The Anatomical Shape of a Heart(73)

“Follow us,” he said, and they began making their way through the crowd like we weren’t all sworn enemies.

Mom and I sneaked glances at each other. My eyes said, Ten dollars her boobs are fake, and Mom’s said, Not as fake as his smile—why did I marry that jerk, again? She squeezed my hand and everything was suddenly okay. Good, even.

Until we got to my painting.

If the room was crowded, the area around my painting was packed. I spotted the top of it, with all its bold colors, and my stomach knotted. Maybe this was the worst idea I’d had in a long time. Being grounded and forced into a celibate, Jack-free existence after our single night of spectacular sex had surely rotted a hole in my brain. And speaking of my spectacularly sexy boyfriend, his dark pompadour bobbed above the fringes of the crowd. He spotted me and smiled so big it threw cool water over my roiling emotions.

In a long-sleeve black shirt, he looked handsome and dressed up, but still very, very Jack. He cut around people and came straight to me, while Mom beckoned Noah and Heath, trying to catch them before Heath spotted Dad—which was a good thing, because all I needed was another public blow-out involving my father, if Heath’s reaction was similar to (or worse than) mine had been.

But I couldn’t worry about that. I just concentrated on Jack. As he approached, his gaze fell to the anatomical heart pendant at my throat, and a blissfully pleased look settled on his face.

“You look beautiful,” he said, dropping a speedy kiss on my cheek. But before I could answer, he quickly murmured in my ear, “I need to tell you something.”

About his mom being there, I assumed. So I whispered back, “I already know.”

“How?”

Before I could answer, the crowd opened up to allow someone important to walk through. Jack’s mom, looking stylish in a pink dress, and …

Her husband.

Jack whispered in my ear, “So sorry. He wasn’t supposed to be here. Mom talked him into coming. That’s what I was trying to tell you.”

This was a total disaster. Why had I done this painting? I could have just made do with what I had of my final Minnie drawing instead of ripping her up in a tantrum. Or I could’ve re-created her. But no. I chose now to do something out of my wheelhouse, something weird and creative and emotional, which wasn’t me at all. I was all about structure and control. I was black-and-white. Grayscale. This was—

This was not.

And it was too late to take it all back.

Holding my breath, I watched the crowd part like the Red Sea, and Moses himself suddenly stood a few feet away from me. He and Jack’s mom were flanked by security and led by several people in suits, who had to be either the organizers or judges.

And when the mayor took his hands out of the pockets of his perfectly pressed slacks and crossed his arms, readying himself to look at my painting, I saw the exact moment recognition came. It struck him like a slap to the face. His head jerked back. Body went rigid. Mouth fell open. He worked to move his jaw, but no sound came out. A muscle around his eye jumped.

The span between two heartbeats seemed to stretch infinitely. I glanced up at my painting and saw what the mayor was seeing:

Jillian’s round face was painted in quick strokes. I’d copied her hair from old photos, dark and bobbed and swooping over her forehead. Her big eyes were open, and she was smiling shyly. I’d tried to re-create the shape of her shoulders—the painting stopped at her waist—and I’d painted her wearing a T-shirt from her favorite band.

Minnie’s dissected arm and half-chest were superimposed over Jillian. But instead of looking like the dead flesh I’d originally drawn, I’d painted it to look like the dissections were doors opening to reveal her muscles and organs—like the back of a clock removed to show the cogs and wheels.

On Jillian’s arm, where the penciled dissection cutaway replaced her scars, I gave the veins and arteries life, painting them in rich red and vibrant blue, extending them into the negative space behind her, where they curled and stretched like the whorls of smoke that floated around her head as she sat at the window, posing for me.

And in place of the usual anatomical diagram markers to identify the names of bones and muscles, I substituted words from Jillian’s ramblings.

Memories of her childhood cat. Her first boyfriend. Her favorite book.

Names she’d given the demons that occasionally spoke inside her head. Things that stressed her out. Regrets.

Hundreds of words. They filled the space around her, connected by diagram lines and curling veins. They were as precise and neat as I could make them, and lettered with a black paint pen. Jack would’ve done far better, but I liked that they flowed and curved this way or that.

It wasn’t perfect. And apart from my recycled pieces of Minnie, it wasn’t anatomically accurate. But it looked like Jillian. I knew it. Jack knew it.

And both Mayor Vincent and his wife knew it.

“What is this?” he murmured to her in a low voice.

“This was done by a senior at Lincoln,” one of the suits offered before Jack’s mom could answer. The suit stood next to my painting like a museum guide, holding a flat box beneath a clipboard. Reading whatever was attached to the clipboard, she said, “It’s acrylic and pencil on canvas and paper, and it’s called ‘Hebe Immortalized,’ which I believe is a reference to the Greek goddess of youth.”