Night Owls

by Jenn Bennett

  Was he just busy? Or maybe there was a reason I didn’t want to face: that he’d seen my art and decided I was too morbid. It certainly wouldn’t be the first time, and even if we were both artists, maybe Cadaver Girl and Vegetarian Graffiti Boy were oil and water. I guess I needed to stop pining away for something I didn’t even really know if I wanted.

  I mean, hello! I was eighteen, baby. I could finally . . . vote and buy all those cartons of cigarettes I’d been pining for. Yippee.

  So Mom spent her only weekend day off from the hospital schlepping Heath and me around the city for Beatrix-approved birthday activities. We waited in early-morning fog for forty-five minutes to have milk shakes for breakfast at St. Francis Diner (my favorite) before nerding out at Green Apple Books (where Heath ponied up for a 1960s coffee table book about medical oddities that he’d had on hold for me). We finally ended up at the Legion of Honor, which, in San Francisco, is an art museum—not a brotherhood of knights, or whatever it is in France.

  I know a museum may not be everyone’s idea of Super Birthday Funtimes, but I really wanted to see this exhibition called Flesh and Bone, and it featured one piece in particular that had me salivating: a Max Brödel diagram of a heart. I’d posted a link to it on the Body-O-Rama site when I’d blogged about my birthday plans, and, holy smokes, seeing it in person didn’t disappoint. Brödel is pretty much the godfather of modern medical illustration. He was a German who immigrated here to draw diagrams for Johns Hopkins School of Medicine in the early 1900s. His illustrations were beautifully detailed and had this weird, surreal quality.

  I’d studied his stuff in books and had even copied a few for practice. But seeing the actual carbon-dust-on-stipple-board drawing was breathtaking.

  In fact, even after I’d looked at everything else, I went back to that heart diagram for one last look, admiring every detail, including the tiny handwritten labels: AORTA, LEFT VENTRICLE, TRACHEA. It was so completely perfect. And I couldn’t help but think he’d drawn it from a dissected heart. If Dr. Sheridan would just let me spend some time in the anatomy lab, I might be the next Max Brödel. I mean, anything’s possible, right?

  But even though I was currently in muscle-and-sinew heaven, it didn’t mean that my family was. Mom kept trying to steer me into one of the permanent collections to see Rembrandt and Rubens: “They’re famous, Bex. And so beautiful.” Eventually Heath griped and groaned and yawned us into the museum’s overpriced cafe for lunch. It was pretty much the same kind of food we had in the deli at Alto Market, so none of it was all that appealing to me. But we ordered, then snagged seats on the patio outside. And because I was a total loser, I checked Body-O-Rama’s comments one more time, only to be disappointed anew.

  My mom was checking her phone, too. I so wanted to ask her about that weird late-night phone call she’d gotten the other day, but I was worried I’d end up incriminating myself. I’m a terrible liar.

  “You’re eating that, Bex,” she said, nudging my shoe beneath the table as she futzed with the fanning dark hair around her temples. She had a pixie cut, which was pretty much just a shorter version of Heath’s haircut—only where his was all blown up, hers was blown down. She was tiny, like me, and the elfish thing looked good on her. But as long as I lived with the two of them, I could never cut my hair short, or we’d all look like some freaky family gang, ready to lure strangers into our house with Kool-Aid. Hence the braids.

  I made a face at Mom. “The bread’s stale.”

  “It was twenty dollars. It can’t be stale.”

  Heath slung his arm over the back of my chair. “Sure it can. Noah says half the starred restaurants in town recycle bread from other tables.”

  “Saint Noah is never wrong,” I pointed out. Noah was my brother’s latest boyfriend, a twenty-five-year-old engineer who had a million-dollar condo in the Castro. He’s stable and smart, and even though Heath had yet to bring him home and introduce us, we’d heard so much about him that we were kind of in love with him, too—especially my mom. I think she was hoping he’d be a positive influence on my not-so-stable brother, who had already burned through two community colleges, dropping out once due to boredom and a second time after he got busted at an inopportune moment with an English professor twice his age.

  “By the way,” Mom said, rearranging her knife on her plate, “you never told me when Noah would be free to come over for family dinner.”

