Twisted Fate(29)

“Nah, we’re just chillin’,” Declan said.

“What are you up to?” I asked him.

“Making art,” Graham said. And at that moment I noticed the tiny camera he was holding. The same one he had tried to film me with the other day. It was so small, I had again completely missed it. “Making art and talking to my homeboy Brian.”

“What kind of art?” Declan asked.

“Cool stuff. If you want to come over I can show you.”

Declan and I looked at each other. The playground castle would have to wait . . . or we’d have to sneak out later at night. Whatever Graham was working on, we needed to see it.

We said good-bye to Brian and got in Graham’s car. Even though it was fall he had the top down. He drove fast through the winding shady roads that wound up the hill to our neighborhood. Declan sat in the front and I sat in the tiny backseat. Graham was a good driver. He took some of the hairpin turns a little fast, but it was fun and he definitely knew what he was doing. I imagined him driving all over country roads down south like some aristocratic hick, even though I knew he was from the suburbs.

When we parked in the driveway I saw Ally looking out our window at the three of us—but I ignored it and we quickly went inside.

It was one of those houses that was somehow even bigger on the inside. The whole place was painted white and had high ceilings and perfect track lighting like in an art gallery. And there were huge canvases hanging on the walls. I mean huge. Like taking up most of the room.

“That looks like it belongs in a museum,” Declan said, pointing to a massive blue painting that looked like some kind of dangerous and mythological aquatic life.

Graham laughed. “It actually was in a museum for the past six months! Part of my stepmom’s show at LACMA.”

“What’s LACMA?” I asked. “It sounds like a disease you get if you can’t digest milk.”

“Los Angeles County Museum of Art.” Graham laughed. “Next week Kim will be sending it to a museum in Florence.”

And it was suddenly very easy to imagine all the boys at school who liked to hunt and fish and fix boats kicking Graham’s ass in the school parking lot. Maybe he knew this too and it was why he didn’t go to school.

The rest of the house was equally beautiful and weird. I guess Kim also decorated everything. Because things looked expensive and hard to find. A chandelier made from deer antlers hung above a long rectangular table in the dining room. The couch was upholstered in some kind of beautiful fabric that looked like trees and fire.

“The couch fabric looks like a forest fire,” Declan said.

“It is. It’s a screen print of the fires outside Oakland a few years ago.”

I couldn’t decide if this kid’s parents were a nightmare or the coolest parents in town. There was a large photograph of things I could barely identify; it looked like silk fabric and knives and horses’ hooves all mixed together. Graham saw me looking at it and pointed to the signature in the corner.

“That’s an original Kate Steciw,” he said. “It’s worth half a million dollars. C’mon, let’s take the back stairs.” We followed him through the long hallway to the back of the house where floor-to-ceiling windows looked out on the woods and a yard that had a tall marble fountain in it. But it was not like a garden fountain, something that shot water or had stones or figures in it. It was shaped like a drinking fountain. A rectangular block of marble that was a complete replica with a little stream of water arcing and falling. You could imagine some giant leaning over to get a drink. It was a visual joke. A play on the idea of fountains.

“Let me guess,” I said, gesturing to it. “Kim.”

Graham nodded and laughed and then sprinted up the wide oak staircase, taking two steps at a time. We followed him until we reached the third floor of his house—the attic, I guess—but finished better than any attic I’d ever seen. We have the widow’s walk, which is cool, because you can see the whole harbor from there, but it’s a cold and desolate place to hang out. Here dark curtains hung down from the ceiling and there was a small row of seats like in a real movie theater facing a blank white wall.

“This is the screening room,” he said.

“Wow,” said Declan, “where did you get the movie theater seats?”

“At an architectural salvage warehouse,” Graham told us. “Have a seat.”

We watched him fiddle around with some kind of digital projector and then he turned off the lights and sat next to us. He was very excited and I could feel the kind of pent-up exuberant energy coming off him. He sat down between us, and his arm touched my arm. I could feel the warmth of his skin and I let my finger brush his wrist for a moment. It gave me goose bumps to touch him and to know he wanted me to touch him. He was shaking slightly, excited about showing us the movie, or nervous that I was there with Declan. The way his body seemed so receptive to everything beside me in the dark, it felt like he was on some kind of speed or maybe even Ecstasy. I pulled myself together and leaned the other way to feel my shoulder touching the solid shoulder of Declan. Then I took his hand.

Suddenly the wall in front of us was flooded with white light beaming from the projector. And then the images started. Stark and brilliantly full of color. There was a close-up of Becky’s lips while she was talking but no audio and the footage was slowed down. Smoke came out of her mouth and then the footage was reversed and it looked like she was sucking in a big cloud of gray smoke. Then there were shots of girls jumping rope and chasing each other but they looked like they were taken from old movies. Then footage of a cat eating a mouse. A slow cruising shot of the whole neighborhood, the cheerleading squad practicing but shot from far away and it looked like from the top of a building or something. Then Becky’s lips again. Smiling, talking. We could clearly read her lips and she was saying, “Yeah, you should text me . . .” Declan nudged me.