Free A Work of Art by Melody Maysonet Page B

everyone.”
    â€œOkay.”
    â€œYou were doing it to practice. I get that. It’s not like you’re a pervert. But you knew it might upset certain people, didn’t you? Is that why you didn’t show me?”
    â€œI was going to,” she said. “I threw the others away. This was the best one.”
    â€œYou did more?” He sucked on his cigarette. “You should have shown me before you threw them away. I could have told you what was good about them, what you need to work on. I could have helped you with the lighting, too.” Smoke puffed from his mouth as he talked. “Where was the light coming from when you drew her?”
    Tera thought for a moment. “There was a lamp,” she said. “Beside the couch.”
    He nodded. “The shadows were all off. It looked like you were outside under the sun. Very two-dimensional.”
    So it wasn’t good after all. Sometimes it felt like she’d never get good.
    â€œTo master the art of drawing nudes you have to capture the play of light and shadow.” He drew a picture in the air with his cigarette as he talked.
    â€œI can do better,” she said.
    â€œAnd how do you get better at something?”
    â€œYou practice.”
    â€œHard to do, though, right?” He tapped ash from his cigarette. “Especially when you have a cuckoo bird for a mother?”
    Tera smiled. She liked it when he called her mom a cuckoo bird. It made her seem less scary, more like a cartoon character.
    â€œSo I have an idea. I want you to keep drawing nudes.” He laid his cigarette in the ashtray and put his hands on her shoulders. “But you have to be careful. We both have to be careful.”
    Another secret, just like the book. Another secret to gnaw at her. One time she painted that secret. A black wad in a girl’s stomach. A black wad with tiny teeth. She painted it and threw it away.
    â€œTera,” he said. “Tell me why we have to be careful.”
    â€œSo the cuckoo bird doesn’t find out.”
    â€œThat’s right.” He smiled as he lit another cigarette. “So she doesn’t find out and burn the house down.”

CHAPTER 12
    Monday after second period, I stopped at my locker to grab my Trig book. Ian was at the locker beside mine, shoving a mess of papers into his backpack. I wondered what it would feel like to be so blissfully unorganized. I’d probably be a lot more relaxed.
    â€œHey,” Ian said.
    â€œHey.” I pretended to be so engrossed in working my combination that I couldn’t look at him. I knew he felt sorry for me. The post on the school forum had been taken down, but he probably still felt like he had to be extra nice to me.
    â€œYou doing okay?” he asked me.
    â€œYeah.” I pulled on my lock. It didn’t open.
    â€œYou need some help?”
    â€œNo, I got it.” I kept my head down and spun the dial again.
    â€œOkay, I’ll see you later.”
    â€œYeah, see you.”
    It took me two more tries to open my lock. I squatted down to rummage through the books at the bottom, not really looking for anything, just wanting to be invisible for a few seconds. Five more hours till the last bell, when I wouldn’t have to talk to people who knew about my dad. Seven more hours till Papa Geppetto’s, where no one knew anything about what had happened.
    And where I’d see Joey.
    A hand grabbed my elbow. I turned around, ready to spout off one of my stock responses: It was a mistake. It’s getting cleared up. Yes, I’m holding up okay.
    But when I saw who it was, my words dried up and sank like stones to the bottom of my stomach. Ellen Cornwell stood blinking at me with wide, blue-shadowed eyes. Justine Kidd hovered behind her. Both of them were Haley’s friends. Justine wasn’t as bad as Ellen, but Ellen was a total bitch. This was the girl who used to laugh at me for wearing the same jeans twice in one