Night Owls (29 page)

I snapped it shut and looped it around my neck. It hung over the top of my breastbone, heavy and polished. I warmed the silver with my fingers and whispered a promise to him: “I
will.”

WHEN THE BIG DAY FINALLY ROLLED AROUND, I WAS A
nervous wreck. I’d finished my contest entry and received Jillian’s approval through Jack,
and though the paint was barely dry, I got it turned in on time. Now I just had to survive the moment of truth.

The show was downtown on Geary Street, and traffic sucked. Mom, Heath, and I were stuck in the paddy wagon trying to find a parking space while I was quietly having a stroke over the fact that
we were maybe-probably-definitely going to be late.

I tried to assure myself that I looked good, at least. I was wearing my most flattering dress—black and white polka dots, with buttons all the way down the front and a belt in the
middle—along with the gray knee-high boots. I was also wearing Jack’s heart. (When Mom saw it, she asked me where I’d gotten it, and I told her the truth; she’d only said
“Hmph,” but that was better than “Throw it in the trash!” so I figured it was okay.) And when I’d stopped by Alto on my way back from dropping off my painting, Ms.
Lopez gave me a cloisonné ladybug for luck, which I’d pinned to the collar of my dress.

But that ladybug was already letting me down, and it only got worse when Heath casually said, “Hey, look at this
SF Weekly
article on the show tonight,” and passed me his
phone. My eyes glazed over as the headline attacked me from the small screen:

I nearly choked. Heath shot me a wide-eyed look between the seats when Mom was busy complaining to herself about city parking. If this discreet silence was Heath’s way of making up for his
massive betrayal, I supposed I’d let him have a few points.

The article was brief. At the last minute, Marlena Vincent was scheduled to appear at the exhibition. The article described her as a “long-time patron of the arts” and remarked on
her extensive art collection. (Her chair paintings? Really?) Apparently, she’d also helped raise a shit-ton of money for Bay Area art education. And
of course
the exhibition
organizers were just “thrilled” to have her on board to inspire the young talent who had entered the contest.

Yeah. Bet they were.

It took me several moments of panic to connect the dots to Jack’s “devious and brilliant” plan to attend the show.
He had put her up to this!
Did she even know I was
entered in the contest? Because she definitely didn’t know that I’d painted Jillian.

Would she recognize her own daughter hanging on the wall? Would she be shocked? Angry? Had Jack even thought this through? He’d seen the photo of the painting, for the love of Pete!
He’d merely said it was “perfect,” which already made me nervous enough because he didn’t elaborate, and what if he really didn’t like it but he couldn’t tell me
because he’s my boyfriend and he didn’t want to hurt my feelings and this is so different than any other artwork I’ve done over the last couple of years and why in the world did I
think it was a good idea to do something so weird for a scientific art contest . . . and, and . . .

OH, GOD!

Slow breath in through the nostrils, long breath out through the mouth . . .

I abandoned the idea of jumping into oncoming traffic and calmed down about the same time Mom found a parking space. Nothing I could do about this now.

Time to face whatever awaited me.

The show was being held in a building with several floors of private art galleries, and they were all open late for some once-a-month open house. A guard sat behind a desk in front of four
elevators, where signs and a map identified the student exhibition gallery. We wove though stilettos and plastic champagne glasses (private gallery openings) to join the Converse and Sprite crowd
(the student exhibition).

The gallery was pretty big: one room split into three sections with white walls, wood floors, and black track lighting focused on the artwork. A small area at the far end had been set up with a
microphone and chairs—for the judges, I assumed. They’d already picked the winners before the show, but the judges were around there somewhere, mingling. I scanned the room for Jack or
his mom. Nada. But I did spy someone beefy and muscular and smiling: Noah.

Heath waved him over, and we all greeted one another.

“How long have you been here?” I asked him.

“Long enough to see all the entries. You’re going to wipe the floor, Beatrix.”

“I don’t know about that.”

“Saw a couple of the judges looking at it,” he said. “
Everyone
’s talking about it.”

Had Noah seen Jack’s mom? He knew better than to mention this in front of my mom, right? Had my fall from grace come up during pillow talk? I imagined it had, and my brother’s shifty
eyes confirmed it.

Heath quickly elbowed Noah and cleared his throat. “Show me where Bex’s painting is, then tell me everything,” Heath said as he pulled Noah away.

“Good luck,” Noah told me over his shoulder.

I checked in with one of the organizers and got an artist badge with my name and school listed. Crap. There were more than a hundred entries? When I’d turned in my painting, the person who
took it said there were fifty. That was twice as many people to compete against.

“It’s loud,” Mom said near my ear. “More like a party than an exhibition.”

“Heathens,” I agreed, eyeing other people with artist badges. They were all boys. Like, nearly every single one. And the artwork was exactly as I imagined: magnified cells,
astronomy, close-ups of flowers . . . oh, and one dissection: a frog. It was actually pretty good.

“A frog?” Mom mumbled. “
Please
. Amateur.”

I blinked at her in shock.

She smiled at me conspiratorially. “Give me some credit,” she said, linking her arm through mine. “I might not be happy about all the crap you’ve pulled this summer, but
it doesn’t mean I’m not a proud mama. Where is yours, anyway?”

I pushed back chaotic feelings and straightened my posture. “Must be in the middle section.” Even wearing heeled boots, I had to stand on tiptoes to peer around the room. When Mom
suggested we cut around a group of parents, we turned together and ran straight into the last people I’d ever expected to see.

Dad and his new wife, Suzi.

“Hello, Katherine,” he said in his VP voice.

“Lars,” my mom said in her
I want to rip your throat out
overly polite voice.

