Waking (3 page)

She painted slowly and quietly for awhile. It made her uncomfortable to be in the classroom where anyone might come in to watch her. She preferred painting in her basement where she knew she was alone and could wear paint-splattered shirts and thick black eyeliner. At school she tried to fade, tried to make everyone forget all of the stories about her. She just wanted to be invisible. Except when she wanted to shoot through the halls like a falling star.

Luna had had a taste of Briar High this afternoon. It hadn't taken long for people to figure out that she didn't exactly fit in. And fitting in was practically an Olympic sport at their school. Lately, Beauty had started wearing vaguely trendy clothes so she could blend, so no one would remember that she didn't fit in either. She still half-expected someone to stand up in the middle of a biology test and scream “freak!”

She'd never been able to decide if her gravestone would read “She tried too hard” or “She didn't try hard enough.”

But Luna, Luna wasn't even trying. She lived in an old house everyone thought was haunted. Her mother had purple streaks in her hair and a nose ring, and Luna swam naked in backyard pools, even when they weren't hers. The guys from school all watched her through the fences and gates and from treetops. If it had been anyone else, they'd have hooted and hollered. Instead they just watched her silently, staring at her plump body as if it held some kind of answer. Once someone had even stolen roses from Beauty's garden and left them in the pool's sharp waters after she'd gone.

Guys didn't watch Beauty at all. Well, except when she tripped over her shoelaces or froze in the middle of a class presentation. Lately her idea of rebellion was chewing gum in class. She was about as dangerous as tea at four in the afternoon with your deaf grandmother. If Luna was a firefly, then Beauty was the glass jar.

She snorted to herself. Luna might be a glass jar too, if she had Beauty's father. Sabrina had it right: Her father was getting weirder. She knew he loved her, but he was becoming so overprotective it was ridiculous. They both knew her mother's birthday was soon, the first one since
the accident
. It made Beauty tired and numb inside, but it seemed to be doing the opposite to her father. He was nervous and edgy.

She shook it off and turned back to her painting. The acrylic was drying quickly and she knew without a doubt that it was no better than the black and white sketch. She ran her hands over her face and turned away. She tossed her paintbrush aside and her eye caught the glint of an X-Acto knife lying among the ruins of a newspaper that had been used for papier-mâché.

She picked it up, the yellow plastic handle as hot as fire in her palm. The blade was short and slanted like a guillotine. She looked at the canvas again and then at the forbidden edge of the blade. When she sliced it across the canvas, it parted the paint like water. The edges of the canvas curled to the wooden frame on which it was stapled. She sliced at it until it hung in tatters like a bead curtain. Strips of paint and material fluttered down to drape over her hands like the long petals of pale lilies.

When the bell rang, she jumped and the knife nicked the base of her thumb. Drops of blood formed and fell, red as rose petals. The pain was quick and sudden, and it felt like a tiny mouth breathed on her hand. She stuck it between her lips and sucked at the blood, feeling a little bit disoriented and a little foolish. She turned her back on the ruined painting.

Her father would freak out if he saw the cut on her thumb. She wrapped it in a wet paper towel and hurried off to class, wondering how she was going to hide it from him.

3

The day was still bright

and warm when Beauty walked up the driveway to
17
Thorntree Drive. The tall house was a riot of muted colors and the gardens were a wild mess. She itched to get in there and start pulling at the weeds. The black-eyed Susans were choking and the roses were growing leggy, stretching out to search for sunlight. Wind chimes, Chinese fortune coins and tin lanterns danced in the maple tree in the front yard. Somewhere down the street a dog barked.

She paused in front of the lavender-hued door and lifted the brass knocker shaped like the snake-haired face of Medusa. She jumped when the door swung open suddenly. A barefoot woman in a sundress barely glanced at her. She was concentrating on the old book in her left hand, and her fingers were stained with ink. Her hair hung down to her elbows.

“Yeah?” the woman asked.

Beauty hesitated. “I'm, uh, looking for Luna?”

The woman nodded, waved her in. “She's around,” she said before wandering off.

