Night Owls

by Jenn Bennett

  My project was unfinished.

  My entry for the art show was shot.

  What the hell was I going to do? I had only a week. One week! And the unfinished drawing of Minnie had taken me an entire freaking month.

  Everything was shit. Two days earlier, I’d been in Jack’s arms, satisfied and happy. Now I’d had my freedom snatched away, my brother had betrayed my trust, Mom and I were barely speaking, and my boyfriend might be sent to another planet—which is about how close Massachusetts felt.

  And now this?

  In a rage, I grabbed the sketchbook out of my bag and tore out pages. Rip! Sketches from the first day in the lab when I’d gotten sick in the bushes. Rip! All my preliminary drawings. Rip! Rip! Rip! Detailed studies, experimental angles, and the final sketch. I crumpled up the expensive French-milled drawing paper that had cost me several days’ salary and sloppily pitched it at the bushes. People stared. I yelled obscenities at one person, until I realized how banana-boat crazy I sounded, all emotional and dramatic.

  Like Heath.

  Or my father.

  The empty sketchpad fell from my hand. I leaned back against the itchy bark of the tree and stared blankly at the lengthening shadows on the closely shorn grass, now littered with torn pieces of Minnie’s body. Plump birds pecked at the paper, searching for food. Students strolled up and down the sidewalk behind me.

  When my breathing had slowed so much that I was practically meditating, I got out my phone to see what time it was. Mom wouldn’t be there to pick me up for another half hour. Out of habit, emotionally numb and hollow as a beach ball, I checked my email. A comment waited for me at Body-O-Rama.

  I clicked the link and was surprised anew at the bright Scarlet Lake in my depressing heart sketch—did I really do that?—and scrolled down past my BioArtGirl profile to read the single-line comment from a newly created profile, RockabillyBoy. It said:

  Have a little faith.

  I stared at that line in wonderment. And as if the words themselves had power enough to create change, an idea bloomed inside my head.

  28

  MOM SAYS I’M STUBBORN, AND MAYBE THAT’S TRUE. But she also taught me not to blindly follow rules without thinking. Not everything in this world is fair, and people with power don’t always have sense.

  If I had anything to add to that, I’d say that even good people make bad mistakes (like Mom lying about Dad, which I could forgive her for). And sometimes good people break the rules, like Jack and his golden words—which his parents had to forgive him for, too. Maybe not today or tomorrow, but if they looked at it logically, they’d eventually understand that he was doing it for the right reason.

  It was a Noble Defiance.

  And that’s why I came to the realization that the lesson I’d learned from the jumbled mess of recent events was not that sneaking around was wrong. Sneaking around for the wrong reasons, sure. But sneaking around for the right reasons? That was a Noble Defiance. And that’s why Mom continued to let me go the anatomy lab, because she knew I’d been doing it for the right reason.

  That’s also why I didn’t tell her about Minnie’s being cremated. I just quietly picked up my ripped drawing paper, fattened it all out, and crammed the pages back into my sketchpad. And when I got into the paddy wagon, Mom pulled away from the curb and asked, “How did it go?”

  “I’ve had a small setback,” I told her. “But I know what to do to fix it.”

  I just needed Jack’s help.

  Two days later, I got it.

  Mom was working, so she asked me to drop by the ER after my scheduled session at the anatomy lab. I could do that; I wouldn’t actually be working in the lab that night, but I’d be only a few buildings away. At six o’clock, I waited in the lobby of the mental health hospital, pacing near some empty visitor seats.

  Please don’t be a mistake.

  When I saw Jack’s dark pompadour come through the door, all the anxious energy bouncing around in my body coalesced into an arrow that propelled me straight toward him. He didn’t miss a beat, just opened his arms and picked me straight up off my feet. All his goodness hit me at once. His lemony hair wax. The rustling noise his old leather jacket made. The solid wall of his chest and the warmth of his neck, where I buried my face.

