Bending the Rules

Now, she sure didn’t come from a family rolling in dough, and God knew there’d been times she’d had to do some pretty creative bookkeeping to make her various incomes stretch. But there was always enough to buy her art supplies—a fact she’d simply taken for granted.

Then she’d met the teens in her first class and realized these kids didn’t have that luxury. And watching them blossom during the short time she’d had them, a new passion had taken root in her breast.

Little by little her current teens trickled in, the cardboard tubes she’d supplied to protect their drawings and paintings tucked beneath their arms or sticking out of the tops of backpacks.

It was a small group, just twelve kids in all, selected by teachers at the three high schools that her eight boys and four girls attended. The teens had been chosen both for their aptitude in art and their lack of financial—and in some cases, family—resources. This was her third group of its kind and her kids were now far enough into the course that she’d mostly gotten them over the giving-her-attitude hump and was edging them into the fun stage. At least it was a kick for her, since this was where she got to watch the myriad possibilities of art start to spark excitement in them.

She moved quietly from student to student, standing behind them to study their paintings or drawings, praising them here and offering tips or answering questions there.

“Yo, bitch. Hand over the vermillion.”

“Whatchu call me, cabrón?”

Poppy whipped around. “Mr. Jackson. Ms. Suarez.”

Darnell Jackson, whom she knew darn well was crushin’ on the girl he’d insulted, winced, but then straightened to his full six and a half feet to give Poppy a look loaded with that attitude she’d just patted herself on the back for having put in the past.

“Did you hear what he called me, Ms. Calloway?” Emilia Suarez stood with one hand on her hip, her head cocked and her chin thrust up in a belligerent I’m-gonna-take-you-down angle at a boy who—even standing three feet away—towered head and shoulders above her.

“Yes, I did. And I’m guessing whatever it was you called him in return wasn’t a love ode to your BFF.” Still, Emilia’s slur had been a direct response to what Darnell started, and Poppy turned to the young man standing one easel over from the irate girl. Leveling her gaze on him, she kept her tone mild when she inquired, “What is my number-one rule of behavior in this class, Mr. Jackson?”

She could see his pride demanding that he hang on to his badass ‘tude, especially considering how the room had quieted and all the kids had turned to see what he would do. But Darnell had been the first of the twelve to give in to the seduction that was art; he was one of her most talented students and Poppy had made it clear at the beginning of the course that she had a zero tolerance policy for troublemaking. Moreover, the teen lived with a grandmother who’d drilled manners into his head regarding respecting one’s elders.

And much as it bit her butt to think of herself as part of that demographic, it was probably how this group of teenagers viewed her.

“To give each other respect,” he said grudgingly.

She looked at him in silence.

He dipped his head. “Sorry, Miz Calloway.”

“It’s not me you owe the apology to,” she said calmly.

Big shoulders curving in, he looked over at the girl next to him. “Sorry, Emilia.”

“You a sorry excuse for a man,” Emilia muttered, but color flushed her cheeks. The other girls were too busy whooping their enthusiasm over seeing one of the boys who outnumbered them being disciplined to notice.

Which was a good thing, Poppy thought, for if they had, they would have teased Emilia unmercifully about it, which would have just escalated matters. “Ladies,” she said with quiet repressiveness.

They immediately settled down, but two of them bumped hips and exchanged low fives.

Poppy bit back a grin. But, damn, she loved teenagers!

She hadn’t gotten as far as Darnell and Emilia in her circuit around the room and she crossed to them now. Standing back, she studied Darnell’s painting. “Oh,” she breathed, staring at the portrait of three women with their heads together. “This is wonderful.”

“I got the idea from this picture my grandma Barb has of her grandmother and two great-aunts,” Darnell said, forgetting both his pride and his embarrassment in his enthusiasm for the project.

She scrutinized it further, admiring the way the women all but leaped off the canvas. “Do you have a name for it yet?”

“After Church.”

She laughed. “Yes, I can visualize that—sprung from those hard pews and ready to dish on who was wearing what and who showed up hungover from the excesses of the night before. You captured a sense of gossip and imbued it with a definite feel of an older, bygone era. Yet the subject matter is as fresh today as it was in your great-great-grandmother’s time. It’s fabulous, Darnell. I love the bold use of color.”

“Grandma’s photo’s black-and-white, but she says her people’s always been lovin’ color.” He grinned. “And I don’t doubt it, if me and her’s anything to go by.”

