Chapter 3
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“And his arm looked like an eggnt,” ry muttered to
herself in exasperation. The drawing just wasn’t
working. With a sigh she tore yet another sheet from her
sketchpad, crumpled it up, and tossed it against the
orange wall of her bedroom. Already the floor was
littered with discarded balls of paper, a sure sign that
her creative juices weren’t flowing the way she’d hoped.
She wished for the thousandth time that she could be a
bit more like her mother. Everything Jocelyn Fray drew,
painted, or sketched was beautiful, and seemingly
effortless.
ry pulled her headphones out—cutting off Stepping
Razor in midsong—and rubbed her aching temples. It
was only then that she became aware that the loud,
piercing sound of a ringing telephone was echoing
through the apartment. Tossing the sketchpad onto the
bed, she jumped to her feet and ran into the living room,
where the retro-red phone sat on a table near the front
door.
“Is this rissa Fray?” The voice on the other end of the
phone sounded familiar, though not immediately
identifiable.
ry twirled the phone cord nervously around her
finger. “Yeees?”
“Hi, I’m one of the knife-carrying hooligans you metst
night in Pandemonium? I’m afraid I made a bad
impression and was hoping you’d give me a chance to
make it up to—”
“SIMON!” ry held the phone away from her ear as he
cracked upughing. “That is so not funny!”
“Sure it is. You just don’t see the humor.”
“Jerk.” ry sighed, leaning up against the wall. “You
wouldn’t beughing if you’d been here when I got
homest night.”
“Why not?”
“My mom. She wasn’t happy that we werete. She
freaked out. It was messy.”
“What? It’s not our fault there was traffic!” Simon
protested. He was the youngest of three children and
had a finely honed sense of familial injustice.
“Yeah, well, she doesn’t see it that way. I disappointed
her, I let her down, I made her worry, h h h. I
am the bane of her existence,” ry said, mimicking her
mother’s precise phrasing with only a slight twinge of
guilt.
“So, are you grounded?” Simon asked, a little too loudly.
ry could hear a low rumble of voices behind him:
people talking over each other.
“I don’t know yet,” she said. “My mom went out this
morning with Luke, and they’re not back yet. Where are
you, anyway? Eric’s?”
“Yeah. We just finished up practice.” A cymbal shed
behind Simon. ry winced. “Eric’s doing a poetry
reading over at Java Jones tonight,” Simon went on,
naming a coffee shop around the corner from ry’s
that sometimes had live music at night. “The whole
band’s going to go to show their support. Want to
come?”
“Yeah, all right.” ry paused, tugging on the phone
cord anxiously. “Wait, no.”
“Shut up, guys, will you?” Simon yelled, the faintness of
his voice making ry suspect that he was holding the
phone away from his mouth. He was back a second
later, sounding troubled. “Was that a yes or a no?”
“I don’t know.” ry bit her lip. “My mom’s still mad at
me aboutst night. I’m not sure I want to piss her off by
asking for any favors. If I’m going to get in trouble, I
don’t want it to be on ount of Eric’s lousy poetry.”
“Come on, it’s not so bad,” Simon said. Eric was his
next-door neighbor, and the two had known each other
most of their lives. They weren’t close the way Simon
and ry were, but they had formed a rock band
together at the start of sophomore year, along with Eric’s
friends Matt and Kirk. They practiced together faithfully
in Eric’s parents’ garage every week. “Besides, it’s not a
favor,” Simon added, “it’s a poetry m around the block
from your house. It’s not like I’m inviting you to some
orgy in Hoboken. Your mom cane along if she
wants.”
“ORGY IN HOBOKEN!” ry heard someone, probably
Eric, yell. Another cymbal crashed. She imagined her
mother listening to Eric read his poetry, and she
shuddered inwardly.
“I don’t know. If all of you show up here, I think she’ll
freak.”
“Then I’lle alone. I’ll pick you up and we can walk
over there together, meet the rest of them there. Your
mom won’t mind. She loves me.”
ry had tough. “Sign of her questionable taste, if
you ask me.”
