The Other Half of Me (8 page)

THIRTEEN

For the rest of the day I keep thinking of those words,
we’re a match.
All this time, I have watched the way Sierra and Sage have effortlessly coexisted, and now I have a match of my own. I know Alexa Mason-Cohen and I are only half sisters, so our genes aren’t a total mesh, but I can’t help but believe she’s the piece that I’ve felt I was lacking this whole time.

Still, I’m not ready to jump into our shared gene pool and meet her. There’s too much going on in my life as it is. School starts soon. The art show is even sooner—Sunday, September 5, from 4 p.m. until 7 p.m., to be exact. I’m tangled up with Tate and have no idea where that will lead.

I’ve been working at the studios for hours on the rectangular painting I started earlier in my closet, only I’ve started fresh on the canvas I sketched on before. I erased the arcing line with an industrial-sized eraser and have, once again, a clean canvas that’s ready for anything. The only trouble is, I don’t know what to put on it, and even if I did, I can barely concentrate because now I’m thinking about these words:
So when do we get to meet?

If this keeps up, there will be no chance in hell I will have anything ready for the art show.

“Picasso once wrote that painting is just another way of keeping a diary.”

I turn to see Jamaica Haas, dressed in lilac from scarf to sandals, with long, tubular yellow earrings. She looks so artsy and beautiful, almost like an iris. I’m almost ashamed of my paint-splattered clothing and facial smears.

“Well, if this is my diary, it’s appalling,” I say, and turn back to the empty canvas.

“That’s highly critical.” She steps into my cubby space so she can peer at the tubes of paint. “You know, sometimes when I have a void, I just fill it with whatever words come to mind. Only I don’t paint words, I paint them as images. Otherwise, I’d be a poet, and my writing skills are paltry at best.”

She slides out of the room as easily as she entered, leaving me with only her advice as company. Then it hits me. We’re a match.

I close my eyes and picture what these words would look like if they weren’t words. And then I start to paint.

An hour or so later, I buzz Tate up and give him a tour of Downtown, culminating with my painting, which is still pretty wet.

“You did all this tonight?” he asks.

“Yeah. I don’t know what happened!” I gush. It’s been forever since I was able to paint something fluidly, without stopping to examine every inch. “And I don’t hate it, which is also a near first.”

Tate nods in affirmation. “I know what you mean. After games I’m always dissecting my plays, what I did, what went wrong, where I can improve. I’m my own coach-slash-critic.”

I lean on the cool concrete wall and look at the bright magenta hues that combust with vibrant oranges and result in a painting that (to me, anyway) is about matching, with two sides of the canvas that meet in the middle. Tate puts a hand on the wall behind me so his face is close to mine. He is about to kiss me when a painting comes half unhinged and threatens to fall.

I jump up, put it back on the hook, and try to resume the prekiss position with Tate. He leans in but doesn’t kiss me. I stifle a laugh.

Tate gives me a confused look. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. I’m just thinking how weird it is that we’re here.” I don’t know how to explain what I mean, and I’m sure Tate will ask.

Tate smirks. “What does that mean?”

Bingo.

I tilt my head up, looking at his full lips and then at his eyes, all swirls of green and blue, rings of rivers. “Let me put it this way. Aren’t your friends going to laugh when you tell them you came here to meet me?”

Tate props himself up on both hands like he’s going to do a push-up against the wall. After he descends slowly, he lets his lips touch mine lightly. “I couldn’t care less about what they think.”

This should put me at ease, but it doesn’t. Right now we are in that amazing summer space where nothing feels permanent. At some point we have to go back to school, and in school Tate and I don’t effortlessly coexist. I can feel panic building within me, especially because I can’t stop thinking about Alexa and the possibility of meeting her in person. Just as I’m about to spill my guts to Tate, Sid slithers into the room and groans loudly.

“Is there anything more clichéd than teenage lust?” He clomps over to us in his black boots, which are so out of season, and stares at my painting while I try to ignore the fact that he’s just seen Tate and me kissing. “So, this is the latest?” Sid whistles through his teeth. It’s a sound so high-pitched and grating even the paint threatens to peel off.

I try to remain calm in the face of impending criticism and find myself shifting into defensive mode. A part of me wonders, if Alexa were here would she leap to my rescue and tell him off? “It’s just a start. I’ve only been working on it for one day and—”

“Rule one of being an artist,” Sid interrupts, nearly spitting on the canvas. Tate looks at me as though he wants to intervene, but I shake my head. “Do not, under any circumstances, defend your work. If the audience doesn’t respond, either find a new direction or accept their reaction as a result of their being uninformed.”

I consider this for a second. “So if someone doesn’t like my stuff, then it’s their fault?”

“Yes.”

“So if I follow that rule, then I can disregard all the times this summer you’ve said my work is terrible and blame it on you?”

From the doorway Jamaica Haas and another artist, a guy with high-tops and wire-rimmed glasses, laugh as they pass by. Sid seethes but smiles through closed lips. “No. When I’m referring to your work this summer, you can disregard rule one and go to rule two: amateurs are always amateurs.”

I don’t even know why I want Sid to like my work. He is obviously Satan.

“Well, I’m sorry about being such an amateur.” I wipe my hands on a rag. All of a sudden Tate does something wonderful. He takes the rag out of my hand and shoves it in the back pocket of his jeans. Then he takes my left hand in his right hand and squeezes it affectionately.

Is this guy for real?

Sid rolls his eyes and starts to head out the door. As he leaves, I look at the painting again, the mists of color that show how we’re a match.

Before he exits through the front door, Sid pokes his head back in. “If I forget to say it later,” he says, pointing with a long finger to my canvas, “that one’s not terrible.”

