SIOBHAN VIVIAN is the acclaimed author of The List, Not That Kind of Girl, and A Little Friendly Advice. She currently lives in Pittsburgh. You can find her at www.siobhanvivian.com.

For Nicky, xoxo

Contents

Cover

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

June

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

July

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Eighteen

Nineteen

Twenty

Twenty-One

Twenty-Two

Twenty-Three

Twenty-Four

Twenty-Five

Twenty-Six

Twenty-Seven

Twenty-Eight

Twenty-Nine

Thirty

Thirty-One

Thirty-Two

Thirty-Three

Thirty-Four

August

Thirty-Five

Thirty-Six

Thirty-Seven

Thirty-Eight

Thirty-Nine

September

Forty

Forty-One

Acknowledgements

Copyright

One

When I was a kid, I drew clouds that looked like the bodies of cartoon sheep. The sun was a perfect yellow circle. Birds flew in flocks of little black Vs. And I made sure there was always a rainbow.

It’s too bad the sky doesn’t actually look like that. In a way, the real thing is sort of a letdown.

“Emily?”

“Yeah?” I raise my head off my towel and squint away the sun. Meg is lying on her side, with dark oversized sunglasses perched on the top of her head. She’s staring at me. I give her a few seconds to say something, but her lips stay pressed together tight. “What is it?”

“I’m trying to imagine you with a mohawk,” she says, leaning forward.

I laugh. “Why?”

“Oh, I don’t know.” She pauses to retie the plaid strings on her bikini bottom. “I bet mohawks are cool in art school. But I think you’d regret it. Maybe not right away, but definitely in September.” Meg reaches for the coconut oil and gives her flat stomach a spritz, then fires one at mine to be cute. “Just remember, it’s not like bangs or layers that you can hide underneath a headband until they grow out. There is no graceful way to grow out a mohawk.”

I rake my fingers through the knots in my damp hair. A few dark blond strands get left behind, swirled around my fingers. It took me practically all of junior year to grow my thin hair past my shoulders. “I’m not getting a mohawk,” I say, probably more serious than I need to be.

“Okay, okay.” She lets a giggle slip. “Could you imagine if you did, though? You’d be the talk of Cherry Grove.” Meg slides her sunglasses back in place and lies down. But she’s only still for a minute before she rolls around, tugging on the corners of her towel, trying unsuccessfully to get comfortable. “Tomorrow’s going to feel so weird without you here.”

There’s a bowl full of cut lemons between us on a green glass mosaic table. I fish around, find a juicy half, and give it a squeeze over my head. I’ve always wished my hair was striking platinum instead of dark honey, which is the most unexciting shade of blond, the one that some people even call brown. A bit of juice drips into my eyes and stings them like crazy. “You’ll have Rick,” I remind her. Though I doubt she’s forgotten.

“Rick’s not my best friend.” Meg stands up suddenly. Red stripes run across her back from the thick rubber strips of her lounge chair. She walks over to her pool, sits down at the edge, and dips her feet in the water.

“It’s not like I’m moving to Philadelphia,” I say. “It’s only three days a week, and I’ll be home by dinner if I catch the five-thirty train.”

She sighs. “Maybe I’ll get a job. Maybe Starbucks is hiring.”

We both know Meg isn’t going to get a summer job, so neither of us says anything. I let her sit with her back to me, kicking her legs through the water in slow motion. I get what she’s hinting at. Even though there’ve been lots of changes this year, and even though my summer art classes aren’t a big deal, the reality is that we’ve never spent a summer apart since becoming best friends and neighbors five years ago. Meg’s going to miss me.

I already miss her.

A cloud passes the sun and drops a cold shadow over the backyard. Meg takes off her sunglasses and tosses them onto her towel. “No use laying out now. Do you wanna walk to Starbucks?”

“Yeah,” I say. “Sure.”

We throw clothes over our still-damp bathing suits and flip-flop down the stone path that leads from the backyard to the front of Meg’s house.

Meg and I live inside a gated community called Blossom Manor, which is made up of ten cul-de-sacs shaped like thermometers. Houses run up the sides in pairs, leading to the three biggest homes curved around the bulbous tip. That’s where we live, directly across from each other, in identical mansions.

The homes of Blossom Manor are all posh and stately, with thick green lawns stretching to the curbs. The streets are named after pretty flowers, like Petunia and Bluebell, and paved with rich red brick in zigzag patterns. The low-pitch hum of purring central air-conditioning units only makes the chirping birds sound sweeter.

I’m suddenly overcome with an achy, sentimental feeling. Cherry Grove, New Jersey, is practically perfect, especially in the summertime. It makes me wish that I was still a kid, when summers meant I played with Meg from morning until night, pool hopping until our skin was pruned and our lips were blue, eating nothing but hot dogs from backyard grills and bomb pops from the ice cream truck. There’s a weight in my stomach that doesn’t usually appear until August, right before school starts up. The sadness of summer coming to an end, even though mine only just started. That’s how things go when you get older, I guess. Summers matter less and less, until you turn into a grown-up and they disappear entirely.

Meg and I reach the back of the development and squeeze through a line of tall, tightly packed bushes that serve as a natural fence to keep nonresidents out of Blossom Manor. When Meg and I first discovered this passage, we felt a rush. It was like our little world had suddenly become huge.

On the other side, there’s a steep sandy hill. Meg and I slip and slide as we amble our way up, clinging to each other for traction, and then again for balance as we reach Route 38 and brush away the grit that sticks to our coconut-oiled legs. Even though we live right off the highway, you wouldn’t know it. The noise of the traffic gets tangled in the bushes.

The Starbucks is an oasis in the middle of the sun-baked parking lot. The heat of the blacktop burns through my flip-flops, so I run for the door. Inside, it’s refreshingly frosty. My hair blows around my face in damp wisps, and goose bumps compete with mosquito bites for space on my legs and arms.

When we step up to the counter, the barista rings us up without even asking for our order, because Meg and I always get the same thing — two grande frozen peppermint mochas and one old-fashioned glazed donut, cut in half.

“My treat,” Meg says, and hands me a crisp twenty from inside her woven straw purse. “And I’m sorry if I sounded like a wet blanket earlier. I mean, it’ll suck not to hang out whenever we want to this summer, but we’ll just make the most of the days when you don’t have classes. And, like you said, you’ll be around for parties and stuff at night.” She smiles. “I’m so proud of you, Emily.”

“For what?”

“For following your passion! Pursuing your art!” It sounds corny when Meg puts it that way, but she truly means it. She puts her hand to her chest and fiddles with the delicate M charm hanging off her silver necklace. It was my Christmas gift to her, from Tiffany’s. Meg bought me an E one in gold, because she said gold looks better with my coloring. We never take them off. “It is seriously inspirational. I mean, I wish there was something that I was good at. I’m so untalented, it’s ridiculous.”

“Please. You have lots of talent.” Meg is really pretty, she’s in all honors classes, and she has a popular boyfriend. But I don’t mention any of that out loud, because they only seem like talents to the people who don’t have them. Instead, I grin and say, “You’re double-jointed!”

Meg laughs, and my heart surges with love for her. Meg is the kind of best friend you read about in old books. She’s that sweet all the time. A lot of girls in our high school think she’s fake, but they’re totally, totally wrong.

While I wait for the drinks, Meg drags two overstuffed armchairs to our favorite table — the checkerboard table centered at the big window. I drop into my seat and tuck my legs underneath me to keep them warm. Over Meg’s shoulder, traffic whizzes along the highway. A big green sign hovers over the road. My eyes trace the reflective white letters twinkling in the sunlight.

“Can you believe Philly is only thirty miles away?” I take a small sip, because frozen peppermint mochas are too sweet to gulp and I want mine to last forever. “I mean, thirty miles is actually pretty close. We could walk thirty miles, if we had to.”

Cherry Grove doesn’t have a trace of city to it. A lot of people commute from here to Philadelphia for work. People who don’t like the city. There are no tall buildings or high-rise apartment complexes here. Things feel very quaint — most of the buildings are old, and if they’re not, they’re eventually made to look that way. Like our town hall. Before the fire last summer, it was an ugly office building, with brown stucco and mirrored windows. But then it was rebuilt with fieldstone shipped in from somewhere in rural Pennsylvania, and black shutters were attached to all the windows. They even added a big clock that hammers a brass bell on the hour.

Meg uses her tongue to chase a drip of whipped cream off the side of her cup. “Do you remember freshman year, when Becky Martin came back from Easter break with those bangs she cut herself? She had to wear that floppy velvet hat to the spring dance.” She closes her eyes and shakes her head. “I felt so bad for her.”

I remember. Becky’s bangs were so short that they stuck straight out like a visor. She cut them because she was bored. I overheard her say that when she was crying in the bathroom, trying to find someone with extra bobby pins. Boredom can be dangerous in a place like Cherry Grove. It can make you do things you’ll regret. But I don’t get why Meg is bringing this up now. I don’t need to be scared out of a hairstyle I don’t even want.

Meg picks off a few crumbs from her half of the donut and pops them into her mouth. “Ooh! I almost forgot. I have a big favor to ask you.”

“Yeah?”