  “There you are,” he murmured in his low voice, the words vibrating through me as I clung to him, more grateful than I’d ever been. “Everything’s right in the world again.”

  After a time that was too long to be polite but too short to be satisfying, I released him and slid down his body until my toes found the floor. “Did they let you come, or did you sneak out?” I asked, blinking back happy tears.

  “I convinced them that suddenly stopping my visits with Jillian would be a bad idea—which is true, and they knew it. So I’m out on parole, but they’ve got a tracker on my phone. I told them six to eight, like you suggested, and they expect me home right after.”

  “That’s fine,” I said, curling my fingers around his and tracing the bones on the back of his hand with my thumbs. I couldn’t not touch him. It was physically impossible. “It’s enough time—that is, if Jillian’s agreeable.”

  “I cleared it with Dr. Kapoor. He talked to her, and she’s okay with it. Or she was earlier. Let’s hope she’s still having a good day.”

  “If not, it’s okay. I just don’t want to upset her routine.”

  “Me and you both, but all we can do is try.” He pulled me against him for a moment and kissed me several times on my head. “Ready?”

  I nodded, and we headed down the hall to check in. The ward was louder and busier than it had been before. The day rooms were just closing up for the evening, and the patients on Jillian’s hall had all been fed dinner, the orderly informed us as we passed a few of them in the hallway. Even during normal business hours, the ward wasn’t a chaotic zoo, the way these wards are often portrayed on TV. Maybe it was different upstairs on the fifth floor, where they kept the patients on suicide watch and the ones who were too out of control for social privileges. I remembered Jillian saying how much she hated that floor, and I wondered how many times she’d been up there.

  We rounded the corner, and just like the first time, there she was, peeking out her door. Only instead of disappearing immediately, she waved at us—just once before she slipped back inside. The orderly left us with the same instructions as last time.

  I could smell the cigarette smoke before Jack opened the door. She was already sitting cross-legged on her bed, with the window cracked.

  “Yo, Jillie,” Jack said brightly. “Cool if Bex comes in?”

  “Yeah, yeah. I told Dr. Kapoor it was fine.” Her eyes darted to my bag before jumping around the room.

  I greeted her and asked, “Did your doctor tell you why I wanted to come? That I want to draw you?”

  “Yeah. Why? Is it part of Jack’s secret word puzzles?”

  I was careful not to mention that he wouldn’t be doing those anymore. Jack had prepped me in advance to keep quiet about that, and about the possibly of his being sent away to boarding school. “No, it’s for an art show. It would be on exhibit, and if it’s good enough, it could win me a scholarship.”

  “Why would anyone want to see me?”

  “Because she wants to immortalize you,” Jack said playfully.

  Jillian looked at him, then at. “Is it an art show about crazy people?”

  “It’s an art show about science,” I told her. “I usually draw people for anatomy studies, but a few things have happened to me recently, and I decided I’d rather tell the story behind the body.”

  She looked confused. Maybe I wasn’t saying it right. I tried again.

  “I’d like to draw a couple of sketches of you today, and while I’m drawing, I was hoping you might tell me stories about things you like. You can talk about anything you want, and I’ll try to incorporate it into my work.”

  “Like art therapy on Fridays with Dr. Yang?”

  “Exactly like that,”
Jack said, smiling. “Except you’d be more famous, because you’d get to be on display in an art gallery. I showed you Bex’s art on that website, remember?”

  “Yeah. It was pretty dark. I liked it.” She laughed briefly and rubbed the heel of her palm against her thigh, back and forth, back and forth. . . .

  “What I really want to do,” I said, “is to draw you here today, and then take the sketch home and work on it some more. And when I’m finished, I’ll get Jack to bring the drawing by and make sure you think it’s okay before I enter it in the contest.”

  Jack tapped her on her shoulder to get her attention. “And if you give us the thumbs-up, the painting will go on display in Bex’s art show next week. We’ll take a photo of it hanging up. Just like I do with the word puzzles. Maybe even make a video so you can see how many people will be looking at it.”

