Impossible Things (12 page)

I met her eyes. “We're friends.”

Felicia's cheeks were pink. “Yes,” she said, “we are.”

Victoria didn't meet my eyes, and I wondered what she was thinking. We hadn't talked about the telekinesis thing since that day at the tobogganing hill, and I felt like it was kind of hanging between us. If she had made up the whole thing about her powers and Rick and all that—well, didn't that mean she didn't trust me with who she really was? And if she hadn't made it up, and I doubted her? Well, that wasn't right either.

“You want to see my picture?” Victoria asked.

I nodded. “Sure.”

She flipped it around so we could see. “I had this idea in my head of how it should look, but I can't get it on to the paper,” she said. “It's so frustrating.”

She'd painted a face, which I guess was supposed to be hers—it had short brown hair and glasses—and crisscrossed it with lines, so that it looked like a jigsaw puzzle. The face was a bit too small for the paper, so there was a lot of empty white space around it, and one eye was a bit bigger than the other. That was exactly what happened when I tried to draw faces, and for some reason, that made me feel better.

“It's cool,” I said. “It's a cool idea. You know, the puzzle thing.”

Felicia nodded quickly. “Yeah, that's clever.”

“You can just say it,” Victoria said glumly. “I can't paint.”

“I honestly do think it's a cool idea,” I said. “And you paint better than I do. And at least you don't have a mother who's a famous artist.”

She nodded, looking more cheerful. “Yeah, at least no one expects me to win the contest.”

“Jeez. You don't think anyone expects me to, do you?” That hadn't occurred to me. I remembered Ms. Allyson saying she was a fan of my mother's work, and I hoped she wouldn't be disappointed when she saw what I'd done. Well, too late to do anything about that now.

I glanced at Victoria's picture again. A jigsaw puzzle. That was about right, I thought. I wasn't sure how all the pieces fit together, and it looked like maybe she wasn't quite sure either.

Twenty-One

I was standing at the bottom of the stairs waiting for Ben when Amber, Madeline and Chiaki came out of the school. I braced myself for the usual barrage of insults. Though, come to think of it, Amber had mostly been ignoring me lately.

Amber nodded at me.

I nodded back. A truce, maybe?

Then, wonder of wonders, Chiaki smiled at me. “Hi, Cassidy.”

“Hi, Chiaki. How's it going?”

She glanced at Amber, a little nervously. “Okay.”

“Come on, Chiaki. Let's go.” Amber looped her arm through Chiaki's.

“Um. Okay. See you.” Chiaki shrugged and followed Amber off across the schoolyard.

I stared after them. Wow. An almost friendly interaction. I wasn't sure what to make of it. I didn't want to hope for too much. If Chiaki wanted to be friendly, that was great. But if not, I'd survive. I had Victoria and Felicia and Nathan and maybe even Joe. Chiaki was welcome to join us, if she ever decided to climb way down the social ladder, but I didn't need my thumbuddy back anymore.

Ben came barreling through the doors, taking the steps two at a time. I nodded at him and we walked across the schoolyard together. “You okay?” I asked.

He nodded, stared at the ground and shuffled his feet through the snow. “Cassidy?”

“Yeah? What is it?”

“I'd rather just get it over with,” he whispered.

I stared at him. “What are you talking about?”

“Tyler.” His face was half covered by his wool scarf, and he looked up at me from behind fogged up lenses. “I know he's just waiting to get me alone.”

“He won't get you alone.” I felt uncomfortable as soon as the words were out of my mouth. Ben was right: If Tyler wanted to get Ben, sooner or later he would find a chance.

Ben just shook his head. He knew it too.

“My art show's coming up, you know,” Mom told me and Ben over leftover Chinese food. “Next weekend. I was wondering if you two would be willing to help out.”

I eyed her suspiciously. Those big canvasses weighed a ton and were really awkward to move. Usually Dad helped, but since he wasn't here…

Mom saw my expression and laughed. “Nothing too unpleasant. I've got friends helping with the setup, but Friday night is the opening and we're hoping for a good turn out. There'll be appetizers and drinks. I wondered if you two would like to help serve them.”

“Like, walk around with trays of crackers and stuff?” I'd done that at one of her shows last year. “Sure, I don't mind.”

