Drawing Amanda (19 page)

“Before the tribe puts out the fire, one of the women scoops up a cupful of embers from the fire and places them in a special pot.”

He let his eyes scan the back left of the auditorium, making it seem like he’d paused for effect. He found her all the way in the back and caught her eye. She looked down.

“This ember pot would be brought with them to their next campsite. The embers from the fire in their last home would be used to start the fire in the next.”

Inky saw that Amanda was looking up at him. He struggled to read her expression. It was hard to see with the lights dimmed. Someone coughed. He knew he was pausing too long.

“Time is running out for the Indians in the Amazon. Gold has been discovered on some of the tribal lands. Mining will certainly ruin the habitat of the animals they hunt. Each year more and more acres are lost to illegal logging.”

“So we see the Awa Indians of the Amazon carrying their fire from spot to dwindling spot, giving thanks for what they have, rather than mourning what they’ve lost.”

Inky closed his eyes for a split second, hearing his own words. How proud he was of his father’s journey.

When he started to speak again, his voice cracked. “The ember pot may look like a trinket you’d put on a dresser,” Inky said, thinking of being in Amanda’s room, “a reminder of a faraway place.”

He paused once more for effect and tried to hold Amanda’s gaze. “For the Awa, and maybe for all of us, it is a reminder that home is made from the sparks you carry.”

Chapter 31

What You Don’t See

I
T SEEMED LIKE FOREVER UNTIL MR. LORENZA
and Mrs. Patel thanked the students in the core program for their presentations. Principal Harooni got up and told them what fine examples of the Metropolitan Diplomatic Academy tradition they were. “You came through for me, even the students who got off to a rocky start.” Inky’s cheeks burned.

He was glad it was over. All the intense drawing he’d done over the past few days left his shoulders aching from hunching over the paper. His fingers were tight and crampy. It felt like it should be the end of the year, not just the first trimester. All he could think about was taking a nap as soon as he got home.

“Nice job, Artboy,” Hawk called out across the hallway. Inky was too wrung out to do anything more than smile.

“Ditto,” Rungs said. Then quietly he added, “He would have been proud.”

Inky felt the twinge of tears forming. Even though Rungs had come to MDA last year and never knew his father, he was right. How he wished his father was there to tell him so. He peered into his locker, not so much to find anything, but to compose himself.

“XME for changing the subject, dude, excuse me. But we have to get on the case with Megaland, ASAP,” Rungs said.

“Now? Not now,” Inky said, taking his jacket out of his locker and raising his head up to look at Rungs, who was grinning.

“Well, maybe not right now,” Rungs said, gesturing with his chin to Amanda approaching them from the far hallway.

Inky put his jacket back in the locker; he felt clammy. She had a right to be mad at him for spying on her—even if it was for a good reason.

“Listen, I . . .” Amanda said.

“No, I . . .” Inky said at the same time. He noticed the part in her hair was back to its lightning-bolt pattern.

They laughed, and Inky thought back to his visit to Amanda’s apartment when the same thing happened.

“Your report. It was really good. I loved what you said about carrying home from place to place. So poetic.”

Inky was only conscious of Amanda. He no longer felt like he was in the MDA hallway, was no longer aware of the row of lockers and his classmates gathering their jackets and books, barely conscious that Rungs had stepped away. It was just Amanda.

That was a new sensation for him. He’d never been able to turn off the visuals around him before. What he saw had always influenced what he thought. Now, what mattered was what was in his heart. Inky pushed his shoulders back and raised his head.

“I was thinking of you when I wrote that,” Inky said.

Amanda blushed, and Inky loved the color of it—a soft pink of early dusk washed over her cheeks.

“I’m sorry about the other day,” she said. “First, I thought you were playing a trick on me, and I was already messed up from my report. Then, I guess I just couldn’t believe that someone who’d been so nice was a pervert.”

“What made you change your mind?” Inky asked.

“When I read through all the links and saw what he’d done.”