Not terrible. Perhaps not the most elaborate compliment, but like most things in my life recently, it certainly seems like the start of something promising, if not everything I’ve always wanted.

Tate and I walk around town after we leave the studios. We look in closed shop windows, eye the freshly poured Oreo fudge at the candy store, and talk about everything from sports pressure to artistic angst. We wind up playing the old board game Chutes and Ladders at the Coffee Dive, the too-small-to-be-called-a-café place that’s attached to Downtown Studios. Under the table Tate sandwiches my ankles between his, and on top of the table I kick board game butt. Even though it’s a game based on luck and odds, not skill, I feel proud, and he fakes enough wounded pride to look adorable. Then, before we part ways, he kisses me good night.

When I get to my room, the first thing I do is e-mail Alexa all about my evening with Tate. I want to share it with her, even more than I’ve wanted to share anything with Faye. When I’m typing, I realize that I haven’t told Tate yet that Alexa contacted me. It’s not as if I’m trying to keep it a secret, but then again, maybe I am.

I guess I just want her all to myself for a while.

FOURTEEN

I don’t know everything about Alexa Mason-Cohen; of course I don’t. But from the e-mails we’ve exchanged over the past twenty-four hours, I’m sure she feels she knows me, just the way I feel I know her. We agreed from the beginning that we’d be completely honest with each other, not stopping to edit our thoughts. So far we have exchanged the basics: favorite kind of take-out (both of us
love
Chinese), favorite season (we both like fall but for different reasons—I like the colors, she likes the anticipation of the school year starting), and music tastes (we are going to burn CDs for each other of our favorite songs and explain why each tune is important).

We also agreed not to send jpegs. “I want the first time I see you to be in person,” Alexa said in one of her e-mails. I’ve already learned that it would be hard to argue with this girl, and that’s why I haven’t. She has asked about fifteen times about making plans to meet each other, and I’ve only answered back with
?????
because I had a feeling she’d be more than ready to debate me.

Here’s the thing that frightens me most: what if I meet her and don’t like her? If I keep her at arm’s length, maybe I can delay that outcome, or prevent it altogether. If I really let her into my life, I run the risk of either hating her off the bat, which would suck, or liking her so much that it would hurt like hell if I found out something bad about her later or if she didn’t end up liking me.

This is what I’m thinking about while I’m lying in bed at two-thirty in the morning. The first chills of fall are creeping into the air and into my room through my half-open window. The breeze makes me pull my covers up to my chin. I think about the great e-mail she sent me in response to my date-with-Tate story.

This Tate guy sounds amazing. Into sports AND art AND Chutes and Ladders? I live in Manhattan with millions of boys and I haven’t met anyone that well-rounded. You’re lucky, Jenny. And even luckier now that you have me!;-)

Everything she writes sounds so energetic and sincere. She makes me want to talk even though I don’t know what to say. So much so that I script another letter to her in my head. Then I get up, sit down at the computer, and begin typing. Picasso once said that you have to act in painting how you do in life. And maybe that’s been part of the reason why my paintings haven’t come to life yet.

Alexa
,

It’s way late and I should be asleep, but it’s still summer so I feel okay about bending rules and regulations. I hope you can understand, though, that I’m worried about

Before I can finish it, an e-mail pops up in my inbox. It’s from Alexa.

Hey Jenny
,

Enough of this writing thing. Call me when you get a chance, okay? I wanna know if our voices are the same!
917 555 3717

A “Too Excited to Sleep” M-C

I stare at the phone number Alexa sent, and before I’m even aware of reaching for the phone, I dial it. As the ring sounds, I feel calm and happy. All the fear I had before about possibly not liking her has apparently ducked out for a late-night snack or something.

“I can’t sleep either,” I blurt out to Alexa before she has even said hello.

“Oh my God, we
do
sound alike!” Alexa replies.

I’m sitting on a globular beanbag chair, staring out the window at the night sky as we talk.

“This is so weird,” I say.

“Yeah, weird, but very…”

“Cool,” we say in unison.

Suddenly we are dying of laughter.

I really like how this feels.

After more than an hour goes by, we’re still talking about everything under the sun—school, parents, love, and hopes for the future. I’m so comfortable chatting with her that I can’t believe I was even stressed out about it before. It reminds me so much of how things happened with Tate.

“So describe yourself in one adjective,” Alexa says through a yawn.

“What? That’s way too hard.” I look out the window and see that the sky is starting to lighten.

“Fine, I’ll go first,” she laughs. “Impulsive. The way I see it, if you think about something too much before doing it, the chance to do it may be gone by the time you decide. Okay, your turn.”

I wince a little. This is the exact opposite of how I see things. Thinking limits the element of surprise. Thinking is what you have to do before you can create. Thinking protects you from making the wrong decision.

“You still there?” Alexa asks.

“Yeah, I’m here.” I hear a bird chirping outside, and I want to imagine what it looks like, not go to the window and see for myself. “I’d say that my adjective is thoughtful.”

“I should have known,” Alexa says.

I have a hunch that she’s grinning.

Now the sky resembles the painting I started at the studio. Pinks are merging with oranges. Morning is on the way. We take this as a sign to get some sleep and say our good-byes, but when Alexa’s about to hang up, she says, “Wait!”

“What is it?” I rub my eyes and stretch my right arm into the air.

“I think you seem great, and I really think we should meet,” she says sweetly.

I draw a deep breath and sigh. Fear has come back and made itself comfortable inside my heart. I wish Tate were here to take this phone out of my grasp and hold my hand. “I think you’re cool, too,” I reply.

When I crawl back into bed and close my eyes, I hope she isn’t too upset that I didn’t say anything else.