Nick had come over Saturday morning to help me set up for the print workshop. Dad had said we could use the dining table; it was the only flat surface in our apartment big enough for five people to work around. We’d put the chairs against the wall and spread plastic sheeting over the table and on the floor. “This is going to be brilliant,” Nick said as we smoothed the plastic out. “I found a bunch of stuff I’m going to use.” I’d told everyone to bring an assortment of flat shapes and textures to use for their printing plates. I’d also sent them some image links to give them ideas.
“Great,” I said, my voice flat. I still felt off-kilter from last night. The couple of hours’ sleep I’d gotten had been scarred by bad dreams.
Nick looked at me, his eyes soft. “Are you okay?” He dropped his voice. “I know last night really sucked, and I’m sorry.”
“Why are you friends with him?” I set out some tubes of ink. Nick wasn’t like Le Bec, and I couldn’t understand why he’d want to hang out with him.
He looked down. “I’ve spent the last few hours wondering that. At first it was because I like his work, and it felt really impressive to know a street artist. He’s a cataphile, too. He knows the catas really well, and with him, we’ve gone places that we wouldn’t have known about otherwise. I actually met him because Noor knows him.”
I stopped rooting around in my supplies box for the other brayer I knew I had and stared at him. “Okay, but haven’t you noticed that she doesn’t like him? He’s low-key mean to her. He treats her like she’s not a good artist.”
“He treats everyone that way. She never said it bothered her.” He held up a flat, round, handled piece of plastic. “What’s this?”
“The fact that he engages in equal opportunity contempt doesn’t make it okay. And why wouldn’t being patronized about the thing that makes her herself bother her? Just because she doesn’t say anything doesn’t mean she likes it. Haven’t you ever noticed how small she makes herself when he’s around? Or how her sketchbook stays in her backpack? Noor’s always drawing, except when Le Bec’s around.” Nick was still holding up the baren, so I told him its name and what it did. He put it down.
“I didn’t notice about the drawing.” He picked up thebaren again and turned it over in his hands like it held some secret answer.
“So was the VIP catacombs access worth Noor getting her amazing art slammed? Is knowing him better than knowing her? Did you ever notice how Martine goes quiet when he’s around? How she kind of puts Youssef between her and Le Bec?”
Nick looked surprised. “She does?”
“He makes her uncomfortable. He makes a lot of people uncomfortable. Haven’t you noticed that? Doyoulike him? Like, as a person?”
“Not really.”
“But you hang out with him. And people think,Well, Le Bec’s kind of awful, but Nick hangs out with him, so there must be something okay about him.You’ve given Le Bec the Nick Wallace stamp of approval.”
He took my hand. “I am so sorry, Tosh. Le Bec crossed a line last night. I’ll never forgive him for trying to hurt you.” I melted a little because Nick so clearly felt bad about what had happened. He still didn’t quite get it, though.
I sighed. “He didn’t ‘cross a line.’ Not like, he’s a good guy and then he has a bad day or something. He’d already shown you who he was. Every time he was mean to Noor or acted like whatever you all were doing was beneath him, he showed you that he liked to hurt people. And I’m sorry, but staying friends with him told him you were okay with that.” He looked like I’d punched him, and I felt terrible. I wanted so badly to tell him it was okay, but I just kept setting out supplies. It wasn’t okay, and I couldn’t tell him it was, simplyto make him feel better. The interphone buzzed, and I picked it up. “We are here, Tosh,” Martine’s voice sang. “We have supplies.” I buzzed them in.
The girls were wearing their Epic Pastry Quest shirts, and I showed them the plate I’d used to print them. “But it is just cardboard,” Martine said.
“Yup,” I nodded. “Cheap, easy, friendly.” Noor examined it like it was beaming ideas directly into her brain. Youssef asked if you could use a plate to print directly onto a wall. I told him it should work, but not to experiment on our walls or Madame Dupuy would kill me. I was happy to see how interested they all were. It made me feel like a contributing member of the group, instead of just Nick’s girlfriend.
Everyone put their shapes and textures onto the table, and we chose from the mix of string, leaves, fabric, Bubble Wrap, buttons, and keys. I showed them how to make the plates by gluing the items to the cardboard plates I had ready for them. Then I showed them how to ink, place the paper, and burnish. When I pulled my print off—a quick assembly of leaves—I could tell they saw the magic, too. They got to work. Noor finished first. She’d gone nonrepresentational, building a mazelike composition of buttons and layered string. Martine did an allover pattern of keys covered by leaves that looked like an invitation to the secrets of a forest. Youssef had 3D printed the facades of his favorite buildings in low relief and puzzle-fitted them into a dense architectural pattern. Nick took the longest, carefully shaping and gluing pieces of string to his plate. When he finally pulled the print, he held it up for us to see “I’m sorry” in block capitals filling the page.
“For what?” Youssef asked.
“For hanging out with Le Bec, even though I knew he was an asshole. I paid more attention to how impressive it was to know an artist and to have adventures in the catas than to how he treated us all—especially Noor and Martine. And Tosh. I really screwed up. I’m sorry.”
“Thank you,” Noor said. Martine nodded.
“I am sorry, too,” Youssef said. “And in reality, we know more artists than just Le Bec.”
Nick winced. “I’m sorry, Noor.”
She gave him an eighth of a smile. “He is very good at reminding people he is an artist. He wears clothes with paint spatters even when he is not painting and fills the conversation with himself and his work. It is easy to forget the other people making art when he is talking.”
“He won’t be talking to me anymore,” Nick told her. “I promise.”
Chapter 12
Ten Weeks Ago
“Merde!” I said, scrubbing with the pick into the padlock Noor had fastened to the park bench. I’d been trying for twenty minutes to get all the pins to align along the shear line for just long enough to turn the cylinder and unlock the stupid thing. Noor and Martine had shown me a video of how it looked when the pins lined up. I understood what I was supposed to do. I could see it in my mind; the mechanics were simple, but I still couldn’t make it work. “How come this is so easy for you and Martine?” When they’d shown me how to do it, they’d both picked it in about ten seconds, as smoothly as if they’d used a key.
Noor looked up from her sketchbook. “You must fail many times first.”
