Ten’s clean, soapy scent, overlaid by notes of…sweet dough—did hespend his morning whipping up pancakes?—tickles my nostrils. “Seems like we’re the last ones left.”
I’m pretty sure two girls asked him to be their partner.
“Portraits!” Miss Bank announces, clapping. “You’re going to be drawing your partner, costume and all. It can be as abstract as you want. And you are welcome to use whichever medium you’d like.”
“I have to warn you,” I tell Ten, once I’ve recovered from the realization that we’re partners, “I’m real bad at drawing people.”
“Good thing Miss Bank said it could be abstract.”
“Yeah. I even botch abstract art.”
He drags an easel toward a chair, and I do the same. “I won’t take offense if I end up with a Picasso face.”
“You’ll be lucky if you end up with a Picasso face.” We walk to the supply closet and grab paintbrushes and tubes of acrylic paint. As we return to our chairs, I ask, “You are aware Walt Disney didn’t come up with Harry Potter, right?”
His mouth rounds in surprise. “No way!”
I’m about to sayyeah, when his golden eyes spark with… amusement? “You’re not a Harry Potter character, are you?”
“Nope.”
I study his red graduation gown and the yellow silk scarf knotted around his neck while he starts painting me. “Are you a wizard?”
“No.”
My gaze drops to the inflatable sword hooked into a rope tied around his waist. “The prince inCinderella?”
“You think I look like a prince?” he asks without glancing away from his paper.
My cheeks smolder. “I saidtheprince—never mind.” I direct my attention to my still-blank paper. I dab red paint on it and swirl the color around until it sort of takes on the shape of a poufy gown.
“Are you giving up? I didn’t peg you for the type of girl who gave up,” Ten says.
Our gazes collide. Although several conversations buzz around us, all I can hear is what Ten just said. “About your costume?”
He returns his attention to his canvas and lifts his paintbrush. “Isn’t that what we were talking about?”
My heart skitters to a halt inside my rib cage. Is he kidding? Did I just totally misread him? He wants me to guess his alter ego’s identity, but not his actual one? “I didn’t think you wanted me to keep guessing.”
He looks back at me. The gold flecks in his irises seem to have dimmed. “So you’re giving up?”
“Honestly, I think it’s better if I do.”
I jab my paintbrush against the canvas and red paint splatters over my cleavage, which is wedged too tightly into my costume’s sweetheart neckline. I should probably have bought a new dress instead of recycling the one I wore two Halloweens ago.
I try to wipe the paint away with the heel of my hand but end up smudging it and making it look like I walked off a horror movie set. I head to the sink, where I ball up scratchy paper towel and wet it to clean myself up before I give Miss Bank a heart attack.
“Arthur fromThe Sword in the Stone,” Ten says after I return to my easel.
“I would never have guessed that.”
For a moment, we look at each other. A long moment. And then I avert my gaze because there’s too much to see in Ten’s face. What’s the point in seeing anything if there’s no way of understanding what I’m looking at?
18
Never Have I Ever Felt This Bad
Fueled by the momentous elation of Reedwood winning the homecoming game, Rae throws a little impromptu party at her parents’ pool house. There are seven of us. Four girls, three boys—me, Jasper, Laney, Brad, Rae, Melody, and Harrison, who was instrumental in demolishing our opponents.
