December, four months later
JACK AND I STOOD BACKSTAGE BEHIND THE CURTAIN, watching his father speak in front of a packed auditorium at the university hospital. The mayor probably made a dozen fund-raising speeches every year for a dozen different causes, but this was the first one that was personal. He wanted to combine city money and private contributions to fund a new outreach program for homeless people with psychiatric needs. It would add another wing to the psychiatric hospital and additional staff to diagnose, counsel, and distribute medicine to people who other wise couldn’t afford it.
People like Panhandler Will.
“Make sure you get a shot of your mom,” I whispered to Jack. He was filming bits and pieces of the speech to show to Jillian later, and their mom was sitting in the front row with Katherine the Great. They saw a fair amount of each other, Mom and Mrs. Vincent. The entire Adams clan, including Noah, even spent Thanksgiving at the Vincents’ house, which was surprisingly cool and fun, if not a little weird.
It was also weird to hear Jack’s father talking about Jillian in public. But he was. He’d done an exclusive television interview with a local news program a few weeks earlier and told the story of the stabbing and Jillian’s suicide attempt. And the world didn’t fall apart. In fact, public reaction was overwhelmingly positive. People liked it when politicians were human and honest. Imagine that.
“God, they’re chatty,” Jack whispered as he filmed our mothers with their heads bent toward each other.
“They’re probably talking about the fact that I won’t get accepted to SFAI.”
“Probably,” he said with a grin.
I elbowed him. “Laugh it up, fun boy. If I don’t, you’ll be in a long-distance relationship after I end up at one of my safety schools across the state.”
“Don’t tease me, Bex. I can’t take it.”
We’d both applied to the San Francisco Art Institute. The school has a rolling admissions calendar, which means they make decisions as they receive each application, instead of having one massive deadline, and Jack had gotten his acceptance letter the day before.
“You applied almost a week after me,” Jack reassured me. “Who would turn down your portfolio? It’s amazing. Besides, your SAT scores are better, and your dad wrote your recommendation.”
Things weren’t perfect between Dad and me, but once a month he came into the city and we’d meet for lunch or have dinner—last month at Noah and Heath’s place (which was sort of awkward, but sort of okay, too). And it was true that he’d written my recommendation letter.
“But he’s my dad,” I protested.
“But he didn’t mention that. Besides, you have different last names. Stop worrying. You’ll get in.”
SFAI was the oldest art school west of the Mississippi River. Diego Rivera painted a mural for the institute, and Ansel Adams started the photography department. It’s a great school. A school for serious artists, and god knew if I was anything, I was very serious.
The school had a reputation for encouraging students to do their own thing, so for me, that meant I could take the occasional premed anatomy class at another school in the city when I was ready. And for Jack, it meant he could attend the college where the graffiti-inspired Mission School art movement had begun. It also meant he could continue to be close to Jillian. And that was more important than ever, because she was coming home the following week.
Pretty amazing.
Jack was over the moon about it. She’d continue to go to therapy and see Dr. Kapoor several times a week, and the Vincents had hired a full-time nurse to live in the house and make sure she stuck to her routines. The new living arrangement might work, or it might be a disaster. But there was no way of knowing until they tried. And Jillian was finally ready to take that step, which was awesome. To get her acclimated to life on the outside, she’d been allowed a computer for a couple of months and had been using social media. She loved it. (A little too much: The orderlies had to stop her from staying up all night chatting.)
When the mayor’s speech ended, he left the stage to thunderous applause. Jack and I were clapping, too. It was sort of exciting. His aides were walking him back to the press for follow-up questions, but he spotted us and made a detour.
“What did you think?” he asked us.
“Nice,” Jack said, sticking out his fist for a bump.
The mayor bumped back and smiled. “Is that for Jillie?”
“Yep,” Jack confirmed, holding up his phone. “Say hi.”
“Love you, baby. Can’t wait for you to come home next week,” his father said to the screen. His chief of staff was calling him and motioning to his watch. “I’ve got to go. See you at dinner tonight, Beatrix?”
“With bells on,” I replied.
He smiled and trotted back to his staff, disappearing down a hallway.