  We’d already talked about this the night before, when Jack was able to give me a quick call: He said he might not even be able to go to the art show unless he found a way to sneak out. Even doing this today was risky, especially now that I knew his parents were tracking his phone. But I couldn’t dwell on it. We just had to take one day at a time and see how things played out.

  “I don’t want to hide your scars,” I told Jillian. “I want to show you as a whole person. Just like anyone else.”

  “You want to show my schizophrenia.”

  “Yes.”

  She looked at me thoughtfully for a moment. Her eyes darted away, and a small line formed in the middle of her forehead. I knew decisions stressed her out because her mind tangled up all the possible outcomes, but no way was I doing this without her permission.

  After biting on her nails and taking several drags off her cigarette, she finally asked, “If you’re going to im-m-mortalize me, can you make my hair longer?”

  “Any way you’d like it.”

  “Okay, then. Jack can show you pictures of how it used to be. That’s how I like it.”

  “Yep, I can show her,” he confirmed.

  “All right,” she agreed with a shy smile. “I’ll do it. Where do you want me to sit?”

  29

  AFTER MY SESSION WITH JILLIAN, I HUGGED JACK good-bye. Knowing we might not see each other for a while made leaving him excruciating. I squeezed him harder and tried to think up excuses not to let go.

  “I keep going back to that first night we met at the bus stop,” he said against my hair as he held me. “And, you know, I think I wanted you from the first time you laughed. But now it’s so much worse. Now I need you.”

  “I know,” I whispered.

  “It scares me how much. How are we going to fix this?”

  “If your father sends you away, I won’t let you go without a fight. I’m willing to do something drastic.”

  “Like what?”

  “I don’t know,” I admitted.

  He didn’t, either. His parents controlled his bank account, and I had a whopping eight hundred dollars in savings. What could we do? Drop out of school and run away? Even though my brother possessed zero pride, getting booted from community college and squatting at Mom’s the last couple of years, that definitely wasn’t me.

  And it wasn’t Jack.

  All we could do was wait. And hope.

  So I watched him walk to the parking garage, my heart breaking a little. Then I pulled myself together. And after checking in with Mom at the ER, I went home with my sketches and notes from Jillian, and I laid them out on my bed with the crinkled, torn drawings from Minnie. I still had a few old canvases down in the garage. One of them was barely used—just a few old brushstrokes. I remembered it well. I’d started working on it the day my parents had their big blowout. Mom had found pictures on Dad’s phone of him and Suzi vacationing together at a cabin in Big Sur. Heath was still a senior in high school, and we were living in our old house. We’d stayed up half the night on his bed with our ears against the wall, listening to our parents fight in the room next door. Dad left a week later.

  But even though the canvas brought back bad memories, it was still usable. A coat of gesso and it was blank again. My portable easel was still perfectly functional, and most of my paints weren’t dried out. I carted them all up to my room and set them up in front of Lester. After a few measurements, I sketched out a silhouette of Jillian and started working.

  Four days. That’s how much time I had left until the show deadline. So I called up Ms. Lopez and explained the situation, and after a few more phone calls, I’d found three coworkers who were willing to cover my shifts.

  So I started painting.

  After the first day, Mom and Heath started popping in to see my progress.

  On the second day, Mom opened up both the X-ray doors and watched me from the living room, bringing me tea and my favorite treat: pecan rolls from Arizmendi Bakery off Judah and Irving Streets—right down the street from the Golden Gate Park entrance where Jack painted BLOOM. She finally asked me why I was working with fragments of the cadaver drawings. “It doesn’t look like the same body,” she said.

  “It’s not.” And partly because I wanted to offer her something honest as a show of good faith (and partly because I had nothing to lose), I told her the story of Jack’s sister. About everything Jack and his family had gone through, and why he’d been doing the graffiti, and how he’d confessed it all to his parents, and that his father was threatening to send him away.