  “I forgot to ask, sorry. He’s been working, and . . .”

  And Heath had been sneaking out to drink and see metal shows every other night. I didn’t say this—sibling loyalty is a two-way street—but my mom has some weird sixth sense about these sorts of things, which is probably why I have no confidence when it comes to lying to her. Nurse Katherine the Great always knows.

  She shot him a dark look across the table. “I swear, Heath, if you screw this up with Noah—”

  “I’m not going to screw it up.”

  “Again,” I amended under my breath.

  “We were on a break,” Heath said.

  “Because you were fooling around with that cook.”

  “Chef,” he corrected. “And he was fooling around with me. I didn’t start it.”

  “Tell me again, why is Noah with you?”

  “Because I’m overflowing with personality and I ooze charm.”

  I snorted. “You’re overflowing and oozing something, all right.”

  “Please, God,” Mom pretend-prayed to the sky. “All I ask is that you swap these children for kittens, and I’ll never sin again.”

  Heath made prayer hands and closed his eyes. “Dear Prince of Darkness, please make sure the kittens piss all over her bed so she’ll regret it and beg for us to come back.”

  I elbowed him in the ribs until he laughed, and then I asked Mom for money. “I’m going back inside for ten-dollar strawberry shortcake,” I explained as I accepted her debit card. “You two keep steering us toward the apocalypse while I’m gone.”

  They continued to joke and laugh as I strolled around tables and a hundred pecking birds, who must’ve thought this place was some kind of avian Shangri-La, what with all the fancy crumbs being tossed their way by museum patrons. I couldn’t blame them. It was really pretty out here, especially beyond the patio; afternoon sun cleared out the fog over the Golden Gate Bridge’s famous orangey-vermillion arches stretching across the blue bay. For once, it actually seemed like summer. Though I did feel a little sorry for the tourists who were prancing around in shorts. Come nightfall, they’d be regretting they didn’t book their trip in September or October, when it was sunnier.

  As I opened the cafe door, a riot of sound drew my attention toward the museum hallway. People were jumping up from their seats, craning their necks to see something. I sidled past one of the museum volunteers and wove between patrons crowding the exit of the Flesh and Bone exhibit.

  A couple of guards cleared a space around a spotlighted area in the middle of the room. That’s when I saw it, scrawled in slanting metallic gold on the gray exhibit wall beneath Max Brödel’s heart diagram:

  C E L E B R A T E

  Was this, could this . . . ? Who the hell else would it be?

  Jack.

  Jack-Jack-Jack! His name bounced around my hollow head like a rubber ball inside an empty gym. Celebrate. This was no coincidence. He went to the Body-O-Rama website. He saw my post about birthday plans—the one in which I’d posted a photo of the Brödel. Humiliation and excitement raced through me in dizzy spirals.

  Oh, my ever-loving God . . .

  He did this for me.

  Important-looking people rushed in with a security guard. Museum administration. One of them was a distinguished older woman in a dress suit, who clamped a hand over her mouth when she saw the graffiti.

  Someone was excitedly talking to a couple next to me. “Dressed in black,” he was saying. “I didn’t get a look at his face, but I thought it was weird he was wearing dark glasses. He had a paint pen or something tucked into his
sleeve, and he just strolled up to the wall and started writing, like it was nothing.”

  The couple gasped and shook their heads.

  “Did they catch him?” I asked, butting into their conversation.

  “I don’t think so,” the man told me excitedly. “It all happened so fast. I ran through that doorway to flag down a guard for maybe ten seconds, maybe. He was already gone when I got back.”

  Holy crap. This was shocking. And stupid. And crazy. Someone else nearby said the police were on their way. My hands shook as I fumbled inside my pocket for my phone. No way in hell was I getting closer, so I zoomed in as best I could and snapped a photo.

  Oh, Jack . . . what have you done?

  6

  IT TOOK US FOREVER TO GET OUT OF LINCOLN PARK because of all the hubbub and traffic. Meanwhile, I was cooped up in the backseat of the paddy wagon, dying to talk about it. But I couldn’t—not in front of Mom, who’d already joked that the “coincidence” of the graffiti was bizarre (if not cooler than the birthday sombrero I’d get in a restaurant).