She spins around in her chair so that her tan legs dangle off one armrest while the other supports her back. Then she twists her long chestnut hair up into a messy bun. Like clockwork, freshly snipped layers fall out the sides and frame her face. “I want to surprise Rick with a great gift for our six-month anniversary. Not like a dumb shirt or video game.” She looks sad for a second, but then she brightens. “Could you help me think of something special?”

“Umm, sure,” I say. But I don’t have any ideas right this second, maybe because I myself have never had a boyfriend, an anniversary, or even a French kiss that didn’t occur during spin the bottle or taste like beer. Before junior year, Meg hadn’t either. We’d both been equal.

Meg’s purse buzzes on the floor. It lies just out of Meg’s reach, so I dig the cell out for her. At the bottom, I touch a chewed-up blue pen. My fingers cling to it like it’s magnetized. It’s almost like I can’t help but pick it up.

Meg flips open her phone and starts texting. While she does, I brush the crumbs off my napkin and start to draw. The pen fits in my hand so comfortably, like an extension of my fingers. I draw a lot in moments like this. It gives me something to concentrate on while life happens to everyone else.

There’s a tiny dip between Meg’s nose and upper lip, and it’s shaped like a perfect teardrop. I draw that pretty quickly, but it looks funny there, floating on the napkin. It needs more context. And since Meg is otherwise occupied — texting away with Rick, no doubt — I draw the flat lines of her lips. Then I add her nose and the sloping angles of her heart-shaped face. I don’t try to map the couple of dark freckles she has, because the pen is leaky and the napkin only too happy to soak up the extra ink.

As Meg appears on the napkin, it makes me excited. I mean, I’m relatively new at this — drawing for real. Not cartoon-style where eyeballs are round circles with big black dots inside and feet face outward at an impossible angle. It’s still surprising when I’m able to draw something that actually looks like what I want it to. Each time feels like a tiny miracle.

When I glance up from the napkin, Meg is staring at me. “Emily, are you drawing me?! Like, right now?”

I take a quick sip of my mocha and put the cup down so it blocks her view. “Sort of. Not really.”

Meg rises up out of her seat, trying to peek. “Yeah, right! You never show me any of your drawings. Come on! Let me see it.”

My first instinct is to crumple it up, because it’s just a quick sketch and not anything I’m even trying to make good. But I know I have to get better about showing my work to people, especially considering my art classes start tomorrow. So I hand it over, and pretend I’m not nervous about what she thinks.

Meg takes the napkin carefully, cradling it in her hands. “Wow,” she says slowly, like each letter is its own sentence.

“You like it?” I’m not trying to fish for compliments, but I want to make sure she’s being honest. Meg definitely prefers niceness to truthfulness, and when you know that about somebody, it’s practically impossible not to feel insecure, no matter what they tell you.

And then it hits me. Maybe I could draw a portrait for Meg to give to Rick for their anniversary! Nothing too colorful or big. Just a simple sketch done in pencil on a small sheet of heavy paper — the kind where you can see the spidery veins of the tree pulp. Then we could go pick out a nice frame to put the portrait in. It might seem like a girly gift for some guys, but not Rick. He’s got photos of Meg all over the place — in his wallet, tucked into the visor in his truck. He even keeps one underneath the insole of his baseball cleat for good luck.

But just as I’m about to share my idea, Meg’s head drops to the side and her bottom lip gets so pouty, it shows a rim of the slick pink inside.

“I would seriously rather get a nose job than a car this summer.”

My stomach muscles get tight, like they don’t want to do the work it’s going to take for another breath. “What?” I reach for my napkin.

But Meg won’t hand it back to me. She keeps staring down at it in her manicured hands, blinking a lot. “I just hate how fat the tip looks,” she says quietly, and scratches the drawing with her nail, as if she could shave the pen marks down.

“Here, let me fix it,” I stutter after a few awkward seconds. The thing is, Meg’s nose is kind of round. Not in an ugly way. In a Meg way.

The door opens and the air makes a suction sound as Rick steps into Starbucks. He’s wearing stiff gray coveralls, mud-caked Timberland work boots, and a red baseball cap embroidered with the name of his family business, WILEY LANDSCAPING. Rick is so tall and broad-shouldered that he blocks out most of the sun shining through the glass behind him.

Meg and I stare at each other in a moment of panic, my napkin drawing hanging in limbo between us. I absolutely don’t want Rick to see it, so I reach for it, but Meg snatches her hand back first.

Rick rests his hands on Meg’s bare shoulders and plants a kiss on the top of her head. She climbs onto her knees and hugs his torso. I watch her discreetly slide my drawing into the back pocket of her red terry cloth shorts.

I guess I should feel relief that it’s hidden. Only it’s kind of weird, how upset it makes me to see my drawing become a lumpy wad. She should have just given it back to me.

Rick smiles at me. “Hey, Emily. I like your flip-flops.”

“Hi,” I say back, and then shove my straw in my mouth. My flip-flops are the same old Havaianas that everyone in town wears. But Rick always finds some random thing like that to compliment me on. Meg says Rick’s afraid I don’t like him. Which isn’t true, exactly. He’s nice, nicer than a guy of his good looks should probably be. He’s just not that smart, especially compared to someone like Meg. But he understands how tight Meg and I are, close enough so that our names are always mushed together in conversations around school, like MegandEmily. He gets that I’m important, that I matter.

Rick stretches and yawns. His armpits are damp, but he doesn’t smell stinky. He wears the spicy smell of fresh-cut grass like a too-powerful cologne. “I thought you guys would be hanging out by the pool all day. I’ve just got to take one last trip to the greenhouse and then I can come over and swim.” Since Rick’s dad owns their landscaping business, he pretty much gets to set his own hours. Which is to say, he’s always around. “Do you guys want me to drop you off anywhere on my way?”

Meg turns to me. “Do you want a ride back home? Or we can walk. It’s just hot out and I’m kind of tired. But whatever you want, Emily. It’s your last summer afternoon.” She’s talking fast. Her light blue eyes sparkle. She still gets so excited about Rick driving us around, even though he’s probably given us over a million rides.

“Hey, that’s right!” Rick says. “Emily, are you dreading summer school or what? I was so happy when I passed my US History final so I wouldn’t have to go again this year and lose out on all the money I’d make working for my dad. But don’t worry. The classes are way easier than regular school.”

Even though I don’t want to get into it with Rick, I feel the need to defend myself. “It’s not summer school,” I tell him. “It’s a pre-college art program.” Rick looks at me blankly, like I’m speaking another language. “It’s at the Philadelphia College of Fine Art.” Still nothing. “I chose to go to it.”

Rick takes off his ball cap, runs his hand through his matted brown hair, and puts it back on again. Thinking. Then he chuckles in a friendly, quiet way. “Okay, that makes sense. I’ve never heard of anyone failing Art at Cherry Grove High.”

I don’t know why this annoys me so much, because Rick’s right. Ms. Kay’s Art class is an easy A. That’s why it’s so popular. That’s why I took it in the first place.

No one takes it seriously. In my class, all the boys ever drew were sports players or weird Alice in Wonderland-type drug stuff. Amy Waterman turned every project into a chance to practice her bubble letters. And the rest of the girls were obsessed with glitter pens and making origami roses for each other. Everyone but me slept during the weekly slide-show presentations. Though it was actually hard to pay attention, since Ms. Kay always had the projector tweaked slightly out of focus, and unless you squinted the whole time, you’d get nauseous.

But for whatever reason, I really did like it. I looked forward to tying on my musty apron, even the eggy smell of the water in the slop sink. It was a place where I didn’t have to think about anything other than what I was drawing.

So when Ms. Kay offered to recommend me for the invitation-only summer program, I felt relieved. Though, honestly, I doubt anyone else in our class would have been interested. But I needed a break from it all, and taking some art classes in Philadelphia a few times a week was as good an idea as any I could think of. Meg got a boyfriend and I got a hobby. That’s just the way things worked out.

“Well, don’t worry, Emily. Meg’s going to be lost without you.” Rick shuffles backward toward the register and grabs a bottle of water. “But I’ll take good care of her while you’re gone. Promise.”

I say “thanks” — not because I’m thankful, but because it seems like that’s what I’m expected to say.

Meg pivots so Rick can’t see or hear us. She pulls my napkin out of her pocket, smoothes it out against her thigh, and hands it back to me. “I’m sorry, but I didn’t want Rick to see your drawing before you had a chance to fix it. You’re not mad, are you?”

Meg’s apology is sincere. I can tell by how her mouth refuses to close until I let her know that things are okay, that I’m not upset.

“It’s fine,” I say, and give her arm a squeeze. “And we can get a ride home with Rick.”

“You sure?”

“Seriously.” And I take the tray and napkin from her hands and throw everything away — including my drawing — to prove it.

Meg and Rick wait for me outside, standing closer than close. I watch as Rick twirls a piece of Meg’s long hair around his finger. She stands on her tiptoes, gently picking bits of cut grass off his neck.

I make sure to put on a smile before stepping through the door.

Two

My heart is not beating in my chest. Instead it thumps a tiny beat underneath the callus on my middle finger. The skin there is white, almost translucent. It bubbled up a week after taking Ms. Kay’s class, in the exact spot where I steady my pencil when I draw. I usually keep the callus covered with a Band-Aid because it’s not very pretty, only I forgot to put one on this morning. Luckily, the bump has gotten smaller, softer since school ended two weeks ago. But not by much.

