The Children(67)

He raised his eyes, from the page to her face, and his own filled with horror. “Oh, sh . . . oot. What an asshole I am. A-hole. Coming at you like this. For a second I forgot you’re a kid.”

Well, that cut her down to size. Guinevere stuck a pungent fingertip in her mouth to punish herself.

“It’s because I’m excited. Seriously, I really liked it. Hey.” He ducked his head, trying to get her to look at him. “If I didn’t, I wouldn’t have made a single note. I’d have said, Whoa, what a fun story, and never talked to you again. I don’t waste my time on bad art, okay? And look at all these notes.”

He flapped with such ferocity she had to look, then laugh, a little grudgingly. “Fine,” she said. “Tell me.”

Arthur plopped down beside her, right on top of the flowers. His butt would be dusted yellow when he stood. Smoothing her story flat, he said, “Okay. Look at the sky. What color is it?”

Guinevere looked up. The sky was blue, but indifferently so, stringy with clouds like unpicked cotton balls. Crossly she said, “It’s a different sky in my story.”

“Fair. Just—sometimes blue is more powerful than sapphire. Sometimes red hits harder than crimson. You’re a writer, you get to use all the words. Don’t forget the little cheap ones down at the bottom. ‘It was a dark and stormy night,’ remember? Not a, oh, inky and tempestuous one.”

She pursed her lips. She couldn’t remember one single line from any book that she might use to disprove him.

“I mean, you get to sprinkle in the good stuff.” He scanned the grass, plucked something up, and handed it to her. A four-leaf clover! He didn’t even look surprised. “Azure is a good word. I mean, Nabokov used it. ‘I was the shadow of the waxwing slain,’ etcetera.”

She twirled her clover. “I don’t know what you’re talking about. I’m a kid, remember? You don’t have to show off in front of me.”

Arthur laughed, a big shout. “I’m insufferable, it’s well known. But, hey.” He tapped the page earnestly. “This is really good. I’m kind of like,” with his fingers he mimed an explosion beside his ear. “This girl is how old? When you’re my age you’ll be running laps around me, laughing.”

Faintly she remembered thinking he looked like a dorky tree. What had been wrong with her eyes? “Okay. Thank you.”

“Thank you. My notes are all on there, look ’em over and we’ll talk more when you’re ready. And, uh.” He nodded toward the book on the grass. “Did you have time to read it?”

Guinevere held him in suspense. It felt like holding sunshine on the palm of her hand. It was a pleasure to give it away, to see his face flood with happy relief when she said, “Yes. I loved it. I mean, I really loved it.”

“You did? Oh, thank god.” He let his head fall back, showing the strong cords of his neck, the half inch of pale skin below his T-shirt collar. “It’s a children’s book, and you’re the first actual child to read it. I was so worried you’d think it sucked. Or sounded like it was written by an old crusty.”

She shrugged. The first actual child. Fine, yes, she was a child. She wouldn’t be one in ten years, when she and Arthur Borelli got married.

He was looking at her. He started to speak, then shook his head. Half smiling, he said, “What I don’t understand is why doesn’t your dad paint you. And your brother. You’re both very, you know. Picturesque.”

Her posing had worked. Queen of the May! Bliss came over her in a hot pink haze and made her lose her mind. “My dad’s not very talented.”

His brows went up, though he didn’t deny it. “Well. Talent’s not everything.” Flushing, he said, “Your mom, though. Damn. Did you know, I started writing The Wandering Country the day I finished reading her first book?”

Guinevere looked down at her flower chain. It was already wilting. She said, “I’m not the Guinevere in the book. I mean, she’s not me.”

“Of course you’re not.”

“Like, if you thought I was and that’s why you wanted to talk to me, I’m not.” She ripped up a fistful of clover. “Just so you know.”

There were three Ninth City books, and a fourth publishing soon. She’d gotten her hands on all but the last. There was no one she could talk to about how she felt when she read them. Llewellyn was useless, Ennis pretended the books didn’t even exist. And Edith . . . forget it.

If she were to tell Arthur what it was like, she’d say this:

There was a gas station grocery her dad stopped at sometimes, when he let them tag along with him to town. When you walked in, you could see yourself on a security TV hanging above the door. There were screens throughout the store, you could track yourself like a hunter.

The girl on the TVs looked like Guinevere. She moved like Guinevere. Yet she couldn’t quite believe that girl was her. She seemed a doppelg?nger, dangerously opaque, drifting through the aisles with dirty hair and hidden intentions.

If that video girl was her dark twin, Book Guinevere was her bright one. She took real Guinevere’s name and face and even something of her essence. But she was a glossy confectionary version of a girl. A candied cherry without the pit. Guinevere couldn’t have hated her more if she were a flesh-and-blood rival.