thirty-one

MAY 4

Yeah, I considered bailing. I tried to come up with a bulletproof excuse that would justify the fourth-inning dropout. But I couldn’t do that to Esther.

No kid has ever been more stoked to wear anything than she was to wear the dress I’d designed, if not made.

I spent the night before the show alone in the garage, working on the metal accessories. I ignored my phone except for a text I sent to Brian, the guy I met at Green Pastures, the metalwork guy who’d been halfway encouraging and whose metal business tag I still had.

I sent him a photo of the throwing star I’d made for Esther’s madwoman hair.

He texted right back.

Shuriken. Wicked. What’s it for? Ninja rumble later?

It’s for the fashion show.

Teachers will enjoy confiscating that.

Any idea how to attach something like that to a hairclip? Any idea where to get a hairclip?

Let me check with my sister.

A pause of not quite five minutes.

Score! I can give you one of hers.

We made arrangements for him to drop it off. It turned out he lived about fifteen minutes away.

When he knocked on the door, he looked healthier than he had the last time I saw him. Bigger. More color in his face.

Bites went after Brian with only about half his usual nastiness. His schnauzer face quivered with outrage, but he kept his teeth to himself as he jumped up and tried to jam his nose into Brian’s crotch.

“Nice dog,” said Brian mildly.

“Bites. Quit.”

Growling and grumbling until he was sure we understood we were not the boss of him, Bites stalked off to lie irritably on his bed.

“Sorry. He’s got some borderline sociopathic tendencies,” I said.

“Don’t we all.”

We walked past the living room, and Brian waved at my grandparents, who were watching TV. They waved back, smiling in that blissed-out way they do when they get in front of a screen.

We headed into the garage.

“Holy. This is a helluva setup,” he said. “I wasn’t expecting this.”

“Yeah, my gramps is an old-school metal guy. But he got me set up with all the newer stuff.”

“Laser cutter, spot welder, bending machine. You don’t need art school.”

I shrugged. I would have liked to be around people interested in the same things. Booker and B hung out in the shop sometimes, but it wasn’t any fun for them.

I walked to the big worktable and showed the throwing star.

He pulled a hair clip out of the pocket of his hoodie. “I don’t think this makes the most of that star. Maybe you should do something else with it. Get a little more innovative. You’ve got the skills and the setup here. Why not make a statement? Green Pastures is all about the grand gesture. Save subtlety for college.”

“You think?”

“Yup.” Then Brian looked around and nodded. “We’ve got a good shop at school, but it’s not better than this.”

“Yeah. I’m lucky.”

Brian began to inspect the metal sculptures on the floor and the smaller pieces that lined the walls. He looked up at the welded killer whale skeleton hanging from the ceiling, the crouching goblin being scary in the corner, the violent unicorn. My stuff mostly just collects dust, or it would if my grandpa didn’t come out and blow everything off with his little motorcycle blower every couple of weeks. Gramps is convinced they’re all great works of art.

All I know is that when I do my metalwork, everything else disappears. It’s as much fun to visualize the sculptures as it is to figure out how to make them. There’s something about turning steel rods and sheet metal into art that feels powerful. Takes all my brainpower and all my physical strength. Metal is fair. I guess that’s best way to put it. Plus, I can make my own weapons, which is cool.

“This one is excellent,” said Brian, pointing at a knee-high bull. It was made of interlocking metal panels on a wire frame. It had come out well, I thought. Booker said it was his favorite thing I’d done. Barbra’s favorite thing was the chained, barking dog.

I liked the pair of giant hands in chicken wire. It had taken me a long time to get them just right.

“Thanks.”

“If it was a straight metalwork scholarship competition, you’d get in for sure.”

I half laughed.

“Too late for me,” I said. “Fashion is my last chance at the place.”

Brian held up the giant wire hands in his own two hands. They sat on an oval platform.

“These are really cool,” he said. “Can you move the fingers?”

I nodded and bent one. “Yeah, but you have to be careful.”

“Make sure you send pictures of all this stuff with your application for art college.”

It was strange to hear him talk like me going to college was a given.

Brian put the hands back on the shelf and started inspecting the wolf and serpent locked in an epic metal battle in the corner.

“Cool,” he muttered.

“I cheated on my girl. With one of the girls in the fashion program,” I said.

He inspected the battling creatures, but I could tell he was listening.

“I don’t know why I did it. I guess I just wanted to be in that world for a while. And I was kind of shocked that the girl, the fashion one, was even interested in me.”

Brian, whose last name I didn’t know, was like some monk confessor standing in my garage. He kept his gaze on my metalwork sculptures.

“I have to tell my girlfriend. Her name is Barbra. We’ve been together since eighth grade.”

Why was I telling this guy all of this stuff? Probably because he didn’t ask questions. Also because he came right over to help me weld a throwing star onto a hair clip on a Friday night, even though we both probably knew I could do it myself.

“I guess I need to tell both of them. Deal with the consequences. I can’t keep this up. The lies. My girlfriend is going to hate me. I already hate me.”

“It’s hard,” he said. “I’ve been there. In the neighborhood, at least.”

“Cheating on someone?”

“Getting caught up in lies and bullshit. Making a mess. Letting down people who care about me.”

“I don’t know how to tell her. Them.”

Brian replaced the battling creatures onto the metal shelf.

“Do it in the way that causes the least harm to the people you screwed. So to speak.”

“So to speak,” I said.

Neither of us laughed.

Then we spent twenty minutes talking about welding and metalwork, and I came up with a better idea for using the throwing star.

John Thomas-Smith’s Inspiring Saying for the Mood Board:

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