Like Max—well, not as extreme as Max—Harry was going to live outside the lines with the weird kids. With the freaks and ghouls, as The Smashing Pumpkins would say. Or somewhere with a really good basketball team. They probably made you wear ties at Harvard.
He turned left. Jazz Age modernist? Nah. Andy Warhol and iconic soup cans sounded better. He turned right into the other exhibit. The security guard welcomed him with an odd sideways glance.
Harry stared back. My tics offending you?
The guard looked away.
Harry scratched his chin, then stuffed his hands into his jeans pockets. This was a great space. Nothing crammed in overloading his brain. Art galleries could make his thoughts spin.
Wow! Harry peered at the sign: “Lichtenstein Water Lilies (Pink Flower). Enamel on stainless steel with painted wood frame.” Pop art with reflective bits, like a mirror. Bizarro!
And that? On the far wall, a painting of an African American dude against a gold background. He was dressed in a suit, sunglasses, and a Superman T-shirt, and the words “aint nuthin but a sandwich” were scrawled in all caps across the top. Harry took a picture on his phone, texted it to Max. Fahamu Pecou was the artist. Harry started reading the wall sign. Something about teenage drug addiction and . . . Now that was art! An Andy Warhol silkscreen of a Campbell’s tomato soup can. Awesome. He took another picture for Max.
Which way, which way? Harry turned, went back to the Pecou, and followed the far wall of the gallery. The picture of a mother and a baby caught his eye, a lithograph called Worker Woman with Sleeping Child, 1927. The kid looked peaceful, and yet the mom was watchful. Anxious. Harry remembered that expression from playgrounds and public spaces. Mom always on high alert.
As he walked through the medieval and Renaissance art and into the antiquities area, memories played: Mom losing it in the supermarket because he’d wandered off after she’d instructed him to stand still and not move; Mom frantic when he went on a dragon-slaying adventure in the park; Mom pulling him away from some dude in Target who’d said he was one cute kid.
His whole life, Mom’d had his back. And now everything was changing, and Mom was the one who needed protecting—and Dad? Dad wanted to push him out into the world and wave farewell. Home, his comfort zone, was disappearing into a sinkhole. And the future loomed like the monstrous black sculpture directly ahead—a towering nonfigure dripping scraps of black fabric, black branches, black flowers. It seemed more shadow than solid, except for the pair of black taxidermied fighting birds rising out of the middle section. Harry moved closer, transfixed by decay—a regular Dudley Dursley sucked into the Dementor’s Kiss. Dad talked about the future, but what if there was no future? What if there was nothing but fear and death?
Footsteps echoed on the wood floor behind him and disappeared around the corner. With a final glance at the sculpture and the weird shadows it cast on the wall, Harry followed Dad. But then he hung back by a still image of a boxing match. “Between Sugar Ray Robinson and Randy Turpin,” the sign said. Off to his right, Dad appeared to be writing on a piece of card.
Harry waited a few minutes, pretending to study Sugar Ray. When Dad moved off, Harry followed and stopped in front of some interactive thing called “A man is . . .” Above a small writing shelf with pencils and index cards were the words “Share Your Thoughts.” People had tacked handwritten cards to the wall. Spotting the perfect calligraphy Dad had learned with a real fountain pen was easy.
Dad had written one word. Alone.
TWENTY-TWO
In silence, they walked across the bridge and through the ivy-wrapped trees that lined their path home. Harry had pretended to sleep in the car. Felix knew it was an act—even when Harry was curled into a ball, there were telltale signs of ticcing. Felix unlocked the front door. As he turned off the alarm, Harry schlepped in and tossed down his backpack. It landed on top of the shoe cabinet.