“Yeah.”
“But this . . . whatever it is you’re doing here . . . it doesn’t seem like you.”
“It is me, though.” I look out over the crowd. “It’s not everything about me, but it’s part of me. My piece very possibly sucks, but I’m glad that everyone here gets to see it, as weird at that sounds. I’m glad that you can come here to see it, too.”
“I wasn’t planning on staying,” Edie says.
“You can, though.”
The names start. Four honorable mentions, and Rider is among them.
“Chickens.”
“Chickens?” Edie looks at me sideways.
“You have no idea of the artistic potential of chickens,” I say.
She smiles.
“And third place goes to Mercedes Moreno, a senior at Sarasota Central, for her painting A Moment in Red.”
Edie nudges me off the bench. “Red, huh?”
“You just never know,” I say.
Angela, Vic, Mom, and Tall Jon didn’t see that I’d slipped away, and now they’re watching me make what looks to be a grand entrance from the other side of the courtyard, my orange dress swinging all the way. A Moment in Red—was that the right thing to call it? Is everyone narrowing their eyes at me because, yes, they understand that the two figures in the painting are girls moving toward each other? Is this the peak of my work, and is everything going to be downhill from here?
I reach the steps where Mrs. Pagonis and the judges and the honorable mentions are standing.
Enjoy it, enjoy it.
For once, it works.
I claim my certificate and smile, and Vic’s hand pops up from the middle of the crowd, waving—saying, in a way, Yes, everyone here, I know her. And for now, that is perfect.
But it’s weird when she and Edie come up to congratulate me at the same time, and I say, “Hey, Vic, this is my friend Edie,” and a realization crosses Vic’s face—quickly, like a page turning—that there’s a whole part of my life she knows nothing about.
“I think we’re going out to lunch.” Never mind the tuna sandwich and two helpings of potato salad I ate at the senior reception. “If you want to come with us.” I guess I’m saying this to both of them. As there are other people poring over the Dead Guy’s plaque and taking up the shade by the bench, we’re stuck out in the sun, all of us barely able to see one another.
“Thanks, but no,” Edie says. “I’ve gotta get home.”
The word sounds perfectly normal coming from her, and yet to imagine her anywhere but between the borders of black-and-white photos is like trying to imagine Victoria taking up woodworking.
“Where do you live?” Victoria says politely.
“Downtown,” Edie says, “with some friends.”
Now I’m the one narrowing my eyes.
“It’s probably a temporary spot. I don’t know what I’m doing right now. I might try to get a photography business started. I might travel for a while and then come back. I don’t know.” Edie looks from me to Victoria and then back to me. “It’s good sometimes, not to know.”
“I’m going to Puerto Rico right after graduation,” I tell her, “but I’ll be back in August.”
“Cool. I guess I may see you then,” Edie says.
And she wanders off, through the courtyard and off school grounds and past the Smoking Corner and on down the street. I wonder if she was lying about living downtown. There are so many things that could be true about her: she might have had a comfy room at her mom’s house waiting for her all along, or she could have had a secret girlfriend the entire time I’ve known her. Or it could be worse: she could be transient, going from couch to couch, maybe searching out another half-abandoned building to make her own.
But I don’t think so. I think she’s found a happy medium.
Vic grapples for nonexistent pockets in her dress. “Wait, dearie. Right after graduation?”
After lunch, Vic and Angela and I head down to the beach. I haven’t been here since Tall Jon’s very windy birthday party in the winter, and everything’s different now. Transitional. The locals are starting to hate the weather and the summer vacationers haven’t made their way down here yet. Angela slips out of her shoes and walks into the wet sand, but Vic and I make things hard on ourselves, trudging through the soft, dry sand in our heeled sandals.
“Think of a place,” she says.
“Um. New York City,” I say.
“I knew it. Okay, you need to narrow down. As you’ll see one day, New York’s a massive place.”
“Fine. Your future dorm room.”
“Okay. Easy way to start—how many people total have lived in my future dorm room?”
“Easy one to follow up. How many people have died in your future dorm room?”
“Morbid. Excellent. How many people who have lived or died in my future dorm room have been convinced that the spirit of Martha Graham visited them?”
We walk past a couple baking themselves faceup on beach towels. The guy turns his head toward us at the sound of Victoria’s question.
“Okay. How many people who have lived or died in your future dorm room, and who have been visited by the spirit of Martha Graham, have also been involved in the strange but necessary destruction of a beachfront property?”
“Umm,” Vic says, looking at me over her sunglasses, “I’d venture to say . . . none?”
“Oh shit, did I break the game?”
Vic laughs. “Not entirely. I think you trampled on a couple of our infinite possibilities, though.”
Here’s the thing: New York is massive. I’m sure I will be able to take note of that one day. It has mass—it is huge and heavy and somehow does not manage to sink the land it stands on. It has stretched itself into the sky and yawned into a couple of different states. But the coast down here doesn’t need to assert itself in the same way. It takes creation and destruction in stride, the tides sweeping in and out with the thump of time, under the hand of the moon. How many people have stood in the same place on this beach, this tiny place in the universe where I have chosen to sink my weight, and been so afraid and so comforted all at once? It’s getting late in the afternoon, and the water is rising. Vic takes off her shoes and goes to join Angela in the shallow surf. I wait at the place where the water just meets the sand.
It looks pretty good in the living room. I mean, black and red don’t match any of the decor in the house, so it stands out more than it should, but it’s a bold statement: red! dancers! Abstract, square-headed people framed on the wall above my school photo! It wasn’t even my idea—it was Mom’s.
“I still have no idea what this is,” she says, “but it’ll remind me of you until I see you again.”
She smiles from the recliner. She’s back to wearing her beachy clothes again: long floral skirts and sleeveless tops, capped off with a straw hat when she leaves the house.
“Can you do a small favor for me when we’re gone?” I ask, stepping into the bare spot by the window.
“In theory, yes.”
“Okay, well, I need you to get Angela a piano.”