Between the Sheets by Molly O'Keefe

he said. “I’ll order a bunch of pizza and pay you whatever babysitters get paid. Feel free to take me to the cleaners.” He grabbed his gloves off the bench and took off without a backward glance.
    Art class. With Ms. Monroe.
    Casey crossed the road up to the Art Barn on Friday after school, feeling, he didn’t mind saying, like a stud.
    An art class stud.
    “I,” he whispered, liking the way his breath poured out of his mouth like he’d just smoked a cigarette, “am an art class stud.”
    Ty didn’t want him to walk over here by himself, because Ty had been a freak-out just waiting to happen ever since the meeting at school. But Casey managed toconvince him not to walk him over to Ms. Monroe’s barn like he was a baby.
    Hard to be an art class stud when your dad-type person was dropping you off.
    At the door, there was a sign made out of wood and sparkles and feathers and paint. It said “Open for Art.” It didn’t look like the kind of thing that should be outside; it was really fancy. He touched one of the blue feathers and it fell off the sign onto the ground.
    Shit. Shit . He grabbed the feather and tried to stick it back on, but instead he knocked another feather off. And then a big, shiny fake pink gem fell off.
    Casey grabbed all the stuff and took a big step away from the barn so that nothing he did would ruin the sign any more. He shoved the feathers and the gem in his pocket and pulled open the door.
    Inside it was like that Willy Wonka chocolate factory movie, but for art instead of candy. Art was everywhere; it hung from the ceiling and on the walls. There was one whole wall of paper flowers. Even that was cool, and he hated flowers. There were shelves of paper and trays of markers. Tinfoil and feathers and gems and sparkles and scissors. Glue. Paint. Big, fat blobs of clay in a whole bunch of colors.
    And in the middle of it all was Ms. Monroe.
    Polishing diamonds.
    “Whoa,” he breathed.
    “Hey!” she said with a nice smile. It wasn’t really big, that smile, like those of a lot of teachers and counselors and social workers who thought that if they smiled big enough, he wouldn’t notice how shitty his life was. Or how they were making it even shittier. Ms. Monroe’s smile just made him feel like she’d been waiting for him and she was super glad he was there.
    She glanced over at the clock on the wall. “You’re early.”
    His stomach fell into his shoes. Early . That was impossibly lame. He didn’t want to go home; he supposed he could go outside and sit for a while. He took a shuffling step backward. “I can come back.”
    “No. It’s awesome you’re early. I need some help.” She held up the diamond in her hand; it was huge.
    “Where’d you get that?” he asked.
    She pointed to the metal light sitting in the middle of the table. It was one of those things that hung from the ceiling.
    “It’s a chandelier. I’m just polishing the crystals.”
    “Crystals?” He stepped closer, and next to her in a faded blue towel on the table were a bunch of those diamond crystal things. “They’re not diamonds?”
    “No.” Again she smiled, and he didn’t feel like a bone-head for thinking they were. “I wish they were. Here.” She handed him a cloth and kicked out one of the tiny chairs across from her. “I could use your help.”
    He sat down and took one of the heavy crystals from the blue towel. Sucked that it wasn’t a real diamond.
    “How was school?” She held her crystal up to the light.
    “Fine.”
    “Fine good or fine bad?”
    “Fine fine.” He watched her hands on the crystal and copied what she did, running the cloth over the sharp edge. She hummed and picked up another crystal.
    “Where are you going to put this thing?” he asked. The metal looked like a plant with leaves and stuff, and he guessed when these crystals were put on it, they would look like the flowers.
    He liked this light.
    She pointed up. There were about four other lights like this one