I nod.
“Angela mentioned that your dad is in jail,” Robert says. “He’s actually quite close—”
“No.” I want to crawl out of my skin at the thought of my dad in an orange jumpsuit.
“Are you angry with him?” Robert asks. “I can’t imagine how you must feel, and we just want to understand—”
“I can’t do this right now,” I whisper. “Did Angela bring this up?”
“We know your mother is—”
—my head snaps back—
“I’m doing okay, aren’t I? Going to school, making friends. My grades are good.” Ish. “You’re letting me be a normal teen with… not a lot of worries, really.” I manage to smile at them. “Thank you for that.”
Somehow this turned into a heart-to-heart.
“We love having you here,” Lenora says.
I meet her gaze. “I love being here.”
She sniffles. “Okay, enough of this. As long as you’re content, and we’re doing a good job… let’s eat.”
“And you’re officially ungrounded,” Robert adds.
I beam.
“How’s your painting coming along?” he asks.
I start loading my plate. My anxiety has eased, and suddenly I’m ravenous. They’ve prepared a feast of breakfast foods.
And then I register his question and slowly set down my fork. “Oh, um…”
The answer? Not great.
Not only have I pushed it so far to the bottom of my to-do list that I’d forgotten about it, but I’m pretty sure it’s going to come out awful.
“Do you need help?”
I squint at him. “Are you allowed to help me? Being the teacher and all?”
Lenora laughs. “Probably not, but that won’t stop him.”
“I can give feedback,” he allows. “And maybe point you in the right direction. Just like I would do for every other student who asked for help.”
“I do need to work on it,” I allow. “I’ve been preoccupied.”
He nods. “I’ve noticed.”
Guilt crawls over me. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean—”
He waves. “Stop. You’re allowed. But if you want to work on it, I’m around today.”
Once we’re done eating, I run upstairs and change into clothes I don’t mind getting paint on. I need to figure out exactly how I’m going to capture Caleb. He’s a riddle I haven’t found the answer to yet, always shifting pieces and parts. A mirage.
I cart down my canvas, my box of paints, and brushes under my arm. Robert has already laid out newspaper on the dining room table, along with a small easel.
He comes in as I’m setting up.
“Do you know why I picked oil paints for this assignment?” he asks.
I shrug, staring at the vague outline of Caleb. “Because it’s a difficult medium, and you wanted to challenge us?”
He nudges me, shaking his head. “Because it’s forgiving.”
I tilt my head. We’ve been working with a bunch of different paints—watercolor, acrylic, oil. I haven’t picked a favorite.
“You make a mistake? Go over it. Erase it. Hell, do a painting and then repaint it the next day. You can’t do that with watercolors.”
“Ah.”
“You’ve barely touched the surface here, Margo,” he says. “You’ve painted an interestingly mute background… and that’s it.”
That’s all I had the nerve to do last time Caleb and I sat down together.
Robert leans his hip on the table, meeting my eyes. “You don’t need him in front of you to paint him. In fact, I think you’d capture his essence better when you’re not looking at him.”
He leaves me alone while I stare at the canvas. Sooner or later, I’ll have to start.
I take my time putting the paints on my palette, preparing my brushes, lining up the charcoal and turpentine. I mix a few different colors together, trying to find the right shade to match Caleb’s skin.
But nothing is perfect, so I just…
Put a stroke on the page.
So what if it isn’t beautiful? He’s not beautiful—not on the inside. He’s broken, just like me. It comes out in the way the colors clash on the page. I take Robert’s advice and redo the background. The blues and purples I had originally painted, trying to go for a nice look, don’t work.
His jaw comes to life with dark slashes.
I leave his eyes blank for now. I’m tempted to paint them completely black, honestly. Yet, that wouldn’t quite do.
“Wow,” Robert says over my shoulder.
I twist around. “How am I doing?”
“Fantastic emotion.” He leans closer. “Once this dries, you can go back with an artist’s eye and clean up some of the lines. Make every stroke purposeful.”
I nod and glance at the clock. I’ve been sitting here for two hours.
“What do you have planned for his eyes? And lips?”
I shrug. “I haven’t decided.” I can’t see it yet.
He chuckles. “That boy is in trouble.”
“I think I’m the one in trouble.” I stare at Caleb’s face. It isn’t exactly in his likeness—it’s a little too abstract for that. Plus, there are the blank gaps: his eyes, his lips, his eyebrows. To capture the scowl or make him smile…
“Speaking of,” Robert says, going to the window. “He just pulled up.”
“Distract him!” I grab the canvas. “I need to hide this!”
He chuckles as I dash around, but he distracts Caleb long enough for me to get it put away. Caleb walks into the dining room. I’m cleaning up my paints. Robert showed me how to preserve them, covering the palette with plastic wrap to keep the air away from the paints.
“Working on our project?” he asks.
I grin. “Yep.”
He makes a show of looking around the room. “Where is it?”
“Hiding from your nosiness,” I retort. I brush my hair off my face and sigh. “What’s up?”
“Didn’t you say you were ungrounded today?”
“Did I say that?”
He lifts one shoulder, smirking at me. “Not sure where else I could’ve heard it, love.”
“Maybe that’s true.”
I try to slip past him, but he moves too fast. He frames me in against the wall, just out of sight of Robert. I know he’s eavesdropping on the other side of the wall.
“You running from me?”
“No,” I breathe.
He hums. “I think you are. Let’s change that.”
“How?”
His fingers dig into my hip. “Come to the masquerade ball with me.”