It's not the scar and it's abso-freakin-lutely not you."
I dropped my hand. "Yeah, right." I sagged against him a little. For being as little as he is, Frankie's really solid. "It's never me."
I felt his sigh against my shoulder blades.
Tag: melissa-jensen the-fine-art-of-truth-or-dare
I bent and twistend and distorted everything ... to fit my pretty picture. God, I belibed my own hype. How stupid, how incredibly stupid was that?
Melissa JensenI have something to show you."
He sank down next to me and handed me a sketchbook. I opened it.
And saw the mermaid. She was drawn in colored ink, exquisitely detailed; each scale had a little picture in it: a pyramid, a rocket, a peacock, a lamp. Her torso was patterened red, like a tattoo, like coral. She had a thin strand of seaweed around her neck, with a starfish holding on to the center. Her hair was a tumble of loose black curls. She had my face.
I turned the page.And another and another. There she was fighting a creature that was half human, half octopus. Exploring a cave. Riding a shark. Laughing and petting a stingray that rested on her lap.
"I'm calling her Cora Lia for the moment," Alex told me. "I thought about Corella, but it sounded like cheap dishware."
"She's...amazing."
"She's fierce. Fighting the Evil Sea-Dragon King and his minions."
I traced the red tattoo on her chest. "This is beautiful."
Alex reached into my sweater, pulled the loose neck of the T-shirt away from my shoulder. I didn't stop him. "It looks like coral to me."
He touched me, then,the pad of his thumb tracing the outline of the scar. It felt strange, partly because of the difference in the tissue, but more because in the last few years, the only hands that had touched me there were mine.
I set the book aside carefully. "Guess I don't see what you do."
"That's too bad, because I see you perfectly."
I curved myself into him. "Maybe you're exactly what I need."
"Like there's any doubt?" He buried his face in my neck.I didn't stop him. "So."
"So?"
"We'll kill a few hours, watch the sunrise, have pancakes, and you'll drive home."
"What?"
I felt him smile against my skin. "I got you swimming with sharks. Next on the Conquer Your Fears list is driving a stick shift.Right?"
"One thing at a time," I said. Then, "Oh. Do that again."
In another story, the intrepid heroine would have gone running out and splashed in the surf, hypothermia be damned. She would have driven the Mustang home, booked a haircut, taken up stand-up comedy, and danced on the observation deck of the Empire State Building.
But this was me, and I was moving at my own pace.
Truth: My story started a hundred years ago. There's time.
It was Day Three, Freshman Year, and I was a little bit lost in the school library,looking for a bathroom that wasn't full of blindingly shiny sophomores checking their lip gloss.
Day Three.Already pretty clear on the fact that I would be using secondary bathrooms for at least the next three years,until being a senior could pass for confidence.For the moment, I knew no one,and was too shy to talk to anyone. So that first sight of Edward: pale hair that looked like he'd just run his hands through it, paint-smeared white shirt,a half smile that was half wicked,and I was hooked.
Since, "Hi,I'm Ella.You look like someone I'd like to spend the rest of my life with," would have been totally insane, I opted for sitting quietly and staring.Until the bell rang and I had to rush to French class,completely forgetting to pee.
Edward Willing.Once I knew his name, the rest was easy.After all,we're living in the age of information. Wikipedia, iPhones, 4G ntworks, social networking that you can do from a thousand miles away.The upshot being that at any given time over the next two years, I could sit twenty feet from him in the library, not saying a word, and learn a lot about him.ENough, anyway, for me to become completely convinced that the Love at First Sight hadn't been a fluke.
It's pretty simple.Edward matched four and a half of my If My Prince Does, In Fact, Come Someday,It Would Be Great If He Could Meet These Five Criteria.
1. Interested in art. For me, it's charcoal. For Edward, oil paint and bronze. That's almost enough right there. Nice lips + artist= Ella's prince.
2. Not afraid of love. He wrote, "Love is one of two things worth dying for.I have yet to decide on the second."
3.Or of telling the truth. "How can I believe that other people say if I lie to them?"
4.Hot. Why not?I can dream.
5.Daring. Mountain climbing, cliff dying, defying the parents. Him, not me. I'm terrified of an embarrassing number of things, including heights, convertibles, moths, and those comedians everyone loves who stand onstage and yell insults at the audience.
5, subsection a. Daring enough to take a chance on me.Of course, in the end, that No. 5a is the biggie. And the problem. No matter how muuch I worshipped him,no matter how good a pair we might have been,it was never, ever going to happen. To be fair to Edward,it's not like he was given an opportunity to get to know me. I'm not stupid.I know there are a few basic truths when it comes to boys and me.
