A Long Way From You (28 page)

I start moving at a snail’s pace to the door, slouching under the weight of Corrinne’s two-ton bag. “Thanks for everything you did for me this summer, Corrinne,” I tell her.

“I was in Virginia at horse camp. I didn’t do
anything
for you,” Corrinne says seriously. “By the way, I’ve been meaning to ask you something. Waverly told me you were at a totally exclusive fashion magazine event. That’s T.M.F.G.”

In Corrinne-speak, T.M.F.G. means Total Material For Gossip.

All I can say back is “It was a weird summer.”

“Speaking of weird,” Corrinne continues, “I saw a picture in
Us Weekly
of this new ‘it girl,’ and there’s a girl in the background who looks just like you, but a New York version. You either have a lot to fill me in on or you must have a doppelganger.”

“That is strange. We definitely
do
have a lot of catching up to do,” I say, relieved that Corrinne’s here. “I can’t believe
everything
that happened in just four weeks.”

Corrinne moans a long “ahhh” every time I bring the makeup brush to her face.

“I really loved camp,” she says, eyes closed. “I really did. But this feels
so
good. There’s only so much natural beauty in the world. I’m happy to get a little help from Chanel.”

I add the last touch of blush and say, “Ta-da. You look
gorgeous
.”

Corrinne inspects herself carefully and then winks at her own reflection.

“Are you sure you don’t want to do
this
for a living? Just teasing,” Corrinne says, pointing to her face. “I know you’re on your way to being a famous artist. By the way, my mom sort of mentioned that a lot has been going on with you. You
know
that I’m always here for you even if we aren’t in the same place.”

“Hopefully, one day we’ll
both
be here,” I say. “I’m definitely not done with New York. I do have a ton to tell you about Amber and Hands and everything, but I’ve got to run to my class meeting before the show tonight.”

“All right, well, we’ll have to talk later,” Corrinne says as we make our way into her bedroom. “Are you sure you don’t want to borrow a dress for your big night?”

Slipping my red Charlotte Russe dress over my head, the one I got in Texas bargain-shopping with Corrinne, I shake my head.

“Thanks, Corrinne, but I think I’ll feel my best tonight if I’m wearing my own clothes.” My dress might not be couture, but I feel like me when I wear it.

Taking my front-row seat next to Ford, I turn and look around the classroom. Whereas the first day, it was a sea of intimidating faces, now it’s a small group of faces I know well, who were there with me from day one of the shocking nudes to my disastrous clay explosion. Maybe we’ll meet again in art school, or in a gallery one day. The door opens and Professor Picasso enters grandly one last time.

“I think students sometimes forget how attached we teachers become to them. Thanks for being such a great class,” he says, looking out at us.

Ford coughs and mutters under his breath, “Picasso has emotions? That surprises me.”

He does have a point. You have to pass through a lot of curmudgeonly layers before you get to the supportive Professor Picasso, but I’m so glad I did.

Professor Picasso gives Ford an icy stare. “You should know that your successes are our successes, too, so don’t be strangers. I want to vicariously live through you all as you change the art world. On day one, I said this wasn’t summer camp. But I still hope you did make a few friends and had at least a little bit of fun. As for the exhibition in a few minutes, don’t be nervous. Even if the art world doesn’t love you, I’m sure your family still will.
Que será será
,” Professor Picasso says.

I look back to Iona, who’s wearing her signature boots with a white lace dress. I raise my shoulders. She mouths back, “What will be will be,” and winks.

I like that. Maybe I’ll start learning French on the internet. If I can do New York, I can
definitely
do Paris, and I read Parsons has a program there.

Professor Picasso continues: “The judges will circulate like everyone else at the showing. At eight o’clock, the scholarship winner will be announced. After that, you’re free to take your pieces with you, although I do ask that you might consider donating one to the school for display. That’s it, class. Have a great rest of the summer. Thank you.”

For a few minutes, we all sit there in silence. It’s nothing like the last day of regular school, when students fly out of their seats like they are on fire. I’m thinking about how special this summer was and how lucky I was to have it. I don’t know what anyone else is thinking about, but I can tell everyone has something on their mind, too. Finally, everyone quietly gets up and walks together to the school’s gallery, where friends and family have already begun to gather.

