Fan Art
Authors: Sarah Tregay
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
Advance Reader’s e-proof
courtesy of
HarperCollins Publishers
This is an advance reader’s e-proof made from digital files of the uncorrected proofs. Readers are reminded that changes may be made prior to publication, including to the type, design, layout, or content, that are not reflected in this e-proof, and that this e-pub may not reflect the final edition. Any material to be quoted or excerpted in a review should be checked against the final published edition. Dates, prices, and manufacturing details are subject to change or cancellation without notice.
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
For art geeks everywhere
Contents
UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE
HarperCollins Publishers
..................................................................
“Nah,” I say about the brunette
at the next table. “Isn’t she more your type?” But the truth is, even though Mason’s my best friend, I don’t know his type. He doesn’t date—he says it’s just asking for drama.
His lip twitches upward as if he’s suppressing the urge to laugh. “What about Juliet Polmanski?” he asks, trudging through the not-very-long list of girls who don’t have dates for prom.
I groan. Juliet is extremely shy—so shy I’ve never heard her say anything but “sorry” and “excuse me.” Prom with Juliet would be one long awkward silence.
Mason pops a ketchup-covered fry in his mouth and scans the cafeteria for another subject while he chews. “I know!” he says. “Lia Marcus. You both do
Gumshoe
so you could talk about literary magazine stuff.”
“I heard she was going to ask Michael Schoenberger,” I say, stealing two fries from Mason’s plate.
“Jamie, every girl without a date is asking the Schnozbooger.”
“Huh?” I ask. Michael Schoenberger isn’t exactly cute—he’s got this, well, huge schnoz. And, for as big as his nose is, he’s always breathing through his mouth like he has a cold.
“He’s safe,” Mason explains. “Safer than asking some guy you have a crush on, right?” He grins, showing me a row of almost-but-not-quite-straight teeth.
“Wait.” I hold up a finger. “What?”
“Come on, Jamie,” Mason says. “Everyone thinks Michael’s gay.”
“Gay?” I echo.
Whoa.
We are not talking about this. Mason and I don’t talk about gay.
Mason shrugs as if it’s no big deal. He picks up the last fry and points it at me. “Michael has a date. I have a date. You, my friend, still need a date.”
“You have a date?” I ask. “Since when?”
“Since I asked Bahti Rajagopolan in physics.”
“Huh?”
“
You’re
the one who wants to go to prom,” he says as if breaking his streak of all studying and no girlfriends was my fault. “So I’m going.”
“Thanks, but I still need find someone to go
with
.” I drop my head into my hands.
“We don’t have to go,” Mason whispers. “We could do something else.”
I look up.
“Like what?”
“I dunno,” he says. “Go to McCall. Stay in Frank’s condo.”
“We never have any fun there,” I say. Frank is my stepfather. He’s taken us to McCall a few times—male bonding and all that—complete with hikes in the woods, canoeing on the lake, and once, fishing. It’s boring. We’d have a much better time at prom.
“Without Frank,” Mason says, and glances down the length of our table to where our friends Brodie and Kellen are sitting.
Now I get it—my stepdad’s condo without my stepdad.
That’s an improvement.
“Maybe invite some of the guys?” he adds, looking hopeful.
“You kidding me?” I ask, knowing our friends. “It’d turn into a total kegger. My parents would flip—” I stop because the spark in Mason’s eyes dims as I speak. “We should go to prom. I mean, Bahti’s counting on you.”
“Yeah, probably,” he says. “She’s cute. Right?”
“Mmhmm,” I say in a noncommittal way. Because none of my memorized hot-girl comments really apply to the third runner-up for valedictorian, Bahti Rajagopolan. She’s Malaysian, with high cheekbones, big brown eyes, and a light-up-the-room smile.
The bell rings, and Mason gives me a questioning
look as if to say,
And?
“Yeah, cute,” I say. “Great smile.”
Mason stands, looking relieved. “You think?”
I nod enthusiastically.
“I love you, man.” Mason whacks me a good one on the shoulder.
I laugh, picking up my tray. He’s not serious. We say it all the time—and not just us. All the guys say it.
It began during my sophomore year, when the goalie of the varsity soccer team died. His name was Jordan Polmanski. He was a senior. I didn’t know him and I hardly knew his sister, Juliet, even though she was in my grade.
He died in a car wreck on Freezeout Hill, a long, boring section of highway that’s icy from Halloween to Easter. That’s when it happened. Easter. Driving home from his aunt and uncle’s house, Jordan rolled his pickup off into the sagebrush. And didn’t survive.