“Mom, can you please put the top up and turn on the AC?” Even though I blew out and then flat-ironed my hair, it is already frizzing in the humidity, and soon my only option will be a boring ponytail. I wear ponytails a lot — you can tell by all the broken little pieces of hair that have been ripped by my elastic bands. They stick straight up if I don’t hair-spray them down.

Mom shakes her head. “We don’t have time to pull over, Emily. You’ll miss your train, and I can’t drive you into Philadelphia. There’s too much going on here.”

I sigh extra loud, so she hears me over the wind. It’s funny how busy my mom is, considering she doesn’t have a job. I think about saying this out loud, but I keep my mouth shut, because I want Mom to concentrate on driving, not being mad at me. I don’t want to be late on my first day of classes. I want to make a good impression.

“Mom,” my sister Claire whines, pulling her two long black laces really tight. Her cleats dimple the tan leather on the dashboard. “If I miss warm-ups, I’m gonna get benched.”

Claire rides permanent shotgun in Mom’s convertible, even though she’s thirteen and I’m sixteen. That’s because her legs are a lot longer than mine, and the backseat has barely any room. Plus, Claire has to squeeze in extra knee stretches before she gets dropped off at soccer camp, because she’s already had ACL surgery. You’d think she’d be grateful for the front-seat privilege, which should be automatically mine, but she’s not.

“They’re not going to bench you,” I grumble. Claire is the best player in middle school. She knows it, too. The high school coaches have come to see her play a few times. And her room is full of satiny ribbons stamped WINNER in gold and trophies, some so tall they have to sit on the floor.

“No one is going to be late,” Mom says, gunning through a yellow light in exactly the way my Driver’s Ed teacher told us not to. She eyes me in her rearview mirror. “But, Emily, you’re going to have to get up earlier from now on, so the rest of us aren’t in a panic every morning. That means no late nights before summer school.”

“It’s not summer school,” I say. “And I didn’t go anywhere last night.” Rick and Meg invited me out with them for pizza and then to Putt Putt Palace, but I didn’t feel like tagging along. I’m no good at sports. Neither is Meg, but without a boyfriend, there’s no one to laugh or tell me I’m cute when I swing and completely miss the golf ball. I just feel like I suck.

Mom shakes her head, disappointed. “Dad saw the light underneath your door after two in the morning, Emily.”

The thing was, I had a hard time falling asleep. I lay in bed for the longest time with my eyes closed and my television off, hoping it would happen. But it didn’t. So I got up and laid out my clothes for today on my club chair. That took about five seconds, because Meg and I had already discussed in detail what I should wear — my white capris, a tan and white striped cami, and a pair of pale gold leather skimmers that Meg let me borrow. I turned on my laptop, but no one else was online, so I shut it back down. I threw out some old makeup that I didn’t use anymore. And then, when I couldn’t think of anything else to do, I randomly decided to lay my new art supplies out on my floor in neat little piles.

A few weeks ago, Philadelphia College of Fine Art sent a list of materials that I’d need, like paint and brushes and charcoal and Strathmore drawing pads. It took Mom and me over an hour at Pearl to find everything.

When you’re a kid, colors have obvious names. Green is grass, red is cherry, and yellow is lemon. That changes when you grow out of markers that can be washed off the kitchen walls. How was I supposed to know that Sanguine is a fancy word for red? And what kind of purple was Dioxazine? It sounded like something I should have learned in Chemistry. Mars Black didn’t make much sense to me, either. Wasn’t Mars the Red Planet? It kind of freaked me out.

Mom felt bad for me, so she made this big show of buying the most expensive stuff they had, insisting that all my brushes be sable, and not the synthetic ones that are way cheaper. I didn’t complain because they were really nice, as soft as my makeup brushes from Bloomingdale’s.

I’d never owned real art supplies before, and seeing my whole floor covered in them felt luxurious. The materials in Ms. Kay’s classroom were old and gross. We only had big jugs of primary colors, like the ones a preschooler would finger paint with. And the brushes were frayed and fanned out and sometimes left strands behind in your strokes. We stopped using the clay because it was hard and flaky, even if you let it soak overnight inside a wet paper towel. I guess that’s why it felt like the possibilities of things I could do with my new supplies were limitless. It lit me up inside. I couldn’t sleep after touching everything. I was too excited for today.

“So all you’re going to do is art? Like, for the whole day?” Claire turns around in her seat. “That sounds kind of boring.”

Sometimes, it takes me a minute to recognize Claire as my sister. She’s tall, taller than all the boys in her class. Her hair is dark brown like my dad’s, and it’s a lot thicker than mine. She’s awkward now — a teenager’s body paired up with a kid’s face. But you can already tell that she’s going to be somebody when she gets to high school this fall. Maybe even as soon as her braces come off.

“Right, Claire. And running up and down a field a million times sounds so fun.”

“It is. And at least I’ll be with my friends. How are you going to survive a whole day away from Meg?”

Claire always makes jokes about how close Meg and I are, but it’s only because she doesn’t have a real best friend. She just has a big group of girls who she plays sports with.

“You’re just jealous. I heard you crying to Mom yesterday because I wouldn’t let you come swim with us. Maybe I’d let you if you weren’t so freaking annoying!”

Her face flushes deep red, like it does by the halftime of her soccer games. “Geez, Emily.” She turns back around and sinks low in her seat.

“Emily, be nice to your sister,” Mom scolds.

“She started it,” I say.

“But you’re older,” Mom says. “You’re supposed to be more mature.”

Whatever.

We turn into the parking lot of the Cherry Grove train station. It’s as crowded as the mall at Christmas.

“Just drop me off,” I say, unbuckling my seat belt.

“I want to make sure you’re on the right train,” she says, getting out with me.

I don’t understand why my mom thinks this is such a big deal. This won’t be the first time I’ve been to Philly — there have been plenty of family drives and school trips there. It’s just the first time I’ll be going alone.

The track that goes to Philadelphia is easy to find because everyone’s crowding together on it. The station doesn’t have any windows or service people there to buy tickets. The three automated ticket machines are completely surrounded.

“I’ve still got to buy a ticket!”

“Don’t worry. You can buy them on the train,” Mom says. “Do you have enough cash?”

“Yeah. And I’ve got my credit card, too.”

“What about your cell phone? Is it all charged up? Keep your wallet on you at all times. Don’t talk to strangers. You need to appear street-smart, so always walk with a purpose.” The train chugs into the station, and Mom yells over the noise. “And please don’t forget to call me when you get there.” Her bottom lip quivers.

I feel like such a baby. Luckily, no one pays me any attention, except to jostle me out of their way.

Everyone on the train is the same age as my parents. A few people watch with interest as I squish down the aisle with my big bags of art supplies. I feel confident, even a bit mysterious. I wonder if they wonder what I’m doing here all by myself.

It takes two cars before I find an empty seat. Well, it’s not exactly empty. A pair of super high heels pokes out of a black leather bag on the seat next to a lady in a business suit and spotless white running sneakers.

I wait a few seconds for the lady to notice me, but she never looks up from her newspaper. I’d keep searching, but my bags are heavy and the plastic handles are starting to rip. Finally I fake cough. The woman glances at me and grudgingly moves her bag to the floor so I can sit down.

A bell rings and “Tickets!” is shouted out in a rough, gravelly voice, like you’d expect in an old movie. The passengers slide their paper tickets into shallow pockets on the seats in front of them. I take out my wallet.

Eventually, a man steps up to my row. He’s got on a white button-up with a light gray tie, and his navy jacket is covered in brass buttons. I can’t see the hair on his head because of his cap, but his beard has a bunch of different shades of red and blond and white in it. “Where you going, miss?”

“Round-trip to Philadelphia,” I say proudly, and maybe a bit louder than necessary. And I hold out a crisp fifty-dollar bill.

He frowns and doesn’t take it. “I can’t break a fifty.”

“Oh, sorry.” I hand over a ten instead.

He still doesn’t take it. And he looks annoyed. “Your ticket’s thirteen dollars.”

“I thought tickets were ten,” I say, my voice squeaking so loud the man in front of me turns around to stare. That’s what I’d read on the transit website last night.

“There’s a three-dollar surcharge for buying on the train during peak hours,” he explains to me. “You need to use the ticket machines on the platform.”

I search through my change pocket, hoping for some quarters to make up the difference, but all I have are a few pennies and a dime. “Can I use my credit card?” I ask, yanking the silver square out of my wallet, dropping some receipts and my change on the floor.

The man laughs, not like I’ve said something funny, but because I’ve said something incredibly stupid. He points to his book of paper tickets and his hole puncher and shakes his head.

I panic. Are they going to make me get off the train at the next stop? I glance at the lady next to me. Maybe she’d help? Lend me three bucks? I’m obviously not some kind of homeless beggar. But her newspaper is a shield. She doesn’t want to see what’s going on.

The last thing in the world I want is to cry here and now, in front of all these people. I take a couple deep breaths.

The conductor looks at me, then quickly over each shoulder. “Listen,” he whispers, “just give me the ten and remember to buy your ticket on the platform next time.”

I thank him, but too quietly for him to hear, as I hand over the money. He punches a bunch of holes in my ticket, sending bits of yellow confetti cascading onto the floor.

