Girl in Snow(26)

Cameron decided to paint a barn swallow, with a red neck and blue body. He found a picture on the internet, printed it, and traced it onto canvas. The bird was perched on a lone branch.

The following week, Mr. O showed up at Cameron’s house for tea. He and Mom had met at parent-teacher conferences. So you’re responsible for this talented kid? Mr. O had said, paint-splattered hands shoved in the pockets of his corduroys.

Mom and Mr. O sat on the old couch in the living room, drinking Mom’s favorite ginger tea. Cameron went for a walk, meandering aimlessly to the foot of the mountains. He debated going up to Pine Ridge Point, but it wasn’t that sort of night, even though he felt awfully sad. It was a specific melancholy, the sort of sadness you felt when you were in the process of losing something: you had to watch it go with the knowledge that you couldn’t stop its leaving.

When Cameron came home, the house smelled like acetone and turpentine. Mom sang while she did the dishes.

A few days later, Mr. O showed the class his painting.

“It’s called The Calla Lily,” he said, propping it up at the whiteboard.

Mr. O had painted the calla lily in melting shades of yellow, the petals tinged a blushing red. The inside of the calla lily was done with a smaller brush, in quiet strokes you had to focus hard on. The anther and the ovary peeked out from behind the petals, and Mr. O had left blank spots in all the right places—the flower had holes, but they were intentional. Spaces that didn’t need covering, empty parts that made it look more whole. The flower was familiar to Cameron, like a song you had heard as a child and couldn’t remember the words to.

Mr. O had studied Mom. He’d understood all her edges, the places where she blended into the background, the places where she popped—he’d taken the sound of Mom laughing to herself at late-night television—and he had turned these things into colors and strokes and put them in the shape of a calla lily.

Cameron guessed Mr. O was around the same age as Mom, but he looked ten years younger. He had black hair with gray bits that poked out around his ears and the sort of wrinkles people got in their thirties. He had a slim, lean build, and he smoked cigarettes against the back fence of the school every day at three o’clock.

Mr. O’s parents had emigrated from Japan when he was only five. He’d taught himself English by watching sitcoms. He used to have a wife, but she moved to New York to be a ceramics designer. He told Cameron and Mom this very casually, at the bakery after the winter art show, as they dipped three forks into one piece of cheesecake.

“People change,” he said, and that was that.

Sometimes at night, after Mr. O had come and gone, Mom would sit on the porch steps, her body folded in half, hugging herself and watching the dim world exist. Cameron wanted to tell Mr. O about loss—the hissing sound it made, like air drained from a tire, how that sound could continue forever if you let it—but maybe Mr. O already knew.



Cameron tried to work on his art project. He tried to fall into the spaces between charcoal strokes, but today was Thursday. Lucinda had ballet on Thursdays. Cameron had followed her, once, and watched from the Chinese restaurant across the street as Lucinda did pliés and jetés in a tight black leotard. Her hair was pinned up in a bun. Even though Cameron couldn’t see from so far away, he was sure the strands in front were curling wild against Lucinda’s forehead.

Cameron left his stick of charcoal next to the easel and wiped his hands on his jeans. His fingers left charcoal tracks across the denim. Cameron’s hands were usually steady. Artist’s hands. His hands had a sense for the way things moved, and he could confidently replicate that movement. Cameron’s hands were his favorite part of his own body because they spoke in all the ways his mouth could not.

Now, they shook as they reached into his backpack.

Even though Cameron knew Mr. O was probably only nice to him because he was in love with Mom, he had a lot of faith in the easiness of Mr. O’s eyes and the way he gave instructions in class—You have to understand the emotional undercurrents of your work if you want genuine results.

For this reason, and because he did not know what else to do, Cameron dug to the bottom of his backpack and pulled out Lucinda’s purple diary.

Mr. O had seen Cameron’s drawings of Lucinda. Cameron had brought them in that September, when Mr. O was deciding about the advanced figure-drawing class. You have an eye for realism, Mr. O said. He’d never seen a ninth-grade student with Cameron’s abilities, he said, and—Wow, Cam—the portraits were lifelike and clear. Majestic. Cameron had exactly replicated her face with his fingertips, drawing her exterior lines and smudging them around to give her a life and texture Mr. O said he wasn’t sure she possessed in actuality. Cameron respected him for this.

When the bell rang, Cameron wrapped Lucinda’s diary in his oversized green sweat shirt and left the bundle on the stool, next to the lion with half-drawn eyes—an apology to Mr. O with a signature at the bottom.



Cameron was stumbling out of the art classroom, breathing hard, when Ronnie grabbed his shoulder. He whirled Cameron around forcefully. Ronnie had PE in the wrestling gym while Cameron had art class, and now he smelled like dirty socks.

“Dude,” Ronnie said. “What’s your deal?”

Ronnie glanced pointedly past Cameron, in the direction of Mr. O’s office. Curious.

“What’s going on with you?” Ronnie said. “Seriously. People keep talking. Asking me what you did, if you really were obsessed with Lucinda. Are you some kind of creep or something?”