The next day I sat on my bed with my notebook trying to add something more personal to the sketches I’d done of the tree. I’d told Lance’s story in my painting, but what about mine?
My computer, which was sitting next to me, dinged with an instant message.
Hey, kid.
I smiled, set the book down, and typed back. Dad! Can you video chat?
Calling now.
My computer rang and I moved the arrow to the video icon. His face came up on the screen.
“Your hair is so short,” I said.
He ran his hand over the buzz cut. “It’s hot here. Had my buddy clip it yesterday.”
“Should I go get Mom too?” I stretched up in my bed to look at the door, like she might be lurking there, waiting for the invite.
“I just got off with her. She’s in her room.”
I laughed. “I like how you know that and I don’t.”
“It’s nice knowing more than you about home life every once in a while.”
I smiled, and his smile slid off his face. “How is she?” he asked. “She was putting on a brave face, but I’m sure you know much more about that than I do.”
“She’s okay. She’s been on a few walks lately. That’s good. She promised me she’s going to my art show.”
“So you’re in the art show now? Your heart list worked!”
“Well, no, not yet. I mean, I haven’t shown him my new paintings yet. I will.”
“I’m still not happy that Mr. Wallace said you have no heart. You have the biggest heart I know.”
I blew air between my lips. “You have to say that because you’re my dad. And because you hardly know me.”
He narrowed his eyes, and I laughed.
“Just kidding. You sort of know me.”
“I know you’re more sarcastic than . . .”
“You went down that comparison road knowing you were going to crash and burn.”
“Your grandpa!” he said, finally producing an end to his sentence.
“Yeah, nice try, but I think Grandpa might still have me beat. He is older and much more experienced.”
“Speaking of your grandpa, how is he?”
“Still alive.”
A door opened and closed behind Dad, and he looked over his shoulder. “I’m so sorry,” he said back to me. “I have to go. Email me some pictures of your latest paintings. And Abby, don’t let anyone tell you that you have no heart.”
“Thanks, Dad.”
“I wish I could be there for your art show.”
I shrugged. “There might not be an art show. I mean, I might not be in it anyway, so it’s fine. . . .”
“I love you,” he said.
“Love you too.”
He clicked the End button and a grainy image of him froze on my screen for a moment. I reached out and touched the smooth surface.
I was busy trying to change the bark sketch when a head appeared around my door.
“Hey,” Cooper said.
“Who let you in?”
He smiled and came all the way into my room. “You’re not happy to see me? Is that why you hung up on me?”
“I hung up on you because I was busy.” I smiled.
“Are you still mad at me for wanting to duel Lacey?”
“No. I’ve learned long ago that you’re a dork.”
His eyes went to my hands. “What are you doing?”
“Drawing.”
“Drawing? When’s the last time you drew?” He sat down next to me and looked at the open book. “What is it?”
“Bark. Up close.”
“Okay,” he said skeptically.
He was right. It didn’t look like bark anymore. It had at one point, but I’d drawn over it so many times, trying to make it cooler or better or more dynamic, that it now looked like a bunch of scribbling. “I know you’re impressed.”
“Why aren’t you painting?”
“I was . . . sort of. I’m letting my mind brainstorm.” I pushed his shoulder. “Now stop mocking me.” I went over a line again on the page.
He took the book and pencil from me and placed them on my nightstand.
“Hey! Give them back.”
“I’m saving you from yourself.”
I sighed. “Fine. Let’s do something on the list then.” Maybe that would help.
Cooper let himself fall onto my bed, then glanced across the room at the list and gave a noncommittal shrug. His enthusiasm over the list had been declining steadily, much to my disappointment. But I still had a show to earn my way into. I couldn’t quit while there was still time. Plus, the things I was experiencing had been fun. Yesterday, after talking to Lance, I’d marked “learn a stranger’s story” off the list. I hadn’t even set out to do that and I had.
“Let’s do the ‘Cooper faces a fear’ one,” I said.
“I still haven’t thought of anything for that.”
“Yeah, right. I’m convinced you know your biggest fear, you’re just too afraid to tell me. Come on, I’m going to root it out of you.” I stood and held out my hand.
“That sounds painful.”
“I’m willing to make that sacrifice.”
“I meant painful for me.”
“I’m willing to make that sacrifice as well.”
