“Thanks, Dad,” she called out her open bedroom door. “I’ve got it.” She closed her door and said into the phone, “Dani?”
“Yeah, it’s me. How’s it going?”
“I’m working on our project proposal, actually.”
“Oh, yeah. That’s due on Friday, right?”
Meredith saved the file on her computer. “Yeah. Just the proposal, but I’m outlining, too, since that’s due in about three weeks. Right around mid-winter recess, I think. I figure we should start with a report about how the house looked in its heyday. Millie said she had pictures for us, so when we get those we’ll ask them for more history of the house.”
“Yeah, cool.”
Meredith asked, “And the new Randall-Bradley House for Women. We should put that in, too, right?”
“Definitely.” Dani’s voice sounded strong and sure. “I mean, like, we can talk about how the house used to look and then about Esther and Millie—we’ll put pictures of them into our PowerPoint—and then we’ll talk about their plans for the women’s shelter.”
“Maybe we could put in statistics about domestic violence or something because I found some really scary statistics online. Like this one. ‘A woman is battered every nine seconds.’ That’s from the Department of Justice. And can you believe what Esther said as we were leaving Hudson Pines the other day? She said, ‘If a woman tries to leave an abusive man, he’s likely to kill her?’ That’s crazy. I’ll have to find documentation on that somewhere. I mean it’s not all men, but...”
Dani was quiet on the other end of the line.
“Dani? Are you still there?”
“Yeah.” There was a sad tone to her voice. “I’m still amazed that there’s so much abuse in the world and I’ve been completely oblivious to it.”
“I know. Me, too. Still, I think Mr. Dalton would want us to include stuff like this. Don’t you think?”
“Oh, yeah. I think we’ve uncovered an amazing story. I’m so glad you came up with this project. Esther and Millie are so cool. I’m glad we met them.”
“Yeah, me, too. Hey, I forgot to ask you. What did you think about Esther’s grandnephew?”
“Her grandnephew?” Dani sounded puzzled. “What was his name again?”
Meredith stood up from her desk to sit on her bed. “Uh, Gregory, I think.”
“Oh, yeah. I guess he was okay. Why? Did you think he was cute or something?”
“What?” That was the farthest thing from her mind. “Well, okay. He is cute, but I got the distinct feeling Millie didn’t like him.”
“Oh, yeah, I got that feeling, too. I don’t know, though. He seemed okay to me.”
“I guess.”
Dani cleared her throat. “Hey Meredith? What are you doing during Winter Recess week after next?”
“Besides working on my portfolio? I don’t know. My folks are working, so I’ll be in charge of Mikey the whole week. I’ll probably take him to the movies or something.”
“Can we take him bowling, too?”
Meredith smiled. Dani wanted to take her and her brother out. She was overwhelmed. She’d never had a friend to do things with. She fell back snugly into her pillows. “Sure Dani, but I don’t think you realize what you’re getting yourself into. I’m no athlete and Mikey’s, well, Mikey, but if you can handle both of us, then, sure, we’d love to go bowling with you.”
“Cool and maybe we could go back to the old house with Mikey afterward. I mean, now that we can go inside anytime we want. We could get subs and have a picnic or something.”
“That would be fun. I bet that would help Mikey get over his fear of the house.”
Dani laughed heartily into the phone. “And yours, too, I imagine.”
Meredith joined in her laughter. “Yeah, I think you’re right. I’m so sorry I almost blinded you with my camera flash on Saturday, but that house gives me the creeps. Even though we’ve met Esther and Millie, and they’re just wonderful, I still think Esther’s right. I still think that house is cursed or haunted or something.”
“Okay. I’ll be like Millie.” She changed her voice to sound gruff. “‘Pah, the old painted lady’s not cursed, she’s just old.’” She laughed and switched back to her normal voice. “Hey, when are you starting their portraits?”
Meredith took a deep breath. She hadn’t thought that far ahead. “Um, well, I have to get most of my AP portfolio done first, then I can make time to start their portraits.”
“Do they have to pose for you like I am?”
“Well, that might be an issue because I want to paint them slightly younger. You know, like in their fifties or something. I have to use photographs for that, but I guess I should ask them what era they want depicted. You know? Having yourself preserved in paint is kind of a personal thing.”
Dani laughed. “Believe me, I know.”
