Fan Art Read Online Free

the GSA. Plus, she’s an amazing artist.
    “Any topic?”
    “Um—” Eden chimes in, as if warning me against agreeing to this.
    “Anything I can get past Taylor. So, like, no f-bombs, okay?” I clarify, already imagining how a comic would look awesome in Gumshoe.
    Challis bites her lip while the corners of her mouth curl up into a smile. “You’ll accept it?”
    “Uh-huh.”
    “’Cause it’ll be a ton of work,” she explains.
    “Yeah,” Eden says. “Original characters are more time consuming.”
    “Promise,” I tell Challis. “Original characters, and it’s in.”
    After school Mason sags into the locker next to mine. “Gabe got my shift,” he says about his brother. “Wannasave the world from the zombie apocalypse?”
    “Sounds great,” I say, and glance over at him. He looks like he always does at the end of the day, tired but content, and as if he just put an X through the calendar square in his day planner. His curls have straightened a little, and they hang in a curtain around the frames of his glasses. See , I tell myself. He’s not that cute. No way I have a crush on him.
    I throw my books in my backpack, and we walk out to the student parking lot, grumbling about the pop quiz in government. Mason tells me the correct answers, and I calculate that I scraped by with a C. I drive the three blocks while Mason cranks the radio.
    After a few hours of Mason killing zombies and my character getting killed by them, Mason’s cell chirps with a text. He pauses the game to read it. He frowns.
    “What?” I ask.
    “My mom’s working late,” he says.
    Mason’s mom works at the twenty-four-hour supermarket, and late can mean really late. But this isn’t why he’s frowning. “And I’m hungry.”
    Personally, I’m famished. One of Mrs. V’s home-cooked meals would have really hit the spot.
    “She said there’s hamburger in the fridge,” he adds, standing up.
    Soon we have a couple of burgers sizzling in a skillet on the stove, and rolls are toasting in the oven. Masonhas his head buried in the pantry, looking for a can of chiles, when his dad and Gabe come in.
    “Smells good,” Gabe says. “What’s for dinner?”
    “Ham—” Mason starts to answer, appearing again with a can in hand.
    But Mr. V cuts him off, asking questions in his rapid-fire Spanish. Not angry but not kind, either.
    “At work,” Mason manages to answer one before another round of questions begins.
    I pull two or three words from the volley: little girls and cooking or maybe kitchen .
    Mason presses his lips together, his skin darkening with embarrassment or anger before he tries to hide it. He opens a drawer and rummages around for a can opener.
    Mr. V continues, gesturing to the backyard and saying something about huevos .
    I flip the two burgers over, getting the gist. We are, in his opinion, playing house like little girls by cooking in the kitchen instead of grilling like real men.
    Gabe finds two beers in the fridge and gives his father one, ushering him out of the kitchen. “Put on another two, would you, Mace?” he asks on his way out.
    “Effin’ A,” Mason mutters. “Make your own goddamn dinner.”
    We eat our chile and-cheese-topped hamburgers on the steps that lead to the backyard, sharing a bag of chips and drinking orange soda from cans. We’re quiet for awhile, and I remember when Mason went from idolizing his father to antagonizing him.
    The summer after seventh grade—the summer Mason spent in Mexico—was the worst summer of our lives. Mine because Mason was gone. His because he dug up a family secret. See, Mason’s father has two families: one here and one in Mexico. Mason is the youngest of five children total, Londa and Gabe being his full brother and sister.
    His half sister, Clara, had come to visit the summer before. The trip was a birthday present. She had just turned twenty. She made the best tortillas, and we ate our fill while teaching her dirty words in English. We said she’d