The Boy Next Story

by Tiffany Schmidt

  And portraits of Toby had always been my gateway to the art world.

  “The likeness—it’s remarkable,” added Ms. Gregoire.

  “But it’s more than that—” said Mrs. Mundhenk as she joined her. “I know you’re talented, that’s always been obvious, but I didn’t want to see you playing it safe. I want people to be able to walk into a gallery and ask ‘Is that . . . ?’ and hear ‘Why, yes. It’s an Aurora Campbell.’ Because that’s what you’re capable of. That’s what I’ve been waiting for. What’s on this easel—it’s captivating. It’s vulnerable. I want to hug that boy or hug the artist because of the emotion you’ve provoked with his expression and your choice of colors. Aurora—this, my dear girl, this is you. This is your voice. It’s unique. It’s powerful. Don’t ever hide it.”

  No. It wasn’t me. It was what I wanted. It was what I didn’t have. It was what was private, and I didn’t want it to be discussed any longer.

  “I’m going to need to keep this,” said Mrs. Mundhenk.

  I shook my head and dropped my phone. Thankfully on the counter and not in the sink. “Absolutely not. You can’t—No one can see—”

  “I won’t show it to anyone. At least not anyone at Hero High.” I was still shaking my head when Mrs. Mundhenk added, “And I’ll count this toward your grade—give you an A-plus.”

  My mouth dropped open as I slumped against the sink. I had so many incompletes in here. I needed the grade. “You can’t show anyone. Really.”

  “Will it help if I also count this as your last response journal and give you an A?” asked Ms. Gregoire. “Don’t think I didn’t notice your use of color—he might as well be standing under a green light.”

  I rubbed my hands over my face, leaving behind streaks and smears that I couldn’t bother to care about. “Green doesn’t just stand for Gatsby. It’s also jealousy, and calming, and greed. And it’s been shown to improve creativity.” I was pretty sure I wasn’t making that last one up.

  “It can be all those things. And I have no doubt that there are people who will say green symbolizes money or the earth or rebirth.” Ms. Gregoire smirked and pointed to my easel. “But in that particular painting, green means something else.”

  Any of the responses in my head were going to either cost me my grade or earn me a detention, so I bit my lip and grabbed my phone from the counter, my bag from the coat hooks, and ran.

  I was two blocks away from home when a familiar Audi pulled over and a familiar boy in a leg brace jumped out, the musical arrangement to some movie’s epic battle scene spilling from his car’s speakers.

  “Are you okay?” he asked, limp-running over and grasping my upper arms. I wasn’t sure if he was going to hug me or shake me. I don’t think he was either. “What happened?”

  “I texted.”

  “Yeah, but it didn’t say anything. I was freaking out. Merri and Lilly are freaking out. The only reason your parents aren’t freaking out is Lilly decided not to call them yet. Where were—” He dropped his arms and stepped back. “The art room. Look at you. You’re covered in paint. Why didn’t I check there? I’m such an idiot.”

  “I lost track of time. I’m really sorry.”

  “I swear, Roar, all I could think about was those Lifetime movies about the missing kids Merri’s always watching.”

  I bristled at his use of the word “kids.” “I was only missing for thirty minutes.”

  I don’t think he heard me. He was tugging on his hair. “And I was going to be the last person who’d seen you alive—and how would I live with that? And they’d bring in the sniffer dogs and I’d give them the sweatshirt you left in my car . . .”

  I snorted and opened his passenger door. “You really went all in on this fantasy, huh?”

  He slid into the driver’s seat. “It’s not funny. Text your sisters.”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “And don’t ever do that to me again.”

  I wanted to laugh. The euphoria of Making! Art! Of hearing it complimented! Of seeing that Toby cared! It all went to my head like the bubbles in seltzer water, tickling the inside of my nose and curving my lips into a smile. “Hey, cranky. Your race-car bed is calling. It says you need a nap.”

  The scowl on his face dissolved so quickly I was a step behind when he paired a full-throated guffaw with that grin that always hit me like a sucker punch. “You know about my race-car bed, huh? When are you going to stop peeking in my windows?”

