Felicity nearly laughed—what she had was pretty much the opposite of a secret admirer. “Trust me, it’s nothing like that,” she said. She shoved her books into her bag in record time, then slammed her locker shut much harder than necessary, as if the violence might scare away any future envelopes. “I have to go.”
Haylie put a hand on her arm. “Hey, you’re not mad, are you? I was just kidding about the secret admirer thing.”
“No, it’s not that. I just … I’ll see you guys later.” Felicity tried to smile, but she feared it was one of those forced, manic smiles that looked more crazy than happy. As she walked away, she heard Haylie say, “What is with her lately? She’s been acting so weird.”
Felicity locked herself in a bathroom stall, then clawed the envelope open with shaking fingers. Inside was another piece of creamy stationery.
Well done yesterday. You will continue to make overtures of friendship to every brunette you encounter. In addition, there is a CD in the art show submissions box containing a painting of hyenas. You will include the painting in the gallery show. Fail to do so, and you know what happens.
Seriously? Her blackmailer was using her to get a painting into the student art show? How absurdly petty. Felicity stuffed the note into the bottom of her bag, feeling much more relaxed for the moment. At least this was a demand she knew she could meet.
When she arrived in the art room after school, Jonathan was already there with the box of submission CDs. He gave her a big smile as she dropped her backpack and sat down next to him; he seemed a lot calmer in the sawdust-and-turpentine-scented classroom than he had been in the chaotic hallway.
“I hope some of this stuff is decent,” he said as he slipped the first CD into the computer. “But I guess if it all sucks, we can just curate a whole show of horrible art, and then we can pretend it’s really deep and profound and go around spouting pretentious art criticism all night. There’s a whole museum in Massachusetts that does that, and people actually go.”
Felicity laughed, surprised. She hadn’t known Jonathan had a sense of humor hidden under his agitated exterior. “Honestly, I think that’s what they do in most galleries,” she said. “Can we wear berets? It’ll make us look more official.”
“Definitely. And black turtlenecks. They don’t let you say things like ‘The semiotics of this piece are so antediluvian’ if you’re not wearing a black turtleneck.”
They spent the rest of the afternoon going through the CDs and choosing the best pieces to display in their own “gallery space,” which comprised the school’s two squash courts. Felicity’s favorite submission was a photograph of a girl reclining in a bathtub full of Skittles. Even after staring at it for five full minutes, neither she nor Jonathan could tell whether it was Photoshopped.
Every time Jonathan inserted a new disc, Felicity wondered whether it would be the hyena picture. And when the painting finally made an appearance late in the afternoon, her stomach plummeted toward the floor. She had assumed it would be a realistic depiction of wildlife, but nothing could have been further from the truth.
As advertised, the piece featured a group of five slobbering hyenas, but each of them was dressed in a garish formal gown trimmed with ruffles, sequins, and lace. They were fighting over a sparkly tiara on a velvet pillow, ropes of drool hanging from their gaping mouths. Each hyena’s head was topped with red hair decorated with flowers and sparkly combs.
The painting was titled Miss Scarlet, and the dimensions were listed as seven by four feet.
Felicity wrapped her arms protectively around her stomach, suddenly afraid she might be sick. Jonathan snorted in disgust. “Are you kidding?” he said. “She can’t have thought we’d actually put this in the show. This has to be some kind of joke, right?”
Felicity knew it wasn’t. And as she looked at the painting more closely, she realized that the hairstyles on the hyenas weren’t arbitrary. One of them had two buns secured with butterfly barrettes. Another wore its hair in a messy pixie cut. A third had long bangs swept to the side. Felicity’s breath caught in her throat as she recognized herself and her two best friends.
“It’s really well crafted for a joke,” she said. “Looks like someone spent a lot of time on it.” Her voice sounded strangled, and she took a big sip of her Diet Coke.
Jonathan shook his head. “This is ridiculous. I mean, I’m a guy, and I don’t even have red hair, and I’m offended.” He closed the window on the screen, and the picture disappeared.
