Drawing Amanda (2 page)

“You can thank me later.” Rungs pressed down hard as he wrote down a URL for the test site and a login password.

“Hey, careful. You’ll break the nib,” Inky said.

Rungs ripped out the piece of paper and handed it to Inky. “GTBOS, my friend. Glad to be of service.” Rungs returned the pen to Inky.

He stood up and returned the notebook to the girl, bowing as he put it on the table. She glowered at Rungs, then Inky, and then her notebook. She reminded Inky of Picasso’s girl with a ponytail. Her look was muse-worthy; her face had depth, beauty and imperfections. Her gaze made Inky think of light streaming through a window crack.

“Thanks. It’ll come back to you,” Rungs said to her in a way that sounded like a promise or an omen.

Chapter 2

Inky Signs On

H
OMEWORK ON THE FIRST DAY
should be against the law, Inky thought, as the books in his backpack bounced against his spine on his walk home. The big tree outside his building cast a long shadow; the few fallen leaves were like an orange arrow pointing home.

Inky climbed the stairs to his apartment. Inside it was dark and had a musty smell that was comfortingly familiar. He tossed the mail on the living room chair, releasing dust particles that danced in the light leaking through the venetian blinds.

In the narrow hallway, Inky’s backpack snagged on the black nylon fabric that was stretched over the hall mirror. Behind the fabric he could just make out the pattern of its richly-carved wood frame—a souvenir from his father’s trip to Sri Lanka. Inky pictured the cinnamon wood he could not see and headed to the back of the apartment where his room and his father’s study overlooked the street.

Inky had to be careful not to bump his head on the loft bed above his desk. An old photograph of himself was taped to a narrow slab of fake stone, a discarded kitchen counter that Inky and his father had found on the street. It sat on two sawhorses and doubled as a drafting table. The space was fine when he was young, but now that he was fourteen, it felt cramped. He threw his books on the faded blue carpeting, even though it would have been easier to use the big desk in his father’s study.

The study was just as his father had left it before his last trip; they’d barely dared to disturb the dust.

Although they’d never been very religious, when the rabbi gave them instructions after the funeral, Inky and his mother took the words almost literally. During
shiva
, the Jewish period of mourning, all mirrors in the house are covered and mourners don’t get haircuts or wear new or freshly laundered clothes.

Neither Inky nor his mother had felt much like cleaning after the
shiva
period was over. Soon they were moving things only when they absolutely had to, sweeping merely as a distraction from grief. A year and a half later, the house was unkempt by habit, like one of those sorry ladies in sweatpants you see at the supermarket. When Inky passed the deli down the street, sometimes he’d smell the bleach they tossed on the sidewalk. It smelled sweet to him. His father had been the tidy one.

Shiva,
the Hebrew word for seven, lasts for a week, the rabbi had told them. Then the candle is blown out, the mirrors uncovered, the shades raised. The mourners take a walk around the block, a symbolic step back into the world, into the light.

But Inky’s house was still dark.

He parted the curtain to the lair underneath his bed and bent his head. Unlike last year when he couldn’t and didn’t concentrate on his work, this year he’d sworn he’d try. He wished he was in the same core class as Rungs, but at least he was not with Sven and Demos from the soccer team.

Inky logged on to his computer to see his social studies assignment. He skimmed the type-dense paragraphs his teacher had posted about the importance of social anthropology. The teacher, trying to be hip, suggested they look at their Facebook pages to see the structure of their “tribes.” So much for fresh starts. He’d abandoned his page last year.

At least he knew he wanted to be an artist, and maybe he didn’t need a specialized art school to get there. He pulled out the paper Rungs had given him in the cafeteria that morning and typed in the URL and password.

“Welcome to Megaland” resolved across the top of his screen. He liked the chubby type and neon colors. A second later a text line appeared under the neon logo: “Megaland: Become your Dream.”

Sure hope so, he thought. A box appeared at the bottom of the screen. “Click to get started.”

Inky filled out the sign-in screen. He even created a username, “Picasso2B,” the name he used for most sites he visited. A chat box opened on the side.

