We got to the Fisher gym in plenty of time and claimed seats in the third row, far enough from the band not to blow out our eardrums. Anjali insisted on wearing the Fisher colors: white and an unflattering shade of purple. She achieved this by borrowing an old blazer of her mother’s that would have made anyone else look like a Halloween version of a newscaster, but this was Anjali—Anjali aglow with the mermaid glamour. All the girls raked her with appraising glances. All the guys raked her with the other kind of appraising glances and held out their hands to help her over the bleachers.
Anjali took it in stride. I don’t think she even really noticed. She focused completely on Marc, grabbing my arm so tightly it hurt when he missed a layup, roaring “Mer-RITT! Mer-RITT!” with the rest of the crowd when he stole the ball back and nailed a three-pointer from the top of the key.
The distraction didn’t seem to bother Marc. In fact, I’ve never seen him play better. Once, he turned our way and gave a little bow before leaping onto an escalator in the air and allowing himself to be borne gracefully aloft within inches of the basket. He sank the ball like a lump of leaden butter over the fingertips of the snarling World Peace center and winked at Anjali as he landed. The gym went wild.
Friends, ones I didn’t know I had, clustered around us at the end of the third quarter.
“Are you guys coming to Jake’s Joint afterward?” Sadie Cane asked Anjali.
“Jake’s Joint?”
“The hamburger place on Ninety-first Street. We always go there after the games. Marc didn’t tell you?” She was clearly fishing for info about Anjali’s relationship to Marc.
“No, Marc and I have plans with Elizabeth,” said Anjali.
“I hope we’re not dragging Merritt away from a fun tradition,” she whispered to me. “He would have told us if he minded missing it, wouldn’t he?”
“I’m sure the plans he makes with you are the ones he wants to keep,” I said.
Somebody behind me snorted quietly. Swiveling to see who, I found myself looking up at Aaron Rosendorn. Despite the heat in the gym, he was wearing a black leather jacket and a blue-and-green-striped scarf, the World Peace Academy colors.
“Aaron! You came after all!”
“Yeah, I found out my favorite pages would be here,” he said. “I figured I’d better show up and keep an eye on you.”
“Well, anyway, I’m glad you’re here,” I said, then immediately blushed and wished I hadn’t said it. It’s not like he came for me, I told myself. Unless that’s what he meant by “keep an eye on you”?
Evidently not. “Hi, Anjali,” he said.
Anjali turned around. “Oh, hi, Aaron. What are you doing here? I didn’t know you were a basketball fan.”
“Didn’t Elizabeth tell you? I’m a humanitarian. I’m praying for World Peace,” he said.
Anjali laughed. “Good—they can use all the help they can get.” She turned back to the game.
Instead of leaning back again, Aaron whispered in my ear. It tickled. “So, Elizabeth,” he said. “Did you see Marc’s air ball at the buzzer?”
I lost my temper. “Aaron, you’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met in my life,” I snapped.
Aaron flinched as if I’d hit him. “That’s quite a superlative, considering how many annoying people you must have met,” he said. “I imagine you run in very annoying circles.”
“Not if I can help it,” I said, turning my back. The ref blew his whistle and the last quarter began. I concentrated on the game with all my might.
Marc scored the winning points. After we’d finished screaming ourselves hoarse, Anjali told me she was going to the bathroom. “I’ll meet you at”—she noticed Aaron leaning closer, hesitated, and said—“where Marc said.”
“Okay. You know where it is?”
“I’m sure I can find it.”
She picked up her things and glided away among the bleachers. I put my coat over my arm and scrambled after her toward the door.
Aaron scrambled after me.
“Why are you following me, Aaron?”
“You invited me here in the first place.”
“And you insulted me and insulted Marc and hung up on me, so why did you come?”
“I told you. I’m worried about the Grimm Collection. No way I’m going to miss the meeting of the Pages’ Conspiracy, Fisher Branch. I’m sorry if you find that insulting.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. There is no conspiracy. You’re just trying to horn in on Anjali’s date with Marc.”
“Is that what you think? I could say the same thing about you.”
“You could say it, but you would be wrong.” I headed for the girls’ room, figuring he couldn’t actually follow me in there.
Well, I tried to head to the girls’ room; in my excitement, I’d forgotten about my little sense-of-direction problem. I managed to stop myself before going into the boys’ room. I found the girls’ room after only two trips around the third floor.