Beauty stood uncertainly in the front hall. The living room was off to her left and the walls were crammed with paintings, mostly of women in medieval gowns or knights in armor. The lamps were off, fringed shades like ornate Edwardian hats. She could see dusty plants in the kitchen, and the hallway was papered with intricate dizzying patterns in burgundy and green. The air smelled like burning wood and paint.

Luna laughed from the top of the staircase. It was old and wooden with a faded carpet runner marching up the center. She was barefoot too, and silver rings gleamed on her painted toes. A jumble of Indian anklets rang out when she crouched down to be seen.

“Never mind Simone,” she said. “She gets like that when she's writing poetry.”

“Is she your sister?” Beauty asked.

Luna shook her head. “She just lives with us sometimes. Come on up.”

Beauty climbed the stairs, feeling like she was entering Aladdin's cave or some distant land where oranges grew in rivers and flowers were eaten for breakfast. Luna led her down a narrow hallway. Doors opened onto several rooms filled with easels and towers of books. They went up another staircase and Luna ducked into the door on her left. A purple bead curtain swayed and clinked together, sounding like raindrops on the roof.

Beauty's eyes widened. “Wow,” she said. “You've got a great room.”

Luna grinned and threw herself down on her unmade bed. “We move around a lot. I've learned to decorate quickly.”

There were candles burning on the windowsills and incense smoke coiling lazily from a wooden holder shaped like a branch. Music she didn't recognize spilled out of a small stereo covered in rhinestones and star stickers. The sound of it was thick with drums and women's voices, making her think of long nights and abandoned castles. There was a desk and a chair and a beanbag cushion surrounded by a pile of embroidered pillows. Beauty lowered herself down into one and had to smile. She felt dangerous and interesting and her name suddenly didn't seem so absurd.

Posters of rock bands and movies shared space with reproductions of old paintings. Beauty recognized the sad woman painted on Luna's knapsack.

“Who's that?” she asked.

Luna followed her gaze. “The Lady of Shalott,” she replied. “She was cursed never to look on Camelot, but she saw Lancelot in her mirror and fell in love with him. When she turned to look at him, she saw Camelot and died in the river.”

Beauty tilted her head. “Cheerful.”

Luna smiled. “I like it. Tennyson wrote a poem about her, and that painting's a Waterhouse. He was a Pre-Raphaelite, like the guys I told you about.”

Beauty nodded. She felt oddly comfortable around Luna, as if they'd been friends for years. It seemed perfectly normal to be sitting around chatting about dead artists. Luna pointed to a pile of books on the low blue table between them.

“I pulled out some of my mom's books on the Pre-Raphaelites. You can borrow a couple if you want.” Beauty picked up the one on top and flipped idly through it while Luna kept talking. “The Pre-Raphaelites revolutionized art in the mid
1800
s. They used these really bright colors and they painted on white canvases instead of the traditional black ones. It was a big deal. They were like a rock band, you know? Everyone talked about them. Am I boring you? I tend to babble when it comes to this stuff. It runs in the blood.”

“Is your mom really an artist?” Beauty asked wistfully.

“Yeah, half the people living here are artists or poets or musicians. It's very much a Pre-Raphaelite house. Even Poe and some of his friends have been by to rehearse. The basement's soundproof, for all the musicians to practice in if it's late. My mom's weird about getting her eight hours of undisturbed sleep. Anyway, where was I? The project. Right. So that's why I thought we should do that as our topic. Kind of cheating, but why not? What about your mom?”

It was like the air filled with dust.

“My mom worked in an office building. She loved her gardens, though.”

“What happened?”

"She died." Beauty picked up another book and forced a smile. "Does your mom have a studio here?"

Luna watched her for a moment but decided not to push it. "Yeah, I'll show it to you later if you want."

Beauty thought of her cramped corner in the basement with virtually no light and paintings stacked under the couch, and then she thought of a real artist's studio.

“I'd love to see it,” she said. It was the first thing she could remember wanting this much since her mother died. Well, except for Poe. And she just liked watching him.

