“Booker, dear, she means unbiased people. People who don’t know and care about her but love her work. We all want that.” Mom pats Carrie’s hand. “Still, I would love a piece. I don’t care what the subject matter is, but I would like to commission a work.”
Carrie melts. “I would love to do that, Mrs. Peters.”
“I’d like to commission something, too,” I say.
Carrie ignores me. “Are you sure you don’t have an idea of what you would like? You said you wanted to replace a landscape?”
“Why don’t you come to the living room and see the space yourself? Maybe it will inspire you,” Mom suggests. Carrie thinks this is a great idea, and the two leave. I dig out my phone and call the curator of the exhibition.
“Hey, this is Booker Peters. I bought the Carrie Montlain art lot. When did you say that was going to be delivered?”
“We are just crating it for you, sir. It should arrive on Wednesday or Thursday.”
“What time?” I can’t have Carrie here when her work arrives.
“We can’t know, sir. It depends on the weather and other deliveries.”
Feeling desperate, I use my dad’s best tool: money. “I’ll pay to have it delivered at a set time.”
“Sir, we cannot modify the delivery orders at this time. If you wanted to make other arrangements, you should have contacted us before the art left the loading dock.”
“Fuck!” I hiss, hanging up the phone.
“What’s wrong?” Carrie appears in the doorway of the kitchen with my mom over her shoulder.
“Nothing. Stubbed my toe,” I lie. “Come on. Let's get to school. We need to swing by your place first? Your mom is probably wondering where you are.”
“She knows I’m here.”
“She misses you, though. Isn’t that right, Mom? You miss me when I’m gone for more than a day?” I try to telegraph silently to my mother that I need some back-up here. Thankfully she catches on.
“I do miss you when you’re gone for even a half an hour. I’ll be heartbroken when you go to college.”
“You said you were renting an apartment across from the campus,” I remind her. I think she’s joking, but who knows. I wouldn’t put it past her to show up at college with some cookies in a tin and an envelope full of cash. She’s a good mom. If I tell her what I did, I think she’ll help me.
“I'll still miss you.” She pats my cheek. “Go on and be good.”
The last bit is a warning that she knows something is up but since Carrie is here, I can’t confess. I cast a wild glance in my girl’s direction, but her only emotion seems to be slight confusion as to why I’m kicking her out so fast. I’ll make it up to her, but first I need to square away this delivery thing. All I really need to do is keep her away from my house this week. Then I’ll need to hide the paintings. Where, though, I’m not sure. I can’t put them in some storage place because the heat or humidity might damage them. I can’t hang them on the wall, either, because then she’d see them. I can’t have her thinking her work isn’t appreciated. I mean, fuck, I appreciate them, and that should be enough, but I guess I kind of see her point.
“Are you mad about something?” Carrie’s small voice breaks through my thoughts.
I give her a tight smile. “Nothing. What do I have to be mad about? Good weekend. Great fucking weekend, in fact. Just not excited about going back to school. Ready for that to be over, aren’t you?”
She nods slowly. “I guess I am.”
“We should have a party this weekend,” I suggest to take her mind off my suddenly foul mood.
“We?”
“You and I,” I confirm and hurry her to the car. “We’ll have it at Dean’s place.”
“Why not here?”
“I don’t have parties here.”
“You have them here all the time,” she argues.
I gun the engine. Lying is hard. You’re always being tripped up by dumb stuff. “Parties you never came to.”
“I don’t go to Dean’s house either.”
“Dean’s place is better. It’s farther out in the country, and the cops are less likely to bust us.”
“Dean’s dad is the sheriff.”
“Exactly. Exactly.” I promise myself to never lie again once I get out of this predicament.
Chapter Twenty
Carrie
My finger hovers over the submit button. Mrs. MacIntosh wrote me a killer letter of recommendation. When I admitted to her the other day that I was thinking about applying to a few art schools, she’d gotten excited. From that point on she was all about it. She even made some calls to some colleagues of hers on my behalf. Applying to these schools didn’t mean I had to actually go. I’m more seeing what is out there, and to be honest I wanted to see if I would even get accepted.