“Can Sydney come too?” Ben asked.

“If he gets to invite Sydney, I want to invite Victoria,” I added quickly. “And Felicia.”

“One friend each. But if Sydney and Victoria want to come, I'd be more than happy to put them to work.”

“Cool.” I started planning my outfit. I'd seen a great hat in the window of the Sally Ann on my way home from school.

Mom interrupted my thoughts. “Invite them here for dinner on Friday. We can order pizza and then all go to the show together.”

I made a face. “Mom? I honestly don't think I can face another pizza in this lifetime.”

Ben's head bobbed up and down like it was on a spring. “Yeah, no more pizza.”

“After this show is over, I won't be so busy.” She frowned. “I'm sorry. I know I've been a bit distracted. With your dad away, I can't seem to stay on top of things.”

Maybe if you didn't volunteer twenty hours a week and spend the rest of your time painting
,
I thought. Then I felt bad. Selfish. Like I wanted her to abandon dying people so that I could have a lasagna. Or burgers. Or a stir-fry. Or a salad. My mouth watered. “Maybe if you volunteered a little bit less? Not quit or anything, but…”

“There's so much to do at hospice,” she said. “I didn't intend to do so much, but the nurses are so busy and they keep asking me if I could just do one more thing.”

Ben stood up abruptly. “Just say no, Mom.”

I looked at him, startled.

“You're never here anymore,” he said.

“I didn't know you felt like that.” She turned and looked at me, her forehead wrinkled in an unspoken question.

I swallowed. “It's hard, Mom. When you're so busy, and everything you're doing is so important, it's hard to talk to you about stuff that seems less important.”

“Less important?” She looked startled. “What are you talking about? Nothing is more important to me than the two of you.”

Ben and I looked at each other. “It hasn't really felt like that,” I said. “Not lately. Not since Dad left.”

I turned to Mom and saw, with a shock, that her eyes were shiny with tears. “I'm sorry,” I said, backtracking. I hadn't seen her cry for years, not since her father died when I was a little kid. “I mean, it's okay, we're okay.”

She ignored me and started talking fast, like she just wanted to say whatever it was she had to say. “When your dad left on this contract, I couldn't stand it. I worried all the time. All those news stories about bombings and kidnappings.”

“You said it was safe,” I said, horrified.

“It is, it is. The area he's in is considered relatively safe, otherwise he wouldn't have gone.” She rubbed her hands across her face. “But I couldn't stop worrying. I'd spend half the day on the Internet, scaring myself silly, waiting for the phone to ring. I couldn't go on like that. I decided I needed to keep myself busy somehow.”

“Well, you sure managed that.” I looked at her carefully. To my relief, the tears were gone and she looked a bit more like her usual self. “I guess you'll be pretty happy when Dad's home then.”

She nodded. “Forty-seven days to go.” Then she laughed. “Pathetic, huh? Missing him so much.”

I thought of Victoria's parents and how they argued all the time. “No,” I said, “it's not pathetic at all.”

Twenty-Two

On Friday, I handed in my art contest entry. On Saturday, I woke up with a stuffed up nose, a sore scratchy throat and a killer headache. I spent most of the weekend lying on the couch feeling lousy, and on Monday I was still too sick to go to school.

So Tyler finally got his chance.

Ben and Sydney burst through the front door after school. “Cassidy!” Ben shouted.

I'd been half asleep on the couch. I sat up. “What?” I croaked.

Ben came running into the living room, still wearing his winter boots and scattering lumps of ice across the carpet. “You won't believe this.”

I stared at him. His hair was full of snow and his left eye was red and puffy, but he was grinning. “What happened?”

“Well, Sydney and I were walking home—”

I interrupted. “Mom told me she was going to pick you up.”

“Yeah.” Ben made a face. “I didn't want her to, so I told her that I'd be fine if I was with Sydney.”

I sat up straighter and narrowed my eyes at him. “What about Tyler? What were you thinking?” I remembed what he'd said before. “You weren't just trying to get it over with, were you?”

He shook his head and started unzipping his jacket. Sydney appeared beside him, having already shed her boots and coat. Ben grinned at her and turned back to me. “We were walking along and all of a sudden this snowball whacked me in the side of the head. A real muddy icy one.” He rubbed his reddened eye.

