The Other Half of Me (4 page)

SIX

My chocolate-and-barely-pink sweatshirt is zipped up to my neck, but it doesn’t quite protect my pounding heart. I am no sooner through the Cutler Green Mall’s front doors with Sierra and Sage than they race off together, leaving me alone to wander through the throngs of summertime shoppers and fend for myself.

“Be back here at ten,” I yell after them, and they do me the small favor of acknowledging me with a wave. This is the last couple weeks of the mall’s extended hours—even retail counts down to fall. A couple weeks from now, the storefronts will darken at six and the twins will be forced to face homework, not shopping. And so will I.

With my sketchbook in hand, I head toward Callahan’s. I could wander around, check out the scene there, and play it cool, but the truth is, playing it cool doesn’t come that easily to me. Instead of braving the crowd inside Callahan’s, I sit down on a bench between the Gap and Wilsons Leather.
It has a nice view of the fountain
, I think. But I’m not convinced—I am being a coward.

I spend the next few minutes people-watching and recognize a lot of the kids here. They are splintered into the usual groups that form in the school cafeteria. The disgruntled rockers are making the rounds at Hot Topic. The bronzed, ponytailed girls have shopping bags swinging from each hand, unplagued by the bills they’re sticking their parents with. The sports crew huddles outside Strauss Sporting Goods, close enough to me that I can put a name to all the faces. I take note that someone is missing from their group.

I flip open my sketchbook to my latest design—two circles that meet midway on the page. It’s like the painting I was working on today, the one Sid deemed first-grade material. Unfortunately, now that I’m staring at it, I can see Sid’s point. Something’s not right here. Even though this design looks deep and meaningful in my mind, when I put it on the canvas it seems juvenile and amateurish. Regardless, I take two pencils—one red, one blue—from my bag and attempt to fix it somehow. Moving the red pencil at an angle, I shade a half-moon shape and then use the blue pencil to highlight it. Hmmm. Not bad.

“How’s it going, Degas?” The voice is coming from above me. I look up and see Tate staring intently at my sketchbook. Instinctually, I slam the thing shut. It doubles as a kind of journal, with random thoughts and titles of paintings scribbled here and there. I never want anyone to look at it. “Sorry. Am I interrupting?” he asks.

I blink a few times and regain my composure. Degas painted dancers mainly, but I don’t think about that. Instead, I think about the fact that Tate’s actually talking to me. “No. Not at all.”

Tate grins at me and raises an eyebrow. “Really?” He bends down and puts a finger on my book. “Are you sure?”

It’s as if he wants me to be real with him, so I say, “Okay, maybe a little. But I don’t mind.”

“Cool.” Tate waves to his pack of guys but doesn’t join them as they wander into Callahan’s, where they will most likely hunch over plates of fries and gallons of soda. He brushes a hand through his hair and sits down next to me. “So, tell me something I don’t know about sports. Test me.”

“Okay.” My lungs fill with air as I think of what to say. Again the painted images of Tate start to appear. What colors would I use to capture the greens, blues, and gold in his eyes? “I can’t think of anything.”

“That’s okay.” He pauses. “I like to talk about other things, too, you know.”

I tilt my head to the right in disbelief. “Yeah? Like what?”

He drums his fingers on the edge of the bench. “Geography, for one. When I was a kid, I read the atlas like it was a comic book.” His smile is flawless. “Don’t slap the loser label on my forehead just yet. I also know a lot about art—paintings and sculptures and stuff.”

Of course this gets my attention, but then I wonder if he’s doing that guy thing. Faye says boys will find out what you like, drop a few names about it—for instance, calling you by the name of a famous artist you admire—and then assume you’ll let them into your pants. So I ignore the art comment from Tate and go back to sports. I’d rather stay on his turf. Talking about art would be way too personal for me, and even though I want to get close to him, I’m not ready for it yet.

“I’ll stick with sports trivia, thanks. But it’s nice to know you’re so well-rounded.” I blush at the thought of how flirty that just sounded.