  As soon as I could get Heath alone, I was telling him everything. My brother may be a lousy role model, but he’s an excellent listener and advice-giver. He’d give me some perspective.

  If I didn’t die first.

  We made a couple more stops before we headed home, but I spent the rest of the afternoon on my phone, refreshing Body-O-Rama every minute and checking my email and feeds (still nothing). Now that I knew he’d actually been on the site, it was driving me batty that he hadn’t contacted me personally. I did my best to consider everything rationally. I mean, he hadn’t actually defaced any artwork. If he had? Watch out, buddy. Never mind the world of hurt he’d be in with the law—I would personally hunt him down and strangle him if he’d screwed with the Max Brödel heart.

  But he hadn’t. All he’d defaced was a temporary wall—one the museum probably painted over for every installation.

  And yet he’d had the balls to walk into a museum in broad daylight and vandalize it. Talk about a jailable offense. Cop cars had descended on Lincoln Park like they were answering a bomb report. Granted, I knew a lot of kids who did crazy things. My own brother had probably broken a million minor laws before he graduated. Unlike me, he knew perfectly well how to be bad, and he was damn good at it. But smoking weed and using fake IDs paled in comparison to citywide infamy.

  And then there was the much more personal part of this: the Me factor. What did it mean? Yes, it was my birthday, so clearly it was a nod to that. But for the love of Pete, just send me a Have a Terrific Day! message online. No need to bring a felony charge into the mix. Was Jack a secret adrenaline junkie? I could already hear Mom labeling him a troublemaker.

  Despite all that, it was—in a way—incredibly romantic. Or maybe I was just romanticizing it. Maybe he pulled a dozen nutball stunts every day before breakfast.

  “You okay back there?” Mom asked when we were nearly home, peering into the rearview to make eye contact.

  “A little weirded out by everything, that’s all.” Which was true. “And hungry.” In the wake of what had happened, I’d forgotten all about getting my fancy strawberry shortcake.

  “I thought we’d pick up Mae Thai for your birthday dinner. How does that sound?”

  I sighed with plea sure. “Heavenly.”

  Mom’s eyes crinkled at the corners when she smiled at me in the mirror. I really hated lying to her, especially when she’d been so nice to me today. This whole situation with Jack was exhausting. If this was what it was like to have a crush on a bad boy, I wasn’t sure if I could handle it. I mean, Howard Hooper—aka the only real boyfriend I’d ever had—was kind of a jerk, but not in a tough-guy way. In the way that geeks sometimes are when they look down on everyone who doesn’t know the name of every Avenger or what 1337 meant .

  Howard Hooper would probably wet his pants if he even daydreamed about doing something as ballsy as vandalizing a museum in broad daylight.

  Where are you, Jack?

  When I finally got so frustrated I couldn’t handle it anymore, I decided to throw caution to the wind and posted the pic I took at the museum. I added the vaguely troll-rific comment Golden Apple Vandal wishing me a happy birthday.

  Once I’d hit send, I had a minor panic attack. There it was in my feed, for all 167 people who followed me to see. Okay, almost none of those people actually knew me, so maybe I was overreacting. Besides, I really only wanted one person to see it, because hey, you just can’t make an epic public declaration like that and then walk away as if nothing happened.

  When we finally got home, a printed note was stuck to the door from some place named Godspeed Courier. “Sorry we missed you, but we need your signature. We’ll try again ___.” The blank wasn’t filled in, and there was no name.

  “Bike messenger?” Mom said, hefting steaming bags of takeout. “What is this, Heath?”

  “How should I know? I didn’t order anything. Maybe it’s a birthday present for Bex.”

  “Right. Because I have so many friends who use courier service.”

  “Probably the wrong address,” Mom said, taking the courier note before heading toward the kitchen.

  “Maybe it was meant for Julie.”

  “Who knows,” Mom called back. “I’ll ask her about it next time I see her.”

  “I can run it up to her,” I said.

  “I said I’d take care of it, Beatrix,” she snapped in a very un-Katherine way.

