Everything Leads to You(59)

Portraits.

It’s similar in feeling to what Ava was thinking, but has the potential to be more beautiful. Juniper will have drawings and paintings of strangers on her wall, old things found at flea markets and thrift stores. She surrounds herself with images of people so she’ll feel less alone.

Rebecca texts me a photo of three rugs with a question mark. I text back, Yes, No, Yes. And I visit four art stands and find six portraits that I love.

Driving back at eight with a few rugs and a chest of drawers in the bed of the truck and my portraits stacked on my lap, Rebecca says, “We watched all the audition reels last night.”

“Oh yeah?”

She nods. “Your friend is good.”

“Yeah, she is.”

I wait.

“How good?” I ask.

Rebecca smiles.

“We’ll see,” she says.

~

Ava meets me at the Hollywood Goodwill. There are thrift stores I like better, smaller spaces with carefully curated stock, but we need dirt-cheap artwork and I am willing to comb through the stacks to discover it.

“Portraits,” I tell her when we get to the corner where the art is. “The apartment is mostly blues and greens, so if anything matches that color scheme let’s be sure to grab it. But a couple pieces could pop, especially if they’re good ones; if you find a couple red pieces don’t hold back.”

“A variety of sizes?” she asks.

I nod. “They’ll all be hung together on one wall. I’m looking for mismatched styles and sizes. I already have six but could use at least ten more.”

We get to work, sifting through everything from framed band posters to amateur oil paintings. Ava starts a pile and I add to it, and I find that I like working with her. The way that she isn’t asking me what I think of what she’s finding, how she’s just moving fast and efficiently, knowing that we’ll look through them all together when we’ve finished.

“Half of these portraits are of Jesus,” she says. “I’m assuming it’s okay to skip over them.”

“That would cast Juniper in a different light.”

“It is morning. Juniper stands before a wall full of approximately sixteen Jesuses in various sizes and styles.”

I laugh and Ava smiles down into the stacks, working again, and I have to force myself not to look at her.

Theo is supposed to make his final callbacks today, and with every hour that passes without hearing, I am struck with both hope and dread. Hope because I know that Ava has a good chance, even though she’s an unknown, even though he doesn’t know about Clyde. She was that good. And why would Rebecca bring it up if the news was going to be bad? But I know Theo had a lot of actresses to choose from this time around, and I really want this for Ava. We don’t need another setback now when things have been going so well.

I flip through a few landscapes, an abstract in muddy browns, an old circus poster. Then I find a pen-and-ink portrait of an old man and I add it to the pile.

“Emi,” says a voice I recognize, and I turn to find Laura Presley.

“Oh, hey,” I say.

And then I remember what I wrote in her yearbook and feel a little embarrassed, because when I wrote it, I never expected to see her again.

She’s looking at Ava so I introduce them.

“That’s quite the stack you guys have,” Laura says, her eyes darting from Ava to me. She’s holding a suede jacket with fringe and a pair of pink sunglasses.

“It’s for a film I’m working on,” I say.

“Cool,” she says. I can tell she wants to see, but I don’t have time to show her everything and explain it all, so I just say yeah and smile and wait for her to walk away.

“Great finds,” Ava tells her. “I love the fringe.”

Laura looks down at the jacket as though she’d forgotten about it.

“Thanks,” she says to Ava. Then, to me, “I didn’t see you at graduation.”

“Yeah, Charlotte and I left right after the ceremony.”

“You aren’t very sentimental, are you?”

“Only about some things.” I wait for her to respond but she doesn’t, so I say, “Well, it was nice to see you.”

She laughs like she gets the point.

“Okay, Emi,” she says. She looks at Ava one more time, and then she says good-bye and walks away.

I turn back to the artwork and shake my head at Ava.