I really liked the picture.
To tell you the truth, I liked it a lot more than any of her mom’s stuff on the walls downstairs, which mostly looked like building materials screwed together, like wall displays for siding in one of those big hardware superstores.
Laura’s painting seemed really human. It was crazy that her mom hadn’t hung it up on the wall. You could really feel Laura’s love of horses, which was something she had never even told me about.
I liked it.
I think I loved it.
It said something about her, I thought. It was sort of serene, but also sort of sad.
The only problem was the X.
That was the problem with all of the paintings, and there were, like, half a dozen of them, all really carefully painted on canvas boards, and all with big Xs gashed into them with a knife or a key or something.
Another painting was of Dobey and I thought it was terrific. He was sitting on the grass, and it looked like a real painting and not just the flat smeary mess you see a lot of times, but again there was the X.
That was hard for me to deal with.
It scared me, actually.
It scared me a lot.
I wanted to look at the other paintings because I could tell they were all good, but they all had the damned Xs, slashed on them like open wounds.
I hated the Xs.
I couldn’t stand the Xs.
Her mother had said painting was not practical; I remembered that now. Laura had told me how her mother had said that.
I tried to think clearly about that.
All I could think was, To hell with what’s practical.
I couldn’t look at the paintings anymore. The Xs were hateful.
It was like Laura had attacked her paintings.
It was like she’d attacked herself.
I took them out and put them face-down on the floor beside the box.
What was under them was worse.
There were all these prizes, certificates, and medals on tangled ribbons she’d won since she was a kid—I could tell by the dates. There were at least two dozen of them, lying on a bed of shredded paper. I lifted them carefully and put them aside.
No, it wasn’t shredded paper. It was lots of photos of her.
They were all torn up.
I wondered, Did Laura tear them up? My mother had done that too—I remembered my grandma telling me. But my mother had only hated how she’d looked. I stirred my fingers through the torn shreds and looked down at the paintings I’d turned over to hide the horrible Xs. I closed my eyes.
I said, “You don’t hate yourself, Laura.”
I did not say it because it was true.
I said it because I hoped it was true.
I took out the pile of torn pieces and spread them on the bed. The pieces all looked similar for some reason, and then I got it. They had all been taken in a gym, and all of them showed her doing gymnastics exercises.
For a second I wondered why she hadn’t thrown the pictures away. She’d torn them up—what good were they now? All I could think of was how some kids scar themselves—they cut themselves with a razor or a knife, and they are left with the scars. They like looking at the scars.
These were her scars.
Some of the photos were pretty big—I mean the pieces of them. I managed to put one photograph together like a puzzle; I found about seventy percent of the pieces. It showed her on the balance beam—one of her legs was missing, but the other one she was sticking out straight in front of her; and part of the background was missing, part of the wall over the rows of those bleachers they have in gyms.
She looked incredible in this white-and-blue leotard. You wouldn’t believe the muscles she had.
In the background I saw other girls too, all of them gymnasts in the same leotard—a team leotard, I guessed—standing off to the side in a line, obviously waiting for their turns on the beam. And there was a man standing off to the side of the beam, making a gesture with his hands. From the shape of his mouth you could see he was yelling something to Laura; he was probably her coach. He was a pretty young guy, maybe thirty, and pretty handsome and muscular, with short blond hair. He seemed hard and intense. In the picture Laura’s face was totally focused but worried. I could see that. I could see the nervousness through the fixity of her face, mostly in her eyes. I’m not just making that up—I could see it. She was afraid of screwing up. That was obvious.
I really wanted to see the rest of the picture, especially her other leg and the whole complete pose with her arms spread out like wings.
I rummaged my fingers through the rest of the torn pieces and found what I thought would fit. Two of the pieces had these colored rings. I put them together, placed them where the wall was missing over the seats, and stopped, unable to breathe.
It was the Olympics symbol.
I didn’t understand.
She had never been in the Olympics.
It was impossible. She’d told me nothing about it, nothing at all.
I sifted through the pieces but didn’t assemble any more photos. I couldn’t stand to because whenever I found a piece with her face on it, there was always that same look, that hard focus over a look of fear.
One thing remained in the box.
A diary.
I picked it up and put it aside.
I quickly put everything back in the box, and then I took the diary in my hands and sat with my back against the bed, staring across the room.
Chapter
Sixteen
It was a red clothbound book, one of those classic girl’s diaries, with a strap and key lock on it to keep it private. It said Diary on it, in gold cursive letters.
I held it, looking at it.
I didn’t want to read it.
Anyways, I
