“Where do you want to go?” Rémy asks, settling back toward his own canvas.
Right now, home.
“I don’t know,” I say. “I’m taking a year or two off first.”
“Smart. Like a gap year or two to travel or something and figure it all out. I get that. The rush to college is about as American a construct as you can get. Sometimes it’s better to not have a plan and see what happens.”
I’m quiet, weighing the risk of telling him anything else about my life, or that the real reason I’m not going anywhere is my sisters. I’ve lived in six states and travel isn’t part of the current equation. But now that he’s piqued my interest with his assessment of my art, part of me wants to ask why he tried to follow me into the air shaft. I’m just not sure I’m ready to open that can of worms.
I reciprocate by studying his self-portrait, a simple but accurate rendition of what Rémy must see in the mirror, what I see when I look at him. Open expression, easygoing, a slight twinkle in his eye that reads optimistic ninety-nine percent of the time. It screams of a person who knows exactly who he is and isn’t trying to hide.
That said, in the time it’s taken Rémy to complete a painting equivalent in size to a head shot, I’ve nearly finished painting three figures on a canvas four times the size. The secret, and the trick, is that I’ve always kept painting. I just don’t know which Honey I want to put at the center. Fierce-eyed prepper Honey, worried-about-her-sisters Honey, or tired, please-give-me-a-moment-to-dream Honey. When I reminisce about the pieces of art I’ve left behind over the years, I get pensive. I could have taken them, but I chose to leave them behind, in places we lived, in art rooms at different schools. Never signed, but as an artistic Honey Was Here trail.
“Are you entering yours in the competition?” I ask Rémy. “Most people struggle with brown, but the way you use all the umbers and sienna with peach and violet highlights is spot on.”
“I like this one, but I’m entering a black-and-white self-portrait. I took it from behind myself with a tripod and timer. My face is in the mirror next to this painting, so in that way I’m entering the painting, too.”
“Oh!” Surprise escapes my lips. “Seeing yourself through your camera is actually a great idea.”
“Thanks.” He smiles, and it’s the most humble thing I’ve seen in a long time. Most of the Burrow Boys are so cocky and self-assured. Not that Rémy isn’t confident. It’s just that he doesn’t need to be holding a rifle to prove it. Unless you count his camera as a weapon, and I usually do.
“Maybe I can show you the comps I’ve taken some time,” he says. “It’d be great to have another set of eyes helping me pick the best one.”
“Sure. Or you could just bring them to class and put them up for everyone.”
Don’t ask me out. Don’t ask me out. Don’t ask me out.
“Or, I could not bring them to class, and we could exchange numbers and meet somewhere. Do you like coffee?”
Shit.
“I don’t have a cellphone.”
He’s gaping at me like I really am an oddball. “Are you Amish?”
I get it. No one my age outside the coalition can believe anyone, in this day and age, is walking around twenty-four-seven without a cellphone.
“I have a cellphone, but I share it with my sisters. It’s only for emergencies. Do you want my email address?”
“Email? Yeah, sure. Why not? It’ll be fun to pretend it’s the early nineties.”
Rémy pulls up the add-contact screen on his phone and hands it to me so I can type in the email address I’ve been using since I was twelve: [email protected].
Rémy gives me his signature dimpled smile when I hand back his phone. Not just an oddball, but an amusing one. His reaction doesn’t tell me anything I don’t already know. When it comes to technology, we Junipers are behind the times.
What I should have said when he asked is, Of course I drink coffee. Pints. Usually at the crack of dawn while I’m feeding chickens in my rain boots and pajama pants. I avoid responding to his offer for coffee in any way by turning back to my canvas. But in doing that, I bang my wounded knee on my stool and the sting rips through my nerve endings, making me grit my teeth.
“Are you okay?” Rémy asks. “That was kind of a big reaction for a small bump.”
“I cut my knee yesterday,” I tell him. “It’s still in the raw stage.”
“You cut it yesterday?” He shifts his eyes around the room before whispering, “When you disappeared through the vent? Do you need to go to the nurse? You might have tetanus.”