  Okay, that was a bit too close to accurate, but since he didn’t know that, it felt safer to sass back. “Can you blame me? Those footie Superman jammies are hawwwt.”

  “Superman?” He gasped as he shifted the car into drive. “Blasphemy, Aurora Leigh Campbell. You know I’m a Batman guy.” Toby handed me a bottle of kombucha from his cup holder. “Here, I got this for you before you went AWOL.”

  “Thanks.”

  By the time we reached our street—a whole two minutes later—I’d texted Lilly and Merri and called off the search party. Toby pulled into his driveway. “You busy tonight? I’ll be home from piano by five thirty. Want to come over and see my race-car bed?”

  The thing they don’t tell you about spit-takes is that the amount of liquid in your mouth magically multiplies before you aerosolize it and spray it everywhere. This is especially true when the person on the receiving end of your spit spew is the unrequited love of your life. I scrunched my eyes shut so I didn’t have to see the kombucha dripping off his chin, the droplets on his glasses, the places his shirt collar was wet.

  “I am so sorry,” I mumbled, wiping my chin on the back of my hand.

  “I see how it seemed like I needed a cold shower, but I was just asking about tutoring.”

  “Tutoring?” I opened my eyes just to cringe again.

  “It may have sounded like the world’s cheesiest pickup line, but come on, it’s me and you. I was joking—” He grinned and my stomach lurched; yeah, me and him. So funny. “You know, since you’re not into this whole tutoring thing? But if you promise not to spritz me again, I promise not to make it torture.”

  “Sure. My quiz retest is tomorrow and the exam’s coming up. I’ll take all the help I can get.”

  “Let’s work at my house. It’ll be less . . .”

  “Chaotic?” I supplied. “Between the dogs and Lilly’s daily wedding drama and Merri being Merri . . .”

  “Yeah.” Toby’s voice turned bitter as he added, “My house is good at silence.”

  I wasn’t sure how to read that comment, except to notice once again that I hadn’t seen Major May in a while. I made a mental note to ask him about it when he wasn’t dripping with my backwash. “Sorry again for scaring you. See you at six?”

  “Can’t wait,” he said. And I thought he actually meant it.

  Race car shaped or not, I didn’t get to see Toby’s bed. He led me to the kitchen again and put my books on the table in the most boring room on earth.

  “Does Major May know that colors besides white exist?” Because there was monochromatic, and then there was This is what the inside of an all-white snow globe looks like. The walls, floor, countertops, cabinets, and backsplash all matched.

  “The place mats are beige.” Toby looked around and laughed. “It’s pretty awful, huh?”

  “Merri calls it the ‘stain-temptation room.’ I want to buy you red cups, or orange curtains, or yellow towels. Or even just a plant or a fridge magnet.” I opened a cabinet and shut it quickly. The interior was white and the dishes matched.

  “How about you stay here?” Toby teased. “You’re the most colorful thing I know.”

  So what if my yoga pants were purple and green stripes and my tank top was yellow. I had on a black hoodie and black shoes. If you ignored the fact that both were polka-dotted with paint spatters, they were practically plain.

  “I’m a thing now?” My words were a little breathless, because Toby had crossed the kitchen to stand in front of me. His arms snaked beneath mine to cage me against the counter
. I could smell his pine bodywash and the licorice he must have had after dinner. The urge to turn my head into his hair and sniff his shampoo was pretty overwhelming. I might have given in if he hadn’t suddenly lifted me up so I was sitting on the island. It was a maneuver right out of my childhood when I’d begged for boosts or piggybacks.

  “You look good up there. Can you stay and be the centerpiece?”

  For a second my heart clenched with hope. This was flirting, right? It felt like flirting. My smile wavered when I glanced over at the math books stacked on the table and remembered the joke he’d made in the car, where the pairing of him plus me had been the punch line. My stomach soured. It didn’t matter if he smelled like heaven and this sounded like flirting. It wasn’t real.

  “I’ll feed you juice boxes and Jell-O. You can even drip if you want.”

