Shiver

CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE • SAM

49°F

After the sci-fi flick ended (the world was saved, but civilian casualties were high), I sat with Grace at the little breakfast table near the door to the deck and watched her do her homework for a while. I was unimaginably tired—the colder weather gnawed at me like an ache, even when it couldn’t get a tight enough grip to change me—and I would’ve liked to crawl into Grace’s bed or onto the couch for a nap. But the wolf side of me felt restless and unable to sleep with unfamiliar people around. So to keep myself awake, I left Grace downstairs doing her homework in the dying light from the windows and went upstairs to see the studio.

It was easy to find; there were only two doors in the hallway upstairs and an orange, chemical smell wafted out from one of them. The door was slightly ajar. I pushed it open and blinked. The entire room was brilliantly lit by lamps fitted with bulbs meant to mimic natural light, and the effect was a cross between a desert at noon and a Wal-Mart.

The walls were hidden behind towering canvases that leaned against every available surface. Gorgeous riots of color, realistic figures in unrealistic poses, normal shapes in abnormal colors, the unexpected in ordinary places. The paintings were like falling into a dream, where everything you know is presented in an unfamiliar way. Anything’s possible in this lush rabbit hole / Is it mirror or portrait you’ve given to me? / All of these permutations of dreams will patrol / this lovely wasteland of color I see.

I stood before two larger-than-life paintings leaning against one of the walls. Both were of a man kissing a woman’s neck, poses identical but colors radically different. One was shot through with reds and purples. It was bright, ugly, commercial. The other was dark, blue, lavender, hard to read. Understated and lovely. It reminded me of kissing Grace in the bookstore, how she felt in my arms, warm and real.

“Which one do you like?”

Her mom’s voice sounded bright and approachable. I imagined it as her gallery voice. The one she used to lure viewers’ wallets into sight so that she could shoot them.

I tilted my head toward the blue one. “No contest.”

“Really?” She sounded genuinely surprised. “No one has ever said that before. That one’s much more popular.” She stepped into my view so that I could see that she was pointing at the red one. “I’ve sold hundreds of prints of it.”

“It’s very pretty,” I said kindly, and she laughed.

“It’s hideous. Do you know what they’re called?” She pointed to the blue one, then the red one. “Love and Lust.”

I smiled at her. “Guess I failed my testosterone test, didn’t I?”

“Because you chose Love? I don’t think so, but that’s just me. Grace told me it was stupid of me to paint the same thing twice. She said his eyes are too close together in both of them, anyway.”

I grinned. “Sounds like something she would say. But she’s not an artist.”

Her mouth twisted into a rueful shape. “No. She’s very practical. I don’t know where she got that from.”

I walked slowly to the next set of paintings—wildlife walking through clothing racks, deer perched on high-rise windows, fish peering up through storm drains. “That disappoints you.”

“Oh, no. No. Grace is just Grace, and you just have to take her the way she is.” She hung back, letting me look, years of good sales training in subconscious practice. “And I suppose she’ll have an easier time in life because she’ll get a nice normal job and be good and stable.”

I didn’t look at her when I answered. “Methinks the mom doth protest too much.”

I heard her sigh. “I guess everyone wants their kid to turn out like them. All Grace cares about is numbers and books and the way things work. It’s hard for me to understand her.”

“And vice versa.”

“Yes. But you’re an artist, aren’t you? You must be.”

I shrugged. I had noticed a guitar case sitting close to the door of her studio, and I was itching to find chords for some of the tunes in my head. “Not with paint. I play a little guitar.”

There was a long pause as she watched me looking at a painting of a fox peering out from beneath a parked car, and then she said, “Do you wear contacts?”

I’d been asked the question so many times that I didn’t even wonder anymore at how much nerve it had taken to ask it. “Nope.”

“I’m having a terrible painter’s block right now. I would love to do a quick study of you.” She laughed. It was a very self-conscious sound. “That’s why I was ogling you downstairs. I just thought it would make an amazing color study, your black hair and your eyes. You remind me of the wolves in our woods. Did Grace tell you about them?”

My body stiffened. It felt too close, like she was prying, especially after the run-in with Olivia. My immediate wolfish instinct was to bolt. Tear down the stairs, rip open the door, and melt into the safety of the trees. It took me several long moments to battle the desire to run and convince myself that she couldn’t possibly know, and that I was reading too much into her words. Another long moment to realize that I had been standing for too long not saying anything.

“Oh—I don’t mean to make it awkward for you.” Her words tumbled over each other. “You don’t have to sit for me. I know some people feel really self-conscious. And you probably want to be getting back downstairs to Grace.”

I felt obliged to make up for my rudeness. “No—no, that’s okay. I mean, I do feel sort of self-conscious about it. Can I do something while you paint me? I mean, so I don’t have to just sit and stare off into space?”

She literally ran over to her easel. “No! Of course not. Why don’t you play the guitar? Oh, this is going to be great. Thank you. You can just sit over there, under those lights.” While I retrieved the guitar case, she ran across her studio several more times, getting a chair for me, adjusting the spotlights, and draping a yellow sheet to reflect golden light on one side of my face.

“Do I have to try to stay still?”

She waved a paintbrush at me, as if that would answer my question, then propped a new canvas against her easel and squeezed gobs of black paint onto a palette. “No, no, just play away.”

So I tuned the guitar, and I sat there in the golden light and played and hummed the songs under my breath, thinking of all the times I’d sat on Beck’s couch and played songs for the pack, of Paul playing his guitar with me and us singing harmonies. In the background, I heard the scrape, scrape of the palette knife and the whuff of the brush on the canvas and wondered what she was doing with my face while I wasn’t paying attention.