“You think you’re up to the challenge?” Tate leans toward me a little as though he’s about to take one of my hands in his. He doesn’t, of course, but the thought of it makes me so nervous I bite my lip to keep from freaking out.

“I can handle it,” I say.

Tate puts on his game show host voice again. “In the four major U.S. pro sports—wait, you do know what those are, right?”

I sigh heavily and roll my eyes. “Baseball, football, basketball, and hockey.”

Tate twists his mouth in agreement. “Just checking.” He pauses and looks up, probably trying to remember what he was going to ask. Meanwhile, more of his cronies walk by and stare, no doubt wondering what their studly leader is doing with a girl best known at school for the new mural on the wall outside the guidance office. “There are only a few teams whose names do not end with an
s
. Name them.”

I narrow my eyes. “You couldn’t come up with anything better? Come on. Basketball: the Miami Heat, the Utah Jazz, the Orlando Magic. Baseball: the Boston Red Sox, the Chicago White Sox. Hockey: the Colorado Avalanche, the Minnesota Wild, the Tampa Bay Lightning…”

“And football?” Tate asks, his smirk indicating that he’s impressed. Who knew the hours I spent sucking up info from Russ, the twins, and my parents might one day come in handy?

“Football? None.” I cross my arms over my chest. “Satisfied?”

Tate shrugs. “Now it’s my turn to be quizzed.” He stands up and motions for me to do the same, leading me to the nearest escalator.

I follow him, wondering where he’ll take me and what on earth he could possibly show me. When we’re outside the giant bookstore, he points inside. “Quiz me.”

Weaving through aisles of novels, past the bestsellers and the small café at the back, right next to the magazine racks we get to what, in my opinion, is the best area of the store—oversized art books, their thick pages spread with images of paintings and drawings, hulk the shelves. “Are you sure we’re in the right section?”

Tate grabs a book of artwork from the Museum of Modern Art and hands it to me, our fingers close enough that they touch just for a millisecond. “Go.”

I flip the book open and display a painting of swirls and the night sky, but I keep the title of the work and its artist hidden with my hand. “What’s this?”

“
The Starry Night
by van Gogh,” Tate says flatly. “Too easy. Try again.”

I page through the book and test him some more. Each time he responds correctly: Seurat, Gauguin, Mondrian. Finally, I catch him. “And this one?”

Tate scratches his neck as he wonders. Knowing that I am the reason for his remembering stance makes me feel special. “Matisse? No. Wait. Miró.”

I shake my head. “Franti
ek Kupka. It’s called
The First Step.
” I wonder if that could be the title of our evening, too. “See the shapes?” I point to the painting. “I love how he takes this thing that’s so familiar, just a regular old circle, and makes it, I don’t know, magical.”

Tate nods and touches the page where the big center circle seems to split itself in two, the shapes overlapping. “Luminescent. It’s like they’re connected, but they’re not.”

“Exactly,” I say. Then my pulse steadies, instead of racing as I would have expected. Calm washes over me. Tate obviously understands the painting, and I can’t help but feel that he understands me, too. I gaze at the circles again and it hits me. “Oh my God, that’s just what I’m trying to say.”

“What do you mean?”

I take out my sketchbook and flip it open to the red-and-blue drawing. “Here, like this.” I’m so excited to have figured this out that I don’t hesitate to show my book to him. Tate leans in close, his eyes on the page, truly interested. “See?” I say. “The circles are doubled, like twins, but not quite.”

“Wow, you’re right,” he replies.

A small silence grows between us, and suddenly we’re a little weirded out by it. Tate coughs and takes a few steps back until he’s safe in the next section over. The magazine aisles are jammed with covers that feature glossy photos of starlets, makeover tips, and country houses. One cover asks, “Do You Like Him? Take Our Quiz and Find Out.” But I’ve already taken a quiz tonight and know the resounding answer.

I close the art book and put it back on the shelf. Then I walk over to where he’s standing and grab a random magazine off the rack. I read aloud in a mocking voice. “Top ten ways to get
him
to notice
you.
One: dress for success.” Tate cracks up and strikes a JCPenney catalog pose.

“What? Don’t I belong on the cover of
Esquire
or something?” Tate asks, making me laugh.