I walk slowly through the gallery and check out my classmates’ work. First, I stop by Ford’s project. He’s photographed mannequins wearing designer clothes and contrasted those images with photos of real people wearing the same clothes. I think he definitely made the statement he was trying for. “I want to show that real people, not anatomically impossible mannequins, wear clothes best,” his artist statement reads.

A small crowd has congregated around Iona’s series of figurative self-portraits. Only Iona would have the confidence for this project. In each drawing, she’s making a different unattractive face, which is my favorite part. In one, she’s sticking out her tongue defiantly. It’s as if she’s looking at the viewer and saying, “It’s okay. You’re not objectifying me. I’m in control because I’m the artist.”

“Provocative,” remarks a well-dressed woman, probably someone from the
real art world
.

I’m thinking how Iona would love to hear that, when I realize she’s come to stand next to me.

“I thought if art is about revealing yourself, I might as well do just that. I also think it’s a nice reversal on society objectifying the female,” Iona says. “By the way, I looked at your photos earlier. They have a lot of heart.”

“Thanks, Iona,” I say.

“Stop hanging around here,” she says. “Go show off your art.”

I round the corner where I installed my project and see the Corcorans. I stand back for a minute and I watch them take in my photographs. Seeing my art on the wall makes me feel both proud and exposed at the same time.

Pointing to a shot of a farm silo at sunrise, Mr. Corcoran says loudly enough for me to overhear, “J.J., is
this
Broken Spoke? It’s breathtaking. How come you never mentioned it was so beautiful?”

“It’s not,” Corrinne starts to say, then gets distracted by a new photograph. “Well, it’s usually not.”

Mrs. Corcoran doesn’t say anything, but she gazes at a panoramic picture of Broken Spoke’s strip. I edited the photo so that only the storefront’s American and Texan flags are in color, and the rest is black-and-white.

“American by birth—” Mrs. Corcoran starts to say.

“And Texan by the grace of God,” I finish for her as I finally approach them.

“Holy Holly Golightly!” Corrinne says, hugging me. “These are amazing, Kitsy. I didn’t realize that you knew how to take photographs. I mean, how did you get Broken Spoke to look so good? No offense or anything.”

“I just tried to see it from a different angle,” I answer, looking back at the wall covered in scenes of Broken Spoke.

The photo of the football field at dawn with mist rising off the grass. The first car at Sonic in the morning. Mr. Chin sweeping outside his restaurant. A photograph of the view out my bedroom window. I don’t think I figured out how to make a political statement or anything, but I do think I finally figured out how to make my art about me and about more than me.

I notice a few older, well-dressed people approach. Instead of sticking around, I leave and let my work speak for itself.

“Let’s go get free cheese,” I say to Corrinne. I know that we don’t have much time together and I want to make the most of it.

“Okay,” Corrinne says, looking at the photographs one more time. “These are making me miss Broken Spoke. I need to plan a visit. You’ll have to give me the football schedule because I definitely want to go to a home game. I’m in need of a good field party, too.”

“You know what? I kind of miss it, too.”

“
Really?
” Corrinne asks me.

“Really. It’s still home at least for another year,” I say. “And it’ll always be part of me even if I’m not living there.”

As we round the corner, we run smack into Iona.

“Hi, Iona!” I say. “Of course, you know Corrinne.”

I give Corrinne a look and she forces her frown into a small smile.

“Kitsy,” Iona says, motioning to a man and woman standing next to her. “These are my parents. Mom and Dad, this is Kitsy, the girl—I mean my friend—from class I keep telling you both about.”

Iona’s mother and father, who look nothing like her, nod knowingly. Her mother, dressed in a pencil skirt and cardigan, gives me the same look Iona gave when I first met her. She’s definitely analyzing me, but I’m okay with it. I’m proud of who I am.

“So nice to meet you,” I say. “Iona’s been very kind.”

After a few polite moments with Iona’s parents, Corrinne and I excuse ourselves. She whispers to me, “Tell me you didn’t become BFFs with Iona.”

“Not BFFs,” I say. “
You
are my only best friend . . . but Iona’s cool. You might try to get to know her.”