I stifle a laugh. “I did it at home,” I lie. “Tripping over a log while feeding our chickens.”
“You have chickens?”
“And goats.”
“That explains your youngest sister.”
I narrow my eyes, hackles up.
Rémy shakes his head and holds up a conciliatory hand. “It’s just, I’ve seen her picking fur and feathers off her clothes.”
“Blue has a pet falcon named Achilles.”
“Seriously?” His eyes globe. “Does he come when he’s called, like a dog?”
“Yes, but only to her. They’re bonded. He comes down if she calls him Achy, which kind of sounds like the Spanish word for here, but it’s short for Achilles. If she needs to do it more quietly, she just lifts her arm and whistles. Sometimes he goes out on longer flights searching for food, but he always returns to Blue.”
“That’s incredible. I’d love to see that in action.”
That’s never gonna happen. I tie a canvas apron around myself so I can get on with painting. Not that I care if I mess up my clothes today. I’m wearing all black, leggings and a sweater, the fastest thing I could find after not getting much sleep. But now that he said it, I pick a few pieces of goat fur off my pants.
“I better sketch these eyes before the end of class,” I tell him. Hoping that serves as an exit from further interrogation. I don’t have the heart to tell him he’ll probably never get to see Achilles and Blue in action. “Thanks for calling my eyes sugar-pine bark in chemistry. That’s actually helping me with the colors.”
“My pleasure. I mean, if I can’t lavish a compliment on a girl by saying her eyes look like tree bark, what good am I?”
I can’t help but smile at any self-deprecating humor, but the smug satisfaction on Rémy’s face, like he just got a present he’s been asking for all year, makes me wipe it away fast. This is why I should have disengaged. I don’t know how to do this friendship, or whatever he’s getting at, thing, and now I’ve backed myself into a corner by showing more than minimal interest.
I let the room dissolve and disappear around me and sketch my eyes, making them oversized, like my mouth. Both have always seemed too big for my face, my lips perpetually swollen, like I got them stuck in a narrow jar and tried to suction them out. I study the irregular peppering of darker brown fanning out from my ebony irises, and I see myself reflected there, shiny twins, moving as one in the black dot like a hovering ghost asking who I am.
I loosely sketch myself into the irises, similar to the way Rémy said he’s doing a picture of himself in the mirror, only through the tiny cameras of my own eyes, the iris a lens. When I’ve got something workable down in pencil, I step back. I like what I see, someone protective and resolute. Responsible, Reactive, and Ready. And I know, if we ever move again, this is one painting I won’t want to leave behind.
TOBYISMS FOR ACTION
3
THE LIE IS IMPLIED
MY LATEST PIECE had a three-day runtime before it got massacred. Someone covered the entire brick wall with matte-black paint, inadvertently giving me a clean slate and a fresh idea. I took a piece of the neon-yellow chalk we use at Nikko’s to write the daily specials on the sandwich board, and on my way I wrote, Paint Won’t Fix The Writing On The Wall, across the brand-new surface.
Bash is with me tonight, acting as my rook since the person that painted over my last piece went t
o such great lengths to erase it from existence. I’m going for something different tonight. A boy in black and white with one hand outstretched, releasing three exploding balloons that are floating away from him and transforming into ravens. The message this time reads THE LIE IS IMPLIED. I let the red letters in LIE drip down the wall like blood. Jonesy once told me we have to consider my sisters may have been murdered. I refused to accept that as a possibility because I would know. Somehow, I would be able to sense the complete loss of them, and I don’t.
“Someone’s coming,” Bash says. “I think they’re cops.”
“Shit.”
I shove the paint canisters into my backpack, and we make a run for the wire-mesh security fence separating the buildings from the train tracks. The openings are tight together, unlike chain-link, so you can’t put a toe inside an opening and climb. Bash is already over the top when I make a run at it. I use the cross-brace at the bottom of a line post and jump high, landing my right foot on the pointy ends at the top. But when I jump down to the other side, the strap on my backpack gets caught, pulling me back as my body weight flies forward. I’m no physics expert. I just know the outside of my forearm gets sliced on the spiky metal, and I can’t let the string of profanities running through my head fly or I’ll risk alerting the cops.
