Same Difference. Siobhan Vivian

charge upstairs to my bedroom and quickly change into the green polo dress, because the red halter is in my hamper. I slide on my pink flip-flops. Cherry Grove feels more like home than ever. I know the rules here. I know how I’m supposed to think and act, and all that is very comforting after the day I’ve had.

      At least I was able to do an okay drawing. I stopped thinking about the naked lady as a lady, and instead pretended I was drawing a statue. So that made it easier. I also just drew her torso, so I could avoid the stuff I felt was too intimate to draw. Mr. Frank said I had an “interesting composition.” I hoped that was a compliment. But the rest of the class stayed quiet during my crit, so who knows.

      I run into my bathroom and scrub my hands hard and fast. Most of the dirt comes off, but not all. Hopefully, no one will notice once the sun goes down. I use hair spray to smooth down my ponytail. It smells like apples, so I don’t need perfume. But I put a little more deodorant on, because it’s really hot outside.

      The beep beep beep of Rick’s truck horn blows in my open window.

      I gotta go.

      Rick and Meg are waiting in his red pickup truck. I get in, close the door, and cuddle myself against it to give Meg more room. But she doesn’t want it. Rick’s truck is small, and Meg seizes the opportunity to cozy up next to him.

      We pass through the gates, and Meg and I wave to the security guard who mans the entrance from a white-shingled booth, made to look like a small version of the Blossom Manor it protects.

      Rick waves, too, and I notice that two of his fingers, the pinky and the ring, are wrapped in white tape and unable to grip the steering wheel.

      “What happened to your hand?” I ask him. The edges of the tape are frayed into white strings, and the end is all jagged, like someone ripped it with their teeth.

      “I was on the push mower and a rock flew up and dinged my pinky. It’s probably broken, but I’m just going to buddy-tape it like coach did for me last season when my other one got hit with a curve ball.” He holds up that hand and proudly flashes a crooked zigzag of a pinky like a trophy. “That was right before we met,” he says, and pats Meg’s thigh.

      He’s talking about when Meg sprained her ankle jumping the horse in gym class. I had put Meg’s arm around my shoulder and tried to walk her to the nurse myself, but Meg was crying and afraid that she was going to slip and fall if she hopped on the linoleum floor. So Mrs. Lord called one of the boys out of the weight room to help support her other side. That was Rick. But instead of helping me, he scooped up Meg into his arms and carried her up three flights of stairs and all the way down the hall. He kept telling Meg how light she was. Like a feather. It was sweet, because Meg was actually on a diet then, not like she needed to be, and after that day, she went back to eating pizza. She sniffled back her tears and thanked him over and over for the help.

      I guess I could have gone back to gym alone, but I didn’t. I just walked next to them and stayed quiet. Actually, I walked a little bit behind them. I guess we’ve been a threesome from the very start.

      “So, how was your first day of school?” Meg asks, in the same voice my mom used when she picked me up. “Tell us all about it.”

      I try not to get annoyed, but talking to Meg alone is much different from talking to Rick and Meg as a couple. It’s like she’s playing house, and I get to be their kid.

      Rick pushes his hat up off his brow to the top of his hairline. “Were there a lot of freaky kids there?”

      “Yeah, some, I guess.” There’s something about Rick’s tone I don’t like. Maybe what it implies about me. “Not too many people talked to me,” I say, like that makes it any better.

      “It’s always hard on the first day.” Meg touches my arm. “What did you do in class?”

      “Well . . .” I think about not telling them anything, but I’m curious to see their reactions. “I had to draw a nude model.” I say it like it was no big deal.

      They both stare at me, mouths open. “Shut up!” they say in unison.

      “Swear to God,” I say, and then laugh with them. Though I was definitely caught off guard by the model, I still managed to hold it together. I bet Meg and Rick would’ve freaked. It makes me feel a little better.

      “Like totally nude?” Meg asks. “Was it a guy or a girl?”

      “It was a woman.”

      “Was she hot?” That’s Rick.

      Meg slaps him on the arm.

      I shake my head. “Not at all. She was old. Like a mom.”

      Meg and Rick turn to each other and laugh. And then, a disturbed look crosses Rick’s face. “Will you have to draw naked guys?”

      “Yeah,” I say casually, even though that never dawned on me before. “Probably.” It’s kind of funny to think that the first time I see a guy naked, it’s not going to be my boyfriend. Though maybe it’s better that way. Maybe I won’t be as nervous when it finally happens for real.

      “Art is so weird,” Rick says, shaking his head. “I mean, I don’t know much about it, but some of those paintings Ms. Kay showed me two years ago were just stupid. Anyone could do that stuff.” He shakes his head again. “Sure some art is, like, unbelievable. Like the Mona Lisa. I can definitely appreciate that. But the other stuff. Paint splatters and colored squares and whatever. I just don’t get it.”

      Meg laughs. “I bet half of the people who say they get that stuff actually have no clue. They just don’t want to sound dumb.”

      I wonder what Meg and Rick would think of Fiona’s shadows. Sure, any three-year-old can trace with chalk, but there was something amazing about them. Like she showed something I’d never noticed was there. I want to tell them about it, but I don’t think I could explain it right. It’s just like Fiona said, I guess — the experience is the thing. Talking about it wouldn’t do it justice.

      The parking lot of the Dairy Queen is packed. It’s one of the meeting places for all Cherry Grove high schoolers during the summer. Everyone eats ice cream while they plot ways to get beer and a place to drink it. On most nights they come up short on both accounts.

      We pull in and park. A bunch of kids from school come by while we’re in line and say hello. Meg and I are friendly with most of the same people, but there are a few of Rick’s friends who I don’t know as well as she does. I turn and spin and nod my head and pretend to be interested in the gossip, but it’s all the same sort of stuff you hear during the year.

      We eat our ice cream over by the chain-link fence, where Jimmy Carr and Chad Daly are talking. Meg always says I should like Chad Daly, but I don’t think he’s my type. He wears too much hair gel, and he never eats ice cream, even though he’s always hanging out at DQ. Instead, he orders a large Mountain Dew from the fountain and chews the straw until it barely works.

      “Hey, guys,” Rick says. They slap hands, all loose and relaxed.

      “So, what’s everyone up to?” Meg asks them. “Getting excited for the Babe Ruth opening game?”

      Chad and Jimmy and Rick all play baseball together on the summer league. It’s the only way for them to get practice in without breaking the high school rules. Meg asks more questions, about the lineups and their pitcher’s shoulder injury. I have no idea how she learned all this stuff about baseball. I guess Rick’s explained it to her. I try to nod at appropriate times so it’s like I get it, too.

      But eventually the conversations that I’m not actually participating in soften into whispers. I can’t hear people talking, or taste the vanilla ice cream in my Blizzard. That happens to me sometimes, when I get bored. When other people zone out, it’s because they’re lost in the lyrics of a song or thinking of a funny story. For most people, it’s all about words.

      Not for me. I find it fun to look at something and reduce it to the small parts that make it up. Like Jenessa