Painted Blind (2 page)

Chapter 2

I sat in my car as minutes blinked away on the digital clock. I didn’t mean to be early, but Dad roused me for a pancake breakfast just after six to celebrate my senior year.

There was nothing to celebrate. I hated school. The learning and the homework and the grades were fine. Even the rules were okay with me, but going into a building with hundreds of my peers—that was torture.

The door facing the parking lot led to the senior hall. When the weather was warm, everyone hung out on the grass and the waist-high retaining wall that flanked the door. Perched right in the center of the wall was Travis McDowell, two-time state champion in the 100-meter butterfly. Every summer he life-guarded at the city pool during the day and trained after the gates were closed. The petite blonde with her head against his shoulder was Savannah, unusually tan. From the looks of it, she spent a lot of time at the pool this summer. Anything beyond eight weeks was out of Savannah’s usual guy cycle, but she and Travis had been dating since April.

The warning bell blared, and I grabbed my backpack with a groan. It was officially time to start a new school year. The crowd dispersed, but Savannah lingered at the wall.

“About time,” she said when I approached. Travis held the door open for us, and she continued, “We were just talking about the Last Bash Carnival.” We moved down the hall toward our lockers. “It’s tomorrow night.” There was a suspicious tone in her voice. The Last Bash was the Montana State University fraternities’ tribute to the end of summer, and Travis’s brother was a Kappa Sigma. “It’s going to be
so
fun.” She paused. This was the part I was dreading. “And this year, you are coming with us.”

“Yeah, right,” I replied.

Travis nodded at two boys coming our way. “I’m heading to class.” He kissed Savannah on the forehead.

She waited until he was down the hall before saying, “Hunter just dumped his girlfriend.”

“And I care because…?”

“Oh, come on, Psyche.”

“A Kappa Sig?” My dad would go into convulsions. He could barely handle me attending a co-ed high school.

By then we were in the middle of senior hall, which made it impossible to continue our conversation. Every two feet someone said hello to Savannah, and she went into full Homecoming Princess mode, greeting everyone with a smile and a compliment. Savannah thrived on attention and, therefore, loved school.

Savannah and I had only third hour Chemistry together. The rest of the day was a blur of slouching in back rows trying to be invisible. Last period I had second year drawing. Instead of giving out a course overview or reciting the rules, Mr. Mayhue handed us each a sixteen-by-twenty-inch sheet of drawing paper and a handful of pencils.

It was the first time all day I felt completely at ease. I sketched the art classroom in perspective while sitting in the corner farthest from the door. I continued sketching after the bell rang. When the din in the hallway ceased, I handed in my sketch and went to my locker. Now the school was just the way I liked it—completely empty.

The parking lot was dotted here and there with cars. With a sigh I dropped my backpack onto the seat of my Subaru. One day down, a hundred seventy-nine to go, I thought as I pulled onto Main Street toward the bank to exchange the Euros I brought home from Italy.

Traffic was painfully slow. Friday would mark the beginning of Labor Day weekend, then a break in the tourist season until snow fell thick enough for skiers. This week the sidewalks bulged with shoppers, and not one parking space emptied as I inched east between the brick buildings of old downtown. I parked behind the bank then walked along the side street toward the front. I rounded the corner and froze.

A new billboard stood at the end of the block. The perfume ad was a look-alike of Botticelli’s
Birth of Venus
, and there in the center, beneath a waist-length wig, was me. Stark. Freaking. Naked. On Main Street. I choked on my breath. That one mistake, the one photo I swore my dad would never see was
right there
.

The photo didn’t show how my eyelid twitched or that my armpits were dripping sweat. It didn’t show the excruciating pain in my chest that made my arm numb. No, my face and body were dusted with gold, and my fearful expression looked half innocent, half seductive. A scream of panic pushed at my ears. My dad would see it. Every guy in town would see it. Savannah would see it, too.

My lunch jumped into my throat. I stumbled to a trash can and hurled.

Thunder cracked overhead. I looked up and that’s when I saw the guy down the sidewalk staring up at the billboard, hands on his hips. He spun around shaking his head, but he stopped when he saw me. Even from a distance, he was dazzling. I felt his gaze like a punch in the chest that struck suddenly and sent my pulse screaming. His eyes narrowed, and in that momentary glance, he looked past the ratty jeans and oversized T-shirt. He saw Venus, and it made him clamp his jaw tight and glare. Rain pelted the sidewalk between us, but I couldn’t pull myself away until he turned and disappeared around the corner.

Absently I walked into the bank, unable to free my mind from the angry set of his jaw. I set an envelope of Euros on the counter and saw surprise in the teller’s eyes when she looked at my face. She made a quick glance out the window and back to me again.

“It’s not me.” My voice was unconvincing. I studied the dark spots made by the rain on my shoes. I didn’t hear her reply. My mind saw only the guy who hated me without even knowing my name.

I was doomed. There was no other way to put it. By morning everyone would know about the billboard. Tonight I had to explain to my dad. Maybe if I told him what happened before he saw the billboard, he would understand. On the way home I gripped the steering wheel with both hands to keep them from shaking.

I watched out the upstairs window for Dad’s pickup on the street. Soon a truck came into view, but it wasn’t his. It was a company truck driven by the foreman. It pulled slowly into the driveway, and before it came to complete stop, my dad jumped out of the passenger seat and headed toward the front door with long, determined steps. He knew. It was too late. I ran to my room.                                                       

The footsteps coming upstairs were hard and fast. A moment later my bedroom door was thrown open with so much force it ricocheted off the stopper and came back to slap my dad’s ready hand. His eyes narrowed on me in wrath so fierce, my knees actually wobbled.