“Number three is ‘Tell him something no one else knows. He’ll feel superspecial.’”

Tate laughs. “Oh, I don’t know if I’m up for that.” He grabs another magazine off the rack and reads to me from some dry article about mortgage rates and insurance premiums until I do a giant fake yawn. “Okay, I’m losing my audience. Hold on.” Tate tosses the finance mag on a nearby chair and snags a glossy
Teen Vogue.
“Are your friends stealing your style?”

I pluck at my zipped-up sweatshirt. “Who would want to? Next question.”

“Could donor number forty-nine be your father?” Tate asks in an over-the-top manner.

Once I realize what he’s talking about, my face falls a little. I wasn’t expecting this information to come out this way, or so soon. Tate looks up at me, unaware of what my sullen expression means. So I explain. “Actually, my donor father is number one-forty-two.”

The magazine droops in Tate’s hands. He seems a little embarrassed. “Really?”

I nod. “It’s no big deal, though.”

Tate keeps hold of the magazine but sits on the floor. He pats the carpet next to him, so I sit there, slouching amid the home renovation guides and soap opera mags. “It seems like a big deal.”

I shrug. “I grew up knowing this, so it’s just a part of my life. I don’t know. Sometimes I think it’s kind of like having a scar, but without any memory of the injury. Does that make sense?”

Tate grins. “It does.”

I take a deep breath and exhale. Talking with him is so much easier than I’d ever imagined, like the best kind of painting, where the images seep out from my mind onto the canvas without any hesitation.

“So how does this work? Is Russ your real brother?”

“Well. It’s like this: Russ, Sierra, and Sage are all fully related biologically to each other. But only half to me.” As I say this out loud—out of the context of my head and off the pages of my sketchbook, too—the sentence sounds weird. Especially the word
half.

“And what’s your story?”

Tate and I lock eyes, and for a split second I think he’s going to lean forward and kiss me right here in the chain bookstore. But he doesn’t. He just waits for me to talk. “Well, seventeen years ago, after a lunch meeting in Santa Monica, my mom visited a doctor’s office off of Montana Avenue and picked a donor, and a few weeks later got inseminated with donor sperm, and voilà! I made it into the world nine months later.”

“Sounds like you’ve got that story down pat,” Tate says.

“Meaning?” I ask.

“Meaning it sounds kind of rehearsed.” Tate sighs. “I guess I’m interested in what you actually
think
about it.”

He’s right. It does sound rehearsed. My parents told me this info just once in my lifetime, and somewhere along the line I’d detached myself from what it all meant, even though in the back of my mind it was always a part of my thoughts. Now Tate wants to hear my thoughts, but I can’t find it within myself to dig that deep. “I don’t know.”

Tate looks confused. “Huh.”

“What?”

“Never mind. I don’t want to pressure you to spill your guts at a Barnes and Noble superstore.”

I smile widely. He doesn’t want to pressure me. How sweet is that?

I glance down at my shoes and try to formulate what I do think, and how I’m going to express that to Tate. I can feel Tate watching me, and then I hear him turning the pages of a magazine.

Without warning, a bunch of words come bubbling out of my mouth.

“Even though I love my family, I guess there’s a part of me that…I don’t know how to describe it. Maybe it’d be easier to draw what I mean.” I pause and look up at Tate. Tate has his eyes glued to the magazine. My heart sinks because he’s not paying attention.

Still, I keep talking. “Maybe there’s this part of me that wonders what’s out there in the future—”

“You mean who.
Who
is out there?” he says emphatically, his eyes widening as he continues to read. Then he looks at me excitedly, as though he’s stumbled onto a treasure map or something. “Jenny, this article is all about these kids like you. They have donor dads and—”

“No,” I interrupt. “I’m not desperate to find the donor. I have my dad.” For some reason a memory of my father pops into my brain. When I was little, he let me draw on the wall in his office. He’d also mark my height with a crayon and write the date. He’s long since painted over the wall art, but I wonder what he thinks of that growth chart now, and whether he remembers each inch I grew and when I stopped marking time in there with him.