He smiled. “And why do we have to leave the house to do this?”
“It’s part of the rooting.”
He let me drag him to his feet and out the door.
Cooper and I had a spot by the ocean. One we liked to go to that wasn’t overrun with tourists. Most days, there wasn’t another soul there. Mainly because it lacked what most people went to the ocean for—a beach. This place didn’t have yards of sand littered with shiny seashells dying to be collected. It didn’t have a place to anchor an umbrella and build sand castles. Or even a rock-free zone to jump waves as they crashed onto shore. No, this place had to be hiked to. It was secluded and small and pitted with tide pools and obstacles. It smelled like fish and seaweed and salt. But this was where we came sometimes to escape everything else. I’d grabbed my notebook along with my beach bag as we had left the house, and I turned to a clean page and held my pencil ready now.
“I’m conducting an interview,” I said, perched on a rock. One of the many purple wildflowers that grew along the cliff tickled the side of my foot.
“Of who?”
“You.”
“Why?”
“It’s part of the rooting process. I am going to discover your fear. If you don’t know it and I don’t know it, you must’ve hidden it somewhere deep in your subconscious.”
“Okay, hit me.” He leaned back on his palms.
“What is your earliest memory?”
“Easy. Four years old. Clinging onto my uncle as he drove me on a quad. When we got back, my mom told him off.”
“You obviously have strong emotions attached to this or you wouldn’t remember it. So was it fear?”
“Nope. Pure excitement.”
“I could’ve guessed that.”
He laughed.
I jotted a note in my book. “Okay, how about this. You find out tomorrow that you’re going to die. What is the one thing you regret not doing?”
He seemed to consider this for a long moment but then said his answer like it was a throwaway one, like he’d really thought of something else but decided to keep it to himself. “Seeing the world, I guess. What does that have to do with fear, though?”
“I just thought that maybe fear was holding you back from doing something you really want to do.”
“No, that’s more about money and being underage.”
I chewed on the pen cap. “Seeing the world, huh? I don’t remember you ever talking about traveling.”
“Like I said, it’s not possible right now, so why dwell on it.”
“Okay.” I tried to decide what else to ask him. “Do you have any recurring nightmares?”
“Not that I remember.” He tilted his head. “Do you?”
“Yes.”
“Really? What happens?”
“I’m at school staring at the big brick wall by the amphitheater. You know which one I’m talking about?”
“Yes. The one that everyone always tags and the principal gives lectures about every year because apparently he wants it big and blank?”
“Yes, that one.”
“Okay. Do you destroy it? Because that thing is begging to be destroyed.”
“No. I paint it.”
“Of course you do. How is that a nightmare? It sounds like perfection to me so far.”
“Well, I paint it and then the principal tells me to try again. It immediately turns white. I paint the same thing. And again he tells me to try again. Over and over and over.” I’d analyzed this dream, and I knew it all came down to me not feeling good enough. Not good enough for Cooper. Not good enough for his parents, not even good enough for my mom sometimes. And definitely not a good enough artist. It sounded overly dramatic, and that’s why I wasn’t going to admit to that out loud.
“Wow. That sounds awful.”
I shrugged, committing to nonchalance. “It’s not like I dream it every night.”
“I was thinking you meant like monsters or demons, but when you put it that way, maybe I do have one.”
“Yeah?”
“I’m standing in a windowless, door-free room, and I’m the only one there.”
I wrote down his dream in my notebook. “Then what happens? Do you try to claw your way out or anything?”
“No. That’s it. I wake up feeling bad.”
“Scared?”
“Not really.”
I sighed. “You’re hopeless.”
He stretched up to try to peer over my notebook. “Those are the only questions? You’re done digging into my brain?”
“No. One more.”
“Okay.”
I looked him in the eyes. “What are you scared of?”
He laughed loud, throwing his head back. When he stopped, a smile still lingering, he said, “You thought this time I’d know?”
I smiled as well but then sighed. “No, but it was worth a try.”
He toed my bag. “Did you bring any towels? Or treats?”
“Both.”
He held up his hands and I threw him a towel, then a granola bar. He lay back on the rock, wadding up the towel and putting it under his head. “You know, you’re the only person I can sit still with.”
“What do you mean?”
“I mean, I like to be in motion. I get antsy when I’m doing nothing. But you’re so good at it that I don’t mind it at all.”