Megaland:
Hello, Picasso2B. Glad to meet you. Megaland will be a game unlike any other, and we’re recruiting a core group of special, talented kids to help get it off the ground. Depending on your interests, you can help build scenarios or design beta game modules. Does that sound good to you?

It sure sounded better than doing homework.

Picasso2B:
yes

Megaland:
Excellent. So let’s find out how you’ll fit in. A placement survey will pop up on your screen asking you about yourself. Here’s me: I was super successful in the music biz. Had a stretch of downtime and got into programming. Now I’m gonna use those skills to create a new breed of game. And you might be one of the ones to help. On the form, tell me what games you’re into, your interests and hobbies, the usual stuff.

Inky clicked through the questions. For interests, he typed “design.” The questions about games were interactive.

Megaland
: Name a favorite game

Picasso2B:
video phone or computer?

Megaland
: Computer.

Picasso2B:
last yr I got back into Spore

Megaland
: What drew you to the game?

That was easy—the logline on the box: “Tired of your planet? Build a new one.”

Picasso2B:
IDK, the advertising I guess

Megaland
: What kept you coming back?

Inky loved designing those multi-eyed, gaudy-colored creatures. Their internecine battles had helped to keep the bright hot colors of loss out of his head, at least for a little while.

Picasso2B:
The Creature Creator is way cool, especially the animation. Plus it keeps my mind off stuff.

There were more questions—a little annoying, but Rungs said this was a start-up, so it made sense that a cutting-edge game developer would do his research.

Megaland
: Ok. Let’s switch gears. Describe yourself. What are your best features or what would someone notice about you?

He couldn’t quite say. After a year of the mirrors covered in black cloth, he’d gotten out of the habit of looking or caring. Every so often his mother would come out of her haze of distraction and look his way, as if seeing him for the first time. She’d gasp like she’d seen a ghost, and he knew it was because he resembled his father.

Megaland
: Please complete each question.

The cursor blinked, wanting more. So Inky typed in the facts.

Picasso2B:
tall, light-skinned

He hit return hoping to move on to the next question, but nothing happened.

Megaland:
Please provide a complete description before moving on to the next question.

Harsh, Inky thought. He added something he knew people noticed.

Picasso2B:
long brown hair

Megaland
: What else?

Picasso2B:
gray eyes

Megaland:
Slim, chunky, athletic?

Picasso2B:
not fat, not thin, Y?

Megaland
: So we can create your avatar

The cursor blinked. Inky felt tempted to hit escape and sign off, to abandon this like he abandoned everything last year. He thought of what Rungs had said. Having his artwork used in a game could be his big break. And what better way than to get in at the beginning?

The cursor blinked again. Inky thought of it as an arrow pointing him on a new path.

Picasso2B:
Can I make my own?

Chapter 3

Amanda in the Glass Tower

A
MANDA’S ROOM WAS LIKE ALL
the other rooms of the apartment, cold and rectangular with too much glass. It made her think of the fish tanks she saw everywhere when they’d lived in Laos. There it meant good luck. And here? All the glass meant was that the building was too new to have a past.

One whole wall was dominated by a glass window. Most of her stuff was still in boxes stacked against the stark white wall by the closet. She’d unpacked some of her treasures and put them on top of the bright white dresser. Her mother loved white. So crisp, so clean, she’d say. You’d think she was a nurse, but really she just liked to be the most colorful thing in the room.

On the center of her dresser was her wooden game of Go, with the points of the star filled with multicolored glass marbles. She could see a different world in each one. Next to it was a wooden monkey on a string from the market in Nairobi. Wind-up toys from her father’s trips were grouped on the side. The gorilla made a crunchy sound when she wound it up. It spit little sparks of simulated fire as it marched. She wound a little white mouse with ballet-pink ears and sent it scurrying across the dresser. It made her feel better, but not much, not when her brothers weren’t around to play along.