“Nobody did.” Simon clicked off, amid shouts from his
bandmates.
ry hung up the phone and nced around the living
room. Evidence of her mother’s artistic tendencies was
everywhere, from the handmade velvet throw pillows
piled on the dark red sofa to the walls hung with
Jocelyn’s paintings, carefully framedndscapes,
mostly: the winding streets of downtown Manhattan lit
with golden light; scenes of Prospect Park in winter, the
gray ponds edged withcelike films of white ice.
On the mantel over the firece was a framed photo of
ry’s father. A thoughtful-looking fair man in military
dress, his eyes bore the telltale traces ofugh lines at
the corners. He’d been a decorated soldier serving
overseas. Jocelyn had some of his medals in a small
box by her bed. Not that the medals had done anyone
any good when Jonathan rk had crashed his car into
a tree just outside Albany and died before his daughter
was even born.
Jocelyn had gone back to using her maiden name after
he died. She never talked about ry’s father, but she
kept the box engraved with his initials, J. C., next to her
bed. Along with the medals were one or two photos, a
wedding ring, and a single lock of blond hair. Sometimes
Jocelyn took the box out and opened it and held the lock
of hair very gently in her hands before putting it back
and carefully locking the box up again.
The sound of the key turning in the front door roused
ry out of her reverie. Hastily she threw herself down
on the couch and tried to look as if she were immersed
in one of the paperbacks her mother had left stacked on
the end table. Jocelyn recognized reading as a sacred
pastime and usually wouldn’t interrupt ry in the
middle of a book, even to yell at her.
The door opened with a thump. It was Luke, his arms
full of what looked like big square pieces of pasteboard.
When he set them down, ry saw that they were
cardboard boxes, folded t. He straightened up and
turned to her with a smile.
“Hey, Un—hey, Luke,” she said. He’d asked her to stop
calling him Uncle Luke about a year ago, iming that it
made him feel old, and anyway reminded him of Uncle
Tom’s Cabin. Besides, he’d reminded her gently, he
wasn’t really her uncle, just a close friend of her
mother’s who’d known her all her life. “Where’s Mom?”
“Parking the truck,” he said, straightening hisnky
frame with a groan. He was dressed in his usual
uniform: old jeans, a nnel shirt, and a bent pair of
gold-rimmed spectacles that sat askew on the bridge of
his nose. “Remind me again why this building has no
service elevator?”
“Because it’s old, and has character,” ry said
immediately. Luke grinned. “What are the boxes for?”
she asked.
His grin vanished. “Your mother wanted to pack up
some things,” he said, avoiding her gaze.
“What things?” ry asked.
He gave an airy wave. “Extra stuff lying around the
house. Getting in the way. You know she never throws
anything out. So what are you up to? Studying?” He
plucked the book out of her hand and read out loud:
“‘The world still teems with those motley beings whom a
more sober philosophy has discarded. Fairies and
goblins, ghosts and demons, still hover about—’” He
lowered the book and looked at her over his sses. “Is
this for school?”
“The Golden Bough? No. School’s not for a few weeks.”
ry took the book back from him. “It’s my mom’s.”
“I had a feeling.”
She dropped it back on the table. “Luke?”
“Uh-huh?” The book already forgotten, he was
rummaging in the tool kit next to the hearth. “Ah, here it
is.” He pulled out an orange stic tape gun and gazed
at it with deep satisfaction.
“What would you do if you saw something nobody else
could see?”
The tape gun fell out of Luke’s hand, and hit the tiled
hearth. He knelt to pick it up, not looking at her. “You
mean if I were the only witness to a crime, that sort of
thing?”
“No. I mean, if there were other people around, but you
were the only one who could see something. As if it
were invisible to everyone but you.”
He hesitated, still kneeling, the dented tape gun gripped
in his hand.
“I know it sounds crazy,” ry ventured nervously, “but
…”
He turned around. His eyes, very blue behind the
sses, rested on her with a look of firm affection.
“ry, you’re an artist, like your mother. That means
you see the world in ways that other people don’t. It’s
your gift, to see the beauty and the horror in ordinary
things. It doesn’t make you crazy—just different. There’s
nothing wrong with being different.”
ry pulled her legs up, and rested her chin on her
knees. In her mind’s eye she saw the storage room,
Isabelle’s gold whip, the blue-haired boy convulsing in
his death spasms, and Jace’s tawny eyes. Beauty and
horror. She said, “If my dad had lived, do you think he’d
have been an artist too?”