Meredith laughed, but realized that she was a little nervous about painting Dani’s portrait, too. She wanted to depict Dani’s expression perfectly. That smile. Her eyes. She wanted to capture the essence that was Dani Lassiter. Getting that personal with a subject was difficult, but Meredith had a willing subject and that was half the battle sometimes.
Meredith attempted to sound reassuring. “You’ll be fine. All you have to do is sit. In fact, you’ll probably be bored in less than five minutes. I’m the one who has to do all the work, remember?”
“Yeah, you’re right. You do have the hard part. Well, I guess I should get going. I just called to say hi.”
Meredith smiled as they said their goodbyes and hung up. She liked having a friend who called just to say hi.
Chapter Nine
Hot Chocolate
MEREDITH HELD HER hair back with her left hand while Dani slid the blue hair band off Meredith’s wrist and placed it in her open palm. Meredith put the hair band around her thick hair and took a deep breath. She had spent a good part of the previous evening going over the sketch she had made of Dani, so her plan of attack would be firmly planted in her mind before she applied paint to canvas.
Mrs. Levine’s small workroom had two large windows that helped the room seem less claustrophobic. The afternoon sun managed to show itself between the gray clouds, and Meredith welcomed the natural sunlight. Mrs. Levine had provided a couple of adjustable floor lamps for additional lighting if they needed it.
Meredith pushed her glasses up the bridge of her nose and then worked for several minutes on a general head and shoulders outline of Dani on the canvas. Once she was satisfied with the positioning, she added a squeeze of cerulean blue and a squeeze of zinc white acrylic paint to her palette. She used her palette knife to mix them together.
Before applying the paint, Meredith asked, “Still comfie?”
Dani shifted in Mrs. Levine’s desk chair. “I guess. But, I’m kind of nervous.” She cleared her throat several times, but couldn’t seem to get it clear.
Meredith laughed. “Well, we’re not going to get the whole thing done in one day. In fact, you’re not even going to look like much today. I’ve already sketched you with light pencil, and I’m about to put color to your shirt. Thanks for wearing the powder blue one. The blue brings out your eyes.”
“Would you stop that?”
“Stop what?”
“Making me turn red. I’m probably going to ruin the painting.”
Meredith smiled as Dani started blushing and picked up her brush. She looked at Dani for a moment and gathered in Dani’s essence, Dani’s energy. Most of her subjects never knew she did this, and she never told them. Meredith figured if her subjects knew she focused on them so intently they would become more uncomfortable than they already were. Dani’s energy—her aura—was strong and bright. Underneath the nerves, Meredith felt the rock-steady Dani she was getting to know. Meredith smiled again.
“What?” Dani asked with raised eyebrows.
“Oh, nothing. I was just thinking how amazing it is that Dani Lassiter, president of the senior class, is sitting here posing for me.”
“And why should that be amazing?” Dani made air-quotes when she said the word amazing.
“Well, a few weeks ago I had no friends at all.”
Dani smiled. “But you’re changing that, aren’t you?”
“Yeah. Seems that way.” Meredith put a few brush strokes to Dani’s shirt.
“Hey, that John Casey thing. You’re the talk of the school, you know.”
“I know. I’m not sure that’s a good thing, though.”
Dani shifted in her seat. “I moved. Sorry.” She had a scared expression on her face.
“No, you’re fine, but sit still or I’ll have to call you Mikey.”
“Okay, okay. I think it’s a good thing that people know you can stand up for yourself. I, for one, am most proud.”
“Well, thank you. Now shut up so I can focus.” Meredith added an ear-to-ear grin to let Dani know she was teasing. She couldn’t believe she had just told the president of the senior class to shut up. Several weeks ago, the thought of doing that would have seemed impossible.
A comfortable silence settled over painter and sitter. Meredith kept an eye on the time, though, because she didn’t want to make them late for history.
“Can I talk, yet?” Dani murmured through closed lips.
Meredith laughed. “Sure. We’ve been at this a long time. You have excellent powers of concentration, by the way. Most of my subjects look bored after only a few minutes.”
“Oh, I just took myself to another place. Honestly, if I didn’t daydream I’d be self-conscious the whole time and probably get an ulcer.”
“Where did you take yourself?” Meredith dabbed her paintbrush in her cerulean blue mixture and put a few more strokes on Dani's shoulders.
“Oh, I daydreamed about the Hudson Pines Senior Center and thought about Esther and Millie. I thought about Gregory.”