“Remind me
not
to leave you alone in Manhattan next time,” Corrinne says, rolling her eyes and tossing a cheese cube in her mouth.

I’m glad I spent some time here alone. I don’t think I would’ve figured out so much about myself if Corrinne had been in New York all summer.

Professor Picasso walks up to the podium and taps the microphone. As much as I keep trying to ignore that this exhibition is also a competition for a scholarship, it does keep popping back up in my mind.

“Hello, students, family, friends, and patrons of our program at Parsons. I hope you’ve enjoyed the exhibition. I know that I’m most certainly impressed by this crop of young talent and I hear that they have a wonderful teacher,” Professor Picasso says. He pauses and waits for the polite laughter. “With many thanks to an anonymous donation, we’re proud to grant a ten-thousand-dollar scholarship toward an art education to one promising student.”

“I didn’t know there was
money
on the line,” Corrinne whispers. “I would’ve totally helped you suck up to the judges. Flattering authority is an extremely important skill of winners. If you want to
win
, you have to play the game, Kitsy.”

I laugh and shake my head. “Art’s not a game to me,” I whisper.

“I’ll have one of our judges, the esteemed potter Maureen Arden, announce the recipient. Thank you all for coming tonight,” Professor Picasso says and smiles, which is definitely the first time I’ve seen that happen.

“My mom has one of her vases,” Corrinne hisses. “It’s
awesome
.”

My shoulders slouch because I can’t help but assume this means the scholarship will go to someone who works with clay. But I don’t regret doing photographs, because it changed how I saw art. It made me into an active creator rather than someone who just copies what she sees.

“Thank you, Professor Picasso,” Ms. Arden says, looking out at the crowd. “All of the art was impressive both on technical and artistic levels. If this is what these teens can do now, I can’t imagine where they’ll go next—especially if they are afforded a great art education. The recipient of this year’s scholarship was chosen for her ability to capture simple landscapes that we can’t rip our eyes away from. It might be the photographer’s technical facility, but there’s something else, something intangible, going on there within the film that’s so beautiful.”

Corrinne is nudging my ribs so hard that she’s going to leave bruises. “It’s you,” she keeps whispering in my ear. “It’s you.”

I refuse to let myself believe it until Ms. Arden pronounces, “This year’s recipient is Kitsy Kidd for her landscapes of small-town Texas.”

Then I hear applause. People are cheering for me. Corrinne is loudly whistling and hollering on as if we were at a Mockingbird football game rather than in an art gallery. For the first time in my life, it’s not me who’s the cheerleader. Instead I’m the one being cheered for. It feels
really
good to be on the other side.

Awkwardly, I walk to the podium to accept the award from Ms. Arden and shake her hand firmly. “Thanks, y’all,” I say to the crowd, where the anonymous judges must be.

In a blur, a bunch of my classmates come up and congratulate me.

“Where are you going to apply for school?” a girl who wore paint-speckled coveralls nearly every day of class asks me.

“I’m not sure yet,” I say honestly. “I’m keeping my options open.” I have a year to figure out how far or how close I’ll stay to the Spoke. This year, I’m going to focus on working overtime at Sonic so I can buy a camera of my own. All I know is that wherever I am, I want to be doing art.

“Congratulations, Kitsy,” Ford exclaims as he pushes through the crowd and gives me a kiss on the cheek. “I guess this means that you’re going to become a famous photographer, and you’ll be too busy to start Ford and Kitsy.”

“Hey,” I say, giving Ford a pinch on the cheek. “You said it would be Kitsy and Ford. I’ll probably be busy with my photography, but I’m always happy to be a highly paid consultant for whatever fabulous fashion line you start.”

“How about I pay you in clothes?” Ford says.

I reach out my hand so we can shake on it.

“I’m going to look for my family,” Ford says. “So I guess this is good-bye?”

“Never,” I say. “You need my color savvy, and I need your sunnier outlook. Whenever I’m down, I’m going to remember to hear the good stuff, just like you told me.”

“I bid you adieu. Until next time, Kitsy,” Ford says, giving me an air-kiss.

I watch Ford blend into the crowd until I lose sight of him, but I know that, like New York, he’ll be in my future.