“You're an artist too,” Luna said decisively. Beauty looked up, startled. It was something she normally tried to hide. Artists didn't last long at Briar High, and she was sick of being talked about.

“What makes you say that?” she asked suspiciously.

Luna shrugged. “I'm either wildly psychic or I noticed the paint spots on your shoes. Your choice.” She grinned. “I'd go with wildly psychic. It's much more romantic.”

“Oh.” Beauty smiled, told herself to relax.

“What happened to your thumb?”

Beauty's hand clenched as she glanced at the thin red cut. Her shoulders tensed. “Little accident with an X-Acto knife,” she whispered. It was a small cut but slightly inflamed. Her dad would notice it in a second. “My dad'll freak,” she said, mostly to herself.

Luna sat up. “Why? It's tiny. I had to have stitches once when I decided it might be cool to juggle steak knives like I saw at a carnival.” She winced. “A very bad idea. I bled everywhere. Star completely lost it.”

“Star?”

“My mom. I've never seen her so twitchy before.” She shrugged. “Anyway, I have an ugly scar, and I still get a weekly lecture on being careful and it's been nearly six years. Parents are so weird.”

Beauty could just imagine what her father would do with a story like that. He'd have a heart attack, simple as that. “My dad's a little…overprotective.”

Luna nodded. “Must be nice.”

“Where's your dad?”

Luna shrugged, tried to look indifferent. “We don't know. Anyway, you can hide that cut, you know.”

Beauty put the book down. “Really? How?”

“I have just the thing.” Luna pulled a wooden jewelry box off a table draped in silvery scarves and rummaged through a staggering jumble of necklaces and brooches and earrings. “It's in here somewhere…a-ha! Knew I still had it.” She pulled out a wide silver ring and tossed it into Beauty's lap. “Just wear it on your thumb. It'll hide the cut.”

Beauty felt slightly nervous, the way she always did when things seemed to be going too well. She slipped the ring on and the cut disappeared.

“Perfect,” Beauty said. When she looked up, she was grinning. “Thanks. But you already gave me a brooch for no reason.”

“So, borrow the ring until the cut heals. No big deal.”

Beauty wanted to hug her but she worried it might be weird. Instead she tried to remember why she was here in the first place. “So, what was your idea?”

“Well,” Luna said, gesturing wildly with her hands, the way she always did when she was excited, “the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, or the
prb
, had a journal for a while. It was called ‘The Germ,' I think. Something like that. Anyway, it didn't last long, but I thought it might be fun if we put a journal together. You know, with poems and art and a couple of essay-type things so Kingsley doesn't think we're just slacking off.” She stood up and began to pace through the room. “You could do the art since you draw. I can only draw stick people,” she continued, ignoring Beauty's little sound of protest. “And we could make copies for the whole class. What do you think?”

Beauty nodded slowly. “Could be fun. I don't know about my drawing, though. You've never even seen my stuff. You might think I suck.”

Luna waved her hand dismissively. “I'm sure you're fabulous. Better than me anyway. There wouldn't be that much to do; most of the paintings would be photocopies of
prb
stuff, anyhow. Is it a deal?”

Her enthusiasm was infectious. Beauty nodded, barely worrying if Mr. Kingsley would think it was a good idea or if they should ask him about it first.

“I'm in,” she said firmly. There was a release, like a melting river in spring, bursting suddenly free of its banks. She flopped back in the beanbag. “How do you like Briar so far?”

Luna snorted and began to juggle three small rubber balls. “Are you kidding? It's high school. What's to like?”

Beauty snorted too. “I thought you were more optimistic.”

Luna laughed. “My mother's the happy-go-lucky hippie; I just play one on TV.” She shrugged, nearly dropped a ball. “That's not really true. It's just a pain sometimes going from school to school and from town to town. And the rules are always different.”

Beauty stared up at the glow-in-the-dark stars on the ceiling. “I don't know, I think we're pretty typical. High school wouldn't be a rite of passage if it didn't suck.”

“True.” Luna let the balls fall and roll under her bed. “But why are those girls so uptight? It's like they think I'm going to steal all of their boyfriends or something.”