puts her hands on top of her head. “Does it really look that bad?” she whispers.
My sad-clown face no longer feels like a joke.
When my mother first got sick, Dorrit would ask me what was going to happen. I’d put on a smiley face because I read somewhere that if you smile, even if you’re feeling bad, the action of the muscles will trick your brain into thinking you’re happy. “Whatever happens, we’re all going to be fine,” I’d tell Dorrit.
“Promise?”
“Of course, Dorrit. You’ll see.”
“Someone’s here,” Missy calls out now. Dorrit and I look at each other, our little tiff forgotten.
We clatter down the stairs. There, in the kitchen, is Sebastian. He looks from my sad-clown face to Dorrit’s pink and blue hair. And slowly, he shakes his head.
“If you’re going to be around Bradshaws, you have to be prepared.There could be craziness. Anything might happen.”
“No kidding,” Sebastian says. He’s wearing a black leather jacket, the same one he was wearing at Tommy Brewster’s party and on the night we painted the barn—the night we first kissed.
“Do you always wear that jacket?” I ask as Sebastian downshifts on the curve leading to the highway.
“Don’t you like it? I got it when I lived in Rome.”
I suddenly feel like I’ve been swept under a wave. I’ve been to Florida and Texas and all around New England, but never to Europe. I don’t even have a passport. I sure wish I had one now, though, so I’d know how to deal with Sebastian. They should make passports for relationships.
A guy who’s lived in Rome. It sounds so romantic.
“What are you thinking?” Sebastian asks.
I’m thinking that you probably won’t like me because I’ve never been to Europe and I’m not sophisticated enough. “Have you ever been to Paris?” I ask.
“Sure,” he says. “Haven’t you?”
“Not really.”
“That sounds like being a little bit pregnant. You either have been or you haven’t.”
“I haven’t been there in person. That doesn’t mean I haven’t been there in my mind.”
He laughs. “You are a very strange girl.”
“Thank you.” I look out the window to hide my tiny smile. I don’t care if he thinks I’m strange. I’m just so happy to see him.
I don’t ask him why he hasn’t called. I don’t ask him where he’s been. When I found him in my kitchen, leaning against the counter like he belonged there, I pretended it was perfectly natural, not even a surprise. “Am I interrupting something?” he asked, like it wasn’t odd that he suddenly decided to show up.
“Depends on what you call interrupting.” My insides were filled with diamonds, suddenly illuminated by the sun.
“Do you want to go out?”
“Sure.” I ran upstairs and scrubbed off my clown face, knowing all the while I should have said no, or at least allowed myself to be convinced, because what girl agrees to go on a date spur of the moment like that? It sets a bad precedent, makes the guy think he can see you whenever he wants, treat you however he wants. But I didn’t have it in me to refuse. As I pulled on my boots, I wondered if I’d come to regret being so easy.
I’m not regretting it now, though. Who makes up those rules about dating, anyway? And why can’t I be exempt?
He puts his hand on my leg. Casually. Like we’ve been dating for a long time. If we were, I wonder if his hand on my leg would always produce the reaction I’m having now, which is a confused sort of divine giddiness. I decide it would. I can’t imagine ever not feeling like this when I’m with him.
I’m losing it.
“It’s not that great, you know,” he says.
“Huh?” I turn back to him, my happiness pitching into inexplicable panic.
“Europe,” he says.
“Oh,” I breathe. “Europe.”
“Two summers ago when I lived in Rome, I went all around—France, Germany, Switzerland, Spain—and when I got back here, I realized this place is just as beautiful.”
“Castlebury?” I gasp.
“It’s as beautiful as Switzerland,” he says.
Sebastian Kydd actually likes Castlebury? “But I always imagined you”—I falter—“living in New York. Or London. Or someplace exciting.”
He frowns. “You don’t know me that well.” And just as I’m about to expire from fear that I’ve insulted him, he adds, “But you will.
“In fact,” he continues, “since I figured we ought to get to know each other better, I’m taking you to see an art exhibit.”
“Ah,” I say, nodding. I don’t know a damn thing about art either. Why didn’t I take art history when I had the chance?
I’m a goner.
Sebastian will figure it out and dump me before we’ve even had a proper first date.
“Max Ernst,” he says. “He’s my favorite artist. Who’s yours?”
“Peter Max?” It’s the only name I can think of at the moment.
“You are funny,” he says, and laughs.
He takes me to the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford. I’ve been there a million times on field trips, holding the sticky hand of another little classmate so no one got lost. I hated the way we were marched around, scolded by a teacher’s aide who was always somebody’s mother. Where was Sebastian back then? I wonder as he takes my hand.
I look down at our intertwined fingers and see something that shocks me.
Sebastian Kydd bites his nails?
“Come on,” he says, pulling me along beside him. We stop in front of a painting of a boy and a girl on a marble bench on a fantasy lake in the mountains. Sebastian stands behind me, resting his head on top of mine and wrapping his arms around my shoulders.”Sometimes I wish I could go into that painting. Close my eyes and wake up there. I’d stay there forever.”
But what about me? screams a voice in my head. I suddenly don’t like being left out of his fantasy. “Wouldn’t you get bored?”
“Not if you were there with me.”
I just about fall over. Guys aren’t supposed to say these things. Or rather, they’re supposed to but never do. I mean, who actually