I settle back into my seat with a deep exhale. The fake leather sticks to the skin on my back and it’s hard to get comfortable with my bags of supplies taking up all my legroom. The lady next to me drops her paper, gives me a flat smile, as if she were completely unaware of what happened right next to her a few seconds ago, and then flaps it open to another page.

I smile back, because what else am I going to do?

A few seconds later, my cell jingles. I think it might be Meg. But it’s my dad.

good luck today picasso

Dad is the only adult I know who can text. That’s how he and his secretary communicate while he’s showing real estate properties and taking bids. He was the one who filled all the homes in Blossom Manor, who sold Meg’s family their house. He also brought in the Starbucks and leased the stores in the strip mall across the highway. He’s the real estate king of Cherry Grove.

Thirty minutes later, the train rolls over the steely blue Ben Franklin Bridge, the gray water of the Delaware River splashing in white-capped waves below us. At the end of the bridge, there’s a huge sculpture of a lightning bolt crashing into an oversized metal key, which I guess represents Ben Franklin’s discovery of electricity. It’s like I’ve been struck by lightning, too, the way the hairs suddenly prickle up on my arms.

I am really doing this. It’s kind of funny, how far thirty miles can be. How much bigger than myself I feel already.

As we pull into the station, everyone stands up even though we can’t walk off the train yet. Someone behind me pushes into the small of my back with a briefcase. The train comes to a stop and everyone files out the small doors. I don’t really know where to go so I follow the flow of the masses up to the street.

I try to find the map that came with my orientation packet, but there are too many old school papers in my bag that I forgot to throw out. A huge clock behind me chimes 9:00 a.m. Orientation will be starting.

I take off and run . . . even though I’m still not sure if I’m going in the right direction.

Three

If you’re lost and trying to find an art school, you might as well forget about asking anyone who looks normal. Like moms pushing their babies in expensive-looking strollers, people in suits, groups of old ladies on their way to have brunch, or even police officers. That’s gotten me nothing but confused looks and indifferent shoulder shrugs, and now I’m twenty minutes late for orientation and completely disoriented. You can’t see for long distances when you’re lost in the middle of a city. There’s no horizon — just stacks of buildings interrupting your sight line. It’s like running through a maze with tall, tall walls.

I kneel down on the sidewalk and open up my bag to try to find something with the exact address printed on it. The salty smell of bacon drifts over and makes my stomach growl. I wish I hadn’t skipped breakfast.

I’m a couple feet away from a shiny metal food truck parked next to a fire hydrant. A few people are in line — two construction workers and an old lady with a dog. There’s also a very, very cute guy who’s watching me. He’s tall and lean, in a loose pair of dirty jeans and a VACATION RHODE ISLAND! tee that looks real . . . not like one you’d buy new in the mall. His hair locks in thick curls that look like rollatini pasta, and are almost the very same color of his skin — a rich, chocolaty brown.

I smile quickly at him and go back to looking through my papers. But as I shift my weight up off my knees and the rough pavement, the breeze catches the papers and a couple of them flutter out of my bag and into the air.

Luckily, the cute boy steps off the line and grabs them for me. He actually has to jump in the air for one, and his shirt lifts up from his waistband, revealing a very flat stomach, a stretch of gray elastic band from his Calvins, and a couple of star tattoos across his hip bones.

“I’m sorry,” I say, heated. “I made you lose your place in line.”

“No problem,” he says with a smile. “Coffee can wait.” But I’m not so sure. He looks half asleep, and a bit of toothpaste flakes off the left corner of his mouth. “Are you lost?”

“Is it that obvious?” I say, still digging frantically. “Ow!” My fingertip gets sliced on the edge of a paper. I squeeze the tip to stop the burn, and it bleeds a deep red drop.

“Maybe you just need coffee. I’m always lost without coffee.” He looks down at his sneakers. “Can I buy you a cup?”

It’s sweet how awkward he is. I can tell by his refusal to make eye contact and the worried look on his face that this is probably the first time he’s ever done something like this. And it’s painfully clear that it’s the first time I’ve ever been asked by a cute stranger if I want some coffee, since I’m so surprised by the question that my answer comes out as “Yes?”

“It’s okay if you’d rather have tea,” he says. “I mean, I’ll still want to buy you a cup if you prefer tea. Even if I don’t personally understand it.”

I personally don’t understand drinking a hot beverage on a humid summer morning, but I seriously doubt this silver cart makes anything close to a frozen peppermint mocha. Whatever. Suffering through a few sips will be totally worth it for this guy. “Coffee would be great,” I say. “Milk and sugar, please.”

He acts like he’s a waiter writing on a pad. “Milk and sugar, coming up.”

While he returns to the silver truck and my heart skips all over my body, I finally find my orientation packet. “Thank goodness!” I say, and when he returns with two steaming cups, I triumphantly show him the bunch of red papers with the words PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF FINE ART printed on them in a big bold font. “Can you tell me how to get here?”

“Oh, sorry!” The boy takes a step back, and suddenly notices the bags of art supplies at my feet. “You’re a summer student?” His eyebrows pop up, like that wasn’t at all what he was expecting. He is now very much awake.

I nod, though I don’t get what he has to be sorry for. “Do you know where the university is? I’m so late.” Then my cell phone rings loud in my bag. It’s a lame beeping version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” that Meg downloaded for me as a joke one time when I was in the bathroom. We’ve always laughed at it, but now, in front of this boy, it makes me feel incredibly lame.

I fumble to ignore the call. “My mom,” I tell him. I don’t know why. “She’s checking in on me. I think she’s nervous because I’m in the city all by myself.” And then I laugh, but it sounds so uncomfortable, I close my mouth and decide never to speak again.

“Interesting,” he says, with a teasing sort of grin. “No need to stress. It’s just around the corner on your left.”

He hands over my coffee, and I’m not sure what to do. I’d really love to stay. But I really have to go.

He makes up my mind for me.

“Maybe I’ll see you around sometime,” he says. “After all, you know where I get my coffee in the morning. That’s practically like knowing where I live.”

I point to the intersection. “I guess that makes us neighbors,” I say, and take off, grinning. A cute boy was just interested in me. That never, ever happens in Cherry Grove. People know each other too well there, so much so that surprises never really happen.

As soon as I step into the crosswalk and glance to my right, I see the Philadelphia College of Fine Art, all massive and stone and old like a castle, occupying almost an entire city block. It’s not what I imagined at all. When I had pictured a college, I thought about a big green lawn, kids outside playing Frisbee, a real campus. It’s a bit jarring, seeing it sandwiched between the sleek architecture of the surrounding silvery skyscrapers.

A bunch of signs lead the way through a set of red wooden doors. I have to push on them a couple times before they open into a huge atrium, with a glass ceiling and three levels of catwalks running along the sides.

The noise inside is deafening. High school kids are everywhere, bright flashes of color and personality, meandering from registration table to registration table, filling out permission slips, getting their temporary IDs laminated, picking up the keys to their dorm rooms, and not-so-subtly sizing each other up. Rows and rows of metal folding chairs are set up in the middle of the atrium, facing a low stage and podium. The seats are almost all filled.

A few older kids — students who are actually enrolled in this college, I guess — stare down from the catwalks, underneath a big WELCOME PRE-COLLEGE STUDENTS banner, and laugh at the whole crazy scene.

And it is crazy.

Two boys in striped shirts like Bert and Ernie are hugging and crying. They look like they are mid-good-bye. One boy fishes a red marker out of his pocket and draws a heart inside the other boy’s palm. It makes them both cry harder.

Next to them, a chubby Asian girl with blue-black hair, dressed in a high-neck beige lace dress that looks incredibly out of season for the last week of June, allows her mom to wipe some tomato-y lipstick from the corners of her mouth with a tissue while she taps away on her mini video game player.

A couple of feet ahead, a tall boy with an asymmetrical haircut and swollen acne awkwardly navigates the crowd toting three canvases — one under each arm and one strapped to his back. He swats people with the corners, unintentionally branding them with touches of wet pink paint.

I take small steps backward until I’m pressed against the wall. The place is crawling with the types of people you find huddled in groups of two or three at a typical high school. I don’t see anyone here who looks like me, and that feels strange. There are always people like me around. We are everywhere.

A hand squeezes my shoulder. It’s a slender lady wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard marked STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES. She seems like a regular nurse, except for her orange Afro and the lei of hibiscus tattoos ringing her collarbone. “Sweetie, do you have your schedule and your ID? We’re about to get started.”

I shake my head. “I — my train — ”

“Do you know who your roommate is?”

“No. I mean, I’m a commuter. I’m not staying in the dorms.”

“Breathe. Breathe. Breathe,” she chants in a warm, friendly voice. “Come with me.”

I follow the nurse down through the crowds. She leads me to several tables, helps me get checked in, and fills my arms with even more papers and information. I’m glad she’s taking charge of the situation, because I can’t seem to concentrate on anything. There’s too much to look at.

There are way more kids here than I expected, at least two hundred total. Everyone seems to have at least one creative detail on them, something that shows that they belong here. I’m plain by comparison. It’s embarrassing, how much effort it took for me to wear something that looks exactly like a blank piece of paper. No wonder no one makes eye contact with me.

Though it’s not like the other students are mingling all that much, either. Everyone seems cautious and careful around each other. The only people who are enjoying themselves are the parents. They talk and laugh in little groups, an Aha! look on their faces, like suddenly, in this context, their weird kids make sense.

