Chapter 14
AMARA
There’s about ten minutes until the period ends, and although I could wait to talk to him between classes, there’s something about the thrill of being caught that makes me tap Rebecca on the shoulder.
Her hand comes down, her fingers gripping the folded piece of paper tightly.
She waits until Mrs. Capriendo turns around to pass the paper to Cooper, who tucks it into his lap.
Thankfully, art class means big tables that are easy to hide things under.
It’s one of the few classes that mix grades. Cooper had begged me to take it, claiming his grandpa wouldn’t allow him another study hall. It was either a science class or an art class, and he picked art.
“I mean, how does a teacher actually grade art?” he shrugged. “I could be the worst artist in the world and I could probably sell someone on it.”
Reasonable.
It was an easy yes for me. Rebecca was already taking the class, and I’ve always loved looking at the displays of past students.
“You owe me an ice cream,” Rebecca whispers.
“I always get you ice cream,” I respond with a smile.
The corner of her lips tilts up before vanishing as the teacher turns to us. “Amara!” she calls with a chilling smile. “What were the two most well-known forms of impressionism?”
I think about it for a few minutes. While I like impressionism, there are some styles I prefer. “Well, I think my favorite is fauvism—”
She shakes her head vigorously, her curly gray hair flying around her face as her lips twist into a sour frown.
“Fauvism was a movement that broke away from Impressionism. They rebelled against it, creating some of the most gorgeous, colorful work. Henri Matisse! Maurice de Vlaminck!” she closes her eyes, smiling.
“Beautiful. Just beautiful. But not impressionism, I fear, dear. I’m asking what the two most widely known impressionist movements are. ”
I look around the class. No one seems to want to answer. Cooper is nearly asleep at the other corner of the table.
“Well, there was the post-impressionist movement—”
“That was one of them,” she says. “Also a reaction against impressionism. You see, the art world was,” she taps her finger against her cheek, “well, dramatic isn’t quite a strong enough word. What’s the second one? Rebecca?”
My friend sits up in her seat, her chest puffed out in front of her. “Neo-impressionism?” she asks, as if not quite sure.
Mrs. Capriendo smacks her hand against the table. “Yes! Amazing. Truly amazing,” she mutters mostly to herself. “Neo-impressionism was a style that arose from impressionism,” she informed us.
While she’s busy walking around the room, Cooper takes the second she turns her back to us to unfold my paper. I watch as a small blush creeps onto his cheeks, the small dimple he’s always had deepening with a small smile.
His green eyes meet mine, and he gives me a small nod.
“Impressionism started in the 1860s but did not become a movement until 1874, during their first exhibition in Paris.”
She stops in the middle of the room, a hand on her hip. “Am I boring you, Mr. Henry?”
Cooper’s head shoots up.
Cooper has always been wicked smart. But for some reason, he doesn’t seem to get great grades, and getting him to pay attention in class is always a hassle for teachers.
“Sorry,” he mumbles, looking down sheepishly.
“If this is boring you, Cooper, just wait until we launch into the drama and infighting within the movement.”
She looks around the room, realizing she’s losing people. “Did you know that Degas had a, well, what do the kids say these days, frenemy?”
A couple of the girls look up from their iPods.
She nods, smiling. “Yep. A turbulent friendship with Edouard Manet that ended when Manet took a knife to one of Degas’ portraits of him and his wife. They made up, of course. But their relationship was still complex until Manet died.”
There are some whispers around the class.
Although interesting, I’m not sure when any of this information will be of use to me.
Cooper looks at me with a smirk, and I know that it’s not because of our teacher’s story or art at all.
Sam sits next to me at Kohr Bros, her giant cone dripping onto her hand. “Can we please do it?” she pouts.
“Absolutely not,” Natalia snaps.
I knock my knee into Cooper’s. “I don’t know. Sounds kinda fun,” I tell her.
It’s the spring, and all the tourists have yet to arrive.
While Rehoboth is a popular vacation destination during the summer, and especially on holidays, there are only around fifteen hundred people who live here year-round.
In the summer? There are at least twenty thousand people.
Well, according to my dad, anyway, who’s constantly upset about it taking him three times longer to get home because of traffic.
Cooper is just a seven-minute drive away in Dewey Beach, which has even fewer people who live there year-round.