Bash makes an ooph sound with the thumb side of his fist pressed against his mouth like he feels my pain. Then he grabs me by the front of my sweatshirt and pulls me into a run. “I was scared for real,” he says when we’re far enough away. “You see how fast I bailed out? That doodle was worth it, though.”
I hold my arm up. The sleeve of my hoodie is ripped, and blood is running from the gash in my arm.
“Oh shit. You need stitches?” Bash comes closer, shining his flashlight on it.
“I don’t think so. Maybe a new sweatshirt, though. You want to come over? I can drive you back to your car later.”
“Yeah, all right. You got anything to eat?”
“As much mac ’n’ cheese as you want.”
“Cool. Cool. You sure you don’t need a tetanus shot or something?”
“Nah. I’m good. It will remind me of that piece after they scrub it away.”
* * *
Half an hour later, I’m cleaning my cut in the bathroom while Bash makes a couple of boxes of macaroni and cheese. Both of us trying to be as quiet as possible because my mom is sleeping, and we don’t want her walking out asking why we’re up at one a.m. The cut on my arm is bad, but I don’t think it needs stitches. Maybe one or two on the end where it snagged, but it’s not an emergency. I lay several butterfly stiches from our first aid kit across the gash and wrap it in gauze. Then I head to the kitchen to clean the paint off my fingers with cooking spray, dish soap, and salt like Stavros showed me.
It’s getting harder to keep quiet when Bash is doing impersonations of people who came into his workplace. He’s been doing this since we were little kids and should seriously consider becoming a voice actor. Currently, he’s impersonating an adenoidal Valley girl type. Banquo whines from inside my mom’s bedroom. I rush over and crack her door open to let him out so he can also be entertained by Bash.
“And then she was like … Do you have any fried chicken, but like, without the skin.” He puts his index finger and thumb together and pretends to ring a bell. “Like that, man. She mimed throwing away the skin on the chicken. First off, that’s criminal in the fried chicken world. Just order a grilled breast or whatever sad piece of chicken you need to eat. Am I right?”
“One hundred percent.”
He flops onto the couch holding a cereal bowl full of mac ’n’ cheese, but quickly readjusts his position and pulls one of Mom’s sketchbooks out from between the cushions. “Oh man, I hope I didn’t crease anything important.”
“I’m sure it’s fine. Give it here.”
I flip it open to check and a series of age-progression photos of my sisters fall out. Not the ones they did eleven years ago, or even six years ago. These are dated last week.
“What is it?” Bash asks. “Your mom drawing nudes? Let me see.”
I hand them over and watch the color drain from his face.
My reaction exactly.
“Oh shit. Did she show these to you?”
I shake my head, breathing deep through my nose to stem a bout of nausea.
“It’s crazy,” Bash says. “Imogen looks so much more like you in these.”
He’s right. She was always the most stubborn, too. I don’t say any of this to Bash because I’m zoning out. Remembering the way Mom said she couldn’t seem to get her out of her head. Which her?
I make a beeline for Mom’s art studio. “Toby,” Bash whisper-yells. “You all right? You gonna puke, man?”
It’s happened before, but no. I’m not gonna puke. I’m gonna look at the painting she’s been working on. The one Mom can’t get out of her head. I let the solid wood door swing inward slowly, opened by a ghostly hand dealt from the past. I stand in front of her ten-foot easel and stare at the portrait of three girls, huddled so close together only the center figure is facing front. Only one of her eyes is showing because she’s partially blocked in front by the others. The iris of the one unfinished eye is practically glowing. A bright white circle giving it the appearance of seeing everything and nothing. The muted colors mimic the rain that’s made their dark hair hang in damp wavy tendrils. I knew who they were the other day because they look like me. More feminine, but with all the grunge. Bee-stung lips below noses with a flattened bump on the bridge. I study the progression photos in my hand to see if I’m sure about the one staring back at me.