“Links?” Inky hadn’t sent her any links. He didn’t even have her email address.

“Rungs sent them to me. Said I needed to see for myself.”

Inky felt a pang of jealousy that Rungs sent something to Amanda without telling him. Then he remembered he’d ignored Rungs’s calls for days while he’d immersed himself in his project.

“I can’t believe what he did to that girl,” Amanda said. “She entered a contest. She trusted him to help her with her singing career.”

“Like we trusted him,” Inky said, no longer inclined to defend Woody.

Rungs returned to where Inky and Amanda were standing.

“We gotta talk about what we’re going to do. Let’s go to your place,” Rungs said to Inky. Then he turned to Amanda. “Together we should be able to figure something out.”

Amanda nodded, not saying yes, but walking with Inky and Rungs out of school.

“All right,” Rungs said. “We’re gonna bring your guy Woody down.”

Chapter 32

Size Matters

I
NKY WAS NERVOUS ABOUT WHAT AMANDA
would think of his apartment. The old four-story brick building was such a contrast to the ritzy, glass monolith she lived in. As they turned the corner to his block, Inky stumbled on the sidewalk where an old tree root lifted the pavement.

“We are so gonna get him. We’re ITC here. In total control,” Rungs said, grabbing them both. Inky smiled and watched Rungs shift into his alpha personality. Then he stole a glance at Amanda and smiled some more.

When they entered his father’s study, Inky saw Amanda look first at the drawings scattered on the floor. Inky had finished the final scans for his school project that morning. He hadn’t expected company.

“Cool,” Amanda said going over to the pile of drawings. “May I?”

Inky could almost feel the touch of her slender fingers as she carefully considered each image, and then turned them face down in an orderly pile. When she came to the drawing on the bottom, Inky turned as red as the lips on his sketches. It was the piece he’d started working on when they’d first discovered something was not right with Megaland—nothing more than the outlines of a young woman’s body.

“I, er, didn’t get very far,” Inky said.

“You chat with Woody again? Did he say anything more about meeting you?” Rungs asked.

Amanda seemed flustered. “Yes. I mean, I had to know for myself. Before you sent me the links.”

“And,” Rungs said.

Inky was bothered by Rungs’s question. He saw the light pink flush of Amanda’s cheeks intensify.

“And she’s here,” Inky said.

Amanda looked up from the drawings and smiled. “These are really good.”

“Did he ask you anything, um, inappropriate?” Rungs said.

Amanda got up and walked to the window. She looked out at the tree. Inky wondered what it was that she was considering.

Softly and without turning to face Inky or Rungs, Amanda said, “Yeah. He asked me if I’d put on a cheerleader’s outfit for the pictures.”

Inky’s stomach did a flip and his head filled with the ruby-hot color of danger.

“That’s awful,” Inky said. He expected Rungs to also be outraged and shocked, but his expression didn’t change. Amanda noticed, too.

“Did you know that?” Amanda asked Rungs. Inky was surprised at how direct she was.

“Not very imaginative, this Woody,” Rungs said.

Amanda stared at Rungs for a moment. “No answer?”

His face didn’t change.

“I should call you Spyboy,” she said. “It’ll be Spyboy and Artboy.”

“Are you mad?” Rungs asked earnestly.

“I was.”

“But you’re not still?” Inky piped in.

Amanda looked at him and Inky felt like jelly inside. “You know, no one ever cared enough about me to spy on me,” she said. “In Nairobi, my brother Derek had a girlfriend. I used to listen in on their conversations. I guess I was worried that she’d take him away from me. She was from town, not our school, and with all the political trouble, I guess I was scared for him, too.”

“What happened?” Inky asked.

“Same thing as always. We moved.”

Inky laughed. “So you’re not mad, or do we have to move away?”

“Oh, don’t move,” Amanda said. “I’m just getting to know you.”

Inky felt like the azure blue of a perfect fall morning. The fatigue from working on his project faded.