  Those had been two of my favorite foods—when I was eight. My shoulders slumped as I leaned away from him. Is that how he still saw me? Because I hadn’t eaten either in years. I slid down from the counter on the side across from where he was standing. “How about you show me how to do some of this math?”

  He blinked. “Right, math.” He flipped the lid of my textbook open and shut a few times. “Want tea or anything first?”

  “Maybe later.” I looked around the empty kitchen, suddenly curious about what I’d find if I opened the fridge. Toby used to eat dinner at our house a couple days a week—he hadn’t since Merri started dating Fielding. I wasn’t quite sure how their friendship dynamic worked anymore. He seemed to openly pine when Merri wasn’t looking, and when it was the two of them—or the two of them ignoring me—they were the way they’d always been. But as soon as Fielding entered the picture, Toby got stiff and awkward. Did Merri know how Toby felt? I hadn’t heard them on the roof in weeks, but Toby was in a knee brace, so maybe that was more about self-preservation than the state of their relationship?

  Right now, in this kitchen with zero personality and zero dishes in the sink, I wondered how often he was alone in this house and if Toby had had licorice for dinner.

  15

  I was humming Jurassic Park’s theme when I got to art the next day—a remnant from my morning drive with Toby. It was Friday. Mrs. Mundhenk no longer thought I was a mistake. Huck worked wonderfully as an easel bodyguard. To top it off, based on yesterday’s studio session, I had my art mojo back.

  Also, spending ninety minutes the night before with the guy who made my heart race and who explained math in ways that made me feel less like a moron could’ve had something to do with my good mood.

  It was time to go oils. That type of paint required a level of commitment I hadn’t felt ready for in this room, but now I was. Get me a paint knife, get me some turpentine, bring on the tubes. Ultramarine blue, titanium white, Mars black, yellow ochre, cadmium red, alizarin crimson—I wanted them all. I was going to mix and layer them until the finished product was something breath-stealingly good. It would be exactly like Mrs. Mundhenk suggested, something that was undeniably me.

  This wasn’t a portrait, and the composition was simple: red rubber boots sitting in a puddle. But water was never easy to paint. The sketch would be fast, the rest of it slow. I began to work in the negative space, beginning with the deepest black and adding in tones of blue as I progressed. The shape of the boots was just beginning to emerge when suddenly the white space they would occupy turned sludge gray.

  I was so confused by the change that it took me a moment to realize the cause—or to recognize that the same dirty paint water dripping off my paper was also splashed across my shirt.

  “Whoops,” said a girl in a tone that didn’t sound whoopsish. It didn’t sound accidental at all, and there was nothing apologetic about the way she twirled her empty cup on her finger. “I guess I didn’t see you.”

  A surge of rage pounded against my teeth and tongue. Weeks of silence were cracking and all the emotions I’d repressed spilled out in one word: “Enough!”

  I yelled it so loud that someone dropped something. I listened to it clatter in the instant silence in the room. But one word wasn’t enough. Especially when the girl in front of me—Maya—seemed to think it was funny. She was definitely choking back laughter. Or, at least she was until I kicked my easel. Not the sideways shove that she and all the others had engaged in. No, I kicked it over, causing the easel beside mine to fall too. Luckily it was empty because Huck was working on the wheel. I stepped closer to Maya, waving a paint-stained finger in her face. “It is not okay!”

  “What in the world is going on over here?” asked Mrs. Mundhenk. “Rory, Maya, explain yourselves.”

  “It was an accident,” said Maya. All her missing contrition suddenly appeared on her face. “Rory must’ve moved her easel when I was walking by and I tripped.”

  “No!” I shouted. “This wasn’t an accident. It wasn’t an accident when my sculpture got smashed, or any of the times that my drying paintings were smeared. Or ripped. Or the fact that no one in here seems to be able to walk by my easel without bumping it. And my supplies disappearing or breaking. None of this is accidental. I don’t know what I did to piss everyone in here off, but—”

  “It’s the Snipes thing,” called out Byron from the crowd that had formed in my corner of the studio, everyone openly gawking at the silent freshman who’d finally found her voice. I whirled toward him and he held up his hands, stepping away from my easel, which he’d been fixing. “That doesn’t make it okay—but it’s because of the Snipes workshop. No one wants to compete with you. If you don’t produce anything, then no one has to.”

