.”

  He made an “uh-huh, whatever” sound as he combed his fingers through spiky hair the same shade of brown as mine. Standing one step above, I was almost taller than him; we both took after my mom in the height department. He glanced at my skirt and boots. “Hold on. Why are you dressed up?”

  “It’s a long story. You smell like a brewery, by the way. Are you drunk?”

  “Not anymore,” he complained. “Hurry up and let us in. I’m totally serious. I saw the paddy wagon pulling out of employee parking when my cab passed the hospital.”

  The paddy wagon is my mom’s ancient white Toyota hatchback. It has two hundred thousand miles on it and a dent in the fender.

  “I paid the cabbie extra to run a red light so we could outrace her. Grrr!” he growled impatiently. “Any day now, Bex.”

  Bex is what my family and friends call me, as in short for Beatrix, and Bex only—not Bea, not Trixie, and not any other way that can make my nightmare of a name sound even more old-fashioned than it already did.

  While Heath prodded my back, I unlocked the door and we hurried inside. Even though our apartment takes up two floors, it’s officially only a one-bedroom. My mom has that bedroom, and Heath lives below on the bottom floor in Laundry Lair,
which is technically a tiny basement space attached to a one-car garage. And my room is technically the dining room, but we eat at the kitchen table or on the couch in front of the TV—“like pigs,” my mom says, but the shame doesn’t stop her.

  The no-shame gene runs in the family, because it also doesn’t stop my twenty-year-old brother from squatting here at home instead of getting his own place. And because he is still four months away from being legal, my mom would kick his ass if she knew he’d been sneaking into clubs with a fake ID. Again.

  “Why is she coming home in the middle of her shift?” I asked.

  “Hell if I know,” Heath called back to me as he headed for the bathroom. “I’ve got to take a piss. Watch at the window and yell when she drives up.”

  “Forget it. I have to change. She doesn’t know I was out, either.” I raced into my room and stashed the portfolio next to my drafting table before shrugging out of my coat. Two French doors separated me from the living room. I’d covered all the glass with old X-rays I’d cut into squares, so that when the doors were shut, I had a modicum of privacy. But since it isn’t a real bedroom, I don’t have any windows, and all my clothes are crammed inside a rickety Ikea wardrobe that won’t stay shut.

  But it isn’t all bad. For light, I have a cool old Deco chandelier that hangs in the center of the room and a gigantic built-in mission-style china cabinet on one wall that I use to display my collections: vintage anatomy books, a 1960s Visible Woman (a clear plastic toy with removable organs), some old dental molds, and several miniature anatomy model sets (heart, brain, lungs). At the foot of my bed is Lester, a life-size teaching skeleton that hangs from a rolling stand. The skeletons are usually expensive, but my mom snagged him for nothing at the hospital campus because he’s missing an arm.

  Heath skidded to a stop outside my X-ray doors, breathing hard. “Seriously, where were you tonight?”

  “Trying to meet with the anatomy lab director, but she never showed.”

  “That again? Look at you, being stubborn. I thought Mom told you not to bug them.”

  “I’d already made the appointment,” I argued. “It’s not like I was breaking into the lab and molesting bodies. I wasn’t doing anything wrong.” Except defying my mother’s wishes, taking the Owl, and flirting with someone who may or may not be a wanted vandal . . . “Not horribly wrong, anyway,” I amended.

  “God forbid,” Heath mumbled. “You really don’t know how to be bad.”

  I got my boots unzipped and tossed them into the rickety wardrobe. “Oh, and you do? Was Noah out with you, or did he even know? If you’re cheating on him—”

  “Shh! Listen.” He angled his head to the side, bracing his hand on the doorway. “Is that the paddy wagon?” he whispered.

  The familiar grating thump of the garage door rattled through the floor.

  “I was asleep when you got home!” Heath instructed, racing downstairs.

  I quickly tossed my skirt under my bed and managed to hop into lounge pants while pulling my doors closed. Right after I shut off my chandelier, Mom’s footsteps hurried up the basement stairwell and into the living room. Crap. That was fast. She must be in a hurry.

  “It’s one in the morning. Where the hell are you calling from?” Mom’s voice said over the squeak of her rubber soles. “Never mind. I don’t care. Just get to the point and tell me what you want.”

  Who in the world was she talking to?

  “Absolutely not. If you mail something, I will dump it in the garbage. Do you hear me?” Her voice bounced past my room as she headed into the kitchen. Jars rattled. She was in the fridge. Oh! She gave her lunch to Panhandler Will. Guess she was foraging for a replacement. “Too bad. Nothing’s changed. Stop trying, and you won’t be disappointed. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m actually working here. Enjoy your flight from London.” She enunciated the city in a mocking tone. A muffled bang ended the call.

  Whoa. She was seriously pissed.

  Footfalls squeaked past my room again. “May your plane crash into the fucking Atlantic,” she mumbled to herself before jogging down the stairs again. A minute later, the paddy wagon’s engine roared to life and she was gone again.