Amanda had been dreading the first day of school and the questions people would ask. “Where are you from? Where have you lived?” She knew where she was born—her mother’s native Venezuela, the year after the mudslides. But that was hardly where she was
from
; they’d stayed for less than a year. Besides, when someone asked where you were from, they were really asking where you belonged.

She’d rather not have to say anything at all. Shyness was her response to life as a modern nomad. Her father’s work with the World Assistance Agency meant that they’d moved every couple of years. As he rose through the organization, he’d chased disasters in Central America; tsunamis in Thailand, Laos and Indonesia; and revolutions in African countries that had since changed their names. He’d been everywhere saving the world. Amanda and her two older brothers, Derek and Kevin, attended the international schools in those places, shielded from it all—in the world, but not of it. Always there was a big house and “help”—a cook, a maid, a driver and security. Always the same. Always different. Always new people to meet. Amanda never got any better at it.

She’d never really had to before, because she had always had her brothers. If she belonged anywhere, she belonged with them, belonged to the elaborate fantasy worlds they’d created for themselves. But this year Derek was in college at Tufts and Kevin was at a Swiss boarding school.

That morning all the new students were asked to stand up in the auditorium and tell where they were from. Amanda had tried Derek’s line: “I’m a citizen of the world.” It used to work for him because he had their mother’s easy, confident smile and a way of flipping his straight black hair away from his face that highlighted his good looks. It did not work for Amanda, who lacked the flair of self-confidence, and her crazycurl hair was anything but tame.

She was intimidated by being in a grade with a hundred-plus students. Her last school had fifty kids in all the grades combined. Derek’s line fell flat and everyone laughed, and not in a nice way.

The principal, Elsbet Harooni, a middle-aged, fair-haired, pixie-like woman who was smaller than many of the students, said, “You’ll find we all are citizens of the world at the Metropolitan Diplomatic Academy.” She held the podium with her bony fingers and looked at Amanda. The auditorium was uncomfortably silent. Thinking back, Amanda realized the principal must have been waiting for her to say something. But she did not. “Well, Amanda Valdez Bates, we hope you’ll call this home.”

Ha. This was the coldest place she’d been to yet, and she’d been to Iceland in the winter. The principal’s remark made her miss her brothers more than ever. They would have nixed her mother’s choice for what to wear on the first day of school to a school where uniforms were not required. Her outfit was all wrong. Only the attendance lady in the main office was dressed in the same magazine chic as Amanda, in a short black skirt and designer white blouse.

“Sacred Circle in the house,” a group of girls had said in “core” class, which seemed to replace homeroom at this school. The Sacred Circle girls were dressed in black leggings cut off at the ankles, topped with long, bright or floral oversized shirts, and wore grungy white sneakers covered with magic-markered names and drawings.

“And what do we have here? Hello,” said Ellen Monahan, the prototypically-American girl who sat in the row next to Amanda, in a super nasty voice.

One of the other girls touched Amanda’s shirt. “Hello dorky white shirt. This is Upper School. Um, we’re fourteen now,” the girl said too loudly.

They sure didn’t talk like that at the Nairobi International School.

Not that coming home was any better. Her mother was giving instructions to the new housekeeper. She was polite, but Amanda heard an edge in her voice, which usually meant her father was having dinner guests.

“Amanda dear, how was school? They loved the skirt, yes? My sophisticated little lady.”

Amanda’s mother shook her perfectly curled black hair, and hurried Amanda down the hall, her spiky heels clicking on the bare floor. “Shower and dress for dinner, before your homework. You have homework, yes? Your father invited some Foundation people over. Big donors to the water initiative, someone behind a new hospital in Haiti, and, and it’s exciting to be in New York, no?”

Amanda stifled the urge to say “really” in that sarcastic way she’d heard in school.

At dinner Amanda watched her father as she would an actor—so funny, so polite, cheerfully holding court. She hardly recognized him as the daddy who would bring home wounded animals and get down in the mud to work with the disaster relief crews he supervised. Now he was the boss of the agency, and the main part of his job was to talk to rich people to get them to pay for all the agency’s save-the-world plans. He seemed to enjoy it.