“Hear that?” Ingrid said, talking to Gillian as they walked away. “Kelsey has to go to class.”

As usual, the room was already dark when she got there, and half empty now that the year was winding down. Mrs. Wallace was bathed in the light from a slide featuring a complex orange-and-pink flower shape. Below it were the words “Feminist Visual Culture.”

“Good afternoon, Kelsey,” Mrs. Wallace said. “You’re late, but I’ll let it go this time.”

“Sorry, Mrs. Wallace,” Kelsey said, smiling sheepishly, because she was late most days. But she was always there, and never fell asleep, like she would have had this been any other year, any other time.

“The first slide is of a painting by American artist Georgia O’Keeffe.”

Kelsey’s eyes followed the lines of the painting slowly, taking in every detail from top to bottom, as she had been taught.

“But before we get into that,” Mrs. Wallace continued, “we have to go back to the beginning. Well, a little after the beginning. We have to go back to 1848. Who can tell me what happened in 1848?”

“Pre-Raphaelites,” someone muttered.

“Exactly,” Mrs. Wallace said, pointing her remote to the projector with a dramatic wave, moving to the next slide. “The Brotherhood, as they say. Kelsey, read those names.”

Kelsey stumbled through the list.

“This is a list of people in Rossetti’s salon, one of the most exciting places to be if you were an artist at that time. They were rebelling against flat, conventional composition. People standing still in perfect portraits: boring! They wanted layers, asymmetry, backdrops, romance!” Then Mrs. Wallace smiled, pacing back and forth in her corduroy jumper. “And what do you not see?”

Kelsey’s eyes scanned the pale faces in the frame, burning to answer the question, but nothing popped into her head. She was stuck.

“Let me put it this way,” Mrs. Wallace said. “What does Rossetti’s salon and a boys’ locker room have in common?”

Kelsey cried out, “Oh! No women!”

“Bam. Right on the nose. And there’s your problem right there.…”

The rest of the class, Kelsey was riveted. Mrs. Wallace had a way of talking about the most minute details of what they were seeing so that they expanded into very big, important facts. The facts didn’t just relate to whatever time period they were studying, they were facts about the way a person looked at anything: a movie, a billboard, her mother’s decorating style. All of these types of seeing influenced one another, and they all found their root in the past.

Today Mrs. Wallace ended the class with a video clip, and as they watched, Kelsey felt something wash over her. The video was supposed to be an example of the way feminist art had evolved, to the point where the artists would use their own bodies as a canvas.

Kelsey didn’t know exactly what this meant. She imagined them painting on themselves.

And then, the artist danced. She danced in a way Kelsey had never seen before, but understood all the same. The dance awoke something in her, the same sort of feeling she would have if she had answered one of Mrs. Wallace’s questions correctly, but bigger than that. Better than that, because she could imagine herself in the artist’s shoes, losing herself to her limbs and torso and the music that played. It was as if the artist were answering a question Kelsey had asked since she was a little girl. The artist’s name was Maya. Maya Deren. She reminded Kelsey of her sister. She reminded Kelsey of herself.

When the video was over, Kelsey fought the urge to applaud.

The bell rang, but before she could gather her things, Mrs. Wallace put a hand on her arm.

“Forgetting something?”

Kelsey was still lost in thought. “Huh?”

“I graded the paper you handed in before break.” Mrs. Wallace looked at Kelsey, her eyebrows raised. “The paper on Cubism you handed in a day after the deadline? Remember?”

“Oh, yeah,” Kelsey said, clearing her throat. Her face burned. She was working harder, but it didn’t seem to be good enough. “Thank you. Sorry about that.”

Mrs. Wallace tapped the paper in her hands with plain, shorn fingernails. The grade wasn’t visible. “Well, you’ve never been famous among the administration for being on time for class, or present, for that matter. I didn’t expect a lot—”

“Yeah.” Kelsey sighed.

Mrs. Wallace continued, “When you gave me an A-plus paper, I was very surprised.”

She smiled as broadly as Mrs. Wallace could smile, which wasn’t very broad, and put the paper in Kelsey’s hands.

Kelsey flipped it over, her eyes wide. Sure enough, at the top near her name there was an A+. She could see small notes Mrs. Wallace had made here and here: Creative observation, she had written, and, Well said.

At first, all Kelsey could do was look back and forth between Mrs. Wallace and the paper. Breaths replaced words. It was the first A+ she had ever received.

“I can’t believe it.”

“Believe it,” Mrs. Wallace replied, and went back to her desk.

Kelsey left the room with a fire underneath her. She couldn’t wait to tell Peter, and to tell her parents. Her mother and father had always told her she could do better. But she often wondered if any of them really thought she could, including herself. She had tried her hand at studying before, and always lost interest. What was different now?

She paused in the hallway, the faces filtering around her, remembering the person who she had done this for in the first place. She had been moved by this subject in the way her sister was probably moved by it every day. Her eyes blurred with happy tears.

I get it now, what you saw in it all, she told her sister, wherever she was. I see what you see.

4/26, 11:55 pm

From: Farrow, Peter W SPC

To: Maxfield, Michelle

Subject: A short list

The things I would rather do than go on patrol:

• Talk to you

• Take you on a date

• Make out with you

• Play music for you

• Listen to you play music for me (not on a guitar, just on the radio or something, no offense)

• Make out with you

• Read your letters

• Talk to you through a computer screen

• Make out with you

• Sit and stare off into space while thinking about you

• Stand and stare off into space while thinking about you

• Walk and stare off into space while thinking about you

• Sleep and stare off into space while thinking about you

• Bathe and stare off into space while thinking about you (sorry if that’s explicit)

Tomorrow we go out for a few days. I’ll try to email you again, but I can’t guarantee it won’t be complete gibberish. I’m having trouble making my hands or brain do anything else but… yeah. You get it already. I love you. I’m in love with you!

—P

CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

The mutters of fifteen members of Kelsey’s dance team echoed throughout the Lawrence High gym, but Kelsey wasn’t listening. She went in phases with the real world: Sometimes, she wanted to describe every detail in her head to Peter, just to know that he, too, had once tasted food, seen sun, tripped over a rug. But sometimes, everything in the world felt somehow unnecessary, because she didn’t need any of it if it wasn’t a part of him. The Lions Dance Team was waiting for Gillian to arrive at the last—and most important—dance practice of the year. Today, they voted on next year’s captains.