it.
He holds something out to me. âDâyou want this?â He places a paintbrush in my hand. Itâs an expensive one with a wide bit for painting a wash but also a fine dot of a point.
âThanks.â I stroke it across the back of my hand, and the fibers spring back. âWas it in the closet? I havenât seen any other brushes like this in here.â
Greg half-turns toward the Art room. âItâs an old one of mine.â He takes the drawing boards from me. âYou can keep it if you want. I donât paint much.â
Light floods back as he moves away from the doorway. I look at the brush. On the glossy black wood thereâs a sticky patch from the price label, and it looks new. Did he buy me a paintbrush? Whatâs 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 canât stop looking at his smile, and itâs hard to stop myself from smiling back. Heâs a Brotherhood boy, I remind myself. He was at the station on the day of the bomb. How do I even know that he didnât have something to do with it?
âHow about you turn and face the closet?â I suggest coldly. I refuse to like him. âAnd put your hands under your legs?â
He laughs at me. âNice try, Verity.â
I shrug. âSuit yourself.â
Ms. Cobana is watching, so I shut one eye and position the pencil end in the air where I see the top of Gregâs dark brown hair, which lies smoothly on his head like a sealâs. 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. Gregâs 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. Gregâs 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 . . .
âTimeâs up!â calls Ms. Cobana. âChange over now.â
Everyone is swapping places, taking the chance to look at each otherâs work. I scribble in the rest of Greg, so that at the end his eyes jump out with a dark intensity. Itâs not bad.
Greg stands up and stretches. âPins and needles,â he says. He comes over and looks at my drawing. âIs that what I look like?â
âNot really.â Itâs obvious that I spent far too long trying to capture his eyes. âIâm no good at drawing people.â
I hop up on the bench. Thereâs so much space here. In my old State school there were thirty students in every class, but here itâs about half. âSo, how come everyone calls you Greg, not Gregory?â I ask. Maybe I can start to find out the truth about this boy. And why heâs buying me brand-new paintbrushes and then lying about it. âEveryone else has long names.â
Charcoal splinters out from behind Gregâs easel. âItâs what my little sister used to call me.â
âOh. Itâs quite short, thatâs all.â
âSo, what about your name, then?â
My name? K? My fingers grip the wooden edge of the bench. I stare back at Greg.
â Verity ,â he says. âWould you have picked it, if you could have chosen?â
âYes.â No. But I can imagine new parents choosing âVerityâ for their baby girl. Not like âK.â
âSo . . . you know what it means?â Heâs still splattering charcoal shards.
âOf course I know what my own name means.â Careful, K. Donât take the bait.
Legs McNeil, Jennifer Osborne, Peter Pavia