Once it was out of sight, Felicity found it a little easier to focus, and something Jonathan had said suddenly registered. “Wait, you just said, ‘She can’t have thought we’d actually put this in the show.’ Do you know whose this is?”
“Yeah, it’s Gabby Vaughn’s. She’s in my art class. She’s been working on it all month. I bet you can imagine how much the rest of my class loved that.”
Felicity’s head was suddenly spinning, and she gripped the edge of the table. Here was concrete proof that Gabby was involved in the blackmail scheme. Though Felicity had been looking for this information all week, having it only made her feel worse. Any of the other girls could have been tormenting her based on speculation. But Gabby might very well have evidence of Felicity’s strawbie status. She was by far the most dangerous adversary. Felicity wondered if she was working alone or if her friends were in on it.
“Hey, are you okay?” Jonathan’s voice seemed to be coming from very far away.
“Yeah. Just … Can I see the painting again?”
Jonathan seemed reluctant, but he reopened the file, and Felicity stared at her hyena counterpart. The neon-orange dress it was wearing was so bright it made her brain throb. Even if she managed to confront Gabby tomorrow, the terms of the note were very clear: if this painting didn’t appear on the list of winning pieces first thing in the morning, everyone would find out what she really was. For the moment, she had no choice but to obey.
Felicity swallowed hard. “I think we should include it,” she said.
“What?” Jonathan stared at her, incredulous. “Really? I mean, don’t you think it’s kind of … vicious?”
“It doesn’t bother me,” she lied. She prayed he wouldn’t see the truth on her face.
But Jonathan was too busy squirming to notice her false tone. A blush was creeping up his neck, and a bright red splotch blossomed high on each cheekbone. “But—I mean, Felicity, isn’t that … isn’t that supposed to be you?” With a pained look, he gestured to the center hyena. “I don’t want to, you know, do that. To you.”
Was it possible that a non-redhead could be so concerned about hurting her feelings? Jonathan seemed even more uncomfortable than she did. “I know it’s not exactly flattering,” she said. “But there are lots of people who don’t like the pageant, and they should get to express their opinions. I think we should put it in the show.”
They both stared at the painting on the screen for a long minute. Felicity examined the ropes of drool dripping from the Haylie hyena’s gaping maw.
“You really think so?” Jonathan asked.
“Sure. Yeah. Art’s supposed to be controversial, right?”
Jonathan was quiet for a moment. Then he said, “You’re right. And I really respect that you think that and that you aren’t, you know, taking this personally. I’m okay with putting it in if you are. But, Felicity?”
“Yeah?”
Jonathan’s blush was intensifying, and his gaze dropped to the floor. “I just want to make sure—I want you to know that I don’t think—um—that. About you.” He gestured toward the hyenas.
Felicity’s heart did a strange little flip. Hearing something so personal come out of Jonathan’s mouth was disorienting, and she was speechless just long enough for the situation to become intensely awkward. Finally, she blurted out, “Well, I hope not. I make a pretty big effort to keep my drooling under control. At least in public.”
Jonathan laughed, and the tension eased a little. He ejected the CD, and they m
oved on.
It took almost three hours to choose the twenty-eight best pieces. “Should we map out how we’re going to arrange everything?” Felicity asked when they had finished.
“Sure. But we haven’t seen each other’s stuff yet. Do you want to do that now, so we have a complete idea of what we’re working with?”
“Oh, right.” Felicity had felt good about her sculpture earlier, when Ms. Kellogg had praised it in class. But now that it was time to show it to Jonathan, a swarm of butterflies seemed to have taken up residence in her stomach. She really wanted to earn her place in the art show—lately, she’d had a few too many reminders that she often got things she didn’t deserve.
“I’ll go first,” she said quickly. Jonathan’s painting was sure to be of Rembrandt quality, and her piece would probably look like third-grade macaroni art by comparison. Better to get it out of the way.
