And then again, the next night: it was one of the women from the party, on the night I almost finished the red room.
I was prepared with a wave and a whole tide of questions for her. Where are you now? Do you know where Edie went? Do you all hate me? But she didn’t stop. She smiled at me, friendly as could be, and then went on walking down the street, striding around the corner as though she was one of the standard-issue dog walkers or stroller-wielding parents. I guess I could have followed her, but I didn’t think I needed to be anywhere that she could take me.
Tonight, though, has the feeling that I’m alone. Just me and the lizards. Me and the pencil point that’s wearing down. Me and this gray sketch of an empty room—I think I’ll be able to fill it in.
“You need to get up.”
Angela doesn’t look any more prepared for the day than I do. Wonder Woman shirt and Tweety Bird pajama pants. She looked tired this whole week at school, in a way that could fool anyone else into thinking she was plain old last-month-of-school tired, but to me it’s something much grayer than that.
She sits at the foot of my bed, gazes around at all the crap I’ve got on my walls that seems irrelevant now. A sagging poster I got at the Dalí museum. An article I printed out describing a play about Mark Rothko. A small print of one of Frida Kahlo’s self-portraits. Well, maybe I’ll keep that one.
Angela says, “Mom’s made the travel plans.”
Mom sits cross-legged on the edge of the living room recliner. When she smiles up at Angela and me, I can’t help but think of how she looked when picking me up from summer camp a couple of years ago—like I’d been picturing her face for weeks, and now here she was, looking happier than I’d imagined. That’s how she looks today: like someone who has all her energy here in the room with us, rather than split between us and a hospital room in San Juan.
“Okay,” she says, “I’ve got this worked out.”
Angela and I wait.
“Looks like there’s not going to be time for you to work at the deli this summer, Mercedes,” Mom says.
I attempt a smile.
We are leaving. After school’s out, Angela and I are flying to San Juan, and then we’ll see Mom a few weeks later when she can take five days’ vacation. Angela and I are going to be in Puerto Rico most of the summer, helping clean out Abuela’s apartment, staying with our San Juan family, and trying to convince them to let us have Abuela’s dogs. And when we get back, it’ll be almost time for Angela to start tenth grade, and for me to start classes at USF. Victoria will have already left for New York.
We agreed to this. I agreed to this. But it seems a lot different now, with all the arrangements made.
“I think this will be good for both of you,” Mom says.
My knees shake. I don’t think I have looked at my knees in a long time. I mumble something about needing to get some orange juice, but there’s none in the fridge, so I wind up back in my room, on the floor, with a stained palette and some colored pencils and about half of my pencil sharpener collection surrounding me. Maybe this is the right time to work on my painting for Rex, when I’m feeling all weird and conflicted. I grab my sketchbook, and it falls open not to last night’s pencil drawing but to a few words scrawled in bright blue Sharpie marker. If you still want to work here, come see me. I need you to do a self-portrait. Lilia’s directions to me from a few weeks ago. It is the only permanent thing she left behind.
The pieces are arranged in a circle in the Sarasota Central High School courtyard, which creates either a nice communal experience of art appreciation, or an exercise in creative claustrophobia. The judges are circling, literally, and Gretchen and I hang back behind the pieces—specifically, behind Rider’s monstrous A Study in Chickens. It’s a massive canvas dotted with orange triangles and starlike patterns. Chicken beaks and feet, I guess.
“I don’t know if he was inspired by you,” Gretchen muses, “or if he completely ripped you off.”
“Eh, I wouldn’t care if he did.” I poke my head around to see the piece close up again. The beaks and feet create a dizzying effect, pulling the viewer into their pointy web. “But I think even if he got the idea from me, he came up with something totally new.”
Rider is in the middle of the circle with a bunch of girls, all of whom are pretty hot in that white-but-tan Florida-girl kind of way.
It’s noon and we’re due to hear the announcement of the winners anytime now. The heat is blazing, radiating at us from the sky and the ground, and we’ve all probably got about twenty more minutes out here before it gets to be too much. Other people are streaming in now: the underclassmen slouching around with their resigned, maybe-next-year looks on their faces, the kids from other schools, wandering around and probably wondering why our courtyard features a plaque and bench for one random kid, and the families and friends, all shiny and loud, talking about where to go to lunch after this whole mess is over.
Actually, some of those people belong to me.
Mom and Angela and Tall Jon and Victoria are all coming my way, waving, and Tall Jon points with both hands to my picture, which cowers between a metal sculpture and a watercolor portrait. Mom looks where Tall Jon is pointing. “Oh, is that it?” she says. Well, it’s better than a frown.
Angela is excited to see my latest painting out in the world. Victoria stands there looking amazing in a blue floral dress, tan sandals, and sunglasses. I saw her just yesterday, for lunch at the Dead Guy, but she seems different now, now that I know I’m leaving first. Some of our infinite possibilities are gone, plucked out of the air as they flew by.
“Well, hey, everybody,” I say.
Gretchen’s entourage moves toward mine, and the woman I remember from last year, the head of the county schools’ art departments, comes to the top step of the school and talks about how art is important, how we mustn’t shut down the schools’ art departments, how all we need to do is look around us at the talent in this courtyard. She’s right about that, but there’s more than this circle—there’s art being poured out into the world right now, in ways she can’t even imagine, and ways I can’t either. Everyone from the Red Mangrove Estate is out there now, somewhere, learning how to be themselves, learning how to bring their creations to the world.
And one of them is closer than I expected.
Edie is wandering around the back of the crowd, poking her head in here and there, looking at the art but mostly looking for me.
I duck around Mom and through Gretchen’s family and train my eyes on Edie until she spots me.
“Let’s go over to that bench,” I whisper.
And so we sit together on the Dead Guy’s bench, and the woman on the steps goes on about the art program, and I have so many questions for Edie and I figure she has the same for me. She’s wearing jeans and a red T-shirt. I’m wearing a long orange dress that Mom picked out for me. I stare at both of our shoes.
Edie takes a breath. “I know you had your reasons for doing what you did.”