Liz Gallagher - My Not-So-Still Life

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the authors imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

Text copyright 2011 by Liz Gallagher

All rights reserved. Published in the United States by Wendy Lamb Books, an imprint of Random House Childrens Books, a division of Random House, Inc., New York.

Wendy Lamb Books and the colophon are trademarks of Random House, Inc.

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Gallagher, Liz.
My not-so-still life / by Liz Gallagher. 1st ed.
p. cm.
eISBN: 978-0-375-89974-4
[1. Interpersonal relationsFiction. 2. Dating (Social customs)Fiction. 3. FriendshipFiction. 4. ArtFiction. 5. High schoolsFiction. 6. SchoolsFiction. 7. Seattle (Wash.)Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.G13556My 2011
[Fic]dc22 2010038546

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v3.1

To all the friends
who waited for this book,
especially Bruce Wylie,
who lived so beautifully

Contents

One

Its time for a new color.

I drape my Smurfette towel over my shoulders and yell, Im ready for pink!

Nick joins me in my bathroom. He unpacks the bleach kit, the bottle of dye.

We do this so often, weve got it down to a science. Nick gets everything prepped, using the back of the toilet as his work space.

An hour later, Im blowing my new hair dry while Nick plays with eyeliner at my desk.

The pink looks hot, he says when I come out of the bathroom. Its so bright.

I love it, I say. It reminds me of cherry blossoms, my favorite.

Heres why I change my hair color so much: All the talent in the world doesnt equal an actual personality. Its not enough to only make the art. You have to be the artist.

Since sixth grade Ive been all sorts of other colors. They were all starting to blend on top of each other, though, so it was a mess. Now that weve bleached it out and started over with the pink, I feel like myself, like a good version of me, like something worth looking at, twice. And thats what I want. If people dont notice me, why should I do anything? Why even exist?

Nice job coloring in the lines, I say to Nick.

Coloring in the lines is all about comics. Nick likes to draw, but hes better at doing color than outlines. He and a boy called Jewel started a strip together freshman year, before I was close with either of them. Not that Im close with Jewel anymore.

Their strip lasted for only a few months. Theyd get color copies at the copy shop by school and put a stack on a table during each of their lunch periods, all nonchalant, like they didnt care if anyone picked it up or not. People did. Im not totally sure why the guys stopped, except that neither one of them seems to have a long attention span. Not for projects, and not for relationships.

In comics, theres the penciler, the inker, and the colorist. Sometimes theyre all the same person, and sometimes people are great at one or two parts, so they specialize. The penciler sketches the general feeling of each panel. That was Jewel. The inker does the outlines, the black, the final artwork. That was Jewel, too. The colorist does the color, the lighting, the shading. Thats Nick, prettying up everything around him.

Thats me, too, in general. A colorist. Giving life to a black-and-white world.

Nicks pretty colorful himself, at least in his clothes. Jetblack hair works on him, so hes kept that up since the fall, and it looks especially good when he wears his neon tank tops and tees. He loves his eighties hoodie with the electric-blue star on the back, outlined in silver glitter.

Hes actually dialed it down, adding jeans and sneakers to the mix, but for a while there in the fall, he always looked like he was on his way to a rave. Hes the sweetest guy youve ever met, though, and he doesnt go to raves.

Tonight, hes wearing my black T-shirt with the metallic stars, his favorite Euro-style jeans, and his silver adidas Superstars. He dresses the same whether hes at school, hanging out in my bedroom, or going out, which for us usually means taking the bus to grab coffee or food and watch Seattle go by while Seattle watches us.

Im in my black cotton tank dress. Its stained with paint splotches and drips of bleach from various hair experiments, and those stains are the reason its my favorite thing to wear around the house. At school, I dress in a way my mom considers wild, but really its not that crazy. When I go out, I wear school-type clothes with more intense makeup.

I nuked you a snack, Nick says, nodding toward the plate on my bed. My mom and Grampie always stock our freezer with microwave burritos, the healthy ones with the whole-wheat tortillas. Except for the weeks after they do their big salmon grab.

They love salmon, the ocean, and Puget Sound. Grampie was a lifer longshoreman until he retired last year, and Mom still works at the docks. Grampie jokes that they have water in their veins.

They go out fishing with a friend on his boat, leaving the port in Ballard before sunrise, and they fish salmon till the sun goes down. They do this for a solid week. Then they host this party in our tiny backyard for everyone we know, and they smoke the salmon.

Burritos are more to my liking. I sit down to munch. Thanks.

Nicks eating at my desk. He went minimal with his eyes, just a touch of brown liner at the outside corners.

He picks up my phone and snaps a photo of me when Im off guard. To show Holly your hair, he says. My friend Holly doesnt usually leave her house on weeknights, except for orchestra practice.

Send it, I say, so Nick does.

Mom pokes her head in the door. Her curly brown hair is in a messy ponytail as usual, and she has zero makeup on. At least she keeps a decent tan from working outside. Its not the kind of tan youd get in a sunny place, of course, but the sun does break through, even in Seattle, and she does ten-hour shifts at the docks. Shes in her gray sweats. You can tell how strong she is from her hard work. Still, shes feminine. Her voice is so warm. Pink. Hmmm. Not bad.

Thanks, I say.

Mom looks at Nick before going back to the family room to watch TV with Grampie. Ten oclock, hon.

Time flies when youre coloring Vanessa. He grabs his backpack and I walk him to the front door, give him a quick hug goodbye. Art walk tomorrow night?

Absolutely, I say. Holly might be able to come too.

Superb. He heads out the door.

Ive slept in the same bed my whole life, and it was my moms before it was mine. We still live in the house where she grew up, with my Grampie. I sleep in my moms childhood bedroom; she sleeps in the master bedroom; Grampie sleeps in the converted basement.

On weekdays, when I wake up, Moms already at work at the docks. Shes up before dawn. Grampies usually at the kitchen table with the crossword. Im almost always running late for school.

My dads never been around. I think of Grampie more as a dad. My actual dad is Paul, my moms high school boyfriend. He lives near San Diego now, and has a wife but no other kids. His parents feel so guilty about him getting Mom pregnant, they help out with raising me. Financially, that is. They paid for me to go to Ocean Tides for middle school, and theyd happily have kept paying for me to go to private high school, but I didnt want to. No way was I wearing a uniform. I think what they really feel guilty about is that Paul got to go off to college and build a normal life, while Mom stayed here, stuck to me.