Chapter Five
The pastels Leo gave me only came from the Dollar Store, but they meant a lot to me. I knew he didn’t want me to go to art college. But he gave me something to help get there anyway.
As a thank-you, I decided to draw him a picture. That Tuesday on my free period I sat behind the school and sketched the football team practicing. (Hey, he’s a jock. That’s the type of picture he likes.)
It was a disaster. Like I said, the pastels meant a lot to me—but they were still cheap. They broke. They smudged too much. Or they wouldn’t smudge at all. I had no control over what I was putting on the paper. It was so frustrating.
I was just about to pack up my stuff when this little spray of pebbles landed on my lap.
“Don’t be scared!” someone whispered.
I turned and saw Devin tiptoeing up to me.
He was going, “Easy, girl. Eeeeeeea-sy.”
It was kind of funny. He was acting like I was this wild animal that could attack at any moment. I couldn’t help myself. I laughed.
He plopped down beside me.
“What are you doing here?” he said.
“I go here.”
“I didn’t know that!”
“There’s only one high school in town. I don’t have much choice,” I said. Then it dawned on me. “But you do. Why in the world would anyone come to Lockeport Rural Academy if they didn’t absolutely have to?”
He shrugged. “What else is there to do around here?”
“Good point.”
“Other than draw, that is.”
He looked down at my picture. I really didn’t want him seeing this one. I didn’t want anyone seeing this one. I put my arm over it.
“Let’s not start that again,” I said.
“Oh, right. That’s what got me in trouble in the first place,” he said.
“Exactly.”
“Okay, I won’t look at your picture if you promise to tell me one thing.” He tried that cheesy smile on me again.
“Deal,” I said. “What?”
“Why are you using those crap pastels?” I tried to brush it off.
“I don’t know,” I said, although, of course, I did know.
The truth is I was embarrassed to admit my boyfriend got them for me. I was embarrassed to admit I’d like a guy who didn’t know the difference between a $2 box of pastels and a $50 box. It’s terrible but true.
Devin said, “Why don’t you use the ones I gave you? Your mother will thank me.”
“My mother? What are you talking about?”
He pointed at my arm. When I tried to hide the picture, the pastels had come off on my sleeve. My white shirt was covered with these gross smudges. My picture of the football team was even worse. It was just a bunch of burgundy and gold blotches on a green background now.
I handed him the picture. “Sure. You can look at it all you want.”
“Very interestink,” he said in a German accent. “I see the passion! I see the fire! Ooops. Sorry.” He turned the drawing around the other way. “I see I had it upside down!”
The expression on his face changed suddenly.
“Hey,” he said in his own voice. “You know all this needs to be really good?”
I shook my head.
“Do you mind?” he asked and took what was left of my black pastel.
“Go ahead,” I said. Who cared at this point?
He started drawing on my picture. He hunched his back so I couldn’t see what he was doing.
After a while he said, “Yeah, this is better. Much better. What do you think?”
I looked at it and laughed. Devin had played connect-the-dots with all the burgundy football blobs and turned them into a picture of a big, black bunny with bloodshot eyes. The blue plaid splotch that had been Coach Isnor was now the bunny’s tail.
“A definite improvement,” I said. “It’s just missing one little detail.” I added bloody fangs.
“Wunderbar!” he said in his German accent again. “Together we will take the art world by storm!”
He handed me the picture. “Your signature please. It very much increases the picture’s value on the international market.” I signed it in purple. He signed in red.
“I will keep it always,” he said with this dreamy look on his face.
It dawned on me that Kyla Swimm—my best friend and Lockeport’s only other art nerd—might like him. He wasn’t bad looking, and I could see her going for his weird sense of humor. I got it in my head that I should set them up.
Big mistake.