“Okey-dokey,” Jack said, stopping the video recording. “We’d better clear out before this dog-and-pony show clogs up the exit.”
We headed out of the auditorium and made our way toward his car, which was parked in a rare curbside space just down the hill. He’d joked that finding the premium space was “Buddha’s blessing.” I told him that he was going to hell for using his enlightened philosophical leader’s name in vain, and that it was totally the cloisonné ladybug pin I’d worn every day since the art contest. He didn’t believe in hell, but he did believe in Lucy the Ladybug, which was what I’d named the pin.
“My parents will be stuck here for a good half hour, maybe an hour,” Jack said, sliding me a seductive look. “We can stop off at the guesthouse on our way out for some quickie afternoon delight.”
“Gee, when you put it that way . . .”
We were headed to our last day of volunteer work—or, as Jack called it, our prison sentence. Every weekend since school had started up, we spent a couple of hours painting over graffiti tags on a block near the Zen Center. This was the “additional stipulation” that the mayor had mentioned after the art show. Punishment for Jack’s vandalism. The SFPD, who sponsored the volunteer clean-up program, thought we were just doing it out the goodness of our hearts. No way was Mayor Vincent opening himself up to the scandal of his kid being the notorious Golden Apple street artist, so we did it on the down-low. It wasn’t so bad. We painted over mailboxes, walls, windows, and sidewalks. Before we covered them up, Jack secretly snapped pictures of anything that was more than just a basic one-color tag and uploaded the images to a local graffiti online photo album. For posterity’s sake.
“What do you say?” Jack pulled out his car keys and swung the key ring around his index finger. “I’ll let you drive. Fast car and fast love. It’s the perfect combination.”
“Said no girl, ever. You sure you trust me to drive after last time?”
I nearly killed all three of us—me, Jack, and Ghost—when he was teaching me to parallel park. In my defense, it was a busy street and the guy behind us was making me supernervous with all the angry honking. Afterward, Jack had to do his seated zazen meditation to calm down.
“Beatrix Adams,” he said. “You know I trust you with everything. The anatomical representation of my heart, my life . . . even my car.”
“You must really love me,” I said, matching my steps with his.
I knew he did, of course. We try not to say it casually too much, because we want it to mean something. Not just a throwaway phrase like “How’s it going” or “See you later.” But when I’m in his arms, when we’re alone, he whispers “I love you,” and those three words never stop amazing me. Never.
Without breaking our synchronized stride, he slid an arm around my shoulders and lowered his head to murmur near my ear. “Would you like me to remind you how much?”
Flutter-flutter. “I actually think I might.”
“Yeah?” A slow, dazzling smile lifted his cheeks, and then he came to a sudden halt on the sidewalk. “Oh! We need to stop by the house anyway. You can see our paintings hanging together, live in person.”
After the art show, Mrs. Vincent replaced her chair painting in the foyer of their house with my painting of Jillian. I got a little choked up when she showed me. I think it made the mayor sentimental, too, because he left the room awfully fast, and Mrs. Vincent says that’s what he does when he gets emotional.
But my painting now had a partner. I’d seen a photo of it before the mayor’s speech this afternoon, but I hadn’t seen the real thing yet.
Before Jack admitted to his parents that he was the person behind all the Golden Apple graffiti, Jillian had given him one last word puzzle to decode. He’d never been able to execute the piece out in the city, obviously. When Jack found out Jillian had agreed to leave the hospital and move back in the house, he painted the tenth and final word for her as a “welcome home” gift.
BEGIN, FLY, BELONG, JUMP, TRUST, BLOOM, CELEBRATE, ENDURE, RISE . . .
And now LOVE.
The word was spray-painted onto a canvas, not a wall, and it was the smallest piece he’d ever done. But it was by far his best work. Jillian would adore it. I sure did.
“Come on,” he coaxed, dangling the car keys in front of my face as he wound one arm around my back to pull me closer. “You won’t ever learn to drive if you stop trying. You know you want to.”
I totally did. I stood on my tiptoes, accepted the kiss he dropped on my lips, and snatched the keys out of his fingers. Feeling alive might just be a rush of adrenaline, but Jack had been right that first night on the Owl bus. It was definitely worth the risk.