My art teacher says that a real artist bleeds for her craft, but he never told us that blood can become your medium, can take on a life of its own and shape your art in vile and gruesome ways.
I shove my hair over my shoulder, puncture my forefinger with the sterilized safety pin I had tucked in my pocket, then position the final glass gem on my mosaic and wait.
As I press the translucent bead into the wet white plaster, I shudder at the seeping sensation. It's like a leech at the tip of my finger where I touch the glass, sucking and siphoning my blood to the underside of the gem, forming a pool of deep, velvet red. But it doesn't stop there.
The blood dances…moves from gem to gem, coloring the back of each with a line of crimson-forming a picture. Breath locks in my lungs and I wait for the lines to connect…wondering what the end result will be this time. Hoping it won't be her again.
The last bell of the day rings, and I scramble to cover my mosaic with a drop cloth, terrified someone might see the transformation taking place.
It's yet another reminder that the Wonderland fairy tale is real, that my being a descendant of Alice Liddell means I'm different from everyone else. No matter how much distance I try to put between us, I'm connected forever to a strange and eerie sect of magical creatures called netherlings.
My classmates gather their backpacks and books and leave the art room, giving each other fist bumps and high fives while talking about their plans for Memorial Day weekend. I suck my finger, although there's no blood leaking from it anymore. Hips leaning against the table, I look outside. It's cloudy, and mist specks the windows.
My 1975 Gremlin, Gizmo, had a flat tire this morning. Since my mom doesn't drive, Dad dropped me on his way to work. I told him I'd find a ride home.
My cell phone vibrates in my backpack on the floor. I push aside the fishnet gloves folded on top, lift out the phone, and open a text from my boyfriend: Sk8er grl…waiting in east parking lot. Can't wait 2c you. Tell Mason hi 4 me.
My throat catches. Jeb and I have been together for almost a year and were best friends for six years before that, but for the past month we've only been in contact through texts and spotty phone calls. I'm eager to see him again face-to-face, but I'm also oddly nervous. I worry things will be different now that he's living a life I'm not a part of yet.
Glancing up at Mr. Mason, who's talking to some student in the hall about art supplies, I text my answer: K. Can't wait 2c you 2. Give me 5…finishing something.
I drop the phone into my bag and lift the cloth to peek at my project. My heart falls into my feet. Not even the familiar scents of paint, chalk dust, and plaster can comfort me when I see the scene taking shape: a Red Queen on a murderous rampage in a bleak and crumbling Wonderland.
Just like in my most recent dreams…
I smooth the cloth back into place, unwilling to acknowledge what the imagery might mean. It's easier to hide from it.
"Alyssa." Mr. Mason comes to stand by the table. His tie-dyed Converse shoes stand out like melted rainbows against the white linoleum floor. "I've been meaning to ask…are you planning to accept the scholarship to Middleton College?"
I nod in spite of my bout of nerves. If Dad lets me move to London with Jeb.
"Good." Mr. Mason's wide smile showcases the gap between his front teeth. "Someone with your talent should take advantage of every opportunity. Now, let's see this latest piece."
Before I can stop him, he tugs off the drop cloth and squints, the pockets beneath his eyes magnified by his pink-tinged glasses. I sigh, relieved that the transformation is complete. "Rapturous color and movement, as always." He leans across it, rubbing his goatee. "Disturbing, like the others."
His final observation sends my stomach tumbling.
A year ago, when I used bug corpses and dried flowers in my mosaics, my pieces retained an air of optimism and beauty, despite the morbidity of the materials. Now, with my change in medium, everything I create is gloomy and violent. I can't seem to capture lightness or hope anymore. In fact, I've stopped trying to fight it. I just let the blood have its way.
I wish I could stop making the mosaics altogether. But it's a compulsion I can't deny…and something tells me there's a reason for that. A reason that keeps me from destroying all six of them-from busting their plaster backgrounds into a thousand pieces.
"Do I need to buy more red marbled gems?" Mr. Mason asks. "I've no idea where I got them to begin with. I checked online the other day and can't seem to find the supplier."
He doesn't realize the mosaic tiles were clear when I started, that I've been using only clear gems for the past few weeks, and that the scenes he thinks I'm meticulously crafting by matching colored lines in the glass are actually forming themselves.
"It's okay," I answer him. "They're from my own personal supply." Literally.
Mr. Mason studies me for a second. "All right. But I'm running out of room in my cabinet. Maybe you could take this one home."
I shudder at the thought. Having any of them in my house would only invite more nightmares. Not to mention how it would affect Mom. She's already spent enough of her life imprisoned by her Wonderland phobias.
I'll have to figure out something before the end of school. Mr. Mason won't be willing to keep them all summer, especially since I'm a senior. But today I have other things on my mind.
"Can you fit just one more?" I ask. "Jeb's picking me up on his bike. I'll get them next week."
Mr. Mason nods and carries it over to his desk.