“Please take a seat, everyone, and we’ll get you off to classes as soon as possible,” a low female voice booms out of a microphone I can’t see from where I’m standing.

“What’s your name?” a boy asks me from behind a table. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says STAFF, and his black hair pokes out like carpet fringe from underneath a plaid yarmulke, covered in crudely sewn yellow lightning bolt patches.

“Emily Thompson.” A flashbulb pops in my face.

He thumbs through a file box. “Okay, here’s your schedule, Emily. And here’s your ID.” He hands me a stack of papers and a warm, plastic square. My eyes are closed in the picture, like I’m sleeping. “Go ahead and find a seat.”

There are not many empty chairs. The ones that are vacant seem uncomfortably sandwiched between people who lean across them to whisper to each other. I get a hollow feeling in my chest. If I had gotten here earlier, maybe I would have met some people already.

Maybe.

I walk toward the back of the atrium and take the very last chair in the row. The section reserved for parents.

A short woman with stringy black hair and burgundy lipstick stands behind the podium on the stage. She beams a smile out into the crowd. Even from this distance, her teeth look gray and dull, like she is definitely a smoker. Of cigars.

“Hello, students. My name is Dr. Tobin, and I am the Program Director of the Pre-College Summer Art Institute. I want to welcome you to Philadelphia and to six weeks filled with personal growth and artistic discovery!” She’s leaning in too close to the microphone, and her deep voice vibrates along my metal chair. “I want to begin by going over the housing rules for the summer for those of you staying in the dorms.”

The funny thing is, there are very few rules for her to go over. Obviously, no drugs or alcohol are allowed, but students who live in the dorms can come and go from the campus as they please until 1:00 a.m., when curfew begins. It sounds pretty good, considering the new strict summer curfew Mom’s imposed.

I actually considered living on campus when Ms. Kay first gave me the brochure, but now I’m glad I decided against it. The dorms don’t have air-conditioning, and the beds are probably not nearly as comfortable as mine. And what would I actually do here all by myself at night? I’d miss home too much.

Dr. Tobin asks everyone to look at their schedules. Mine is damp and wrinkled from being squeezed in my hand. I have Drawing on Tuesdays and Mixed Media on Thursdays. Those were my first-choice classes, which is pretty nice.

“Classes will run from nine until four-thirty Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesdays are reserved for program-wide field trips to museums and creative destinations all over the city. Everyone will be assigned designated studio space where you can store your supplies, and you should feel free to use the campus on non-program days to continue working on your projects.”

I’m relieved to hear we get studio space, because the muscle between my shoulder blades is throbbing from carrying all my bags and I definitely don’t want to lug this stuff in for every class. But I doubt I’ll be coming into Philadelphia on the days I don’t have class.

“Finally, the summer program will culminate in a gallery reception, where student work will be displayed for faculty, friends, and family. There will be a special section where the best student work will be displayed, juried by faculty consensus.” Dr. Tobin clears her throat dramatically. “But I want to remind you all that art is not about competition. It’s about self-expression and discovery. I hope you will allow yourself the opportunity to explore your own creativity, to strip yourself of the hesitations and insecurities that might have limited you in your high school, and create in an environment free of judgments and established social mores. Here, you are among your true peers, people who value originality.”

It’s sort of nice, what Dr. Tobin is saying. From the looks of everyone around me, you can tell these kids take art seriously. It’s not a joke like Ms. Kay’s class. These kids actually care. They want to be here. And, honestly, I do, too.

“Now, please welcome Joe Farker, our Director of Campus Security. . . .”

Two parents want to get into my row. When I stand up to let them pass, I notice something outside the glass doors behind me. There’s a girl lying flat on the ground, like she’s dead.

Weird.

Her sea-foam jellies have bits of glitter on them, casting small rainbows on the concrete. She’s wearing a navy cap-sleeved dress, and the elastic pinches in on the flesh of her upper arms, making rings much pinker than the rest of her pale body. The dress is covered in tiny white polka dots and reminds me of something I wore on the first day of school when I was a kid. The stringy, raw ends of a pair of gray shorts, probably cut from a man’s suit pants, peek out from underneath the hem. The girl puts a dark brown cigarette to her lips, flashing five colorful rhinestone rings — a gaudy one for each finger, jewelry you’d find in a glass dish on an old lady’s dresser. After a second or two, she lets the smoke out in a cloud.

The most striking thing about this girl is her hair — brown, blunt, and cut in a pageboy falling just past her chin, with bangs straight across her forehead. But there’s also a bright streak of electric pink underneath. That thick pink strand is about five inches longer than her brown hair, and it cascades over her shoulder and onto the concrete like a Kool-Aid waterfall.

My eyes wander back to her face, only to see that the girl is now staring at me from the ground. Like, obviously staring at me. She lifts one hand and waves, a fluttering gesture, demure like a beauty queen.

I quickly turn away and lower myself back in my chair.

Dr. Tobin returns to the podium. “Okay, students. It is now ten o’clock. You will be free to finish up the registration process, say your good-byes to your parents, and get some lunch. All of you will be expected to report to your first classes by twelve-thirty. If you have questions or need any more information, please report to my office on the third floor.” She claps her hands together. “Have an exhilarating first day!”

Everyone stands up and scatters. I wait a few seconds before moving, just in case that girl is still watching me. As I lean over to grab my stuff, I glance outside. I don’t see her.

I walk outside to the courtyard between the east and west dorms. Everyone’s looking down at the ground. Pointing. Smiling. The girl has traced shadows all over the pavement in smooth lines of colored chalk — a tree, a bush, a statue of a stone head perched on a big marble pedestal, a trash can. The sun has already shifted the shadows just outside her lines.

By the number of tracings, it’s a safe bet that this girl probably didn’t go to orientation at all, if she’s even a student here. She was outside by herself the whole time, making art.

My phone rings. It’s my mom again, but I still don’t answer. Instead, I walk the edges of the shadow outlines the girl has drawn, careful like I’m on a tightrope. Other people around me do the same. Someone’s mom asks a security guard who did this. He shrugs and calls maintenance on his radio, telling them to bring a hose. He doesn’t get that the lady wasn’t complaining. He doesn’t get it at all.

I try to line myself up to where the girl was when she waved at me. There, her outline is traced on the ground. It’s different from the kind you see police draw around dead bodies — there’s detail and depth to it. I can see the wrinkles of her clothes, the fringe of her choppy hair, features I never thought possible to capture with sidewalk chalk.

When no one is looking, I step inside the lines. My shadow doesn’t come close to filling it up.

Four

On my way out of the university cafeteria, I accidentally bump into a thin, frail girl hovering over the food bar.

The force knocks the serving tongs out of her hand and into a nearby tray of thick, mayonnaisey tuna salad. Splats fly everywhere. One clump hits my capris, just above the knee.

“Oh! I’m sorry,” I say, and then catch myself staring into the girl’s take-out box with fear and concern. Strips of fake bacon are piled high. They look like plastic play food, technicolored in an entirely unconvincing way.

“The vegan entrée has been contaminated!” the girl screeches to no one in particular, but glares at me through her thick shaggy hair like I’ve just slaughtered a pig right in front of her. A cafeteria lady in a white apron and black hairnet rushes over and pushes me out of the way.

Oh well. So much for good first impressions.

I walk through a door, up a set of stairs, and out onto the street. Philadelphia feels huge. If I squint, I can see City Hall in the distance, dead center in the middle of Broad Street. It’s a really ornate building, a stone-colored wedding cake. A statue of William Penn is perched at the very top, watching over the whole city. It was probably the tallest building at one time, but now it’s dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers.

My very first class, Drawing, is held in the main art building directly across the street from the atrium. It’s a totally uninspiring location, where you might expect the office of an accountant, except that it has a huge, empty gallery space in the lobby. I walk to the corner and wait for the traffic light to change while other kids dart across the street when they see holes in the oncoming traffic.

I flash the security guard the college ID dangling around my neck, even though he’s too busy talking on his cell phone to notice, and head down a long hallway to a set of elevators. There’s a bunch of people already waiting. I delicately squeeze my way onto an elevator and reach out to press the button for the seventh floor, but it’s already lit up. As the doors shut, a girl with a corncob blond pixie cut, tight pencil-leg jeans, and a red silk scarf knotted around her neck runs toward us. No one holds the door for her, though, and she looks annoyed as it closes right in her face.

The elevator moves incredibly slow. I’m stuck in the corner near the buttons, and can’t see the people behind me. But I hear two iPods playing different songs in a musical mess, and someone smells like they haven’t learned what deodorant is yet.

I think the first stop is a photography floor, because the chemicals make my eyes water as soon as the doors open. That, and one of the kids who steps off the elevator turns around and, with his camera dangling mid-chest, takes a picture of us.

“Idiot,” a boy next to me mutters as the doors close. His long hair is split in two pigtails. Fake white plastic flowers are tucked into each elastic.

I try not to stare. Maybe he’s sweet or secretly good at sports, but I can’t help but wonder how exactly a boy like that survives in high school.

By the time we stop on the seventh floor, there are three kids left in the elevator beside me. I smile at one freckly girl with thick tentacles of auburn dreadlocks. She nods her head at me, not exactly in a friendly way, but not meanly either.

It’s slightly encouraging.

