UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
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“So what about your parents?” I asked Leo when we were back in the car, speeding past the Art Institute.
“Divorced,” he said.
The sun glinted on the car and I reached for my sunglasses. “And that’s why you moved?”
A funny look crossed Leo’s face—something between embarrassment and impatience—but it was hard to tell if it was because of what I’d asked, or because of the drivers careening into our lane and making it hard for Leo to exit. My hair whipped across my face as Leo took a tight turn and cut off a silver BMW. The driver flipped us the bird and yelled something that sounded like: “Kids!”
We cruised into a garage across from Millennium Park. Leo got our ticket, and we didn’t say anything else until we were out of the garage and crossing the street.
“I know it’s a little cornball, but I wanted to do touristy things with you,” Leo said as we walked into the entrance of the Lurie Garden.
“It’s not corny,” I said. “This is one of my favorite places.” My eyes swept across the urban oasis, the acres of garden flowers and greenery smack in the middle of downtown Chicago. I looked at Leo, and saw he was smiling.
Our feet padded along the wooden planks lining the walkway past a cluster of dark purple tulips. I breathed in the thick smell of grass and flowers. Two girls who looked like art students sat on the walkway with their sketchpads, each one making her own rendition of the tulips.
“My parents split when I was little,” Leo finally said. He opened his dark leather wallet and put the parking ticket inside. “My dad was a hippie.”
“Your dad was a hippie?” I asked, as we moved across a boardwalk that took us over stepped pools and five feet of exposed water.
“Yeah. Not a sixties hippie. A wannabe hippie. It was weird,” Leo said, laughing. He stuck his hands deep into the pockets of his chinos. “Now he sells insurance.”
I wanted to take Leo’s arm and lead him down to the step closest to the water. I just wanted to sit next to him, stare into the glistening pool and listen to him talk. But I was too nervous to touch him. This all felt so perfect, and I worried I could somehow ruin it. I’d never felt so unsure of myself, or like every little detail mattered, and it scared me to think that someone I barely knew could make me feel this way.
We walked quietly past white daffodils and bright green wild ginger. I liked how we didn’t need to fill the silence between us, and I liked how when we did speak to each other, what we said had substance. It made me think of how often I just chattered away at Harrison with Xander and my friends: how often I talked without really connecting to anyone. Something about Leo’s interest in me still felt a little off, but I couldn’t put my finger on it. Maybe I was just being paranoid, or maybe I wasn’t used to someone like him. He felt different.
“So you live with your mom?” I asked. I stopped next to a patch of violet aster flowers and traced the thin, triangular petals.
Leo nodded, not meeting my glance. His hand grazed the flowers carefully, like they might break with his touch.
“And what about her—what does she do?”
“She doesn’t work anymore,” Leo said when we started walking again.
“So then why did you move to South Bend?” I felt nosy asking, but I really wanted to know. “And don’t you miss your friends?”
Leo shrugged. “It was just time for a change, I guess,” he said.
That was his mom’s reason for moving from California to South Bend? I wanted to press him, but I didn’t. Families were complicated: Maybe there was something he wasn’t ready to tell me yet.
The early spring sun was bright as we walked along the Seam, the corridor between the light and dark sections. They were called plates, and they were like two different worlds of the garden. The Dark Plate was filled with lush vegetation set free to grow wild and unrestrained. It made for a dramatic contrast with the Light Plate, which was filled with bright, controlled landscaping. Last year I tried to write a paper on the Garden, focusing on the plates and the West Hedge, a topiary that told the Greek story of the nymph who escaped from Apollo by becoming a laurel tree. But I couldn’t get into words the way the garden made me feel, the way it took me into its care and ushered me through the four seasons of change like we had a relationship all our own. I got a C on that paper. It made me never want to write about anything meaningful to me again.
“Does it bother you that I’m not smart?” I asked Leo.
It came out quickly, and I couldn’t look at Leo after I’d said it. Still, I felt him turn to me. He stopped walking, but I couldn’t. I walked ahead on the Seam and left him standing there.
“Blake?” he called. I heard his feet clap the wood as he closed the distance between us. Then, more urgently, he said, “Blake.”
He grabbed my hand and I whirled to face him. I stared into his steel-gray eyes, searching for my answer there, but I couldn’t find it. I hardly recognized his face so still and hard.
“There are a lot of different kinds of smart,” he said, his hand warm around mine.
I was suddenly very okay with how close we were, and how it felt to have him touching me.
“You’re still in high school,” he said. He cleared his throat. “We’re still in high school.” His grip tightened. I didn’t want him to let me go. “So you only know about high school smart,” he said, “which is how you do on tests, which is totally different from all of the other kinds of smarts there are out in the real world.”
I nodded slowly. A part of me knew he was right—I could feel it, especially here, in the garden, in Chicago, far away from Harrison and my father and my world in South Bend.
Leo lowered his voice. “You just need to think about what you want to be, who you want to be.” His hand dropped mine and he stepped closer, gently taking my arms in his grip. “Don’t take this the wrong way, okay?” he said. “But I don’t really get the impression that you even like who you are. At least, not the person you are at school.”
