Chapter 4
Kayla shoved her hair behind her ear for the thousandth time as she looked down at her drawing. It was wrong.
She knew it was wrong. She could see that it was wrong. What she couldn’t figure out, no matter how long she stared at it, was why it was wrong. It was driving her bonkers.
One-point perspective. One vanishing point.
Lines converging. It was simple geometry.
She was excellent at geometry. She had explained the Pythagorean theorem to other kids in her class, and three of them were sitting in this very classroom!
So why was her hallway drawing looking like something a second-grader might tape to a refrigerator?
She tilted her head. That didn't help.
She tilted it the other way. Nope, that didn’t help either.
“Nice,” Mrs. Alvarez said, as she paused behind Tyler Brannock's shoulder two seats over. “You’re showing a really nice sense of depth, Tyler.”
Kayla looked at Tyler's drawing.
It was nice.
It had depth.
The lines receded to the vanishing point in a way that felt effortless and real, like you could actually walk down that hallway.
Tyler Brannock, who two weeks ago had stared at the equation 3x + 6 = 18 like it had personally wronged him until Kayla had walked him through it three times.
But here in art class, Tyler Brannock had a nice sense of depth.
She looked back at her own paper.
To her left, Jordan Petree was shading. Actually shading. Jordan was already past the lines part and adding shadow to the baseboards like it was nothing, like art class was a breeze.
She closed her eyes.
Shut it down, Gault.
What would her dad say?
He’d tell her to suck it up and do her best. He’d tell her to be aware she couldn’t be good at everything and it was her job to accept that. It was her job to praise others for their skills and when they were part of your team, to know you could rely on them. Just like you would in sports.
She took a deep breath and let it out.
Mrs. Alvarez came over to her desk.
“Kayla, I think you might be overthinking this assignment. Is that possible?”
“What do you mean?”
“A lot of students who excel at geometry come at this assignment with those principles. Why don’t you relax and just draw what you see?”
The bell rang, she had never been so grateful.
“I’ll try at home,” she promised her teacher. Then she closed her sketchbook, tucked it under her arm, and left the classroom.
The hallway between Art and her locker was always a little chaotic right after fourth period with everyone going different directions, lockers slamming, and the particular noise of six hundred people all trying to be somewhere else.
Kayla had learned to move through it efficiently.
She kept right, kept her head up, and didn't stop for anything that wasn't worth stopping for.
She almost didn't see Mandy.
Her best friend was standing at her own locker around the corner, and normally that meant she was sorting through all of her books and assignments that were never in order, or she was already talking to someone and would flag Kayla down with the particular wave she used that meant come join in for the scoopage.
She wasn't waving. She was just standing there, door open, looking at the inside of her locker with an expression Kayla couldn't quite read from this distance.
“Hey.” Kayla stopped beside her. “Survive fourth period?”
Mandy blinked and looked over. “Oh. Hey.” She smiled. It was the right shape of a smile. “Yeah, fine.”
“I almost didn’t survive Art.”
“You say that every time.”
“Because every time it’s true.” Kayla leaned against the neighboring locker. “Tyler Brannock is adding depth and atmosphere to his perspective drawing. Tyler Brannock. I helped that kid with algebra for two weeks.”
Mandy made the sound she usually made at this, a short laugh that meant only you would be personally offended by this. Except it came out a half-beat late, and a little flat, and then she turned back to her locker and started moving things around that didn't look like they needed moving.
Kayla watched her for a second.
“You okay?”
“Fine.”
“You sure? Because your locker looks kind of organized.”
“I'm fine, Kayla.”
She said it the way people said things when they were not fine and didn’t want to talk about it.
Kayla had known Mandy since first grade; she always wanted to talk about it. Kayla was the one who kept things to herself.
“Hey.” She said it quieter. “What's going on?”
Mandy's shoulders went tight. It was small, barely visible, but Kayla was standing close enough to see it.
“Nothing. I said I'm fine.”
“Mandy—”
“Can you just—” She stopped. Turned. Her eyes were bright in a way that wasn't happy. “Not everything is something, okay? Not everything needs to be analyzed. Just because your dad's a SEAL doesn't mean you have to treat every conversation like a mission debrief.”
The words landed in the middle of the hallway and just sat there.
Kayla didn't say anything. She couldn't quite find anything to say.
Mandy's expression shifted, something moving across her face that looked like it might be regret, but then it was gone. She shut her locker, tucked her bag over her shoulder, and walked away without looking back.
Kayla stood where she was.
Around her the hallway kept moving, lockers kept slamming, people kept going wherever they were going. Nobody had heard. Nobody was looking at her.
She stood there another moment, her sketchbook still under her arm, her wrong drawing still inside it.
Then she went to her next class.
First screwing up in Art class, then screwing up with Mandy.
Everything was not fine.
The bus dropped her two blocks from home, which she didn't mind. The walk gave her time to think, and right now she had things to think about.
She was still thinking when she pushed open the front door, hung her backpack up, and made her way to the kitchen.
She grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl on the island, then leaned down, crunching into it.
She let the quiet of the empty house settle around her as she waited for Lisa and her mom to show up.
She didn't have to wait long. Twenty minutes later she heard the garage door, and then Lisa's voice was carrying through the house before the door from the garage had fully closed.