Katherina.
Cassandra is on her right, shorter than the others and a touch more vividly executed. Imogen, always the darkest in both mood and coloring, looking the most despairing to the left. I cover my mouth, because now I might actually puke.
Behind the easel, taped to the wall, are dozens of drawings of eyes. Every expression imaginable, like she’s struggling to pinpoint their feeling after all these years. I look away and catch my own reflection in the gold-framed mirror hanging on the opposite wall. How about the unfocused gaze of disbelief?
She purposely hid these from me when I came home from work the other night. I remember her stuffing them into her sketchbook before offering to make me something to eat. Not like everything was normal. The exact opposite of our normal.
Bash walks in behind me. “You want me to go so you can wrap your head around this? I’m cool to call for a ride.”
I nod. It’s probably for the best. Bash knows this will send me down a rabbit hole for hours. Maybe days. He claps a hand on my shoulder before he leaves. I wait until the front door clicks. Then I walk out of Mom’s studio backward, staring at that one glowing eye until my socks meet the edge of the navy-and-gold Persian rug where we used to wrestle. I won’t be able to get her out of my head, either.
I sit at the kitchen table and take snaps of the photos with my phone that I can post on social media. The tab to access the catalog of missing persons is always open and active on my laptop. And tonight, I search for Imogen first. Based on these new progressions. Not the image I’ve been carrying in my head from eleven years ago when she was as stubborn and toothless as the little girl in Nikko’s. Imogen is the reason I have an inch-long scar right below my lip. She wanted to sit on my new skateboard and ride it down the driveway. When I said no, she made a run at me head down like a ram and knocked me off the board. My front teeth sliced clean through my skin. I’ll never forget how much she cried afterward, harder than me, and I’m the one who needed seven stitches.
Most nights it’s hard not to think I’ve wasted tons of time looking for them. I could have easily gone over to Bash’s tonight and played Xbox, just like we did that fateful night. But I’ll tell you a secret. I don’t really like video games anymore, and I never rode a skateboard again.
SERE
SURVIVAL, EVASION, RESISTANCE, ESCAPE
DIETER IS
CALLING over the CB for mandatory training drills in two hours and cutting off power to both garrisons for the next twelve. Because, as he put it, we’re not acting like we’ll be able to handle ourselves when the shit hits the fan. By the time he’s finished telling us how the rest of the day will go down, I’ve filled the cast-iron kettle and our three biggest stockpots with the water we’ll need later. I’m so behind on everything, I wish I could split myself in two. Maybe that’s a concoction Mother can work on in her kitchen lab, because at this rate we’ll never get ahead.
We don’t have enough time to get our homework and chores done before we have to meet on the training field for our assignments. Dinner will have to be MREs when we get back. Meals, Ready to Eat are never my choice. They should be called Meals, Rarely Edible, but it’s one of those things you practice for survival. The military has to eat them all the time when they’re deployed, so Mother makes us eat them once a week to get us used to them. I take a visual inventory of our useable stash and pull out three vegetarian Chili Mac meals. They’re the least gross of all dehydrated meals and have a seven-year shelf life. That should tell you everything you need to know about the quality of the MRE dining experience.
A series of clicks and dull pops is followed by a second-floor groan from Birdie. There goes the power. I take the stairs to the study two at a time, the skin surrounding the cut on my knee stretching tight in resistance. I was hoping my sisters would be diligently working on our shared computer, but Birdie is working on a comic strip in her sketchbook and sulking, squeezing a pencil across her two middle fingers hard enough to make it snap. When she sees me standing in the doorway, she hops up from the floor and goes to the window, throwing her arms up like the outdoors are all to blame. “Training? Now?”
“I get it, Birdie. We have a lot of balls in the air. I’m frustrated, too. There’s nothing I’d rather do than pretend none of this happened, get my homework done, and write a letter to Bucky. But we have to go along with our normal protocols. There isn’t enough spare time to debate Dieter’s motivations. Did you get everything you need off the computer, because without our cellphone—”
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