I didn’t go to his funeral. I didn’t have to. It was on the five-o’clock news, and even though I wanted to change the channel, I couldn’t. Someone from my school died.
Died.
So I watched as teary face after teary face—male and female—told the camera “I loved him, man.”
That’s when Jordan’s friends started saying, “I love you, man” to one another. They were seniors, varsity athletes, popular with steady girlfriends—so no one dared
make fun of them. But then other guys started saying it too—juniors and sophomores like me, mostly because we wanted to be like the cool seniors, but also because it felt right. Sure, we weren’t serious—but we were taking back our right to say we care about our friends. After years of tormenting each other about being wusses, pussies, or fags, collectively we said, “Screw it!” We told ourselves it was okay to love our friends—in a teasing, mocking way, of course.
And we owe it all to Jordan Polmanski.
“Hey,” Eden says as I slide into my seat next to hers at a table in the art room. She and I are pretty much friends—we’ve been sitting together all year—but we don’t do stuff outside of school. “You decide on your self-portrait medium yet?”
“Pencil.”
“Pencil? Ms. Maude said no to Photoshop?”
I nod. “It has to be done in a tactile medium.”
“I’m doing pen and ink,” Eden says. “And Chuck Close.”
The assignment was to choose a medium and an artist for inspiration, then draw or paint a self-portrait. And it’s supposed to reveal something about you. At first I thought I wanted to choose a graphic designer for inspiration, but Paul Rand’s poster for the film
No Way Out
was a little too obvious. And I just couldn’t picture myself
on a Toulouse-Lautrec poster. So I was going to do a Norman Rockwell triple self-portrait, until I found this Belgian designer, Maxime Quoilin, who merges two photographs into one, so you see the person’s profile and the front of their face at the same time. I’m pretty sure I’ll be able to BS my way through what this reveals about me—that there are two sides of me or something.
Eden gets out her pad of tracing paper. She pulls a sketch from between the pages and puts it on the table between us. It’s a picture of her, without her glasses, taped over a piece of graph paper, the little squares showing through. Her eyes look huge.
“No glasses?” I ask.
“I hate my glasses,” she says, and tucks a strand of strawberry-blond hair behind her ear.
“So your self-portrait is revealing this fact?”
“No.” She sighs as if I’m stupid. “The grid reveals all the little pieces of me—that I am complex and multifaceted.”
I suppress the urge to laugh. That’s exactly the type of thing Ms. Maude would fall for. I take out my sketches and the photos of myself that I was working from. They’re awful.
Eden turns one sketch right side up. “Very Picasso.”
“I’m not doing Picasso,” I say, even though sometimes I feel a little like his paintings—arms, legs, and thoughts all at weird angles to one another and not quite fitting
into the picture frame.
“Maybe you should,” she says, and giggles.
“Very funny,” I say, because I’m not about to reveal all my feelings for some art class assignment.
After school I plop my stuff on a desk in Dr. Taylor’s classroom for the
Gumshoe
meeting. I say hi to Lia, Holland, and DeMarco while I get out my laptop.
Michael nods at me, smiles.
I think of what Mason said about him at lunch and smile back. Michael may not be model material, but he’s not Frankenstein.
Michael inhales a noisy breath and begins the meeting. “As you all know, the deadline for submissions is Friday—so Jamie will have time to do the layout—but between now and then, we need to encourage people to send stuff in.”
“Our video is running on the announcements for the rest of the week,” DeMarco says, his tall frame slouched low in his chair. He’s one of those black kids everyone thinks should play basketball just because he has to duck through doorframes, only he chose the literary mag and band over sports. Maybe it’s because he and Holland were flirting with each other back in September when he signed up. Now they’re an item. The only junior on staff, he will inherit the literary magazine next year.
“And I’ve got new posters,” I say, passing them
around. They’re green and have an illustration of a detective tiptoeing around a column of type that reads,
Don’t let the
Gumshoe
deadline sneak up on you. Submit your art and writing by Friday.
When I’m finished, Lia pats a ragged stack of papers on her desk. “We’ve got stuff,” she says. “But it’s not gonna win any prizes.”
Gumshoe
won an excellence award last year, the only student literary magazine from Idaho to place. But last year people were excited about it because it had just been resurrected—a victim of budget cuts from a decade ago. This year
Gumshoe
is old news.
Lia starts sorting the pile into art, poetry, and short prose. Since I’m the graphic designer, I get the art. I peer at what’s going into my pile: manga drawing, two landscapes, and a still life of an apple, peacock feathers, and a skateboard—the crap piled up in the art room.
Ugh.