  Mom rarely gets angry. Honestly, she pretty much never gets emotional about anything. Ever. It’s one of the things I’ve inherited from her—a no-nonsense personality. No drama, no tears, no yelling. We both operate on a nonemotional setting, unlike Heath, who operates on an unhealthy decadence of shifting highs and lows. He got that from our father, who up and left us three years ago for a strip-club owner he met on a business trip to Southern California. We hadn’t seen him since, and to be perfectly honest, I didn’t miss him.

  Sure, there was a lot of yelling before he left, but after he was gone, Mom pulled herself together pretty fast. She didn’t cry when the divorce went through, and she didn’t bad-mouth Dad when he never made a single child support payment. The last time I remembered her getting emotional was a couple of years ago when Heath and I suggested we legally change our last names to her maiden Adams out of solidarity.

  Anyway, the only person who ever put her in a remotely bad mood was my dad, and as far I knew, they didn’t have any contact. She wasn’t dating anybody—she was “done with men”—and none of her friends were in London.

  So who was she yelling at on the phone?

  I cracked open one of the X-ray doors when Heath bounded back upstairs. He held out a palm as he passed, and we high-fived. “Live to puke another day,” he said cheerfully, striding back to the bathroom.

  “You’ve got glitter on your nose,” I answered.

  Whatever smart-ass answer he gave was out of earshot. I had more pressing concerns, so I ignored him and curled up in bed with my laptop. It took me only a few seconds to find what I was looking for—a post on a local city blog luridly titled: “Golden Apple Street Artist: Poet or Attention-Mongering Vandal?”

  The blog post detailed what I already knew, but I learned a couple of new things—like that the “burners” or “pieces” (short for masterpiece) were executed with both a professional airbrush and a specialty graffiti spray paint that’s illegal to sell in the city. I thought of the fancy can in Jack’s backpack—definitely not something you could buy at the local home improvement store—and my stomach went a little flippy.

  Five words had been painted over the last couple of weeks: BEGIN, FLY, BELONG, JUMP, TRUST. Begin was, aptly, the first word, painted in ten-foot-high letters on the pavement around Lotta’s Fountain, the oldest monument in the city. The most recent word, trust, had been stenciled across the ticket booth roof at the San Francisco Zoo entrance.

  The post quoted a police officer in charge of the SFPD Graffiti Abatement Program. He warned that the difference between graffiti and art is “permission,” and pointed out that since the cumulative cleanup costs were over four hundred dollars, the artist who painted the golden words would be facing a felony charge.

  But that wasn’t all. The artist signed all the words with a small golden apple at the bottom of the last letter. And this made the blogger wonder about a connection to a local anonymous “artist collective” called Discord.

  Not good.

  Members of Discord were known for engaging in antagonist behavior toward the mayor’s office and had done tens of thousands of dollars’ worth of damage to public property: breaking windows, trashing stores, setting things on fire, and pouring paint on a bronze statue of Gandhi outside the Ferry Building on the Embarcadero. The blogger speculated that the golden graffiti’s signature might be a nod toward the Apple of Discord from Greek mythology, which was inscribed with “the fairest” and started a catfight between Hera, Aphrodite, and Athena.

  Thinking about all this made me feel as if I were on one of those pirate-ship rides at a carnival, swinging back and forth between excitement and the nagging fear that a bolt would break and the whole thing would slingshot into the sky.

  My brother was right about one thing: I didn’t really know how to be bad. So
maybe I should have just put Jack out of my mind and gone back to my boring sunless, friendless summer.

  But that was easier said than done.

  The next afternoon, while Mom and Heath were both still sleeping off their respective graveyard shift and club-hopping, I took the regular Muni train to Irving Street, a short walk from the southeast entrance to Golden Gate Park . . . and one stop from where Jack got off the bus the night before.

  It was also where I worked part-time as a glamorous checkout girl in an upscale gourmet market called Alto. Because we catered to the upper crust, everyone but the meat and fish counter employees had to wear a white button-down shirt, black pants, a black tie, and a store-issued black Alto Market apron, which made me feel like a high-end restaurant server—without the benefit of high-end tips.

  A lot of people at school complain about their summer jobs, but apart from the black tie, I was sort of okay with mine. It didn’t take a lot of effort to run stuff over a scanner. I also secretly enjoyed stacking groceries in bags because it was sort of like a puzzle, fitting the heavy stuff in the right place, and keeping the cold stuff together—a little like replacing all the plastic guts in my Visible Woman anatomy model: strangely satisfying.

  Along with all that, the store always smelled like baked bread and fresh flowers, and the piped-in classical music fueled my Sophisticated Older Art Student fantasies. It could be worse.

  After clocking in and counting my till, I headed out to my assigned register. The last person who used it had moved the rubber bands and pens around. As I put it all back into place, a dark-haired woman poked her head around a rack of imported candy.

  “Good afternoon, Beatrix.”

  Ms. Lopez is one of the store managers. She’s a single mom in her early thirties with an eleven-year-old daughter named Joy. She’s been my boss since I started working here last summer. As far as bosses go, she’s pretty reasonable and fair, and just plain nice—another reason I don’t mind this job.