Boy Proof (19 page)

I park my jacket at the coat check and wobble over to my table. I’m not an expert at walking in heels yet. These aren’t even high, but they’re higher than combat boots and sneakers. I am on a higher plane. They make me walk different. I am taller, and I’m already tall.

The slip of paper the woman gave me says
Table 13.
I scan the crowd for a familiar face. I see Max at the same moment that he sees me. He puts his napkin down and stands up as I approach the table.

“Wow,” Max says. “I almost didn’t recognize you.”

“Is that a compliment?” I ask. I know it is. But I want him to say it.

“Hell, yeah,” Max says.

My hair is growing in, and in general I am less scary looking. But I’m never going to be normal. I’m glad about that.

He moves out from behind his chair and pulls out my seat for me. I feel like a lady.

“Mom,” Max says, pointing to a short spiky-haired, sharp-looking woman with big silver jewelry. “This is Victoria.”

“Hi,” she says. “You’re a legend in the Carter household.”

The Carter family laughs, but no one explains why I’m a legend.

I wonder if Nelly is as much of a legend as I am. I doubt it as I watch Nelly and her parents approach the table. Max does not get up. He does not pull out her chair. He is not sitting next to her. He stays in his seat next to me.

There is something different about Max and Nelly. Maybe they had a fight?

“Hi,” Nelly says, and the inevitable introductions are made.

“Where are your parents?” Nelly asks, calling attention to the empty seat that doesn’t complete our table.

“Yes, I was hoping to meet your mother,” Nelly’s dad says. “I had a poster of her on my wall when I was in college.”

“I move alone,” I say.

“The mechanas can track packs of humans,” Max says, completing the line from
Terminal Earth.

“What are you talking about?” Nelly asks, half-buttered whole-grain roll in her hand. She has to lean across the table to be included. “Are you guys speaking in comic-book code?”

“No, it’s from
Terminal Earth,
” I say.

“Oh, I never saw that movie,” Nelly says. “When I’m an actress, I think I only want to do romantic comedies.”

Max and I give each other a look.

I kick my shoes off under the table. I’m afraid I’m getting a blister from where the new shoe rubs against my foot. I listen to the ebb and flow of conversations. I’m not taking part — not because I’m isolating myself but because I’m listening.

Max makes an emphatic point to his parents about animal research, and his fork flies off the table and onto the floor. We both reach down instinctively to grab it, our heads knocking into each other. While still under the table, beneath the cloth, in our own private world, he takes his hand and touches my head where we have connected. His mouth is so close to me I could kiss it.

His eyes are holding mine. He notices my shoeless foot, and he slips the fingers of his forkless hand down under my toes and squeezes them.

“We’re up,” Max says as the master of ceremonies suddenly calls out our category and announces our names. We emerge from under the table to the sound of applause and are met by Nelly’s angry eyes.

I don’t bother putting my shoes on as we cross between the tables to the podium and receive the medal for our Garbage Art piece.

“Outstanding,” Max says to me.

I’m in the back seat with Max. I have my medal in my goody bag and my leg pressed up against him. Neither of us moves our bodies an inch in either direction. It is amazing how long you can go without even daring to breathe. The energy running between us makes a perfect electric current.

Mr. and Mrs. Carter’s conversation becomes a hum in the front seat. The light from the streetlamps occasionally highlights Max’s face. I steal glances at him. I love his high cheekbones. His awkward nose. The loose strand of hair falling from his ponytail.

I feel Max stealing glances at me. When I look at the floor of the car, I notice his hand perched on the edge of his leg, which is still pressing against mine. I notice the curl of the fingers and how open they are. Welcoming. My hands are in my lap. I can see how easy it would be to put my hand in the curve his thumb and forefinger make. How easy it would be to hold his finger, or lace mine through his. I can see how fun it would be. How meaningful. But I can’t seem to make the jump from my body to his.

What if he didn’t hold my hand back?

Besides, he’s with Nelly. Isn’t he?

“This is my house,” I say, breaking the silence in the back seat. After talking all night, after having so much to say to each other after not having spoken for so long, after monopolizing each other throughout the evening, in the car we didn’t speak at all. “Thanks for the ride home.”

“A pleasure,” Flint Carter says. “And I mean it, come by the editing room anytime.”

“Thanks,” I say. “Bye, Max.”

“Bye,” Max says.

I pause for a second, waiting for something else to follow, but it doesn’t. So I leave the car.

“Wait.” Max runs after me. My heart jumps. Max is running toward me. Then I notice my goody bag is in his hand. “You forgot your medal.”

“Brain freeze, I guess,” I say.

“So you’ll meet me at Pershing Square, for the Frankenfood protest?” Max says.

“Yeah, I’ll look for you, and you look for me.”

He stands there for a minute.

“Nelly and I are over,” Max says. “I just wanted you to know.”