Room 713 is a large studio that smells of turpentine. There are twelve sets of easels and stools arranged in a circle, surrounding a tall pedestal made out of stacked white plywood boxes in the very center. The long tables across the back of the room are covered with half-finished assignments from the undergrad students — heads carved out of clay, wooden sculptures, plaster casings.

Shadow Girl is near the window, sitting on a stool. She scrapes her purple nail polish off with her teeth. Her shorts are dusted in chalk powder of all different colors, like the clouds in a summer sunset.

I wonder if Shadow Girl knows how many people were looking at her tracings in the courtyard. But I’m not going to tell her. I don’t want her to remember that I was staring, so I put my head down and walk quickly past her.

She grabs my arm and pulls me to stop.

“I love your shoes,” she tells me. “They’re like . . . princess slippers or something.”

“They’re not mine,” I admit. Though as soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret it. I should have said they were. After all, I do have practically the same pair.

She presses her lips together. “Umm, all right then,” she says, followed by an awkward laugh, because I didn’t leave much room to expand the conversation. “Well . . . make sure you pass along my compliment to their rightful owner.”

“Okay.” I stand there for a second, in case Shadow Girl says something else. Only, she doesn’t, and neither do I, so we just kind of stare at each other. Then I head toward a seat on the other side of the room. It isn’t until I sit that I realize I’ve been holding my breath.

I unload a few supplies, like a big drawing pad and the red plastic art box that holds my pencils and brushes. Glancing around the room, I notice I’m the only one with brand-new, untouched materials — paintbrushes wrapped in plastic, tubes of paint that need to be peeled open, unsharpened pencils. I’m a screaming newbie. I decide not to put on my smock, since no one else is wearing one.

Five more minutes and the classroom is practically full. Pixie Girl with the red scarf enters the room huffing and puffing, I guess because she had to take the stairs. She climbs onto a stool right next to Shadow Girl. Their eyes scan each other briefly before they nod and roll their eyes, as if they’ve just shared a silent joke. They are the only ones in class not wearing their IDs on the provided lanyards. They seem like they should be friends.

I’m sad that there doesn’t seem to be the person like me here, the person I am so obviously supposed to hang out with while I’m here. Someone like Meg. But someone like Meg wouldn’t exist in a place like this.

I grab my phone and pound out a quick text, just to tell Meg hello. I wonder what she’s doing right now. Maybe lying by her pool, working on her tan. Actually, since it’s Tuesday, she’s probably walked to the town farmer’s market to get some of that grilled summer corn we both love. Meg likes plain butter on hers, but I use paprika and garlic salt. Maybe Rick took the afternoon off to go with her. Probably.

The teacher comes in, a tall, skinny old man wearing frumpy brown linen pants and a raggedy black T-shirt. His head is full of wild white hair, jutting out from all angles like the bristles of an old toothbrush. A tall boy follows him, toting two bags of supplies — and holding a very familiar cup of coffee.

He spots me right away and stops at my easel.

“Wow,” he says, shaking his head. “You’re in my class.”

“Yeah,” I say. The realization makes my eyes go wide.

I accidentally flirted with my teacher this morning.

The boy still has toothpaste in the corner of his mouth, but it doesn’t detract from his smile one bit. But when the older teacher glances back at him, the smile drops right off his face.

Shadow Girl and Pixie Girl both stare at me, shocked. I feel their eyes.

My phone twitters, a charm of beeps that sounds like glitter. A signal I’ve gotten a text. I’m sure it’s from Meg, probably saying hi back. But it’s not worth it to check, because now everyone’s staring at me. The boy winces, like I’m in for it.

“Rule number one! No cell phones on in my class!” the old man barks. He’s got a bit of an accent. Maybe Russian. I can’t tell. “Absolutely none!”

“Sorry,” I whisper and shut off my phone.

The old man walks in the center of our easels, climbs up on the platform, and stares at us with big dark eyes. He signals for the tall boy to shut the door. He does not smile. “I am Mr. Frank.”

We murmur hello back to Mr. Frank. He still doesn’t smile. In fact, he looks pained to be here.

“I will be your drawing teacher for the summer.” His annoyance with us breaks as he gestures to the tall boy, warmly. “This is Yates, my teaching assistant. Yates has just completed his freshman year at this college and will also be giving you instruction and answering questions.” Yates has his back turned to us, unloading Mr. Frank’s supplies. “I would like to start today by going around the room. Tell me a little about yourself and your goals for this class.”

It’s too much to process at once. His name is Yates. And if Yates just finished his freshman year, he’s probably only nineteen. I’ll turn seventeen in September. Two years older than me isn’t much of an age difference at all. But the fact that he’s my teacher is a big difference. Huge, even.

Mr. Frank looks in my general direction and snaps me back to attention. “Who would like to go first?” he asks.

My stomach flips. I hate speaking in public. I’m way better with images than I am with words.

Shadow Girl raises her hand, the only volunteer. Everyone in the room sits up and pays attention. I know I do.

“My name’s Fiona Crawford, and I’m from the glamorously named Fish Town.” Her voice is drowsy and raspy, but it projects like she’s used to addressing a crowd. “I’ll be a senior next year and I need some traditional pieces for portfolio reviews so I can apply to art school.”

Mr. Frank takes a sip of coffee from a Styrofoam cup. “Traditional as opposed to what?”

Fiona smirks. I can’t exactly tell if she’s annoyed that she has to explain herself, or happy that she gets to keep talking. “My work is mainly guerrilla meets performance, so it’s impossible to document.”

“You can take pictures. That’s entirely acceptable for a portfolio.” Mr. Frank looks for the next person to speak.

“Pictures?” Fiona’s face curdles. “A picture can never be as meaningful as the actual experience.” She arches her back into a stretch. It’s almost flirtatious. “I’d rather not show the piece at all, if it’s going to be some weak, half-assed version. So yeah, just set me up with some fruit in a bowl and maybe a ceramic pitcher, or whatever. A couple of still lifes and I’ll be good to go.”

Mr. Frank raises his coffee to his mouth and considers this. We all stay quiet. I don’t know about anyone else here, but I’ve never heard a person say assed before in a class. When he lowers the cup, he reveals the smallest smile.

The class collectively shifts its weight. Fiona’s answer is a lot to live up to.

Mr. Frank continues. “How many of you are going into your senior year of high school?” About half of our class raise their hands, including me and Pixie Girl. “Well, by the end of our six weeks together, you should all have more than a few portfolio-quality pieces. And the rest of you will have quite a jump on putting together something for admissions.”

I haven’t ever considered going to college for art. Meg and I are looking at Trenton State. Her grades are much better than mine, but hopefully we’ll both get in. I worry that maybe this drawing class is going to be more advanced or serious than someone like me, someone with no experience, is ready for.

Pixie Girl goes next. “I’m Robyn, and I’m from northern New Jersey. But it’s practically New York City,” she adds quickly, “because I can see the Empire State Building from my bedroom window. My parents own a gallery in Chelsea.” Robyn’s eyes stop on Mr. Frank, probably to see if he is impressed. If he is, he doesn’t show it. “They travel through Europe most of the summer and I get shipped off to Fine Art day care.” I’m surprised to hear Robyn talk in such a blasé way, like she’s already over this place. I guess when your parents actually own a real art gallery, these programs seem a lot like Ms. Kay’s class. “Anyhow, I’d like to work on developing a more critical eye, so I can express my opinions about art better. I plan on running my own gallery one day.”

“Well, we will be doing a lot of discussions and critiques. All of you will be expected to articulate an opinion on what your peers are producing.”

Great. I imagine myself hanging up a bad drawing and standing there, blindfolded, like I’m in front of a firing squad. Ms. Kay was nice about not forcing our class to show pieces we weren’t happy with. I have a sneaking suspicion Mr. Frank won’t be as forgiving.

We continue to go around the room. The rest of the kids in my class seem average compared to Fiona and Robyn, which puts me just the smallest bit at ease. Most are from the East Coast, but one guy is from Arizona. There’s a girl from Helsinki who speaks really bad English and I don’t think anyone understands her answers.

I notice that Fiona looks a little bored while the other people talk. Not in a mean way, but where she kind of looks over your head because she’s thinking about something more interesting than what you’re saying. Robyn keeps leaning in and whispering things in Fiona’s ear, jokes to get her attention.

When it’s my turn, it’s like I can’t help but want to impress them, for whatever reason. But I also already know that’s not going to happen.

My mouth opens. It’s so dry. “My name is Emily Thompson. I’m from Cherry Grove.” That’s the easy part. My smile fades and my mind goes as white as the paper up on my easel.

Mr. Frank clears his throat. “And why are you here?” He asks it not like he’s interested in my answer, but more like he’s feeding me lines I should already know.

Fiona glances at me, as she braids and unbraids her long pink waterfall of hair.

“Uhh . . .” All the answers that flood my head are ones I wouldn’t dare speak out loud. That this is the only way I could come up with to make my summer less boring, because I don’t have a boyfriend like my best friend. That art was the only high school class I got an A in. None of these seem like good enough answers, even if they are all true.

I end up shrugging my shoulders. It’s the best I can do.

Almost instantly, Robyn leans into Fiona, pushing that long pink lock away from her ear so she can whisper something about me. Then Robyn laughs. Loud.

I stare at the paint splatters on the floor. Even if I’m nothing special in Cherry Grove, no one laughs at me. I do enough right to keep that from happening.