Truth: You have to talk to a boy-really talk,if you want him to see past the fact that you're not beautiful.
Truth: I'm not beautiful. Or much of a conversationalist.
Truth: I'm not entirely sure that the stuff behind the not-beautiful is going to be all that alluring, either.
And one written-in-stone, heartbreaking truth about this guy.
Truth:Edward Willing died in 1916.
You might think lunchtime at Willing would be different from other high schools. That everyone would be welcome at any table, united by the knowledge that we, at Willing, are the Elite, the Chosen, stellar across the board.
Um.No.Of course not.High school is high school, regardless of how much it costs or how many kids springboard into the Ivies. And nowhere is social status more evident than in the dining room (freshman and sophomores at noon; upperclassmen at one). Because, of course, Willing doesn't have a cafeteria, or even a lunch hall. It has a dining room, complete with oak tables and paneled walls that are covered with plaques going all the way back to 1869, the year Edith Willing Castoe (Edward's aunt) founded the school to "prepare Philadelphia's finest young ladies for Marriage,for Leadership, and for Service to the World." Really. Until the sixties, the school's boastful slogan was "She's a Willing Girl."
Almost 150 years, three first ladies, and one attorney general-not to mention the arrival of boys-later, female members of the student body are still called Willing Girls. You'd think someone in the seventies would have objected to that and changed it. But Willing has survived the seventies of two different centuries. They'll probably still be calling us Willing Girls in 2075. It's a school that believes in Tradition, sometimes regardless of how stupid that Tradition is.
Oh,for God's sake." Frankie rolled his eyes under his green porkpie hat. The color perfectly matched the VINCE stitched onto the pocket of his brown bowling shirt. Frankie is all about vintage chic. "Give me the book.I'll throw it at him."
Frankie's daring. He's also conversant in postmodern art and tells me he loves me on a regular basis. He does lie like a rug,but only to people he doesn't care about, like the gym teacher. "Badminton?" he gasped once, early in our friendship, when I assumed I'd found a gym partner (him) who would actually talk to me. "And risk this nose?"
It's a good nose. In a really, really good face.
Besides, I'm not a mirror girl. I have Frankie and Sadie to tell me if I have lettuce in my teeth. I don't have shiny lip gloss to check. I don't do anything that necessitates Visine. Still, sometimes I'll come out of a stall or look up from washing my hands and catch sight of myself: a small, startled person behind a curtain of dark hair who looks away quickly, as if embarrassed by being caught staring.
Melissa JensenHey,Alex." I composed the words in my head. "I have your book..."
D'oh.I would be standing there, holding his book.
"Alex.Thought you might want to have this back."
Nope.Sounded like I'd taken it, which would be bizarre, or that he'd given it to me, which would be ludicrous.
"Hey.This was on the floor in the upstairs hall, and I figured you probably didn't know where it was."
Truth is always good.
He would look blank for a sec (he probably had no idea he'd dropped it; European history was first period ), then smile gratefully, hazel eyes crinkling at the corners, that mouth turning up in that unbelievably cute way.
"Wow.Thanks,Ella! I didn't even know I'd dropped it."
See?
And I would hand it over-if our fingers brushed, no complaints-and say, "I saw the stuff inside.It's really..."
"El.Ella." Sadie bumped me with her button again. "Coming?"
"Hmm?"
"Where were you? Oh, yeah..." She followed my slightly unfocused gaze and nodded. On her other side, Frankie snorted. She elbowed him.No button on the other sleeve.
I wove my way between the tables, pulling my hair forward over my shoulders as I went.Alex was still sitting when I reached him.
"Hey.This was on the floor in the upstairs hall..."
I stood behind his chair.Completely frozen.
I might have stood there for a very long time if he hadn't pushed himself away from the table to get up. The chair thumped me in the stomach first, then in the knees.I think I made a noise. I dropped his book.
"Oh.Oh,crap.I'm really sorry!" Alex jerked the chair out of the way and bent down a little. He had to, to see my face. "You okay?"
I did manage to nod.
"Seriously.I must have really pounded you there.You sure you're all right?"
"Yes,fine," I whispered.
Across the table, Chase Vere laughed. "Dude, she was,like, standing right behind you.
We're not supposed to have electronic stuff out during the school day. Yeah,right. I would say with confidence that 250 of Willing's 311 students can text without looking.
Melissa Jensen« prima precedente
Pagina 3 di 22.
prossimo ultimo »
Data privacy
Imprint
Contact
Diese Website verwendet Cookies, um Ihnen die bestmögliche Funktionalität bieten zu können.