  She quietly listened to every word without comment. No consolation. But no admonishment, either. Just poured me more tea, promising that the Vincents’ secret wouldn’t leave her lips, and told me to keep painting.

  On the third day, I had the house to myself because Mom and Heath left to have dinner with Noah and his parents, an hour away in San Jose. I painted the entire time they were gone.

  On the last day, when Mom was getting ready for work, the doorbell rang. I wiped paint off my hands and answered it, surprised to see Jack’s friend Andy standing on my doorstep wearing an Isotope Comics T-shirt. His labret stud was now blue.

  “Hey there,” he said brightly. “Jack sent us out on a mission to find your house.”

  “Found me. Who’s ‘us’?”

  He tipped his tousled head down the stairs toward the curb, where a beat-up yellow car idled. One tiny arm stretched from the passenger window and waved. It took me a second to spot the pink-and-purple hair, and I realized it was my favorite person, Sierra.

  I waved back.

  “He wanted me to bring you this,” Andy said, handing me what looked to be a plastic bag wrapped into a palm-sized wad and wound up with a whole lot of packing tape.

  “Oh, lovely. You’ve brought me what appears to be a package of illegal drugs, right in front of all our neighbors. Just what I needed.”

  He laughed.

  “But really, what is this?” I asked.

  He shrugged his shoulders extra-high and held out his hands, but his smile told me he knew exactly what it was. “I’m just . . .”

  “The messenger?”

  “The person who’s not in hot water for something that’s obviously juicy and epic, because Jackson usually gets away with murder. Any idea why he’s grounded?”

  Jack hadn’t told him? Wow. “It will go with me to my grave,” I said.

  “And you just happen to be grounded, too? The whole thing reeks of scandal, if you ask me.”

  “Good-bye, Andy.”

  He grinned and saluted me. “I’ll let him know the package has been transferred successfully.”

  “Thanks.” He stood there for another moment, so I asked, “Are you and Sierra seeing each other?”

  “Indeed we are,” he said, then added, “exclusively.”

  As he started down the steps, I thought of all the things the girls at Jack’s party were saying about her, and I’m not sure why, but instead of hating her guts, I felt a little sorry for her. “Hey,” I called out in a low voice.

  He paused and turned around. “Yeah?”

  “She needs someone
she can count on.”

  “I know.” He smiled and jogged down the stairs to rejoin her in the car.

  Once they drove away, I headed back inside and examined the strange package. I was pretty eager to find out what was under all that tape, but it took kitchen shears and some elbow grease to get it open. Jack must’ve been paranoid about Andy sneaking a peek inside to have Fort Knox–ed it up like that. Why? Inside were a folded note and a small black bag.

  The note was handwritten in perfect letters:

  Bex,

  Good news and bad news. The bad: I probably won’t be able to meet up with you to show Jillian the painting, because my mom’s coming with me to see her on Tuesday. But if you can email me a photo of it, I’ll find a way to sneak Jillian a peek at it. The good news: I found a devious and brilliant way to attend your art show on Thursday. Don’t worry! It doesn’t involve graffiti.

  A “devious” way? What in the world was he doing? I prayed it wasn’t something risky or stupid, because him being at the art show wasn’t worth it. I didn’t want to make his father any angrier than he already was. But if Jack said not to worry, I wouldn’t. Much. I continued reading:

  As to what’s inside the bag . . . You once gave me the choice of none of you or all of you. No matter what happens, I wanted you to know that you have all of me in return. I’m giving this to you because I trust you to keep it safe.

  Love,

  Jack

  I opened up the black bag. The contents tumbled out. A sterling silver anatomical heart sat in my palm, suspended on a short chain. Maybe an inch tall and modeled all the way around, the pendant was beautifully cast and anatomically correct. It was also a locket, and when I opened the tiny clasp, two halves swung open to reveal a hollow compartment. My pulse leaped when I spied the jeweler’s script engraving on the smooth inner wall: