BONNIE WAS WAITING FOR ME when I got to Something’s Brewing.
“Kate, dear, I need to rush out for a little bit,” she said as she handed me a caramel latte.
“Is everything okay?”
She grabbed her jacket off a chair. “Everything’s fine. My daughter’s car broke down across town. I’ll pick her up and be back within an hour. Think you can manage on your own?”
I had never worked at Something’s Brewing by myself. As long as there wasn’t a sudden surge of caffeine addicts, I knew I would be fine.
A few cars pulled up right after Bonnie left, but it wasn’t too crazy. I had just sat down to finish my caramel latte when I saw Brady’s car pull into the parking lot. Eli got out of the passenger seat and said something to Brady, who then left. I went to the back door and opened it.
“Hey,” he said as I held open the door.
“Hey.”
We walked down the little hallway and I sat down on a chair while he stood against the wall. I explained that Bonnie was running an errand. He nodded. It was awkward. I had been waiting so long to talk to him one-on-one and now that he was right in front of me, I didn’t know what to say. I waited for him to go first.
“It’s been a crazy day,” he said. “Crazy couple of weeks, actually.”
“Yep.” I stared into my nearly empty cup.
“Kate, I’m really sorry. Everything’s a mess and it’s all my fault. I’m sure you have a ton of questions.”
I looked at him. “Yes, I do.”
He ran a hand through his hair. “Okay, where do I begin? I want to tell you everything. Right here, right now.”
“Start at the beginning.”
Eli pulled the only other chair in the room over to him so he was sitting directly across from me. “I’ve been researching colleges for a while now,” he began. “I want to get into a really good school for computer graphics. They all require portfolios, and I needed something to help mine stand out.”
“And you came up with gorillas?”
“Yeah. My brother helped me. I designed the stencil and he produced it when he was working at that sign shop. We set up a team, too, to help with carrying out each of our location targets.”
“How did you pick the locations?” I asked.
“We looked for abandoned buildings, mainly. That way, we weren’t hurting anybody. We did the school because that wall was already ruined, and we figured no one would really care.”
Eli said that each member of his “team” had a different job: one would hold the stencil while the other one taped it to the wall. Eli would spray the paint. They did it that way so each gorilla only took a minute to complete and they could get away quickly. They documented each mural for Eli’s college portfolio.
“Let me guess. Trent and Brady were on your team?”
“At first it was just the three of us, but then Reva found out about it.” He sighed. “That’s when things with her got bad. She knew I wanted to break up, but she said if I did, she’d bust all of us, my brother included.”
I set my empty cup down. “Well, nothing like a little blackmail to help keep a relationship together.”
He stood up and paced. “The thing is, I started doing it just for my portfolio. But then I saw the reaction it got and it became something more to me.”
“What did it become?”
“A kind of protest, I think. I mean, you go through each and every day knowing what you’ll do, what you’ll see. I liked shaking up the routine. I liked that people actually stopped and looked at the places around them hoping something new would be there.”
He stopped pacing and looked at me. “I liked that you noticed it, too, and that you thought about it.”
I smiled. “I did think about it. When I wasn’t thinking about you, that is.”
Eli smiled back at me. Then he shook his head. “Now it’s a mess, though. My brother was arrested and we don’t know what kind of sentence they’ll give him. Reva was suspended for the gorillas on the school—they thought she did it—but I cleared that up this afternoon so now I’m really in trouble.”
“Define trouble.”
“My parents grounded me until the end of the year. Carter gave me an in-school suspension, and I also have to complete a hundred hours of custodial service at school this summer. I haven’t heard yet about the legal charges.”
“Let’s hope this gets you into a really, really good school.”
He laughed. “That would be nice.”
“Did they ask you about Tiffany’s car?”
“Yeah. I confessed.”
“What?” I exclaimed. “Lan said she and Brady did it.”
“They did, but I figured since I was already in so much trouble, I might as well take the blame for it.”
“That was decent of you,” I said. Eli was a good guy, I thought. But one thing still bothered me. “Why were you in Oklahoma for so long?” I asked. “And why did you wait so long to contact me? Couldn’t you have told me most of this last week?”
“Oklahoma was crazy,” Eli said, shaking his head. “We had to wait to see how my brother would be charged. My parents had him out on bail, which was good, but then we had to wait for a court date, and they decided we were going to stay together as a family. They didn’t want to let either one of us out of their sight for a minute.”
“Were they worried you and Ben would go on a painting spree?”