  “I don’t even know what that is!” I roared.

  “Is this true?” asked Mrs. Mundhenk. “You’ve all been sabotaging a classmate’s art for your own gain? In my studio? In this school that prides itself on the student body’s integrity? I’m ashamed of you all. And I’m sorry, Aurora. I can’t imagine what this has been like. I wish you said—No, I wish I’d noticed earlier. Or that someone else had spoken up. I owe you a bigger apology than that, but for right now, go to your next class. The rest of you will be staying. And Headmaster Williams will be joining us.”

  “Not everyone,” I clarified. “I don’t know everyone who did or didn’t—but definitely not Huck or Byron.”

  “Very well. Byron, Huck, and Rory, you’re excused.” Mrs. Mundhenk turned to the remaining students with a look of furious disapproval. “The rest of you, I don’t know what to say, except—”

  I shut the door on “except.” I didn’t need to hear the lecture, I just needed the harassment to stop.

  “Hey, wait,” Byron called. “You really didn’t know about the workshop with Snipes?”

  I studied his face. It was super pale, but he always skewed that way—he didn’t seem to be joking. “Andrea Snipes?”

  Of course I knew who she was. I had postcard prints of her work hanging on my bedroom wall. She’d been an artistic wunderkind in the eighties. Took the art world by storm and had paintings in the great museums all over the globe. In third grade, I’d asked Santa for a lunch box printed with her Girl, Rising. Incidentally, that was the same year I stopped believing, after I caught Dad in the basement with a glue gun trying to attach a print of the painting to a Minnie Mouse lunch box.

  Huck gestured impatiently. “So what is this Snipes workshop that has everyone so worked up?”

  Byron rolled his eyes and grumbled, “Freshmen. Every four years she does a workshop in New York over winter break. She accepts a dozen students from around the country and works intensively with them for a week. It’s this year. You can’t apply—you have to get nominated by your art teacher. But teachers can only nominate two students.”

  He turned to head toward the upperclassman lockers. “No one wants to compete with you. Can’t say I blame them.”

  “Can I ask a question?” Huck and I were walking from our lockers to lunch. Some days I ate with him. Some days I ate with Clara and her group, and some days—when the morning had asked too much an
d I needed to regroup—I ate in the art room. But after that morning’s showdown, I wasn’t quite ready to step foot in there.

  “I suppose,” he answered. “But I don’t know any more about the Snipes thing than you do. And I don’t think I need to learn about it. I’m not a contender. And that’s cool.”

  “It’s not about that. It’s about English. Does Gatsby seem great to you? I don’t mean to make you my own personal SparkNotes, but . . . is that part still to come? Or is it a sarcastic title because he’s really a dud?”

  “I think . . .” Huck was clearly choosing his words carefully. It was a new look on him and one I appreciated. If he’d had this answer on the tip of his tongue, I would’ve felt more stupid than I already did. “It’s going to be good for you when we finish this book. I don’t know why it stresses you out. Did you hear what Gemma said about champagne bubbles being a metaphor for the brevity of life? Or Dante’s theory that Tom has a crush on Nick? Half the time everyone’s making stuff up.”

  “Even you?”

  Huck raised an eyebrow. “Well, of course not. Everything I say is brilliant and canonical.” He flashed his dimples. “It’s just a book. Don’t let it get to you this much.”

  I’d gone back last night and looked up when Gatsby was first described in the novel. It was on page two when Nick admires Gatsby’s “extraordinary gift of hope” and “romantic readiness.” But I couldn’t decide if those qualities made him exceptional, or exceptionally foolish. I couldn’t decide what they made me either.

  I grabbed the cafeteria door, but Huck put a hand above mine and stopped me from opening it. “I never answered your first question. No, I don’t think he’s that great. That’s the point—that he’s not what he seems. His reputation is built to impress, but it’s all a facade.” He dropped his hand. “You, Aurora Clementine Campbell, are guileless and honest and wear your heart on your face—you’re the opposite of a Gatsby, and I think that’s pretty great.”