“—and then Mrs. Patterson held it up and said it was one of the best in the class—”
“That's wonderful, baby.” Her mom’s voice, warm and appreciative. That was Mom, she was always their biggest cheerleader.
They came through the door together, Lisa still talking, while her mom still listened with an absorbed expression, the way she did. Kayla watched her little sister for a moment. Ten years old and absolutely certain the world revolved around her, which was fine, because for the most part it did.
“What did she hold up?” Kayla asked.
Lisa spun around. “Kayla! My solar system drawing. I made sure all the planets were the right colors, and I labeled Pluto as a planet even though technically it's a dwarf planet. I put a footnote.”
“You put a footnote on a fourth grade assignment? I didn’t think you had to do that kind of thing. You’re a badass.”
Kayla watched her sister preen. “Well, someone has to stand up for Pluto.”
Kayla looked at her mom. Her mom looked back with an expression that said she gets it from your father's side.
“Can I see it?” Kayla asked.
Lisa started digging through her backpack. She pulled out a folded piece of paper and handed it over with huge pride.
Kayla unfolded it.
It was good. Actually very good. The planets were the right relative sizes, the colors were careful and accurate, and at the bottom in Lisa's neat handwriting was a footnote that read: Pluto is classified as a dwarf planet by the IAU, but this is disputed. I'm choosing to include it.
“Lisa, this is really good.”
Lisa shrugged, but she was pleased. “I know.”
“No, I mean it.” Kayla looked at the drawing again, the clean lines, the sense of space between the planets, and felt something that was uncomfortably close to envy. She folded it back up and handed it over. “If my Art homework ends up kicking my butt tonight, I’m calling you for help.”
Lisa looked up at her with their father’s eyes, then patted her arm. “I’m always here for you.” Every ounce of envy fell away, and Kayla hugged her little sister. Then she turned to their mother. “Can I help with dinner? I don't have much homework.”
Sophia was already nodding. “Wash your hands first.”
Kayla grabbed her backpack from the entryway. “Can you call me when it's ready? I'm going to be drawing hallways for the rest of the night.”
“Still the hallway?” Sophia asked.
“Still the hallway.”
“You can do it,” Lisa called after her. “But if you can’t, I’m always here to help.”
“You’re the best.”
Kayla slipped into her bedroom and shut the door. It was quiet and familiar and smelled like the candle she'd burned last weekend. She dropped her backpack, pulled out her sketchbook, and sat on the floor with her back against the bed.
She looked at the hallway drawing from class.
Then she turned to a clean page and decided to draw a hallway from memory.
Their hallway. The one from the front door to the kitchen, with the little table on the left where the mail piled up and the framed photo of her parents on their wedding day.
She closed her eyes and waited until it was perfectly clear in her head.
Then she opened them and put her pencil to paper.
She didn't measure anything. She didn't think about vanishing points. She just drew what was in her head.
After three minutes she could clearly see it was better.
Significantly, annoyingly better.
How was that possible?
Her father had taught her her entire life, you plan. Then you plan again, then you make a contingency plan, and then you make a back-up plan to your contingency plan. You do not just close your eyes and give it your best shot.
This made no freaking sense!
Hell, even at her mom’s job, you had to be precise.
When you were baking, you had to follow the recipe just so.
Otherwise, the bread wouldn’t rise, or the pastry would come out wrong.
Okay, okay, Mom fiddled with different ingredients to get different tastes, but that was after she got the basics down perfectly.
The only good thing was that she didn’t have to take any kind of Art class next semester.
Kayla set aside the sketchbook.
And then, because she'd been not-thinking about it since fifth period, she started thinking about Mandy.
The thing was, it didn't track.
Mandy had never once said anything like that to her.
Not in eight years. They'd disagreed about plenty of things, Mandy thought pineapple on pizza was acceptable, which was a character flaw Kayla had chosen to overlook, but Mandy had never accused her of being pushy.
And she'd definitely never brought up her dad being a SEAL.
Kayla sure didn’t. What her dad did was classified. Mentioning that he’d just left was not something you were supposed to do, so Kayla only ever mentioned things about her dad when he was doing things at home.
A lot of the other Navy kids knew her dad was a SEAL. There was always talk. So it wasn’t like she denied it, that’d be lying. But she didn’t go around bragging about it, even if she did think it was pretty darn cool.
Bottom line, it was just part of her life. Like living near the base, like living near the ocean, like being a blonde, like her dad's team being the people they called family. But she sure didn't wave it around.
And Mandy knew that. Mandy had always known that.
So why had she said it?
Kayla pulled her knees up and rested her arms on them.
Mandy's dad was a helicopter mechanic for the Navy.
He'd done overseas tours. He was good at it too, her dad had said once, in that specific way he talked about people he respected, that Dan Kowalski was one of the best mechanics he'd ever seen. He’d specifically said that Dan was somebody you wanted working on your bird.
Their dads were connected to the same world. It had never been a point of friction between them.
So why had Mandy looked at her like that, in the middle of the hallway, with those too-bright eyes, and said what she'd said?
It made no sense.
Kayla turned it over and looked at it from a few different angles the way she did with complex math problems, and it still made no sense from any of them. Something was wrong with Mandy. Something real. And whatever it was, it was big enough that Mandy had gone somewhere she'd never gone before.
She was still thinking about it when her mom's voice came up the stairs.
“Dinner, Kay!”
She unfolded herself from the floor, left the sketchbook where it was, and went downstairs.