By then Aaron had regained his cool. “Are you trying to shake me? You’re not very good at it,” he said companionably, striding along beside me.
I gave him the most sarcastic smile I could muster.
“I was right,” he said. “You do run in extremely annoying circles.” He chuckled at his own joke.
I liked him much better before, I thought, when he was making me sit on imaginary chairs and fall down. I went into the girls’ room and let the door swing shut in his face.
Anjali wasn’t there. I took my time, reading the graffiti in the stall, then touching up my lip gloss. I noticed I was looking good: confident, a little fierce, with very nice hair. Mermaid magic?
I gave my hair a few extra strokes with the comb.
Aaron was waiting for me outside the bathroom, leaning against the wall. He tilted his head to one side and made a show of inspecting my face. “You really didn’t need to spend all that time on your makeup just for me,” he said. “Not that you don’t look nice, of course—but you overdid the mascara. I prefer the natural look.”
“I’m not wearing mascara.”
“No? Hm. So where are we meeting Anjali?”
“You’re not meeting her anywhere.”
“Sure I am. I’m pretty stubborn, in case you haven’t noticed.”
“I don’t get it, Aaron. Do you really think there’s a conspiracy? Because if we wanted to conspire, we could perfectly well do it sometime when you’re not around to watch. So tell me. Why are you really following me?”
“I don’t know, Elizabeth—maybe because I can’t stand to be parted from you?” His smile, which was exquisitely balanced between sarcasm and sincerity, revealed beautiful white teeth.
“If that were true, you would never say so.”
“Maybe you’re right. Or maybe I think it’s perfectly safe to say so because I know you’d never believe I would admit a thing like that if it were true.”
“Or maybe you’re talking in circles to confuse me so you won’t have to answer my question.”
“Talking in circles is no worse than walking in circles.”
“If you don’t like the way I walk, you don’t have to follow me.”
“Oh, but I do like the way you walk. Very much. I’ll happily watch you walk all evening.”
I gave up. Anjali and Marc would have to get rid of him themselves. I headed toward the school library—or at least, I tried. But the library seemed to recede before me, wiggling away like a clam when you don’t dig fast enough, and I found myself instead standing in front of the social studies department office.
“Oh, the door’s shut. I guess they left without me,” I said.
“Nice try,” Aaron said.
“See—it’s locked.” I rattled the door to show him. My coat brushed against it, and the buttons made a scraping noise.
To my surprise, the doorknob turned. Aaron pushed the door open and snapped on the light. A cold wind blew in our faces from the window, which was open a crack, blowing papers off the desks. I shut the window. Should I pick up the papers too?
Aaron sat down.
“What are you doing? That’s Mr. Mauskopf’s chair!”
“Who’s Mr. Mauskopf?”
“My social studies teacher. He’s not going to like you sitting there.”
“That’s okay. He’s not my social studies teacher.”
“Come on, Aaron, you’re going to get me in trouble. Let’s get out of here before someone shows up.”
“Like who—Anjali and Marc? . . . Hey, Elizabeth?” Aaron’s voice changed, the bantering tone dropping away. “What is your social studies teacher doing with Art Murk?”
“With what?”
He pointed. Hanging over Mr. Mauskopf’s desk was the muddy, shifting painting from the Grimm Collection.
“I have no idea. Are you sure that’s what it is?”
Aaron turned back to the painting and said, “Well? Don’t keep us in the dark—show us Anjali and Marc.”
The dim, sinister forms in the painting began to ooze like nightmare lava.
The picture showed Anjali and Marc, standing in one of the Fisher hallways. They were in the middle of a slow kiss.
Aaron stared at them, his face an unsettling greenish color. The kiss seemed to go on forever. So did Aaron’s stare.
“Stop it, Aaron!”
He didn’t seem to hear me. He went on staring with an expression like someone watching his house burn down. In the painting Marc and Anjali came up for breath and he began kissing her neck.
“Don’t watch that!” I shook his shoulder, but he ignored me, so I covered his eyes with my hands and yelled at the painting, “Much too frank! Please go blank!”
It obeyed slowly—so slowly it seemed to be taunting me. Marc’s lips melted into Anjali’s throat; her hair blended with his hands.
Aaron gripped my wrists tightly as if to pull away my hands, but instead he held them still against his face. I felt his eyeballs roll beneath my hands under their thin lids, the lashes tickling my palms; it was disturbing, embarrassing, almost like the amorphous shapes in the painting. His hands felt hot on my wrists. I thought I felt his pulse race, but maybe it was mine.