Safe to say that everyone knows everyone here. We all go to the same school and hang out at the same places.
“I say let’s go for it,” Cooper snickers.
Natalia shoots him a lethal look.
“We’re going to get in trouble,” she complains.
Kids are always up to no good here. Now is our time to have fun.
No one says anything for a moment.
“Okay, fine.”
“Thank god,” Sam mutters, slurping at her melting ice cream.
“What are the dares going to be?” I ask them.
Rebecca grins. “Well, Sam has finally gotten the new iPod touch, right? So, how about this? We each have a few tasks we have to do, and we all take photos of ourselves doing them. Then we meet back here. Whoever does the most, wins.”
“Let’s do it,” Cooper says quickly, getting up. “What are the tasks?”
“Ding dong ditch,” Sam says through a mouthful of dessert.
Natalia thinks for a moment before she eyes the cone. “Eat three ice cream cones.”
Sam makes a face. “They can be little right?”
“Yeah. Why?”
She places her hand on her stomach. “I’m lactose intolerant.”
Natalia’s brows furrow. “You took your medication, didn’t you?”
Sam shakes her head. “Nah.”
We’re all confused, but she just shrugs.
And then everyone looks at me.
I think about it for a few moments. “How about taking a dip in the ocean?” I smile.
Rebecca gasps. “You jerk!”
The ocean is freezing. It’ll be fun.
“Okay. We’ve got a few things down. If anyone else wants to add something in, we can come up with a few more when we meet back here, okay?”
We all nod.
“Are we pairing up?” Natalia asks expectantly.
“Amara is with me,” Cooper says as he hits his knee to mine, the force nearly knocking me over.
She looks at us suspiciously but continues her questioning.
Thinking about spending a chunk of the night with Cooper has my stomach filled with butterflies.
Five minutes later, and we’re all sprinting out of the ice cream shop and into wildly different directions.
Cooper is taller than I am. Much taller. He’s also an athlete, and it takes me forever to catch up to him, and that’s only when he slows to a stop outside of a house.
More specifically, Old Man Willy’s place.
An old, crotchety man with more cats than toes.
There’s a local legend—okay, gossip—that he captures kids who trespass and turns them into his cats.
Stopping at the side of the home, Cooper’s beautiful eyes meet mine, shining with mischief. “You ready?” he asks with a grin, holding his hand out for mine.
“Not really,” I say on an exhale. I like cats, but I don’t want to be turned into one.
Grabbing my hand, Cooper doesn’t ask any more questions. Instead, he tugs me along to the front of the house, crouching down at the large garden pots in front.
Meow!
Cooper looks back, a bit panicked. “I forgot about the cats,” he whispers.
“How could you forget about them? They’re everywhere,” I gesture around us.
He bites his lip, his head rearing back in an attempt to get his dark brown hair out of his eyes. “Okay. Let’s do it and get out of here.” He scrunches his nose as if trying not to sneeze.
We both count down from three, running up to the door and ringing the bell. We don’t stick around long.
We’re around the side of the house by the time Willy opens the door.
Cooper stands behind me, his body tensing. I peek behind me to find him struggling not to sneeze.
But him sneezing would be bad. Very bad. The legend aside, Willy isn’t necessarily known to be the warmest man, and, well, he and Cooper’s grandpa have had a decades-long grudge. One that apparently has involved several generations.
So I do what any rational person would do. I grab his nose between my fingers, my palm clamping down on his mouth.
It’s not until I do it, watching his eyes grow wide and wild, that I realize how close we are. His body up against mine. My face so close to his.
I hear Willy on his porch, likely looking around. “Kids these days,” he mutters. The door closes loudly.
I let him go, and he immediately buckles over, sneezing into his arm. He does so quietly, but we both freeze, listening to see whether Willy will come back or not.
Cooper’s smile lights up the late afternoon sky.
Taking my hand without a word, we run off.
“We didn’t film it!” I cry after a moment, reaching for my pocket.
We come to a stop in the middle of a parking lot.
“I don’t think that matters,” he says.
I look at him in confusion. “What do you mean it doesn’t?”
“I mean that I don’t think you want to do that again, do you? So let’s just hang out.”
I look at the beach in the distance, the waves crashing as kids run around.
“Sure,” I agree with a small smile. I mean, that’s what I wanted, right?
I wanted Cooper.