“I rear-ended a Volvo on Main Street,” he growled. He didn’t have to say where. I knew it was somewhere around Church Street, in full view of the Venus billboard. I didn’t know which was worse—his fury or the humiliation of knowing he saw it. “You promised me.” Disappointment made his voice crack.

Tears pushed at my eyes. “I can explain…”

He cut me off with a wave of his hand. “Find a ride to school tomorrow. I’m taking your car.” Then he turned into the hallway, and I rushed after him.

“I can’t go back to school. Everyone will be talking about me.”

“That is your own fault! You will go to school. No excuses.” It was pointless to argue.

I went back to my room and threw myself on the bed. Tomorrow was going to be the worst day of my life.

It was probably suicidal to disobey him, but I made no attempt to find a ride to school. A slow and painful death sounded better than school.

Mid-morning he returned and caught me sitting on the couch. “I thought I told you to find a ride to school,” he said.

I tossed the remote onto the ottoman. “I didn’t.”

“Get your shoes on.” Dad flicked off the television. “I’m taking you.”

Reluctantly, I gathered my books and gave my teeth a quick brushing before following him out the door. He dropped me in front of the school and left me to face my fate alone. I waited until the Subaru was indiscernible down the street before I turned and pushed myself through the door to the office.

The secretary wrote out my admit slip with raised eyebrows. She wanted to say something, but she didn’t have to. All her condemnation was right there in her pursed lips.

I grabbed my slip and went to the senior hall. I was fifteen minutes late for third period, and I was in no hurry to face Savannah. As I stood fiddling with the combination of my locker, a boy named Rory Keene came around the corner wearing a bright green lanyard dangling a rubber chicken, the hall pass from our third period class.

Years ago Rory lived across the street from me. The first snowfall each year, we built a fort against the picket fence of his front yard and waged war on the neighborhood. Just about the time I got strong enough to heave a snowball from my front yard into his, Rory’s parents divorced, and he moved across town. Rory now held a place in the social outcasts category, which he earned with greasy hair and the worse case of acne I had ever seen. He still talked to me occasionally, but today I wasn’t in the mood. I turned my back to him.

Savannah must have put an air freshener in her locker because the air held a hint of cinnamon and orange. Something else, too. Salty, like the sea. Just as I lifted the handle, a voice behind me whispered, “Perfect!”

I spun around, ready to give Rory a verbal beating. “What did you say?”

He was still ten feet down the hall. Startled, Rory paused. “I didn’t...”

Someone sneezed. Rory and I said, “Bless you” at the same time, then looked around. There was no one there but the two of us, and neither of us sneezed.

Rory muttered, “Weird,” and continued down the hall.

As I grabbed my books and walked away, I heard a string of whispered curses that started with “stupid” and ended in a language I’d never heard in my life.

It took three steadying breaths before I could open the classroom door. I took Advanced Chemistry not because I was good at science, but because Mr. Billiard wore Coke-bottle glasses and called me “Ron’s girl.” All of us were just a blur to his ancient eyes—the children of students he loved in better years. However, to my utter disappointment, Mr. Billiard was spending the semester drinking coffee in the staff lounge while a student teacher named Michael Darling taught Advanced Chemistry.

When I opened the door, Mr. Darling turned from the class and said, “Look, everybody! Venus has arrived.”

A guy in the back whooped, “Yeah, baby, take it off!”

My armpits grew damp. My eyelid twitched. I told myself not to overreact and hurried to my seat. I clenched my teeth as Savannah turned to me.

“South Dakota?” she said. “Then how do you explain
this
?” She opened the September issue of
Cosmopolitan
to a two-page spread of the Venus ad and held it out to me.

I swiped the magazine and closed it as fast as I could. Getting harassed by a teacher was bad enough. I didn’t need it from my best friend, too.

Back from his errand to the office, Rory filled the seat in front of me, but he didn’t mention the strange sneeze in the hall.

“I don’t know how you could have done it,” Savannah whispered. “You won’t even wear a skirt to school.”

I picked stray shavings off my pencil and stared at the desktop. I should have told Savannah about modeling, but she wouldn’t have understood why I needed her to keep it a secret.

“There are no modeling agencies around here. How did you …” She broke off and answered her own question. “Jill.”

It bugged Jill to no end that she had a head-case for a daughter.  Modeling was her grand scheme to cure me. She came from L.A. the last week in May and flew with me to New York. We stayed a week while her friend put together my portfolio. Then we left for Milan. Jill helped me decorate my apartment and went with me to my first two modeling sessions. All I needed was confidence, she said. I would learn to feel more at home in my own skin. A week later she slipped out while I slept. She was halfway to New York when I found her note. It said she was
so
proud of me. I tore it to shreds.

I wanted to go home, but I’d signed a contract. If I quit, I had to repay all the expenses the agency incurred to get me there. Too proud to tell my dad what a fool I’d been, and unwilling to let him foot the bill for my stupidity, I stayed and I worked. Blair kept me booked double sessions nearly every day. I finished my contract and refused to stay longer, even though she offered to find me a private tutor or pay for a school abroad. I missed my dad, and I wanted to be a normal high school student. Even if I wasn’t normal.

“I’m still mad at you.” Savannah reached across the aisle and swiped the magazine from my desk then dropped it into an oversized purse she used as a backpack. “On the upside, you’ll be famous.”

I grunted without meaning to. It was impossible for her to fathom how famous could be a bad thing.

“What did your dad say?”

“He rear-ended a Volvo and took away my car. Can I have a ride home after school?”

“Of
course
,” she replied before Mr. Darling called on her to read aloud from the overhead projector.

I should have noticed the devious look on her face, but Mr. Darling caught my eye. He focused on me so intently, I wanted to ooze into the desktop. I slouched behind Rory the rest of the period.