Still Life with Tornado(72)

I decide Bruce says, “Sarah told me the whole story. I want an explanation. I’m about to become her guardian and plan to talk to the principal and the administration about what happened in your room. All of it. Not just the disappearance of her art project but the things you’ve said to students about her.”

Miss Smith doesn’t say anything. I am still waiting for bats to fly out of her mouth.

I imagine Bruce says, “I think we should start with the art project, though. Did you steal it or did a student steal it?”

“I assure you I didn’t take your sister’s project.”

Bruce turns to me. “Do you have any idea who stole it?”

“I can only guess. Miss Smith is hooking up with Vicky. So it was probably Vicky.”

Bruce looks at me. “She’s having sex with a student?”

“Is this even legal?” Miss Smith asks. “How did you get in here?” The bats have arrived. “You can’t just come in here and accuse me of things.”

Bruce says he has to pee.

I walk him to the men’s room and he asks me to come in with him. I’m not scared, but he is. There are four urinals. Each one has a letter painted in black on it. The letters spell D-U-M-B. He pees in the one with the M. Two rats skitter from the back corner of the stall with no door and past me into the hallway.

? ? ?

We walk through the halls and Bruce seems concerned. “So this is where you go instead of school?”

I say, “Don’t worry. I come here all the time. It’s my new school.”

“Um—I don’t know what to say.”

I stop at another locker with a cool diorama. “Never saw anything like this in my old school.”

He doesn’t say anything.

I take him to the room that says HEED on the wall. I point to the word.

“This place is art. My kind of art.”

“It’s derelict,” he says. “And dangerous.”

“I feel at home here. Ruins. Lies. And look,” I say, running to the end of the hallway where there’s a two-story-high spray-painted windmill. “There’s even a windmill!”

Bruce kicks a can of spray paint by accident and startles himself. I lean down and pick it up. Half full. Gold. Seems right. I shake it so the ball inside makes that unmistakable noise.

I walk into the nearest classroom. I go to the front of the room where the chalkboard used to be, but someone has pried it off the wall and left a big rectangle of clear surface.

In gold spray paint, in all capital letters, I write, THIS IS ART.

When I’m done, I find a desk and sit there and look at what I wrote.

There’s the sound of footsteps in the hallway and before Bruce or I can move, forty-year-old Sarah comes into the room. She takes a deep breath and says, “God, I love the smell of spray paint.” I want to ask her how she got here because she was supposed to be eating lunch with Mom and the other Sarahs, but instead I study her. Still in her hiking shoes—but this time I notice the tiny spots of paint on them.

“Me too,” I say.

“You haven’t told anyone about Miss Smith yet.” She turns to Bruce. “Hey, Bruce.”

“Hey,” he says, but you can tell from the look on his face he doesn’t know who she is. He’s standing there and his body is trying to walk toward the door. He’s going to say “Let’s get out of here” any minute now.

“You have to tell someone,” forty-year-old Sarah says.

“Bruce knows.”

I don’t know what else to say. It’s hard to be honest about this. I haven’t told anyone because when I walked in on Miss Smith and Vicky, they looked so happy. They looked in love. They looked right for each other. Back when it happened, we were all still friends. Miss Smith was still nice to me. Vicky and the whole art club always said I was the one who would make it for real. They said I was weird enough. Miss Smith often talked about the pain in my work.

Ruin.

There was always ruin in my work. Whether it was color or feeling, or something surreal like an animal with no head. Something was ruined. Painful.

Only I didn’t know why until the meat grinder.

But why hurt two people who’re in love, you know? Why spread ruin?

Forty-year-old Sarah says, “I can take care of it my own way if you want. I can call the school.”

“They seemed so happy,” I say.

“You’re mixed up. I understand. But a grown woman preying on a teenager isn’t happy.”

“What’s going on?” Bruce says. “Who is this?”

I pace, my shoes landing on broken pieces of everything, and I explain who forty-year-old Sarah is. Bruce looks at her and smiles.

Bruce says, “Let’s get out of here.”

The two of them start to leave. I put the can of spray paint down and realize that ruin has done me a favor. Ruin is why I will be able to draw the pear. Ruin is why I’ll be able to sculpt another owl. Ruin is why my work has pain.

When we get back outside, forty-year-old Sarah says she’s going to take the next bus and I ask Bruce if he’ll walk with me instead.

On our walk back to home, I explain the Sarahs to Bruce.

“It’s impossible to explain,” I say. “But they’re real.”