She collected her sculpture from the back of the art room, where she had tucked it under a protective drop cloth. She set it down in front of Jonathan and removed the fabric with a self-conscious little flourish. “It’s called Skin-Deep.” She could hardly bring herself to look at his face.
The piece was a self-portrait, created using a technique she’d invented that combined sculpture, photography, and papier-mâché. Felicity had built a life-sized wire sculpture of a seated female figure hugging her knees to her chest, her cheek resting against them as if she were pensive or exhausted. Then she had taken hundreds of digital photos of herself smiling, laughing, dancing, joyfully tossing her vivid hair. She had printed them on translucent paper and brushed them onto the frame with a glue mixture so they formed a skin. A small part of her hoped someone would see her piece and walk away with a deeper understanding of who she really was. But a larger part hoped nobody would look past the shiny outer layer.
Jonathan circled the sculpture slowly, taking it in from all angles. Then he crouched down, looked at it up close, and ran his finger gingerly over the figure’s papier-mâché shoulder. Felicity’s own shoulder tingled sympathetically.
It seemed like it had been way too long since either of them had spoken, and she grew increasingly anxious. Maybe Jonathan was trying to find a tactful way to tell her that the sculpture wasn’t good enough for the show. “If you don’t like it, I have other stuff,” she finally said to break the silence. “I’ve mostly been working with this technique lately, but there are other things I could show you if—”
Jonathan stood up. “I love it,” he said. It was the most declarative thing she’d ever heard him say.
Felicity felt her cheeks flood with heat. “Really?”
“It’s so original. I’ve never seen anything like this. She’s awesome.” Felicity loved how Jonathan referred to the sculpture as “she” instead of “it.” He crouched again and looked closely at the photographs. “Did you take all these yourself?”
“Yeah. It took forever.”
He walked around the sculpture again. “I think—I mean, we don’t have to do this if you don’t want to, it’s your piece—but I think we should put her up on a pedestal so people can see the photographs better. Otherwise, I’m worried they might miss the point.”
So Jonathan got the point. Did that mean other people would, too? A spark of terror ran through Felicity as Jonathan looked up from the sculpture and stared intently into her face, as if a puzzle piece had just clicked into place in his mind. Exactly how much did he suddenly understand about her? Maybe she had revealed too much. Putting this work on display suddenly felt intensely personal, almost like stripping in public, and she had to fight the urge to throw the drop cloth back over it.
But Jonathan’s gaze was kind and warm, respectful and supportive. There was no judgment in it at all. Felicity noticed that behind his glasses, his hazel eyes were flecked with green.
She nodded, then quickly looked away. “Can I see your painting?”
“Oh, yeah, sure. It’s not nearly as interesting as this, though.” Felicity followed him as he crossed the room and pulled a drop cloth off several canvases, which were leaning against each other, their faces to the wall. “I have a bunch of options, actually. I wasn’t sure which one was best for the show, so I … Why don’t I just show you all of them, and you can choose.” Jonathan’s hands were getting fluttery again as he prepared to spread out the paintings. Was he actually nervous about showing them to her? That didn’t seem possible.
“I’ve been doing a lot of landscapes this semester,” he said as he flipped the first canvas around. It was a painting of the most beautiful place Felicity had ever seen. In the background, huge, majestic rock formations reared their heads out of a stretch of turquoise ocean. There was a light sprinkling of boats in the water, and the foreground was filled with magenta flowers. Though the colors and the composition were gorgeous, the most striking thing about the painting was how confident and sure each brushstroke was. It was obvious that Jonathan hadn’t painted over anything. He’d gotten it all right the first time.
“Oh, wow. Is that Hawaii?”
“It’s Capri. It’s this little island in Italy? My grandmother lives near there. I visited her over Christmas, and I did a ton of sketching. It’s so—I don’t know, I just love it there.”
Jonathan flipped over more paintings of cliffs, water, and street scenes. Each piece looked like it belonged in a museum. But when he turned over the final canvas—a little smaller than the others, and less finished-looking—Felicity immediately knew that was the one she wanted in the show.
