Free One of Us by Jeannie Waudby Page A

it.
    He holds something out to me. “D’you want this?” He places a paintbrush in my hand. It’s an expensive one with a wide bit for painting a wash but also a fine dot of a point.
    â€œThanks.” I stroke it across the back of my hand, and the fibers spring back. “Was it in the closet? I haven’t seen any other brushes like this in here.”
    Greg half-turns toward the Art room. “It’s an old one of mine.” He takes the drawing boards from me. “You can keep it if you want. I don’t paint much.”
    Light floods back as he moves away from the doorway. I look at the brush. On the glossy black wood there’s a sticky patch from the price label, and it looks new. Did he buy me a paintbrush? What’s he up to?
    Greg is already sitting on the stool, grinning at me. He has carefully placed his hands on his knees so that the perspective makes them even harder todraw. I can’t stop looking at his smile, and it’s hard to stop myself from smiling back. He’s a Brotherhood boy, I remind myself. He was at the station on the day of the bomb. How do I even know that he didn’t have something to do with it?
    â€œHow about you turn and face the closet?” I suggest coldly. I refuse to like him. “And put your hands under your legs?”
    He laughs at me. “Nice try, Verity.”
    I shrug. “Suit yourself.”
    Ms. Cobana is watching, so I shut one eye and position the pencil end in the air where I see the top of Greg’s dark brown hair, which lies smoothly on his head like a seal’s. He has good cheekbones. Then I slide my thumb down the pencil to the edge of his chin. How many of those into the whole of Greg? I move my thumb mark on the pencil down his red-checked chest, his blue jeans, and then his legs until they meet his sneakers. Greg’s eyes are wide open and staring straight at me. He holds mine a moment too long, but I pretend not to notice.
    I mark two almond shapes over the eyeballs, then add the pupils, very large. I darken them with a soft pencil, leaving a little bit of white to make them come alive. Greg’s eyes are chestnut brown, with golden-brown lights, when you look closely, so I mark the irises with tiny fanning-out lines. I put in his eyelashes with tapered strokes . . .
    â€œTime’s up!” calls Ms. Cobana. “Change over now.”
    Everyone is swapping places, taking the chance to look at each other’s work. I scribble in the rest of Greg, so that at the end his eyes jump out with a dark intensity. It’s not bad.
    Greg stands up and stretches. “Pins and needles,” he says. He comes over and looks at my drawing. “Is that what I look like?”
    â€œNot really.” It’s obvious that I spent far too long trying to capture his eyes. “I’m no good at drawing people.”
    I hop up on the bench. There’s so much space here. In my old State school there were thirty students in every class, but here it’s about half. “So, how come everyone calls you Greg, not Gregory?” I ask. Maybe I can start to find out the truth about this boy. And why he’s buying me brand-new paintbrushes and then lying about it. “Everyone else has long names.”
    Charcoal splinters out from behind Greg’s easel. “It’s what my little sister used to call me.”
    â€œOh. It’s quite short, that’s all.”
    â€œSo, what about your name, then?”
    My name? K? My fingers grip the wooden edge of the bench. I stare back at Greg.
    â€œ Verity ,” he says. “Would you have picked it, if you could have chosen?”
    â€œYes.” No. But I can imagine new parents choosing “Verity” for their baby girl. Not like “K.”
    â€œSo . . . you know what it means?” He’s still splattering charcoal shards.
    â€œOf course I know what my own name means.” Careful, K. Don’t take the bait.