“Oh? And do you still think he’s an okay guy?”
“Sure and you’re right, he is a hottie. If you like that sort of thing.”
“What sort of thing?”
Dani looked down, but then must have remembered that she was supposed to keep her head up. “Oh, sorry. Uh, I don’t know. He’s just not my type.”
“What’s your type?”
When Dani didn’t answer, Meredith looked out from behind the canvas and saw that Dani had turned fire engine red. Meredith changed the subject quickly. “I hadn’t really thought much more about Gregory, but it would be kind of fun to have Esther as an aunt, you know?”
Dani laughed. She sounded relieved. “Yeah, really. And Millie, too. I guess she’d be an aunt, too, right?”
“I wonder if either of them has ever been married.”
“Well, they’ll tell us if they want us to know, you know? We probably shouldn’t get too much into their private lives. Unless they volunteer the info, that is.”
“Yeah, you’re probably right.” Meredith put her brush in the jar of murky water and wiped her hands on her rag. She would clean the brushes more thoroughly in the sink later, after her AP class. “I think we’d better call it a day. I’ve got to clean up a little bit so Mrs. Levine can have her office back.”
Meredith was about to pull the band out of her hair, but on a whim decided to keep her hair pulled back for the rest of the day.
As they made their way out of the art room and up the stairs to their history class, Dani looked at Meredith and asked, “What do you think the other kids thought about us going into Mrs. Levine’s private workroom?”
“Since when do you care what other kids think?”
“No, you’re right. I don’t really care what they think. It’s not like we were breaking any rules, right?”
“Yeah, and besides, Mrs. Levine set up the whole thing. Probably because the sketch of your scissors was so amazingly awesome.”
“Yeah, I know. Did you see my scissors?” Dani beamed. Meredith smiled, but rolled her eyes at her friend.
Dani had taken to sitting in the back row next to Meredith, and as they walked past Ben Kinsey Meredith caught the glare he threw at her. Mr. Dalton didn’t assign seats, but usually once kids chose seats at the beginning of the school year, they didn’t change. How Dani got the guy who sat next to Meredith to swap seats was still a mystery. Meredith would never have been able to do it.
The late bell rang to begin class, and Mr. Dalton stood up from behind his desk. “Okay, people, settle down.” He leaned on the front edge of his desk and waited for the din of student conversations to subside. “Okay, before we get into our topic for the day I want to remind you that your typed proposals are due next Friday. And for you last-minute types, remember that midwinter recess begins right after that so make sure the proposals aren’t late. I want to look them over during break. Yeah, I know. A fun vacation for me.”
Dani smiled at Meredith and Meredith smiled back. Their proposal was already typed up and ready to hand in.
“Okay,” Mr. Dalton said. “Notebooks out. Pens poised. We’re starting the American Revolution.”
The students groaned, but Mr. Dalton laughed because he’d obviously been expecting that exact reaction.
Mr. Dalton, apparently, was a real fan of New York’s role in the American Revolution. He shined an overhead of an old map of Fort Ticonderoga on the pull down screen. Meredith had been to the old fort once, since it still sat on the New York State side of Lake Champlain.
“This whole area,” he said making a wide circle around the areas including Lake Champlain and Lake George, “was critical in the war.”
As her teacher continued his lecture about the war, Meredith thought about the mountain town of Lake George only a couple hours north of Albany just inside the Adirondack Park. Meredith’s family had taken a week’s vacation there when she was twelve and Mikey was six. She remembered the big lake and the boat tour, but the thing that stuck with her most was not the lake itself, but the Canadian flags that flew everywhere in the town. She even received a Canadian penny in her change when she bought some candy in one of the local shops. She smiled because she still had that penny in her cigar box of treasures. She wondered if Dani had ever been to Lake George. Maybe they could take Mikey up there during the summer.
Mr. Dalton explained that the French built the Fort, originally called Fort Carillon, in 1755, but the British, threatened by a fort so close to their land, gained control in 1759. The British promptly changed the name to Fort Ticonderoga, but oddly enough they only held onto the fort for sixteen years because the Green Mountain Boys from Vermont led by American colonists Ethan Allen and Benedict Arnold captured it in 1775. In 1776, Arnold, still an American patriot, constructed the very first American navy on Lake Champlain in an attempt to prevent British retaliation from Canada. Unfortunately, British General John Burgoyne, coming from Canada, recaptured the fort in 1777.