My Not-So-Still Life Read Free Page A

myself in her. Mom and Grampie say my birth was the thing in the universe that balanced out her death. I like the idea. Not that she’s gone, but that I somehow make up for her death a little.
    The bus stop is at the corner of Twenty-Sixth, just a couple of blocks back from Market Street, where Ballard stops being residential and starts being citylike.
    Nick gets there first, and when I join him he says, “I love Fridays.”
    “Me too.” I put my arm around him, and we stand there looking like two wild teenagers waiting for something to happen. Something more than a bus showing up, headed toward Fremont.
    But sometimes, a bus and your neon friend are enough.
    “I’m glad you’re getting to know Holly,” I say as we get off the bus across the street from Caffe Ladro, our first stop on the art walk.
    “She’s a sweetheart.” It was Holly’s sweetness that made us into friends the first week of sixth grade. I was terrified to talk to anyone, but Holly marched right up to me during “nature exploration”—Ocean Tides Middle School code for “recess”—to ask if I wanted to build fairy houses with her.
    Holly lives in Fremont—right next to Ballard but with a different vibe, less about the water and more about creativity and Thai food. Her house is taller than mine, but still shingled. Her yard is even tinier than mine, her house closer to the road.
    Holly practices the cello from six until eight everynight, even Friday and Saturday. Even on the days when she’s got organized practice after school and has already played for two hours. Practice makes perfect, and Holly’s driven; she doesn’t want to accept less than perfect when it comes to her music.
    We’ll meet up with her right after Ladro. We have just enough time to pop in.
    We cross the busy street in the dying light of springtime. I catch a whiff of Indian spices from the restaurant by the bus stop.
    “Wonder who’s exhibiting this month,” Nick says, holding the door for me. As if we’ll know the artist. An exhibiting artist wants nothing to do with two high school kids.
    Even if I’m the best artist at school, I’m nothing out here in the real world.
    There’s a long line for coffee, and the shop is pretty crowded, people mingling and eating free snacks. When I see the photos on the wall, I realize that we do know the artist.
    It’s Jewel. The reason my insides are twisty. The cause of my one stint with the black string. He’s a high school sophomore, like me. But he has this show. And I have … what?
    “Let’s just go meet Holly,” I say.
    Nick doesn’t question. He can radar that I’m uncomfortable.
    Nick and I weren’t that close yet when Jewel mashed my heart into my toes last fall. In fact, less time with Jewel was the start of more time with Nick. Friend-dating is so much easier than dating-dating.
    “Sure,” he says. “Let’s go.”
    I want to. But I don’t turn to leave.
    Jewel’s biting into a cookie, standing in a huddle with his overalls-wearing mom, and with Alice Davis, whose ponytail looks as perfect as ever, and her folks, who are wearing conservationist tees I know they screen-printed themselves. Alice wears one too. Hers and her mom’s have a tree with roots, and her dad’s has a dolphin. Back when Alice and I were in elementary school, before I went to Ocean Tides, Alice gave me one about saving bees. I wore it forever.
    She and I have a tiny friendship, a sort of understanding or respect, because we were friends as kids. But lately, due to Jewel, our good thoughts and feelings about each other are this cactus we’re both afraid to touch.
    Jewel looks to see who Mr. Davis is waving at. His eyes—his amazing eyes that seek and find beauty in every little thing—glint as he locks on me. I feel zapped. As if there’s light, sound, and
this
. Jewel’s electric gaze.
    Alice notices me. She gives me that look. The one she’s been giving me since the fall, simultaneously sweet and kind of cruel, because we