“CFD, it’s time to call for discussion—since we’re all staying,” Rungs said. “If we want to get Woody, we have to have something concrete on him.”

Inky didn’t want to hear it. He wanted to show his drawings to Amanda, not think about Megaland and how Woody wanted to dress Amanda as a cheerleader. “Can’t we let the police figure that out?”

Rungs shot him a withering look. “They’re not gonna do anything if we don’t have evidence. But we totally can—assuming Amanda helps us.”

They both looked over to Amanda. “If I can, I guess. OK,” she said.

Rungs caught her eye and held her gaze, like he was sizing her up. “OK. What we have to do is get Woody away from his computer and camera, after he’s taken pictures of Amanda.”

Whoa. Inky felt like he’d been slapped in the face by a winter wind. He wasn’t so sure about Rungs’s idea. Maybe Amanda could just not show up and someone else could bust the guy. He would gladly draw her picture for her Christmas present for her brothers.

That was it. When did Rungs get a superhero cape? He wasn’t the only one who could hatch a plan. He picked up the big unfinished drawing and looked at it as if he saw more than the lines on the page. Inky’s fingers smarted from the past few days of non-stop effort. He laid the drawing out on his father’s desk, reached for his pencils and willed his aching fingers into action.

“Now? You’re drawing now?” Rungs asked.

“I have an idea,” Inky said.

Rungs stuck out a cupped hand and pretended it was a microphone. “Tell us your idea, Mr. Artboy.”

Amanda clapped her hands appreciatively, which made Inky less annoyed. When she clapped, her breastbone curved in a way that emphasized the strong definition of her neck. She was more than zebra pretty. She was beautiful.

“Woody tried to lure Amanda using my art right?”

Amanda and Rungs both nodded.

“I’ll lure him away from his computer with a drawing just for him.”

Inky could almost hear Rungs trying to figure out his plan. Amanda looked at him expectantly.

“He likes young girls, right? I’ll draw him a girl he’ll really want. Then I’ll upload just a piece of it and get him all interested.”

Inky stood up and pointed to the poster-sized paper on the big desk. “But it’ll be too big to scan, so I’ll bring it to him. And when will I drop it off? When Amanda is there, of course.”

Rungs bowed a half-bow in honor of Inky’s plan. “WOA. It’s a work of art.”

Inky looked over at Amanda and saw she was nodding her approval. He had to admit, it was clever.

He picked up the drawing from the floor, set it on the desk and took out his box of colored pencils and pastels. Amanda settled into the beanbag chair under the window. Inky was not used to working in front of other people. Even in art class Inky would go off to a corner of the room.

But there was no time for that now. Inky thought of the caricaturists hawking their sketches to tourists at the Central Park entrance by the Plaza, capturing images in a few sure lines. His favorite birthday party was when his father brought Inky and his friends there for portraits and a picnic. His father had always made a big thing about his birthday, but he understood now it was his choice; he enjoyed it, too. It was Woody who helped him realize that. This was some way to thank him.

Amanda thumbed through a book and Rungs seemed lost in thought. Inky refocused on his drawing and still felt self-conscious that he was working on a nude—and with Amanda in the room. He wondered if she thought the body resembled hers. He pushed the thought out of his head. He just had to keep working.

“Can I have your barrette?” Rungs asked Amanda.

“This?” she said as her hand touched her butterfly hairclip. Rungs nodded and Amanda removed the hairclip and handed it to him. “Why?”

“All the better to hear you with, my dear,” Rungs said. “I want to see if we can fit a microphone in there.” He examined the butterfly.

“Microphone?” Amanda asked.

“Yeah. An omni-directional mic. We want to be able to hear your conversation, and an omni’ll pick up sounds from any direction. You’ve seen those mics the TV guys clip on their jackets? Like that.”

Inky looked up from his work to Amanda seated under the window. He reached for light, bright colors.

But the lightness faded quickly. “And where are we going to be?” he asked Rungs.