I crouch to arrange the stuff in my backpack, rubbing sweaty palms over my striped leggings. The hem brushing my knees feels foreign. My skirt is longer than what I'm used to without the petticoats underneath to fluff it out. In the months since Mom's been home from the asylum, we've had a lot of arguments about my clothes and makeup. She says my skirts are too short and she wishes I would wear jeans and "dress like regular girls." She thinks I look too wild. I've told her that's why I wear tights and leggings, for modesty. But she never listens. It's like she's trying to make up for the eleven years she was away by being overly invested in everything about me.
She won this morning, but only because I woke up late and was in a rush. It's not easy to get up for school when you've been fighting sleep all night, avoiding dreams.
I lift my backpack to my shoulders and tip my chin good-bye to Mr. Mason. My Mary Jane platforms clomp along the deserted tiles of the hall. Stray work sheets and notebook papers are scattered like stepping-stones in a pond. Several lockers hang open, as if the students couldn't waste the extra half second it would've taken to shut them before leaving for the weekend.
A hundred different colognes, perfumes, and body odors still linger, interspersed with the faded yeasty scent of rolls from the cafeteria's lunch menu. Smells like teen spirit. I shake my head, grinning.
Speaking of spirit, Pleasance High's student council has been working around the clock to tape up prom reminders around every corner of the school. This year, the dance is the Friday before our Saturday graduation ceremony-one week from today.
ALL PRINCES AND PRINCESSES ARE CORDIALLY INVITED TO THE PLEASANCE HIGH FAIRY-TALE MASQUERADE PROM, MAY 25TH. NO FROGS ALLOWED.
I smirk at the last line. My best pal, Jenara, wrote it with bold green marker at the end of each announcement. It took her entire sixth period on Tuesday to do it and cost her three days of detention. But it was totally worth it to see the look on Taelor Tremont's face. Taelor is my boyfriend's ex, the school's star tennis player, and the student council's social chairperson. She's also the one who ratted out my Liddell family secret in fifth grade. Our relationship is strained, to say the least.
I run my palm across one of the banners that escaped half its tape and drapes like a long white tongue from the wall. It reminds me of my experience with the bandersnatch's snaky tongues last summer. I cringe and rub the vivid streak of red in my blond hair between my forefinger and thumb. It's one of my permanent souvenirs, just like the nodules behind my shoulder blades where wings lie dormant inside me. No matter how I try to distance myself from the Wonderland memories, they're always present, refusing to leave.
Just like a certain someone refuses to leave.
My throat constricts at the thought of black wings, bottomless tattooed eyes, and a cockney accent. He already has my nights. I won't let him take my days, too.
Shoving the doors open, I step into the parking lot and get hit by a rush of chill, damp air. A fine mist coats my face. A few cars remain and students cluster in small groups to talk-some hunched inside hoodies and others seemingly oblivious to the unseasonably cool weather. We've had a lot of rain this month. The meteorologists calculated the accumulation somewhere between four and six inches, breaking a century's worth of spring records in Pleasance, Texas.
My ears automatically tune in to the bugs and plants in the soggy football field a few yards away. Their whispers often blend together in crackles and hums like radio static. But if I try, I can make out distinct messages meant just for me:
Hello, Alyssa.
Nice day for a stroll in the rain…
The breeze is just right for flying.
There was a time I hated hearing their fuzzy, buzzy greetings so much I would trap them and smother them. Now the white noise is comforting. The bugs and flowers have become my sidekicks…charming reminders of a secret part of me.
A part of me even my boyfriend is unaware of.
I see him across the parking lot. He leans against his souped-up vintage Honda CT70, chatting with Corbin, the starting quarterback and Jenara's new main squeeze. Jeb's sister and Corbin make an odd match. Jenara has pink hair and the fashion sense of a princess gone punk rocker-the antithesis of a typical Texas jock's girlfriend. But Corbin's mother is an interior designer who's known for her eccentric style, so he's accustomed to offbeat artistic personalities. At the beginning of the year the two of them were lab partners in biology. They clicked, and now they're inseparable.
Jeb glances in my direction. He straightens as he sees me, his body language as loud as a shout. Even at this distance, the heat of his mossy-green eyes warms my skin under my lacy shirt and plaid corset.
He gestures good-bye to Corbin, who shoves a strand of reddish blond hair from his eyes and waves in my direction before joining a group of football players and cheerleaders.
Jeb shrugs out of his jacket on his way over, revealing muscular arms. His black combat boots clomp across the shimmery asphalt, and his olive skin glistens in the mist. He's wearing a navy T-shirt with his worn jeans. A picture of My Chemical Romance is air-brushed in white with a red slash streaked diagonally across their faces. It reminds me of my blood art, and I shiver.
"Are you cold?" he asks, wrapping his jacket around me, the leather still warm from his body. For that fleeting second, I can almost taste his cologne: a mix between chocolate and musk.
"I'm just happy you're home," I answer, palms flat against his chest, enjoying his strength and solidity.
