“We’ll start this afternoon,” I said, picking up my paintbrush, signaling that he should go. Go, Tristen. Please, just go . . .
He left without another word, and I didn’t watch him walk out like the rest of the class. I just kept studying my self-portrait, darting glances back and forth between my photo and the face on the canvas until I was dizzy from comparing the two. It was almost like the girl in the photograph was blurry and vanishing and the girl I was trying to capture on the canvas was an unknown quantity, too.
How could I not know my own eyes?
Still clutching my brush empty of paint, I thought back to the night Tristen had played our old Steinway and I’d glimpsed that dark place in his eyes, heard it expressed in his music. I’d wondered then if that was what had been missing in my art.
But I’d been wrong. That wasn’t me. I would never be like Tristen.
I wiped my free hand across my mouth, which suddenly tasted metallic, like the formula I’d drunk just the night before.
The rage I’d felt toward my father, the clothes I’d hidden, an arm sliced to the bone, and blood on white sheets and white paper . . .
No! That wasn’t me.
Hand not quite steady, I jabbed my brush into a glob of pure white and painted over my eyes with broad, reckless strokes, thinking I had to start again from nothing. But no matter how I tried, I couldn’t even figure out how to begin.
It was a relief when Miss Lampley finally told us to clean up, and when the bell rang, I walked into the hall, glad to be headed toward sociology, where all I had to do was listen and take notes.
As I slid into my seat, I felt somebody staring at me, and I turned around to see Todd Flick, who sat near the back of the class, glaring at me. And then he mouthed the word “bitch.”
I slid back around, mortified and shaken, not sure what I’d done to earn such naked hatred, not to mention a name I’d never been called before.
Not . . . me.
Chapter 63
Jill
“I’M SO GLAD you two decided to enter, and with such a compelling project,” Mr. Messerschmidt gushed, rubbing his hands together and beaming at me, Tristen, and the stack of old documents on the lab table before us. “To think, recreating such a famous experiment from the original notes! It’s tremendous. Astonishing, even!”
Mr. Messerschmidt started to reach out like he was going to touch the notes, and I slid them closer to myself, out of his reach. Something about my teacher’s enthusiasm for the partnership of Tristen and me still seemed strange to me, and I didn’t like the way he was looking at the documents. It wasn’t like I thought Mr. Messerschmidt would steal my family’s stuff, but still . . . he was almost drooling. “These are kind of fragile,” I said, resting my fingers lightly on the yellowed papers. “It’s not good to handle them a lot.”
“Of course,” Mr. Messerschmidt agreed, withdrawing his hand. But he frowned at me. “Jill, why didn’t you come forward with this before when I urged you to enter the contest? You need to present in less than two weeks!”
“I don’t know,” I lied, spreading my fingers wider, like I was hiding the notes from everybody. “I just didn’t think about it, I guess.”
“You didn’t think about this?” Mr. Messerschmidt laughed, gesturing to the papers again. “That’s hard to believe!”
“Not just hard to believe but total bull,” Darcy interrupted from the front of the room, where she and Todd were working at their usual lab station: number one. She didn’t bother to apologize for eavesdropping. “They’ve been collaborating for weeks.”
“Is planning quietly against the rules?” Tristen asked rhetorically. As if he cared about rules. “Must we all make a big show of everything we do? Some of us are mainly concerned with results, Darcy.”
Her blue eyes flashed. “Or else you’re cheating—”
Tristen laughed. “You’re the one who boasted that you’re working alone. And yet I see you have a collaborator. Who, I ask, is bending the rules?”
“Todd is an assistant,” she clarified, voice rising. “He’s not a collaborator. He just does what I tell him. Grunt work.”
“Jeez, Darce,” Todd snapped as he rinsed some beakers in the sink. “Thanks a lot.”
Tearing my eyes away from the curled, stained papers, I saw that Todd’s ears were red. “You’re so mean, Darcy,” I said. “You even treat your boyfriend like a slave.”
I’d barely even realized I’d said that out loud until everybody turned to look at me. My first instinct was to blush, but I controlled it and forced myself to look them all right in the eye, one by one. Darcy was mean, and I had a right to say it.
Mr. Messerschmidt seemed hesitant, as usual.
Darcy looked shocked and angry.
Tristen nodded, eyes twinkling with bemused approval.
And when I locked eyes with Todd, I saw that he was furious and sheepish at the same time, like my defense had hurt his pride. What had happened, or what was happening between us?
Mr. Messerschmidt cleared his throat in a weak attempt to restore order. “Now, kids—”
“We’ll need lab rats as soon as possible,” Tristen interrupted, addressing our teacher. “I’ll need you to get about twenty from the school’s supplier. The school will pay, right?”
“I suppose so,” Mr. Messerschmidt mused.
“See that it does,” Tristen directed.
Me, I started staring at the old documents again. The formula lurked in there. The dangerous, exhilarating formula. The papers should be hidden . . .
Tristen tapped my shoulder. “Jill, are you all right?”
I tore my eyes away from the notes and realized that Mr. Messerschmidt had meandered off to Darcy’s station. “Yes, sure. I’m fine.”
“What do you want to