“We’re all set, Mr. Frank,” Yates tells him quietly, a much-needed break to the awkwardness. I’ve made a fool of myself in front of him. He slips a small black notebook into Mr. Frank’s hands.

“Okay.” Mr. Frank stands up. “How many of you keep a sketchbook?”

A few kids raise their hands, including Fiona, though hers seems to rise above the rest. Robyn raises hers, too, but a few seconds later. I sit on my hands and enjoy the weight of my body, the pressure on my fingers, like a punishment. I’ve never kept a sketchbook. I’ve only doodled in the margins of my lined notebooks, when I got bored in school.

“For this class, I am requiring everyone to keep a sketchbook, which I want you to think of as a visual diary,” Mr. Frank continues. “Except that one entry per day will not do. Rather, I want you to catalog your life, your point of view in the pages. I want you to take pause in the small, beautiful moments where you’d otherwise push on through with your normal life.” He locks eyes with Fiona. “Would you mind if I took a look?” he asks, taking careful, slow steps over to her.

“Absolument,” Fiona says in a pitch-perfect French accent, and digs deep in her tote bag, which is covered in cartoon owls. “So long as you don’t narc me out to the cops.”

What?

“I don’t feel comfortable sharing my sketchbook,” Robyn says, even though no one asked to see it. “Mine is very personal.”

“Well,” Mr. Frank says, “you should begin a new one, then, because I will expect you to show me drawings each week.”

Fiona pulls out a thick blue book that looks handmade, stitched together with red yarn. It’s stuffed full, the way my binders get by the end of the school year, with a black band wrapped around the cover to force it closed. As she opens it up and hands it over to Mr. Frank, a few pieces of ripped paper and what looks like confetti fall to the floor. She climbs down from the stool and picks them up, like they are valuable. He flips through a few pages. Inside are lots of sketchy pencil drawings, stickers, pieces of fabric. I wish I could see better, but my easel is in the way. Robyn seems especially interested. She’s practically climbed on top of her stool to get a better look.

“A visual diary will help you, as artists, become more familiar and comfortable with the way you, and you alone, see things. I don’t want you to just observe, I want you to obsess. Your point of view, your voice, will be what makes your art special and unique, so I hope you’ll all take this assignment seriously.” Mr. Frank hands the sketchbook back to Fiona and smiles. “Wonderful.”

“Thanks,” she says, not even the slightest bit embarrassed by his praise. More like she hears those kinds of compliments all the time.

Even though I’m totally intimidated, I’m also inspired. I’ve never had a special place to draw. I’ve never thought about capturing my world. Lately, I’ve only thought of escaping it.

“And now, on to our first lesson. Mastering the human form is undoubtedly the most essential part of your training as an artist. These skills will serve you in all other media, be it photography, sculpture, painting, jewelry, or what have you. Here, unlike with your sketchbooks, creative expression is not encouraged. Rather, I will push you to be as exact and accurate as you possibly can. You must know the rules before you can break them.”

I bite the inside of my cheek. This is so different from Ms. Kay’s art class. She was much goofier, and always encouraged us to be open to mistakes and happy accidents. Sometimes, she’d even tell us to draw with our eyes closed. Now I feel the pressure to be good. Better than good, if possible, to prove I belong here.

As Mr. Frank continues, a woman emerges from behind a canvas curtain slung in the corner of the room that I did not notice before. She’s maybe my mom’s age, wearing a plum satin kimono robe very loosely tied at her waist. Her silver-streaked hair is spun into two tight buns behind her ears. She has no shoes on. Her toenails are long and polished an acidic orange.

Yates moves quickly around the room, pulling down the shades.

Mr. Frank hops off the platform. “Lily, I’m looking for something not terribly difficult. Twenty minutes and then we’ll have a break.”

Lily nods and climbs up. In a flash, her robe falls to the floor. She’s completely naked and very, very pale. You can see most of her veins, like little blue rivers and streams on a map. She sits down, twists her back and lifts her chin up to the ceiling.

A few people, including myself, giggle. For the first time I remember that I’m in a room full of teenagers. And I’m not the only one who seems to look to Fiona for her reaction. It’s like everyone turns their heads her way. But she’s not laughing or smiling or rolling her eyes like the rest of us. She’s already drawing.

Mr. Frank takes an egg timer and spins the dial around. It starts ticking. Slowly. “For this first drawing, I’d like to get a sense of your skill level. Please just capture the form at its most basic. We shall, obviously, progress from there.” He claps his hands. “Begin.”

The pencils of the students around me fly over their papers. I gaze ever so slightly above the edge of my drawing pad. Just look and get the shock over with. The woman’s boobs are huge and hang heavy off her slightly lumpy frame. And her nipples are erect because it’s so cold in here. Is Mr. Frank going to want us to draw nipples? Because I seriously don’t think I can do that.

I’ve never seen anyone else naked in real life, definitely not an adult, except for the time everyone went skinny-dipping in Billy Barker’s hot tub after New Year’s. Rick invited us to the party after he and Meg first started talking. Everyone was game for it, except for Meg and me. Luckily, it was dark and we couldn’t really see anyone. Not that we were trying to look. Rick didn’t try to make Meg go in or anything. Instead, he stayed with her on the chaise lounge and they talked about school and stuff. I sat high and dry at the picnic table and blacked out the teeth of the models in the J.Crew catalog.

With the way she’s twisting, if I lean to my left, I can’t see the model’s private parts at all. The girl from Helsinki across the room probably doesn’t see anything else but the private parts. The model’s got a bit of a belly, round and plump, and some love handles that hide the shape of her hip bones. I have a perfect view of her butt crack, before it smashes into the base of the pedestal.

Mr. Frank is suddenly behind me, his shadow the only thing darkening my white sheet of paper. “What is your name again?”

Everyone glances my way. Of course he hasn’t remembered. “Emily,” I say.

“Emily, start with the spine. Always build from the spine.”

I pick up one of my pencils and press it to the paper halfway up the page. I try to start drawing but the pencil point is so sharp, it pushes off the paper like it doesn’t want to listen to me. So I just hold it there, without moving, until my arm prickles from lack of blood flow.

“Hey,” a smooth voice comes from behind. Yates. “Which pencil are you using?” His breath smells icy, like a fresh piece of gum.

I roll it between my fingers until I see the foil stamp. “Umm . . . the HB?” I have absolutely no idea what that means.

“Use the 6B,” Yates instructs. Then, before he walks away, he whispers, “The name has to do with the softness of the lead.”

I am too embarrassed to say thank you, so I just take out the 6B from my art box, even though it looks absolutely the same as the pencil I was just holding. I raise my hand and position myself . . . and the point sinks right into the paper. It’s soft, like butter left out on the kitchen counter.

I try to get into my drawing, but I think I am overthinking. My lines aren’t smooth — they’re sharp and jagged and impatient. My eyes bounce between the model and my paper so fast it makes me dizzy. I try to get everything just right. I can’t shut my brain off enough to relax, especially knowing that Mr. Frank will probably make us all share our drawings at the end of the day. It’s pretty much the most impossible situation.

What seems like seconds later, the egg timer rings and Lily excuses herself for a pee and a smoke break. The rest of the class gets up to stretch and walk around. Except Fiona, Robyn, and me. Fiona keeps drawing, staring at the empty space as if the model were still there. Robyn casually walks the room, peering at everyone’s sketches. I bite down on my pencil until I taste wood and flip to a new sheet before she has a chance to see how bad I suck.

Not like she can’t already tell.

Five

I’m not even halfway up my front steps before Meg’s sing-song call trills from across the street. “Em-i-ly!”

She bounds out of her front door, shiny hair swishing from side to side. Her arms keep her lilac slip dress from flying up past her thighs and her chunky espadrilles might as well be sneakers because of how quick she is with every step.

I feel like I’ve been gone for months. “Hey!” I say, and hold my arms out for a hug.

“Yay! You’re home!” Meg gives me a squeeze, but quickly wriggles out of it, leaving me slightly sticky from the unabsorbed cucumber-melon lotion on her skin.

“I have about a million stories to tell you,” I say, laughing as flashes of the day light up my mind. Where should I start?

“And I want to hear absolutely everything about your first day, but listen.” She’s all eager and excited. “A bunch of people are going to Dairy Queen, and Rick will be here any minute to pick us up.” She glances down. “What’s all over your pants?”

My white denim capris are smudged across the thighs with pencil lead. “Art class, remember?” My hands are dirty, too — not just on the palms, but in thick black stripes under my nails. I shove them in my pockets before she notices.

“Well, quick, go change!” She brushes a piece of hair out of my eyes. “Maybe wear that green polo dress with your pink flip-flops, or your red halter with your teeny jean skirt.” Meg is really good with clothes and she always helps me pick things out. “I have to run home and grab my purse. Hurry!”

I charge upstairs to my bedroom and quickly change into the green polo dress, because the red halter is in my hamper. I slide on my pink flip-flops. Cherry Grove feels more like home than ever. I know the rules here. I know how I’m supposed to think and act, and all that is very comforting after the day I’ve had.

At least I was able to do an okay drawing. I stopped thinking about the naked lady as a lady, and instead pretended I was drawing a statue. So that made it easier. I also just drew her torso, so I could avoid the stuff I felt was too intimate to draw. Mr. Frank said I had an “interesting composition.” I hoped that was a compliment. But the rest of the class stayed quiet during my crit, so who knows.