He let go of my hands and pointed at the picture. “What is your social studies teacher doing with this?”
“I have no idea. He must have borrowed it from the GC. I’m sure he has some good reason. He’s the one who got me a job at the repository. He’s a friend of Dr. Rust’s.”
“Oh, is he the one who got Marc the job too? Maybe he’s the real thief, and Marc’s just working for him!”
I lost my temper again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry Anjali doesn’t like you. I’m sorry she likes Marc instead. I’m sorry he’s tall and handsome and popular and a fantastic athlete, and I’m sorry you’re not. But why do you have to be a jerk about it? It’s not like I’m all that pretty or popular either, and you don’t see me taking it out on Anjali, do you? I’m nice to people. Why can’t you just be nice?”
“Nice!” he said. He made it sound like a curse. “You, nice—not pretty but nice? You don’t know the first thing about yourself. You think it’s nice to make me like you and trust you, over and over again, and then every time you turn out to be lying and covering for that—that liar? You think it’s nice to break Doc’s trust and help people ruin the one true place of magic we know? Is your teacher behind it? Is that who you’re working for?”
“I’m not working for anybody!” I protested. “I want to catch the thief. That’s what Anjali wants too. So does Marc. So does Mr. Mauskopf, I’m sure.”
Aaron snorted. “We’ll see about that.” He turned to the painting. “Masterpiece beyond belief, show the Grimm Collection thief.”
I didn’t think it would work. Otherwise, Dr. Rust could have just asked the painting who was stealing the objects weeks ago. Sure enough, the painting had a mind of its own. The shapes flowed and the murk paled into a brightly lit art gallery crowded with people. They clustered around gesturing at paintings or stood in groups with their mouths moving, nodding and sipping from glasses. There were dozens of them. If the thief was there, it was impossible to tell who he or she was—the room was too crowded to see most of the faces.
“Oh, that’s helpful!” said Aaron.
“It is, actually,” I pointed out. “Marc and Anjali aren’t there. We just saw them hooking up in the hallway.”
“So maybe Marc’s not the actual thief. Maybe he’s just working with him.”
“Can’t you ever admit you’re wrong? Maybe instead of accusing our friends, we should try to figure out who the crooks really are.”
But the painting gave us no clue, so after watching people mill around and sip wine for a while, Aaron told it to shut down. He waited while I texted Anjali that I’d gone home and put the scattered papers back on the desks.
“Look,” he said when I was done. “I . . . I’m sorry I said all that. I have my suspicions about Marc, but I don’t actually think you . . . you and Anjali, you’re just so . . .”
“That’s okay,” I said quickly, before he could say something terrible and make me lose my temper again. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said all those things either. I don’t actually . . . I don’t really believe those things about you.”
“Peace, then?” Aaron held out his hand. “Or,” he said wryly, “maybe I should say World Peace?”
“Peace,” I agreed.
We put on our coats, turned out the light, and locked the door behind us. Aaron followed me as I followed the exit signs out. They took us to the back door behind the cafeteria, but at least we weren’t stuck wandering endlessly around the building.
“See you next week,” he said as the big school door swung shut behind us.
“Wait—would you mind—can you walk me to the subway?” I asked. With my lost sense of direction I was afraid it would take me all night to get home on my own.
Aaron looked surprised, but he didn’t object, even when I took his arm.
He didn’t say much on the way to the subway station. He watched me go down the stairs; I saw him still standing at the top until the wall blocked my view.
There was a message from Anjali waiting in my voice mail when I got off the train. I listened to it as I turned toward my building (after walking half a block in the wrong direction first). Sorry! I didn’t mean to ditch you. Marc and I just got a little . . . caught up in stuff, and then when we got to the library, I guess you’d gone home. I hope you’re not mad! Wasn’t that a great game? I like your friends. Thank you SOOOOO much for inviting me, I really owe you. Well, see you next week.
That night I dreamed about the scene in the painting, the scene with the kiss. The dream had the same sickening intensity as the shifting picture, the same over-intimate embarrassment when the kiss moved from mouth to neck, and even the same sense of dissolution when the image blurred into darkness. Only instead of Marc, the guy in the dream was Aaron.
And even more disturbing, instead of Anjali, the girl was me.