The subject of the painting was a girl about their age. She stood at a railing overlooking the ocean, her body turned toward the endless expanse of blue. Her long dark hair danced in the wind that whipped around her face, and she was trying to catch hold of it with her hand as she looked back over her shoulder at the viewer. Her eyes were warm and alert and a little mischievous, as if she were about to make a wry joke. It was obvious that Jonathan cared about this girl, whoever she was; the painting overflowed with tenderness.
“This one,” Felicity said, pointing.
“Really? But all these other ones feel more finished to me. I mean, doesn’t this one seem—”
“No,” said Felicity. “This one is the best. Who is she?”
Jonathan rested his hand on the top of the canvas protectively. “This is Lucia,” he said. His eyes got brighter just saying her name.
“Is she in Capri, too?”
“Yes.” He looked at the painting like he wished he could reach right through it and grab the girl’s hand. The expression on his face gave Felicity a peculiar little ache in her chest. She wanted to ask all kinds of questions about Lucia, but since she and Jonathan were just art class friends, not real friends, she felt that might be out of line.
“She’s beautiful,” Felicity told him. “She should definitely be in the show.”
Jonathan looked at his painting for another minute, then nodded. “Okay. That’s fine. If you think so.” He gave the top of the canvas an affectionate pat.
Felicity and Jonathan covered their artwork, then wrote out a list of the chosen artists’ student ID numbers, including Gabby’s. Felicity posted the list on the studio door, and then they got to work figuring out where each piece would go in the “gallery.”
But Felicity found it hard to concentrate. All she could think about was the expression on Jonathan’s face as he’d looked at his painting of Lucia. There had been so much sweetness and longing in his expression. Nobody had ever looked at her that way.
She hadn’t even known she wanted that kind of attention until now, but suddenly she wondered how she had ever managed to live without it.
That night, Felicity was sitting on her bed, doodling plans for her next sculpture in her sketchbook, when she heard rustling in the tree outside her window. Her heart started pounding; nobody had gotten around to fixing her screen since a squirrel had chewed through it and gotten into her bedroom last month. Felicity grabbed a heavy art book from her desk and held it up like a we
apon, then sidled toward the window.
But it wasn’t a squirrel—it was a football player. Just as Felicity reached the window, all 180 pounds of Brent tumbled over the sill headfirst and landed directly on top of her. She tried to scream, but all the air had been knocked from her body, and no sound came out. The book skidded ineffectually across the floor.
Felicity struggled out from under her boyfriend. “God, Brent, you scared the crap out of me.”
He grinned. “Sorry, babe. I wanted to surprise you. I didn’t think you’d be right there.”
“You either have to call first or use the front door, okay?”
“I can’t use the front. If your mom knows I’m here, she won’t let us close your door, and I wanna be alone with you.” He flopped down on her polka-dotted bedspread with his shoes on and held out his arms. “C’mere. I didn’t mean to freak you out.”
Felicity made sure her door was shut tightly, then went over and sat on the bed. Brent pulled her down next to him and kissed her, then wrapped both arms around her and settled her head onto his chest. She allowed herself to be embraced, and despite her annoyance, she felt herself relaxing. Her head fit so perfectly into the little dip next to his collarbone. Their legs tangled together in a reassuring, familiar way. One of Brent’s hands rested on her hip, and the other twined through her hair. She closed her eyes and listened to the slow, even thump of his heart.
It was nice, just lying there with him. Brent was perfect when he wasn’t talking, and for a little while, Felicity felt safe and comfortable and content. But soon she felt his breathing start to deepen, and she realized he was falling asleep. She knew he had good reason to be tired—he got up super early for football practice, and he often went to the gym after school, too. But now she wasn’t sure whether he’d been seeking a girlfriend or a body pillow when he’d climbed through her window.
She squirmed around and repositioned her head, hoping the movement would wake him. “We picked the pieces for the art show today,” she said, a little louder than necessary.
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