Luke looked taken aback. Before he could answer her,
the door swung open and ry’s mother stalked into the
room, her boot heels cking on the polished wooden
floor. She handed Luke a set of jingling car keys and
turned to look at her daughter.
Jocelyn Fray was a slim,pact woman, her hair a
few shades darker than ry’s and twice as long. At the
moment it was twisted up in a dark red knot, stuck
through with a graphite pen to hold it in ce. She wore
paint-spattered overalls over avender T-shirt, and
brown hiking boots whose soles were caked with oil
paint.
People always told ry that she looked like her
mother, but she couldn’t see it herself. The only thing
that was simr about them was their figures: They were
both slender, with small chests and narrow hips. She
knew she wasn’t beautiful like her mother was. To be
beautiful you had to be willowy and tall. When you were
as short as ry was, just over five feet, you were cute.
Not pretty or beautiful, but cute. Throw in carroty hair
and a face full of freckles, and she was a Raggedy Ann
to her mother’s Barbie doll.
Jocelyn even had a graceful way of walking that made
people turn their heads to watch her go by. ry, by
contrast, was always tripping over her feet. The only
time people turned to watch her go by was when she
hurtled past them as she fell downstairs.
“Thanks for bringing the boxes up,” ry’s mother said
to Luke, and smiled at him. He didn’t return the smile.
ry’s stomach did an uneasy flip. Clearly there was
something going on. “Sorry it took me so long to find a
space. There must be a million people at the park today
—”
“Mom?” ry interrupted. “What are the boxes for?”
Jocelyn bit her lip. Luke flicked his eyes toward ry,
mutely urging Jocelyn forward. With a nervous twitch of
her wrist, Jocelyn pushed a dangling lock of hair behind
her ear and went to join her daughter on the couch.
Up close ry could see how tired her mother looked.
There were dark half-moons under her eyes, and her
lids were pearly with sleeplessness.
“Is this aboutst night?” ry asked.
“No,” her mother said quickly, and then hesitated.
“Maybe a little. You shouldn’t have done what you did
last night. You know better.”
“And I already apologized. What is this about? If you’re
grounding me, get it over with.”
“I’m not,” said her mother, “grounding you.” Her voice
was as taut as a wire. She nced at Luke, who shook
his head.
“Just tell her, Jocelyn,” he said.
“Could you not talk about me like I’m not here?” ry
said angrily. “And what do you mean, ‘tell me’? Tell me
what?”
Jocelyn expelled a sigh. “We’re going on vacation.”
Luke’s expression went nk, like a canvas wiped clean
of paint. Belonging to N?velDrama.Org.
ry shook her head. “That’s what this is about? You’re
going on vacation?” She sank back against the
cushions. “I don’t get it. Why the big production?”
“I don’t think you understand. I meant we’re all going on
vacation. The three of us—you, me, and Luke. We’re
going to the farmhouse.”
“Oh.” ry nced at Luke, but he had his arms
crossed over his chest and was staring out the window,
his jaw pulled tight. She wondered what was upsetting
him. He loved the old farmhouse in upstate New York—
he’d bought and restored it himself ten years before,
and he went there whenever he could. “For how long?”
“For the rest of the summer,” said Jocelyn. “I brought the
boxes in case you want to pack up any books, painting
supplies—”
“For the rest of the summer?” ry sat upright with
indignation. “I can’t do that, Mom. I have ns—simon
and I were going to have a back-to-school party, and
I’ve got a bunch of meetings with my art group, and ten
more sses at Tisch—”
“I’m sorry about Tisch. But the other things can be
canceled. Simon will understand, and so will your art
group.”
ry heard the imcability in her mother’s tone and
realized she was serious. “But I paid for those art
sses! I saved up all year! You promised.” She
whirled, turning to Luke. “Tell her! Tell her it isn’t fair!”
Luke didn’t look away from the window, though a muscle
jumped in his cheek. “She’s your mother. It’s her
decision to make.”
“I don’t get it.” ry turned back to her mother. “Why?”
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