  “Sheesh,” I mumbled. “Bossy much?”

  I remembered Mom’s late-night phone call. She’d told the person not to mail anything. Was this what she was talking about?

  “I thought you were starving. Come help me get ice in the glasses,” she said in a nicer tone from the kitchen before I could read anything more into it.

  Besides, I had other things to worry about, like the ding on my phone. One HAPPY BDAY text from Lauren and Kayla in LA (who couldn’t even spare enough time to send separate texts or type the IRTH). While I was at it, I checked my email. Holy freaking alerts, Batman: The photo I’d uploaded two hours ago had been reposted 503 times, which was about five hundred more times than anything else I’d ever posted. Was I the only person who’d snapped a picture?

  “Bex,” Mom called again.

  “Coming!” Ugh. Maybe posting that photo was a mistake.

  My post-museum panicky high faded into a slow buzz after a movie and massive amounts of Pad See-Ew noodles and lemon-grassy Panang curry. While Mom was in the kitchen, our doorbell rang. It was almost eight o’clock, which was kind of late for someone to be stopping by. My brain jumped to conclusions and screamed Jack, but when Heath swung the door open, it was a uniformed police officer.

  The oh-shit look on Heath’s face was mirrored on my mom’s when she walked into the room balancing a plate of three candlelit cupcakes.

  “Evening. I’m Officer Dixon,” he said. “Sorry to interrupt your night, but if you don’t mind, I have a few questions. May I come in?”

  Mom’s shoulder’s sagged. “Of course. Heath, close the door and sit down. Beatrix, go to your room.”

  “You’re Beatrix Adams?” the cop said.

  “Umm, yes?”

  “You’re the person I’d like to speak with.”

  “Me?”

  “Did you post a photograph online from the account BioArtGirl?”

  My response was caught in some kind of psychedelic slow-motion filter. “Uuuuuh, yeeees, siiiir.”

  I barely heard Mom, who was politely introducing herself and sounding disturbingly calm as she questioned the officer: What photo? And what was this all about? And how did they get her daughter’s address?

  Officer Dixon matched her on the supercalm attitude. “We traced the account to an art website and found her Facebook link. Lincoln High was on that profile. Your address is in the school system database.”

  Holy crap. All of that was set to private. Wasn’t this a violation of my rights?

  “Miss Adams,
” he said to me in a firm tone, “can you please tell me what your relationship is with the person who vandalized the Legion of Honor this afternoon?”

  “None!” Why was my voice so high? “I just posted it as a joke. It’s my birthday. I saw it and took a picture. It’s my birthday,” I repeated dumbly. Could I sound any guiltier?

  The officer was a brick wall. Completely unreadable. “Did you witness the vandalizing?”

  “No.” I told him what happened, which was fairly easy because I was actually telling the truth. Mostly. And I thought he believed me, but then he got serious.

  “Are you aware of an anarchist art group called Discord?”

  “I’ve read about them.”

  “Then you know that someone in the group defaced a Rothko painting in the Museum of Modern Art two years ago.”

  “That was them?”

  “Cost the museum thousands of dollars in restoration damage. That’s a very serious crime. So if you even suspect you might know someone in your art class at school who might do some graffiti now and then, you need to tell me. Legion of Honor isn’t taking this lightly. And if this perp”—Jesus! Jack was now being considered a freaking perpetrator?—“defaces something else, the charges are just going to keep getting worse. Right now, they’re looking at one to three years in state prison.”

  Years?

  “And trust me, if this person is connected to Discord, he or she won’t be getting mercy from the court, because members of that group are facing felony arson charges, assault on a police officer, rioting—you name it.”

  “I only read about Discord last week!” I turned around when Mom made a noise. “I swear, Mom. This is craziness. I just posted a photo.”

  “I believe you, baby.”

  “Ma’am, did you know that parents can be held responsible, too? You can face fines, jail time, and up to twenty-five thousand dollars in damages if your daughter is found to be connected to Discord.”

  My future fantasy life in the Mediterranean flashed before my eyes. Jack swore he wasn’t affiliated with them. Did I believe him?