I swallowed the lump in my throat. My eyes started blinking fast, and I knew I was a breath away from tears. “But this is who I am,” I said, my voice rasping over the words. “I’ve been this way for so long.” And I could go on being this way for so much longer if that’s what I wanted. I could go to Notre Dame in the fall and be the beautiful, bitchy ice queen for four more years.
Leo shook his head. “Then why are you so different today, here with me, when we’re all alone?”
He’d put his finger on something I couldn’t name. Today with Leo, far away from school, I was the way I used to be with Audrey when we were alone in her room, or the way I used to be with Nic when we were younger. I was unguarded. I was softer. I was kind, even. And I felt free. I wasn’t worried about what anyone thought about me, and I wasn’t hanging on so tightly to my place at school.
“I used to be different,” I said, my voice still rough. “I used to be normal. And kind.”
“Normal’s overrated,” Leo said. “But kind isn’t.” He nudged a pebble on the Seam with his shiny brown shoe. And then he pulled me so close I could smell his sweet and salty boy smell. “Change back,” he said softly.
I suddenly felt exhausted. I wasn’t even sure how we’d gotten to this place, to this conversation. I wanted to lean my head against Leo’s chest and close my eyes. But instead I pulled back and looked into his face. “Why do you care?” I asked.
Leo smiled, but he didn’t answer, so I pressed him. “I mean it,” I said. “You barely know me.”
He loosened his grip on my body, which was the last thing I wanted. “I guess there’s something about you,” he said. He gave me a small shrug, and then kicked at the stone again. “You kind of remind me of how I used to be. I used to care so much about being the best programmer that I would’ve done anything to outshine everyone I programmed with—even stuff I shouldn’t have. I did do some of that stuff, and I got into trouble.” He ran a hand through his light hair. “There were these people who got me out of it, and I’m trying to be better.”
A shadow passed over us as the sun ducked behind dove-white clouds. I didn’t completely understand what he was trying to tell me.
Leo gave me a long look, almost like he wasn’t sure how far he wanted to take this with me. But then he let out a breath, and started talking. “I was in a lot of trouble,” he said. “I was only fifteen—still a kid, really—but doing stuff I wasn’t supposed to be doing. They found out, and they didn’t report me.”
I nodded. I didn’t ask him what he’d done—I didn’t need to know. If he wanted to tell me, he would.
“Maybe we can be each other’s clean slate,” I said. If Leo could change, why couldn’t I?
Leo grinned. “Clean slate,” he said, nodding. “I like that.” But then the grin disappeared. He lowered his voice as a group of elementary school kids wearing neon-yellow T-shirts paraded past us along the Seam. “There are things I should still tell you,” he said. “I mean, maybe not now. But at some point. If we keep hanging out.”
If we keep hanging out. I loved the sound of it. I wanted to memorize the way he said it, the way it felt to hear the words pour of out him.
Leo held my hand all the way through Millennium Park until we were face-to-face with the Bean.
“Whoa,” Leo said. He took in the enormous silver sculpture and nodded appreciatively, checking out the buildings and people reflected on the surface. “All the surfaces must be convex,” he said.
He looked over at me and I giggled. “What?” he asked.
“That was cute and dorky,” I said.
“Oh, I’m a dork all right,” he said, laughing. He grabbed my waist and pulled me close. “And I plan to dorkify the coolest girl in school,” he said. He leaned in to whisper, “That would be you.”
His lips brushed my cheek and I shivered.
Tourists sidled next to us, raising their cameras to snap photos and calling to each other in languages I didn’t recognize.
“Let’s go under,” I said. I took Leo’s hand and guided him beneath the cavernous stomach of the sculpture, where it was a lot less crowded. Even in the small space, with him, I didn’t feel anxious. I looked up and saw Leo and me reflected in the Bean’s glossy surface, our reflections warped. The sculpture made me short and round. The angles in my face were all but lost and I looked like some kind of blob. I wanted to look away but I couldn’t—I couldn’t stop staring at the alternate version of myself. I saw Leo reflected, too, and the way he stared back at me in the mirror, smiling at our foreign alter egos. We were barely recognizable. If I’d been born this way, my life would’ve been entirely different, which made it all seem like a total crapshoot. Something so random as genes could make or break your social experience and how other people treated you. Did it have to be this way? Did it stop being this way after high school? After college? Ever?
Our heads were still tilted up, both of us staring into the sculpture, when Leo traced the distorted outline of my face. He was touching my real skin, but we were both watching his hands move over my warped skin in the mirrored reflection. I watched as he inched forward, bent down, and covered my lips with his. And then my eyes closed, and I suddenly didn’t care which version of me Leo was kissing. My heart went wild as his mouth opened, warm on mine as he pressed his body against me.
“Leo,” I said softly when he pulled away a few manic heartbeats later. I opened my eyes and let my gaze settle on his full mouth. I touched the blond stubble on his jaw and looked into his eyes, seeing shades of blue-gray come to life as he stared back at me.
Schoolchildren paraded beneath the sculpture and chattered away, pointing at their reflections and taking photos, but Leo and I never once broke our stare, not until the kids marched out the other side and left us alone, not until Leo smiled one of his small smiles, different from the others I’d seen, and leaned forward and kissed me again and again and again, until everything around me quieted and the only thing I could feel was us.