True:*eyes pop out of head due to kinetic energy of epic eye roll*
Onny:I think the easiest way is to drink it? But Lola’s recipe just says “touch the potion to your intended’s body and your own.” Whatever that means.
True:*snort* PLEASE can you hurl the potion into Cassidy’s face? I’d like to be there to see it.
Onny:LOL. Drinking it is more romantic. But don’t forget she also has to kiss you before midnight. That’s how your love is sealed.
Ash:OK thanks. Gotta go.
Onny:That’s it? You’re just gonna leave us hanging like this? I NEED DETAILS!
Onny:Hello? Earth to Ash?
True:Leave him alone. He’s flitted off to work his magic.
Onny:Ooooh, so you DO believe in magic.
True:Some days I honestly don’t understand how you two dorks are my best friends.
For the third time that day, Ash stepped into the backyard to go to his studio. The bistro lights on the patio next door twinkled, and lively conversation spilled over as the team continued to eat their spaghetti dinner. But Ash was immune to distraction now. He had a plan. Not a loud, showy one like Logan and the marching band, but one that would hopefully work just as well.
He flipped the light switch in the studio and shut the door behind him. Then he turned off the ringer on his phone and set it on the top shelf, where he wouldn’t be tempted to check it.
Noise-canceling headphones? Check.
Box of beads, sequins, feathers, and ribbons? Check.
Paintbrushes, palette, and rack of more bottles of paint than an art store? Check, check, and definitely check.
With his setup ready, Ash picked up one of the “naked”masks—plain white with empty eye holes—and spun in his chair to his worktable. Of course, Cassidy already had a mask, but Ash wanted to make one that was unique to her. He could have decided to give her any of the dozens of finished masks hanging on the wall behind him. But that felt lazy. It was like buying a gas-station rose at the last minute because you just remembered your mom’s birthday. Sure, you showed up with a present, but there was nothing ofyouin the gift. If Ash was going to put himself out there and let the girl he’d loved for years know it, he was going to do better than a gas-station rose.
The question was, how to design the mask? On the one hand, he could translate everything he knew about Cassidy into paint. Like the fence bordering her yard. It would be vibrant and gleeful, her exuberance rendered in color, like the Kandinsky he’d imagined earlier when he touched her hand to help her onto the shack’s porch.
But there would also be calm, because it underlay everything Cassidy did—how she trained for her races, how she practiced soccer and basketball with Ricky and Jordan, how she lived without fear, despite knowing that her fragile, transplanted lungs could betray her just like her original pair did.
A mask like that would begin with blue at the bottom, a serene ocean. And then it would open up above into a resplendent sunrise, all pinks and oranges and yellows. There would be sapphire tassels beneath the ocean, glitter on the brow, and fans of feathers at the top corners.
Or… Ash could make a mask that was the other half of his own costume, the woman in Klimt’s paintingThe Kiss.
“No,” Ash said out loud, even though he was the only one in the studio. “That’s too presumptuous.”
But wasn’t this whole endeavor presumptuous anyway? Making a mask for Cassidy, asking her to come to the midnight gala after she’d already said no… It was all based on the presumption that her answer could be changed. That, even though she’d said yes to Logan for Sadie Hawkins, it was only a dance and not a relationship. That the connection Ash had felt with Cassidy this afternoon might have gone both ways.
He thought back to their conversation outside Skeleton Shack, when they’d talked about Mayor Grimjoy and Mr. Brightside. How, on the outside, it didn’t seem like they would work, and yet they did, because even though the sun and the moon appeared as opposites, they were both bright lights, just in their own ways. They were complements who worked perfectly together.
Cassidy was a charismatic athlete who thrived at pep rallies. Ash was an introspective artist who preferred the quiet of shadows to the noise of spotlights. But what drew him to Cassidy wasn’t all her trophies or the fact that people carried her on their shoulders while she led cheers. What he loved about Cassidy were her noiseless qualities—her loyalty to her friends, her commitment to her passions, and her devotion to her family. Qualities that Ash liked to think he had, too.
We could be good together.Like the sun and the moon. Like two halves of the same painting.
Ash reached for the gold paint.
His own gold mask shone on the windowsill, reflecting boththe electric lights in the studio and the moonlight streaming in through the glass ceiling. But whereas Ash’s mask was covered in rectangles of black and white, along with the gold, Cassidy’s mask would match the pattern on the woman’s dress inThe Kiss,with clusters of red, purple, and blue ovals, like pansies springing up in a field of gold.
First, he spray-painted the mask with a layer of gold. Next, Ash double-checked Klimt’s painting to make sure he’d get the flowers right. He riffled through his racks of paint until he found close to the correct shades and squeezed out what he needed to custom-mix his colors.
Then Ash reached for the antique perfume vial Onny had given him—sterling silver whorls set over a tapered bulb of glass, like a Christmas ornament from another era.
Please let this idea work.