He’d painted two of the women in mostly primary-colored clothing—one in brilliant blue with a blue-and-yellow head wrap, the other in yellow sporting a large brimmed hat with green feathers and a matching sash that tied beneath her chin. He indicated the third figure, which as yet was still a pencil sketch. “That’s what I wanted the vermillion for.” Then he drew himself up to his considerable height and cut his eyes to the girl next to him. “But I’m sorry ‘bout what I called you, Emilia. I was being a smart-ass and Grandma would scrub my mouth out with soap if she knew.”

“I’ll do that myself, you ever call me that again.” But Emilia handed him the tube of paint. “I’m sorry I disrespected you, too.”

His teeth flashed. “Did you? I don’t speak Spanish, so you coulda said anything and I wouldn’t know the difference. What’d you call me?”

Her lips curved up. “It’s prob’ly best you don’t know.” She gazed at his painting. “You’re really good, Darnell. I can’t do figures for sh—” shooting a glance at Poppy, she cut herself off “—um, nuthin’.”

“Yeah, but you do buildings real good. I wanted to put the church steeple in the background, but I drew it and erased it so many times trying to get the proportions right I’m lucky I didn’t put a hole in the canvas.”

“Maybe after class sometime, I can show you how to do that. But you gotta show me how to draw them whatchamacall’ems—life studies.”

“Yeah,” he said, turning back to his easel. A smile curved his lips. “Yeah. That’d be good. Go to Starbucks, maybe, and grab a table where we can spread out our sh—Uh, stuff.”

Poppy was feeling pretty pleased with both her kids and herself by the time she rolled back into her Fremont neighborhood late that afternoon. She’d stopped at a Home Depot on the way home to grab a fistful of paint chips for the mansion. She swung by Marketime now to pick up a few groceries—but then didn’t feel like cooking when she got back to her apartment. So she tossed her paint chips on the table, took her groceries into the kitchen and put them away, then hiked over to Mad Pizza to get herself a small pie to take home.

Settling with it at the tiny table outside her kitchen a short while later, she listened to Zero 7 on her CD player and happily pored over paint color chips while washing down three slices with a bottle of beer.

She was feeling so mellow that she actually filed away the stack of paperwork that was a by-product of the grant she’d received from the Parks Department Youth Community Outreach program. It had been taking up space on the top of the bookshelf for the past six weeks. She felt a lot more righteous than the chore merited when she finished up and, noticing the pristine clear spots in the dust where the paperwork had lain, even considered digging the duster out of the closet to do a little spring cleaning.

Then she laughed and got real. “Nah.” No sense in getting carried away.

She did swab down the table in order to have a clean surface on which to lay out her greeting-card supplies, then got down to work. She finished painting the design she’d been interrupted doing yesterday when something else needing her attention had gotten in the way. When that was done she started a new design and was soon in the zone where her mind drifted while her creativity soared.

It was a while before she registered the primary colors she’d been automatically applying to the new card. Realizing that Darnell’s painting had inspired her color choices, it started her thinking. Maybe she should put together a proposal for a new grant—this one to teach kids how to make greeting cards with the intent to sell them. It was true she’d only sold one card to a national company, but she did okay marketing her others to trendy little boutiques around town. Her income from them was pocket change compared to the one that had gone mainstream, but it nevertheless gave her additional credentials and demonstrated that handcrafted cards were marketable.

Someday, when the mansion renovation was complete and she and her friends had sold it, she’d have access to some real money. Aside from getting a car that was more reliable than the heap she drove now, her own needs were few. But with Miss Agnes’s money, she could reach out to more kids—a lot more. The old lady would’ve loved that.

The pure, max coolness of that prospect made her smile. Life was good.

The telephone rang and she jumped up to answer it, ready to share her ideas and settle into a long, satisfying conversation with Jane or Ava or her mother.

Only it turned out to be none of them and by the time Poppy hung up fifteen minutes later, her heart was hammering the wall of her chest like an enraged carpenter. She didn’t know whether to laugh like a loon or bang her head against the nearest wall.

Because it turned out she was getting what she’d asked for. And that was good, right? Her three juvie taggers were getting a second chance, which meant so was she—to help. So, yes. It was good.

Excellent, in fact.

All except for the part about them being monitored for good behavior. By none other than her favorite cop: Jason de Sanges.

Chapter Four

Did I lie through my teeth? You betcha. Do I feel bad about it? Yeah, right.