Max shoots his head forward and kisses my cheek roughly with his slightly dry lips.

“See you,” he says. He runs back to the car.

He does see me. Because I’m not invisible anymore.

In my pile of opened mail are three college acceptance envelopes.

Better news than all three of those things put together is the trigonometry exam in my back pocket with the grade of seventy percent and Ms. Weber’s smiley face that says,
Well Done!

But the most outstanding thing of all is the e-mail from my dad’s travel agent with my confirmed flight itinerary for Poland.

I, Victoria Jurgen, am going to be a Vampire and Bat Wing Apprentice.

It takes a lot of yarn to make a broccoli headdress. On the flyer for the Frankenfood protest march, it said to come dressed as a genetically modified food item. I have chosen to present myself as Franken-broccoli.

This time, going downtown, I know exactly which bus to take. I hop on the number 14, glaring at everyone who stares at me with my painted green face and my broccoli statement. I look around the bus, imagining which vegetable each person looks like most. I do this by taking the lines of their face and imagining how I would extend them and mold them.

There is a tomato in the back seat, a radish by the back door, and a yellow squash next to a spinach leaf by the window. I amuse myself with this until it’s my stop.

There is a large crowd of people assembling at Pershing Square. There are signs. Singing and music greet me. I begin to feel like an idiot for coming here by myself and not trying to hook up with Max earlier. I wonder if I’ll see him on the long walk to the convention center.

A guy with a large puppet dressed up as a corporate office drone with wads of toilet-paper dollars flowing out of its felt pockets says hello to me.

I don’t see Max.

“Where do I go?” I ask a girl with rings and widening earlobe holes and more tattoos than skin.

“Oh, you look great!” she says, and points me over to the table where other demonstrators are.

There are many more people there than I imagined. I get lots of compliments on my broccoli outfit.

A horn sounds and we begin to march.

The walking is slow. The chanting is loud.

“Do we want fish genes in our spinach!”

“No!”

“Do we want frogs in our carrots?”

“No!”

As we are walking, chanting, and singing, I keep scanning the crowd for Max. But after a bit, I get over it because the protest is exciting. It’s important. I am singing. I am broccoli.

We arrive at the convention center — firm, proud, together. People are giving impassioned speeches. In the distance a drum circle is beginning. There are stands of organically grown vegetables.

Hungry, I make my way over to one of the stands and get an organic veggie wrap. That’s when it happens. I feel a vacuum of silence. And then drops of water begin to rain down on me. I know something bad is happening. That’s when the roar begins.

“You need to clear this area,” a bullhorn blares. I turn around and I see the police horses and riot gear.

“What’s happening?” I ask the person next to me.

“I guess there’s trouble,” she says. “Better try to get out of here.”

Like a distant hum, the police begin to move in, sprays of water arcing above the crowd. People are pushing to get out.

I feel paralyzed. It seems wrong to run. It seems more sane to stand my ground. Like Dad says, Document, document, document. I pull my camera out and begin snapping pictures.

I am still standing there snapping away as the people — scared, crying, wet — push by me.

“Egg!”

“Max!” I say, following him down an alley. He pushes me into a doorway. We peer out and see the crowds running by.

“What’s happening?” I ask.

“Somebody threw a bunch of rotten vegetables at some scientists entering the convention center,” Max says. “The police decided to break up the protest.”

“It was so strange. The silence, right before everything went haywire,” I say.

Max finally takes a good look at me in my outfit and laughs. “Egg, are you in there?”

“Egg is gone. It’s just me,” I say. “Victoria.”

The shouting just outside the alleyway begins to subside. The only sound I can hear is the beating of my heart.

“You okay?” Max asks.

“I’m a fighter,” I say.

It’s something that I always said because Egg said it, but now I say it because I mean it. I am a fighter.

“I think it’s safe now,” Max says.

We emerge into the empty, trashed remnants of the protest. I start snapping pictures. The wet, running poster board. The spoiled food. The cops.

“You can’t be here, kids,” a burly officer says to us. “We’re clearing the area. Go home.”

“I’m with the press,” I say.

“Let’s see some ID,” he says.

Max and I pull out our
Melrose Lion
press cards and show them to him along with our student IDs.

“Freedom of the press,” I say.

Max gives me the thumbs up.

The police officer turns his back to us and moves along to help another officer.

“Let’s head toward the subway,” I say. “We can go to Hollywood and Highland and maybe catch a movie?”

“Cool,” Max says.

We head toward the nearest subway stop.

“Hey, I got into my first-choice college,” Max says. “I’m going to go to the Chicago Art Institute. And I’m going to submit my graphic novel to this new comic-book company. They’re looking for new stuff.”

Here amongst the ruins of the day, there is still time for casual conversation. It’s funny. Real life, just like in all those post-apocalyptic stories, goes on.

I put my hands to my head and feel my broccoli headdress.