“So good at what? Doing nothing?”
“That came out wrong.”
“Did it?”
“I just meant being laid-back. It was a compliment.”
I kicked his foot. “You need to work on giving compliments.”
He chuckled and unwrapped his granola bar. “I know.”
I opened my notebook again and started sketching the flowers growing through cracks in the rock. “Why do you think that is?”
“Why aren’t I good at giving compliments?”
“No. Why can’t you sit still?”
“I can. Look at me. I’m a study in Zen.” He took a large bite of granola bar and chewed it slowly.
“Are you afraid to be bored? Afraid of people thinking you’re boring?” I pointed at him. “Ooh. I got it. You’re afraid to be in your own head.”
He pinched the bridge of his nose. “Ah. Here comes the painful rooting-around-in-my-skull part.”
“So yes, then?” I wasn’t sure why I was so intent on finding his fear. I claimed it was for the list and to pay him back for the terror-filled quad ride, but part of me felt like it was something beyond that.
“No,” he said. “My head is the best place to be. There’s a constant party up here all the time.”
I continued drawing. This was a pointless exercise only reaffirming my belief that Cooper had no fears. It was time to change the subject. “How is your sister? Is she still upset about her goldfish?”
“No. She’s trying to talk my mom into a pet bird now.”
“She’s moving up the food chain. Nice.”
“Do you need her painting back so you can show Mr. Wallace?”
“Not yet.”
“You still have one more to paint?”
“No, well, sort of. If I count her fish, then I finished the fifth one last night, but there’s something not quite right about it.”
He hummed. “You’re stalling.”
“I’m not. I have time.”
We were silent for a couple of beats while Cooper finished his granola bar. Waves crashed against rocks in the distance, sending water filtering through the tide pools and closer to us. In a couple of hours the spot where we were sitting would be underwater with high tide.
“What happened with Elliot, Abby? We never talked about it.”
“What do you mean, what happened? We hung out at a party. Were you expecting a wedding invitation?”
“You didn’t like him?”
“Who said that?” My voice rose an octave, and even I could hear the defensiveness in my tone.
“I can tell. I thought you said your relationship goals were that you wanted to date an artist.”
“How did you know he was an artist?”
“He told me.”
“When?”
“I don’t know.”
I shut my notebook and sat forward, but Cooper didn’t move from his reclined position. “I thought the first time you met him was at the restaurant.”
“It was,” he said.
“And the second time was at the party.” I could feel frustration rising in my chest.
“Yeah, but maybe I asked around.”
“Why?”
“I like to know who my friend is about to go out with.”
I hit him with my towel. “Don’t ask around, Cooper. Not for things like this.”
“So why don’t you like him?”
He’s not you, I wanted to say. “I don’t know. He’s nice. We’ll still be friends.” At least I hoped we would be.
“You don’t need another guy friend.”
I crossed my arms. I wasn’t used to Cooper being so serious. We sniped at each other occasionally, but where was this coming from? “Excuse me. What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s not supposed to mean anything but what I said.”
“Maybe I don’t need the guy friend I already have.”
He scooped up a pile of sand from beside him and threw it in my direction halfheartedly.
“That was a toddler’s response,” I said, the tension dissolving a little.
He smiled. “It’s just that you frustrate me sometimes.”
“Ditto.”
He pulled a piece of the towel over his eyes. “Fine. I’ll drop it.”
“I’m fine. I’m happy. I don’t need a boyfriend. Maybe you always need a girl to make you feel special or whatever, but I don’t. Okay?”
“Okay. I said I’d drop it.”
“Good.”
“Good.” He took the towel off his face and sat up. “I don’t always need a girl.”
“Okay.”
“I don’t.”
“I said okay . . . it’s just, you seem to always have one.”
“I don’t.”
“Maybe that’s your fear.”
“What?”
“You fear being alone. Stuck in a room with no door or windows and no way out. All by yourself.”
“Why are you so hung up on my fears? Maybe you should analyze your own dream, Abby. Your own fears. Dig around in your brain for a while. Find out why you keep painting the same thing over and over. Find out what’s holding you back.”
I swallowed a surprised breath. Nothing was holding me back. “I’m pretty sure I’m transparent.”
He scowled at me, then stood. “I should probably get home.”
I stood as well. “Yep. Me too.”