I winced, but Sydney was grinning so wide her smile practically split her face in two.

“You should have seen him,” she said proudly. “He picked up a handful of snow, balled it up and whipped it right back at Tyler. Hit him smack in the face.”

My eyebrows shot up. Ben is smart, but he can't throw a ball to save his life. “Seriously?”

“Total fluke,” Ben admitted cheerfully. “It was perfect though. Tyler was yelling stuff at me and I guess he must have had his mouth open when the snowball hit him, because he started spluttering and coughing.”

“Cool.” I'm not usually the type to get excited about snowball fights, but I was nodding as proudly as Sydney. “Good for you, Ben.”

“That's not all,” Sydney said. “He told Tyler that this was it—that if he ever did anything to him again he was going to tell.”

“And I told him that he should stop doing stuff like that. I told him he was going to develop an antisocial personality disorder and my mom could get his mother the name of a good child psychiatrist.”

I started laughing. That sounded more like Ben.

“Anyway, he just stomped off,” Ben said. He sounded amazed. “He just stomped off and left us alone.”

“That's great,” I said. “Good for you, Ben. I knew you could stand up to him.” I felt a huge sense of relief. Maybe Tyler would leave him alone and maybe he wouldn't, but at least Ben was fighting back and feeling better. I'd wanted to solve this problem for him, but Sydney had been right. He'd had to do it himself.

I was back at school on Wednesday, red-nosed but generally recovered. Everyone was buzzing about the art contest. Ms. Allyson had said she would announce the winner at the end of the week. I knew it wouldn't be me, but I was still caught up in the excitement. It was hard not to be, the way everyone kept talking about it. Plus Victoria's words kept echoing in my head:
At least no one expects me to win.
Well, I hadn't even told Mom about the contest, so she wouldn't be disappointed, but I did feel like I was letting Ms. Allyson down. And it would have been so amazing to come home from school on Friday—the day of Mom's art show—and tell her that I'd won.

When Friday rolled around, the excitement in the classroom was electric. For once, everyone was sitting at their desks before the morning bell even rang.

Ms. Allyson walked in a couple of minutes late, wearing her red cowboy boots and a long black skirt. “Okay. I can tell no one is going to be able to concentrate or do any work until I announce the winner, right?”

We all nodded impatiently.

She gave a dramatic drumroll of her hands on the desk; then she laughed. “No, seriously, I want to say what a difficult decision this was. There were a few entries that were quite outstanding. It was very hard to choose only one to go on to represent the school. Personally, I wish I could have chosen several.”

The suspense was killing me.

“The winner, who will be going on to represent our school at the district competition, is Felicia Morgan. Congratulations, Felicia!” Ms. Allyson smiled warmly. “Well done.”

Felicia's round face was flushed. She looked very embarrassed but also very pleased. “Thank you,” she said. Her voice was so soft I could hardly hear her.

“You deserve it,” said Ms. Allyson. “Your work was wonderful.” She held up Felicia's painting to the class.

I hadn't really seen it before; Felicia had been so shy about it. It was beautiful—much nicer than my mom's paintings, in my opinion. Dark green ferns swayed around disconnected images: whales, giant trees, strange birds. I could have looked at it all day. And I didn't even like art.

Our group had expanded: Victoria, Felicia, me, Nathan, Joe, two shy quiet girls called Tansy and Hannah, and a very smart, computer-obsessed guy called Ken. We had taken over a corner table in the lunchroom and were sitting around it, trading tuna sandwiches for peanut butter, and chocolate puddings for cookies.

Felicia was talking about her painting. “It's my memories of New Zealand,” she said. “We left two years ago, but I still miss it. Someday I'll go back, to visit anyway.” She looked at me. “I was worried you might be upset,” she admitted. “I know how much you wanted to win.” “Nah, I knew I wouldn't win.” I shrugged. “I'm over it.”

“Do you want to be an artist?” Victoria asked Felicia.

“I'd love to. But I don't know how realistic that is. It's probably pretty hard to make enough money that way. I have an uncle in New Zealand who's an artist, but I never get to talk to him now.”