Grace

11. A Masterpiece

The next day was Friday, Jordan felt simply in love with life. Caleb's return bathed the whole world in a rosy glow and drove all other, less important things from Jordan's mind. The earth felt charged with excitement and promise, even though the sky was overcast and brooding all day and the most he managed to score on all those tests he had studied for last night were C's.

He told his news to Adam and Ian, pretending that he didn't really care about it, since everyone knows that guys cannot show intense emotion to other guys. His friends expressed their happiness for him through a couple muttered words, slapped him on the back, and then couldn't think of anything else to say.

Grace's reaction was the exact opposite.

"OH MY GOSH!" She shrieked at the Park Bench of Awkwardness, causing a random guy walking his dog to look at them weirdly. Both teenagers ignored him. "That's great, Jordan!" she continued, "You have to introduce me as soon as he gets home, no wait, you probably have a lot of plans already, but sometime, you know?" She continued babbling on as she added the finishing touches to Jordan's picture.

Jordan sat still and listened to her with only half of his mind. He had grown to accept that as a girl, Grace was naturally hyper-talkative. He definitely wanted to introduce his brother and Grace to each other. He wondered what Caleb would think of her. They would probably either become best friends or start arguing. Jordan thought he would like to see them argue: Grace with all of her calm, blissful assurance, Caleb with his confidence and overwhelming personality...

He was imagining exactly what they would say to each other, and who would win, when he realized that Grace had stopped talking. When he glanced at her, he saw that she was staring intensely down at his picture, chewing on her lower lip. She made a tiny mark on the paper with her lightest pencil, then shook her head and erased it. Frowning, she looked critically from the picture to Jordan and back again.

"Well," she said finally, "I think it's done." She scribbled her initials in the corner of the paper. "Want to see?"

"Heck yeah!" said Jordan. He was burning with curiosity to see how Grace had portrayed him. He took the sketchbook eagerly from Grace when she held it out to him.

Then he saw his picture, and caught his breath.

It was him, yet at the same time it was more than him. Every physical detail was there, down to the hairs on his eyebrows and the offensive zit on the side of his forehead. Due to artistic license his nose only looked slightly more swollen than usual. The picture was so realistic that Jordan might have been looking in a mirror, except he had no idea that his face could assume this expression. He looked thoughtful, almost sad... And his eyes- he couldn't quite find the words for what he saw there. Grace's eyes were clear as water, reflecting the peace inside of her. But Jordan's eyes were, well, clouded. There was something going on inside of him that he didn't want others to see.

Suddenly he realized that Grace had drawn his eyes on the day when she had told him about Angela. He had been thinking about whether there was really life after death. Somehow, Grace had captured some of Jordan's struggle in his picture, just as she had captured the baby's innocence and peace.

"Wow," he said finally, and found himself unable to say anything else.

*************

At school the following Monday, Grace popped up at his side by the lockers, looking pleased.

"I got an A on the drawing," she said, "thought you might want to know."

"It deserved an A plus!" said Jordan vehemently, surprising himself. "You have a gift, Grace."

Grace shrugged. "Well, it is a college-level course. I'm totally happy with an A. "Besides, I had good subject matter to work with." She took off her backpack and fumbled with the zipper. "Anyway, as a thank-you for everything, I wanted to give you this." She pulled out Jordan's finished picture. "It's your portrait, after all."

"Wow, thank you," said Jordan, taking the picture from her carefully. He knew that he was being given something very special, a true masterpiece. He looked down at his face, captured in grayscale. Lately he had been wanting to study it again, figure out exactly what was Grace saw in him that she had brought to the surface. And now she was giving it to him to keep. She was very generous.

The bell rang, and Grace excused herself to go to her next class. Jordan didn't want to expose the picture to crushing or crinkling in his back pack, so he tucked it between two large textbooks in his locker for safekeeping.

He would have to frame it later, he thought tohimself. And he would show it to Caleb. He grinned; he couldn't help himself.The very thought of Caleb made him grin lately. Only three more days...