I run into my bathroom and scrub my hands hard and fast. Most of the dirt comes off, but not all. Hopefully, no one will notice once the sun goes down. I use hair spray to smooth down my ponytail. It smells like apples, so I don’t need perfume. But I put a little more deodorant on, because it’s really hot outside.

The beep beep beep of Rick’s truck horn blows in my open window.

I gotta go.

Rick and Meg are waiting in his red pickup truck. I get in, close the door, and cuddle myself against it to give Meg more room. But she doesn’t want it. Rick’s truck is small, and Meg seizes the opportunity to cozy up next to him.

We pass through the gates, and Meg and I wave to the security guard who mans the entrance from a white-shingled booth, made to look like a small version of the Blossom Manor it protects.

Rick waves, too, and I notice that two of his fingers, the pinky and the ring, are wrapped in white tape and unable to grip the steering wheel.

“What happened to your hand?” I ask him. The edges of the tape are frayed into white strings, and the end is all jagged, like someone ripped it with their teeth.

“I was on the push mower and a rock flew up and dinged my pinky. It’s probably broken, but I’m just going to buddy-tape it like coach did for me last season when my other one got hit with a curve ball.” He holds up that hand and proudly flashes a crooked zigzag of a pinky like a trophy. “That was right before we met,” he says, and pats Meg’s thigh.

He’s talking about when Meg sprained her ankle jumping the horse in gym class. I had put Meg’s arm around my shoulder and tried to walk her to the nurse myself, but Meg was crying and afraid that she was going to slip and fall if she hopped on the linoleum floor. So Mrs. Lord called one of the boys out of the weight room to help support her other side. That was Rick. But instead of helping me, he scooped up Meg into his arms and carried her up three flights of stairs and all the way down the hall. He kept telling Meg how light she was. Like a feather. It was sweet, because Meg was actually on a diet then, not like she needed to be, and after that day, she went back to eating pizza. She sniffled back her tears and thanked him over and over for the help.

I guess I could have gone back to gym alone, but I didn’t. I just walked next to them and stayed quiet. Actually, I walked a little bit behind them. I guess we’ve been a threesome from the very start.

“So, how was your first day of school?” Meg asks, in the same voice my mom used when she picked me up. “Tell us all about it.”

I try not to get annoyed, but talking to Meg alone is much different from talking to Rick and Meg as a couple. It’s like she’s playing house, and I get to be their kid.

Rick pushes his hat up off his brow to the top of his hairline. “Were there a lot of freaky kids there?”

“Yeah, some, I guess.” There’s something about Rick’s tone I don’t like. Maybe what it implies about me. “Not too many people talked to me,” I say, like that makes it any better.

“It’s always hard on the first day.” Meg touches my arm. “What did you do in class?”

“Well . . .” I think about not telling them anything, but I’m curious to see their reactions. “I had to draw a nude model.” I say it like it was no big deal.

They both stare at me, mouths open. “Shut up!” they say in unison.

“Swear to God,” I say, and then laugh with them. Though I was definitely caught off guard by the model, I still managed to hold it together. I bet Meg and Rick would’ve freaked. It makes me feel a little better.

“Like totally nude?” Meg asks. “Was it a guy or a girl?”

“It was a woman.”

“Was she hot?” That’s Rick.

Meg slaps him on the arm.

I shake my head. “Not at all. She was old. Like a mom.”

Meg and Rick turn to each other and laugh. And then, a disturbed look crosses Rick’s face. “Will you have to draw naked guys?”

“Yeah,” I say casually, even though that never dawned on me before. “Probably.” It’s kind of funny to think that the first time I see a guy naked, it’s not going to be my boyfriend. Though maybe it’s better that way. Maybe I won’t be as nervous when it finally happens for real.

“Art is so weird,” Rick says, shaking his head. “I mean, I don’t know much about it, but some of those paintings Ms. Kay showed me two years ago were just stupid. Anyone could do that stuff.” He shakes his head again. “Sure some art is, like, unbelievable. Like the Mona Lisa. I can definitely appreciate that. But the other stuff. Paint splatters and colored squares and whatever. I just don’t get it.”

Meg laughs. “I bet half of the people who say they get that stuff actually have no clue. They just don’t want to sound dumb.”

I wonder what Meg and Rick would think of Fiona’s shadows. Sure, any three-year-old can trace with chalk, but there was something amazing about them. Like she showed something I’d never noticed was there. I want to tell them about it, but I don’t think I could explain it right. It’s just like Fiona said, I guess — the experience is the thing. Talking about it wouldn’t do it justice.

The parking lot of the Dairy Queen is packed. It’s one of the meeting places for all Cherry Grove high schoolers during the summer. Everyone eats ice cream while they plot ways to get beer and a place to drink it. On most nights they come up short on both accounts.

We pull in and park. A bunch of kids from school come by while we’re in line and say hello. Meg and I are friendly with most of the same people, but there are a few of Rick’s friends who I don’t know as well as she does. I turn and spin and nod my head and pretend to be interested in the gossip, but it’s all the same sort of stuff you hear during the year.

We eat our ice cream over by the chain-link fence, where Jimmy Carr and Chad Daly are talking. Meg always says I should like Chad Daly, but I don’t think he’s my type. He wears too much hair gel, and he never eats ice cream, even though he’s always hanging out at DQ. Instead, he orders a large Mountain Dew from the fountain and chews the straw until it barely works.

“Hey, guys,” Rick says. They slap hands, all loose and relaxed.

“So, what’s everyone up to?” Meg asks them. “Getting excited for the Babe Ruth opening game?”

Chad and Jimmy and Rick all play baseball together on the summer league. It’s the only way for them to get practice in without breaking the high school rules. Meg asks more questions, about the lineups and their pitcher’s shoulder injury. I have no idea how she learned all this stuff about baseball. I guess Rick’s explained it to her. I try to nod at appropriate times so it’s like I get it, too.

But eventually the conversations that I’m not actually participating in soften into whispers. I can’t hear people talking, or taste the vanilla ice cream in my Blizzard. That happens to me sometimes, when I get bored. When other people zone out, it’s because they’re lost in the lyrics of a song or thinking of a funny story. For most people, it’s all about words.

Not for me. I find it fun to look at something and reduce it to the small parts that make it up. Like Jenessa Wilson, leaning against the DQ counter. She’s one long line, from the top of her head, curving down her spine and along her butt, which always seems to be sticking out, and then down her long, thin legs. Jenessa’s on the cheerleading squad and a year younger than me, but I think she looks way older. She wears a lot of makeup, and you can usually see some of it, tan like caramel, smudged on the collars of her shirts. But guys love Jenessa. They throw themselves at her. Meg says that she’s actually a nice girl when you get to talking to her, but I don’t believe it. I’ve never once seen her truly smile. It always looks more like a sneer.

“Hey! Emily!” Meg says, knocking into me with an embarrassed laugh. “Come on, we’re leaving.”

Everything snaps back into normal focus. Rick is across the parking lot, unlocking the door to his truck. There’s no one else around. Jimmy and Chad are gone. I’m standing here alone, in the middle of the parking lot, all by myself. My Blizzard is almost empty.

“What’s everyone doing?”

“Nothing. Going home. You know how it is.” Meg turns toward Rick’s truck.

The night is slipping away. “Hey,” I say, and take hold of her arm. “Let’s go sneak into a movie, like we used to do.”

Meg shrugs her shoulders. “Hmm . . . maybe. You know, ever since they redid the movie theater, they have people double-checking ticket stubs. I’m dying to see that new one about the florist who falls in love with her delivery guy, but it doesn’t open until this weekend. We should just go next week. Maybe on Tuesday. I think it’s supposed to rain on Tuesday.”

“Well, we could go down to the fields and hang out there.” Someone discovered that the back door to the football equipment room never locks. We’ve snuck in there to drink beers and listen to music sometimes. It’s not all that much fun, but at least it’s something.

Meg laughs. “Didn’t you hear? Coach Heller got the locks replaced.”

“Oh.” I try to think of another possibility. I’m not ready for tonight to be over. Nothing’s even happened yet.

Meg turns and looks back at the truck. “I think we’re going to just go and watch some TV or something at Rick’s house.” She pauses briefly. “You can totally come if you want.”

It’s nice of Meg to invite me, but I will never go and watch television with her and Rick again. The last time I did that, they were either cuddled under a blanket together or disappearing upstairs to the kitchen together to get more snacks or whatever. I’d be left alone in Rick’s dark basement watching some dumb show or movie, the kind of thing you decide to “watch” when you have a boyfriend because you don’t plan on “watching” anything.

“That’s okay.” I say. “I’ve got class tomorrow anyhow. Oh! But I have to bring Claire a Blizzard or I’ll never hear the end of it when I get home. Can you give me one second?”

“Of course,” Meg says. “I’ll be in the truck.”

I run over to the counter and place my order. Across the parking lot, Meg talks to Rick in the truck. She’s saying something to him, probably that I’m not coming. Rick smiles, and they start kissing. I hold Claire’s Blizzard and walk as slow as I can. I don’t care if the ice cream melts. I’m not rushing back over there. Their night is just getting started, and mine’s about to end.

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