Pop continues dicing a stalk of celery. “A homebody is someone who loves to be home more than anywhere else.”
“I like to be home,” Abby announces. “But I also like to go places. Today we went on an African safari. I made a batik.”
It takes me a second to realize that Abby is talking about the day camp she goes to during the summer, since Pop works nights at El Camino Hospital in Mountain View, and Mom works days at Stanford Hospital in Palo Alto. Although to say that Mom works days is inaccurate. Mom works all the time.
Speaking of which: “Where’s Mom?”
Pop keeps chopping vegetables. “She said she’d be home in time for dinner. It’s family night, you know.”
“I know.” Normally I would stay and help him finish making the salad, but that could lead to conversations like “How was your day?” and I don’t want to go there. So I grab a carrot and flee upstairs to my room. I close the door and go straight to my desk, where I take out my journal and art pencils and begin to sketch Leo.
I can still see him clearly in my mind’s eye. That expression on his face when I said I didn’t want to go all the way. The way his eyelids lowered, not squeezing into a squint or a glare, but dropping like protective shutters over his eyes. His eyebrows angled up at the inner edges, pressing together, causing two small bumps to appear in the space between them. The discontented downturn of his mouth.
My pencil practically dances over the paper, capturing that look. It takes me ten minutes, and the moment I finish I know it’s one of the best sketches I’ve ever done. It illustrates the moment perfectly—the feeling in it, the tension. Strange how the worst experiences can lead to the best art. But that’s life, I guess. Beauty in the pain.
I pick up the carrot I stole from Pop and crunch on it miserably. Clearly I’ve made a huge mistake here. Why didn’t I want to have sex? Was it the I love you bit? Do I believe, deep down somewhere, that to “make love” you need to be in love, and I don’t love Leo enough for that? Do I love Leo? I’ve never considered my feelings like that before: either love or not love. I like Leo. I love being with him. I’m attracted to him. Shouldn’t that be enough?
Or was it the unshaved legs thing? The holey underwear? The sports bra? Am I so uncomfortable in my own skin that the idea of Leo seeing me naked is more than I can handle? I know I have body issues, but am I really that self-conscious?
Or maybe it was Michael Phelps.
Whatever the reason, it was the wrong call. Leo was offended. He might say it’s all right and that he respects me and that he can wait, but he got instantly distant with me after I wanted to stop. He couldn’t help it. He was disappointed.
Yeah, well. I’m disappointed, too.
I sign and date the sketch. It needs a title. I scrawl a word I like: crestfallen. That’s what Leo was. His crest had definitely fallen. I snort, then erase the word carefully. Not ready, I write instead.
Not ready. I sigh. I flip back through the journal, past the pages and pages of sketches like this one, documenting the moments of my life as intimately as any diary would. There are so many drawings of Leo. Leo on the beach at Santa Cruz, the sea breeze ruffling his hair. Leo tying his shoe. Leo in swim trunks that one time we swam in his aboveground backyard pool, his back to me as he stood at the edge of the water, the muscles tightened as he prepared to dive in. He’s beautiful. Built. Sexy. What is wrong with me?
I flip back a few more pages, to February and the first sketch I ever did of Leo, at his mother’s show.
He was slumped in a chair to one side of the gallery, a modern teenage boy as Rodin’s Thinker, rumpled hoodie, holes in his jeans, elbow propped on his knee and his chin in his hand. I knew after two seconds of seeing him that he was Diana Robinson’s son. For a minute I just stood there, looking, internalizing his shapes and shading for this sketch, the one I’d do of him later. Then I actually went over and talked to him, a move so unlike my introverted self that thinking back on it surprises me every time. How was I so inexplicably brave that day?
“It must be weird” is what I said to him.
He looked up, startled. “Weird?”
“To be your mom’s, like, muse.” Almost all of Diana Robinson’s sculptures featured a little boy doing something strangely adult: reading Proust, driving a car, shaving, fastening a cuff link to his sleeve. I’d recognized Leo from the back—that cowlick he has on the right side of his head. It’s in every sculpture, that uncooperative swirl of hair.
“How did you . . .” Leo seemed confused at how I knew who he was, but then he glanced around and realized. “Uh, yeah. It’s weird. Little bit.”
We struck up a conversation, and at the end of it he asked me out. This still feels like the most improbable thing ever. A guy asking me out doesn’t seem like something that is possible in my world, which consists of Notre Dame High School (Catholic, all girls), babysitting my little sister, hanging out with my big sister, and my art stuff (a largely solitary obsession). I’d never been asked out before. And then suddenly—bam—there was Leo. Athletic, affable Leo. Who likes me, maybe even loves me. Who wants to kiss me.
And other things.
God, I think. What have I done?
There’s a single sharp rap on my bedroom door. Pop’s voice. “Dinner.”
“Okay,” I call back faintly. “I’ll be right down.”
3
In the dining room I take my usual seat between Mom’s chair and Afton’s. Afton is eighteen and essentially a carbon copy of our mother—whip-smart, take-no-shit-from-anybody, and annoyingly gorgeous, with long ash-blond hair and hot-fire-blue eyes.
“I thought you were staying over at Lucy’s,” Afton says.
I shrug. “No.”
“Did you get in a fight? What’s going on?”
Normally I tell Afton everything of significance that happens in my life. But now is definitely not the time. Besides, just thinking about Leo is making my face feel hot and prickly.
“Nothing,” I insist. I give a little shake of my head that means, I’ll tell you later.
“Where’s Mommy?” Abby asks, a welcome distraction from Afton’s inquisitive gaze.
“She’s not here.” Afton smirks, a twist of her pink-petal lips. “What a shock, right?”
“I’m sure she’ll be here any minute.” Pop sets a steaming dish of meat in the center of the table, then a bowl of what looks like mashed potatoes with corn and peas in it. Meat and mashed potatoes. Not Pop’s usual dinner offering.
“What is that?” Abby asks loudly, staring at the gravy-like substance surrounding the meat like it has oozed down from outer space.
“Is it . . . beef?” Afton’s a ballet dancer. She’s always careful with what she eats. As in, no red meat.
“Nyama na irio,” Pop explains, like that explains it. “It’s a Kenyan dish.”
Ah. That does explain it. Pop recently took one of those DNA tests that tell you what ethnicities you’re made up of. According to said test, Pop is 45 percent African (Nigerian, Kenyan), 26 percent European (British, Irish, Iberian), 14 percent South American (Columbian, Argentinian), 3 percent Native American, and then traces of other random stuff. Pop calls himself a “worldly specimen.” Ever since he received the results, he’s been researching and cooking meals from the different specific cultures he’s related to. Last week was fish and chips. The week before: arroz chaufa de mariscos, a kind of spicy seafood and rice. And now this.