"Me, too." He looks down at me, caressing me with his gaze but holding back. He cut his hair while he was gone. Wind ruffles the dark, collar-length strands. It's still long enough at the crown and top to be wavy and is a mess from being under his helmet. It's unkempt and wild, just the way I like it.
I want to leap into his arms for a hug or, even better, kiss his soft lips. The ache to make up for lost time winds tight around me until I'm a top ready to spin, but my shyness is even stronger. I glance over his shoulder to where four junior girls gathered around a silver PT Cruiser watch our every move. I recognize them from art class.
Jeb follows my line of sight and lifts my hand to kiss each knuckle, the scrape of his labret igniting a tingle that races all the way to the tips of my toes. "Let's get out of here."
"You read my mind."
He smirks. The butterflies in my belly clash at the appearance of his dimples.
We walk hand in hand to his bike as the parking lot starts to clear. "So…looks like your mom won this morning." He gestures to my skirt, and I roll my eyes.
Grinning, he helps me with my helmet, smooths my hair across my lower back, and separates the red strand from the blond ones. Wrapping it around his finger, he asks, "Were you working on a mosaic when I texted?"
I nod and buckle the helmet's strap under my chin, not wanting the conversation to go this direction. Not sure how to tell him what's been happening during my art sessions while he's been gone.
He cups my elbow as I climb into place on the back of the seat, leaving a space for him in front. "When do I get to see this new series of yours, huh?"
"When it's done," I mumble. What I really mean is, when I'm ready to let him watch me make one.
He has no memory of our trip to Wonderland, but he's noticed the changes in me, including the key I wear around my neck and never take off, and the nodules along my shoulder blades that I attribute to a Liddell family oddity.
An understatement.
For a year, I've been trying to figure out the best way to tell him the truth without him thinking I'm crazy. If anything can convince him we took a wild ride into Lewis Carroll's imagination, then stepped backward in time to return as if we'd never left, it's my blood-and-magic artwork. I just have to be brave enough to show him.
"When it's done," he says, repeating my cryptic answer. "Okay, then." He gives his head a shake before tugging his helmet on. "Artists. So high maintenance."
"Pot…kettle. While we're on the subject, have you heard from your newest number one fan?"
Jeb's gothic fairy art has been getting a lot of attention since he's been going to art expos. He's sold several pieces, the highest going for three thousand bucks. Recently he was contacted by a collector in Tuscany who saw his artwork online.
Jeb digs in his pocket and hands me a phone number. "These are her digits. I'm supposed to schedule a meeting so she can choose one of my pieces."
Ivy Raven. I read the name silently. "Sounds fake, right?" I ask, straightening my backpack straps under his jacket. I almost wish she was made up. But I know better. According to some Web searching I've done, Ivy is a totally legit beautiful twenty-six-year-old heiress. A sophisticated, rich goddess…like all the women Jeb's around lately. I hand the paper back, trying to stanch the insecurity that threatens to burn a hole in my heart.
"Doesn't matter how fake she sounds," Jeb says, "as long as the money is real. There's a sweet flat in London I've been looking at. If I can sell her a piece, I'll add it to what I've already saved and have enough to cover it."
We still have to convince Dad to let me go. I refuse to voice my concern aloud. Jeb's already feeling guilty about the tension between him and Dad. Sure, it was a mistake for Jeb to take me to get a tattoo behind my parents' backs. But he didn't do it to make them mad. He did it against his better judgment because I pressured him. Because I was trying to be rebellious and worldly, like the people he hangs out with now.
Jeb got a tattoo at the same time, on his inner right wrist-his painting hand. It's the Latin words Vivat Musa, which roughly translates to "Long live the muse." Mine is a miniature set of wings on my inner left ankle, camouflaging my netherling birthmark. I had the artist ink in the words Alis Volat Propriis, Latin for "She flies with her own wings." It's a reminder I control my darker side and not the other way around.
Jeb tucks the heiress's number into his jeans pocket, seeming a thousand miles away.
"I bet she's hoping you're Team Cougar," I say, half joking in an effort to bring him back to the present.
Making eye contact, Jeb works his arms into the sleeves of a flannel shirt he had flung across his Honda's handlebars. "She's only in her twenties. Not exactly cougar material."
"Oh, thanks. There's a comfort."
His familiar teasing smile offers reassurance. "If it'll make you feel better, you can go with me when I meet her."
"Deal," I say.
He climbs onto his motorcycle in front of me, and I no longer care if anyone sees us. I snuggle as close as possible, wrapping my arms and knees tightly around him, face nuzzled into the nape of his neck just beneath his helmet's edge. His soft hair tickles my nose.
I've missed that tickle.
He slides on his shades and tilts his head so I can hear him as he starts the motor. "Let's find somewhere to be alone for a while, before I take you home to get ready for our date."
My blood thrums in anticipation. "What'd you have in mind?"
"A roll down memory lane," he answers. And before I can even ask what that means, we're on our way.