Eli smiled. “I guess.” His expression turned serious once again. “As for not contacting you…Kate, I really wanted to. But I was worried about putting you in the middle. I didn’t know if your dad was involved with the investigation, and I wanted to keep you out of it just in case he was.”
A car pulled up to the window and I stood. When the driver ordered four banana lattes, Eli went to work steaming milk while I took the customer’s money. For a moment, it was just like old times.
After the customer left, I thanked Eli for helping me. “You know, I’ve never actually tried a banana latte,” I confessed.
“Then I’ll make one for you,” Eli said with a flourish of his arm, “and it will be the greatest drink you have ever tasted.”
I giggled and sat down to watch him work. He was wearing a purple T-shirt and I loved the way it clung to his back. It would be so nice, I thought, if we could just erase the past few weeks and go back to that moment in the car when we first kissed. But we couldn’t, and no matter how much I wanted things to be perfect between the two of us, the simple fact was that they weren’t.
Eli handed me the warm cup and pulled his chair closer to mine.
“I’ve reached my latte limit for the day,” I joked. I didn’t take a sip right away. I wanted it to cool off a little first.
“So, are we okay now?” He was staring at me, and I self-consciously tucked a strand of hair behind my ear.
“I would like everything to be okay,” I said, looking into his brown eyes. “But the truth is, I’m having a hard time with all this. You were secretive and distant and I was totally confused and hurt for a while. Those feelings aren’t just going to vanish instantly.”
“I understand.” Eli nodded sadly.
“But there are also the feelings I had for you before all of this happened, and those aren’t going to vanish, either.”
He grinned. “I’m glad to hear that. So where does that leave us now?”
“I don’t know,” I admitted. I reached for his hand. “You know what I want? I want a relationship that starts off right, that doesn’t include a lot of baggage or angry exes or damaged feelings.”
“Is that possible?”
“I don’t know. Maybe, though, over time. Think we can start over?”
He brought my hand to his lips and kissed it. “I’d love to.”
ELI STAYED WITH ME throughout the rest of my shift. Bonnie was thrilled to see him. Eli told her that he would need to come back to work soon. “I have a lot of fines I need to pay,” he explained.
“There’s always a place for you here, dear,” Bonnie said, hugging him. “And I never paid you for the new sign, did I? So maybe that will help.”
“New sign?” I asked.
Bonnie gave Eli a worried look. “Does she know?”
Eli nodded. “Tell her.”
“I knew Eli was painting the gorillas so I asked him to paint me one. I thought it would help business.” She smiled and patted Eli’s shoulder. “And it has, dear. I can’t thank you enough.”
“How did you know it was him?” I asked.
“Call it a hunch.” She winked. “That and he left his computer open one day.”
I was happy that I would be working with Eli again, especially since he was grounded and work would be the only time we would be spending together until the end of the school year.
Both my parents came to pick me up after my shift so we could drive to dinner. They saw me kiss Eli on the cheek, and as soon as I got in the car, they bombarded me with a million questions. I calmly told them that Eli and I were just friends, but there was a chance we would start dating in a few months.
“Too bad he’s a vandal.” Dad sighed. “I might have really liked him.”
Mom gave him a playful punch to the shoulder. “I think he’s sweet. He took responsibility for his actions. And he wasn’t doing it to be malicious.”
“That doesn’t mean he needs to date my daughter,” Dad grumbled, but I knew he wasn’t really angry. He was only doing the concerned dad thing.
“We’re just friends right now,” I reminded them. “Nothing else.”
We ate dinner at Mom’s favorite Italian restaurant and talked about other things. I was full from lasagna and salad and bread but was considering a thick slab of tiramisu when Dad asked about school and I remembered the history paper. I couldn’t put it off any longer.
As soon as we got home, I went to my computer. I spent hours on it, writing and rewriting several drafts, but nothing sounded satisfactory to me. I couldn’t express what I really wanted to say and I was beyond frustrated. It wasn’t just that I wanted a good grade. I felt like I had something to say about art, that it was personal and mattered to me. I wanted to define art more for myself than for Mr. Gildea’s class.
After three hours I was ready to give up. No matter what I wrote, it wouldn’t be good enough. Then I spotted my digital camera. I opened up the picture files on my computer and searched through all the images I’d taken in the past few months, starting with first shots on Christmas morning, right after my parents gave the camera to me. I took the rest after school began in January. There was a photo of the gorillas on the wall. One picture showed Lan wearing a pink orchid pin she had made. In another, Eden bent over a stack of newspapers. I smiled. I wasn’t going to write a definition of art, after all. I was going to show it.