And before I could filter it, “What the hell are you doing here?” came out of my mouth.

“Your mother invited me.”

Oh. Wait—huh?

Why?

What was going on here? Just the week before, she was biting my head off and crying over the fact that I’d gone behind her back to meet up with Dad. Now, after a three-year Dad-free zone,
she was inviting him to things?

“This is Suzi,” he said to us, like she wasn’t the woman who’d broken up my parents’ marriage. Then again, maybe she didn’t. What did I know anymore?
Relationships were complicated.

“It’s nice to meet you—formally, this time,” Suzi told me. “It was hard to hear over all that screaming your father was doing.”

She smiled at me—like, a real smile. She was teasing. No way. I really didn’t want to like her.

“Ah, yes,” Dad said uncomfortably, then quickly changed the subject. “We saw your painting, Beatrix. It’s very interesting.”

Interesting.
Yeah, that about summed it up. “Where is it? We just got here.”

“Follow us,” he said, and they began making their way through the crowd like we weren’t all sworn enemies.

Mom and I sneaked glances at each other. My eyes said,
Ten dollars her boobs are fake
, and Mom’s said,
Not as fake as his smile—why did I marry that jerk, again?
She squeezed my hand and everything was suddenly okay. Good, even.

Until we got to my painting.

If the room was crowded, the area around my painting was packed. I spotted the top of it, with all its bold colors, and my stomach knotted. Maybe this was the worst idea I’d had in a long
time. Being grounded and forced into a celibate, Jack-free existence after our single night of spectacular sex had surely rotted a hole in my brain. And speaking of my spectacularly sexy boyfriend,
his dark pompadour bobbed above the fringes of the crowd. He spotted me and smiled so big it threw cool water over my roiling emotions.

In a long-sleeve black shirt, he looked handsome and dressed up, but still very, very Jack. He cut around people and came straight to me, while Mom beckoned Noah and Heath, trying to catch them
before Heath spotted Dad—which was a good thing, because all I needed was another public blowout involving my father, if Heath’s reaction was similar to (or worse than) what mine had
been.

But I couldn’t worry about that. I just concentrated on Jack. As he approached, his gaze fell to the anatomical heart pendant at my throat, and a blissfully pleased look settled on his
face.

“You look beautiful,” he said, dropping a speedy kiss on my cheek. But before I could answer, he quickly murmured in my ear, “I need to tell you something.”

About his mom being there, I assumed. So I whispered back, “I already know.”

“How?”

Before I could answer, the crowd opened up to allow someone important to walk through. Jack’s mom, looking stylish in a pink dress, and . . .

Her husband.

Jack whispered in my ear, “So sorry. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Mom talked him into coming. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

This was a total disaster. Why had I done this painting? I could have just made do with what I had of my final Minnie drawing instead of ripping her up in a tantrum. Or I could’ve
re-created her. But no. I chose
now
to do something out of my wheel house, something weird and creative and emotional, which
wasn’t me at all
. I was all about structure and
control. I was black-and-white. Grayscale. This was—

This was not.

And it was too late to take it all back.

Holding my breath, I watched the crowd part like the Red Sea, and Moses himself suddenly stood a few feet away from me. He and Jack’s mom were flanked by security and led by several people
in suits, who had to be either the organizers or judges.

And when the mayor took his hands out of the pockets of his perfectly pressed slacks and crossed his arms, readying himself to look at my painting, I saw the
exact moment
recognition
came. It struck him like a slap to the face. His head jerked back. Body went rigid. Mouth fell open. He worked to move his jaw, but no sound came out. A muscle around his eye jumped.

The span between two heartbeats seemed to stretch infinitely. I glanced up at my painting and saw what the mayor was seeing:

Jillian’s round face was painted in quick strokes. I’d copied her hair from old photos, dark and bobbed and swooping over her forehead. Her big eyes were open, and she was smiling
shyly. I’d tried to re-create the shape of her shoulders—the painting stopped at her waist—and I’d painted her wearing a T-shirt from her favorite band.

Minnie’s dissected arm and half-chest were superimposed over Jillian. But instead of looking like the dead flesh I’d originally drawn, I’d painted it to look like the
dissections were doors opening to reveal her muscles and organs—like the back of a clock removed to show the cogs and wheels.

On Jillian’s arm, where the penciled dissection cutaway replaced her scars, I gave the veins and arteries life, painting them in rich red and vibrant blue, extending them into the negative
space behind her, where they curled and stretched like the whorls of smoke that floated around her head as she sat at the window, posing for me.

And in place of the usual anatomical diagram labels to identify the names of bones and muscles, I substituted words from Jillian’s ramblings.

Memories of her childhood cat. Her first boyfriend. Her favorite book.

Names she’d given the demons that occasionally spoke inside her head. Things that stressed her out. Regrets.

Hundreds of words. They filled the space around her, connected by diagram lines and curling veins. They were as precise and neat as I could make them, and lettered with a black paint pen. Jack
would’ve done far better, but I liked that they flowed and curved this way or that.

It wasn’t perfect. And apart from my recycled pieces of Minnie, it wasn’t anatomically accurate. But it looked like Jillian. I knew it. Jack knew it.

And both Mayor Vincent and his wife knew it.

“What is this?” he murmured to her in a low voice.

“This was done by a senior at Lincoln,” one of the suits offered before Jack’s mom could answer. The suit stood next to my painting like a museum guide, holding a flat box
beneath a clipboard. Reading whatever was attached to the clipboard, she said, “It’s acrylic and pencil on canvas and paper, and it’s called ‘Hebe Immortalized,’
which I believe is a reference to the Greek goddess of youth.”