Fans of the Impossible Life (4 page)

UNCORRECTED E-PROOF—NOT FOR SALE

HarperCollins Publishers

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Two weeks into the school year Peter decided that he wasn't going to let me get away with never talking to anyone.

I had been spending my lunch periods in his office, balancing the contents of whatever food Dave had packed for me on my sketchbook while I pored over an art book from the library. It was the best part of my day. The only interruption was the occasional student looking for Peter's attention with the excuse of talking about a paper or an extra-credit project.

Peter was the most adored teacher at St. Francis, at least ten years younger than any of the others and the only one who had his students call him by his first name. A long face and dusty-brown hair topped a body that moved with a kind of loping confidence through the halls, upright enough to inspire authority but casual. Accessible.

If I was sitting alone in Peter's office when another student came in they would eye me jealously, wondering why I thought
I could be so familiar with his space. Then they would remember, and a look of discomfort or pity would move across their face like a cloud, and I would turn back to my sketchbook and let them leave.

On this day I headed to his office as soon as the bell rang for lunch. His door was open as usual, and I dropped my things on the floor and made myself comfortable, pulling a cookie that Dave had packed up for me that morning out of my pocket and eating it, crumbs spilling onto the book of Impressionist paintings that the library had just gotten in.

“Jeremy, my man.” Peter came in behind me, tossing his lunch bag on the desk. “How goes it?”

“Fine,” I said, attempting to gather up the cookie crumbs.

“Mind if I join you?” he said, sitting down on the other side of the desk.

“It's your office,” I said.

“I'm glad you're here. I wanted to show you something.” He grabbed a piece of paper off the shelf behind him and held it up in front of my face.

“New club registration,” I read.

“They're looking to fill out the after-school club roster, and I thought that you might be interested in starting an art club.”

“Me?”

He laid the piece of paper down on top of my open book.

“Maybe something for the students who want more time in the studio than they get in class.”

It was true that the actual studio art class was mostly useless.
An artistically frustrated former painter had been drafted into teaching the same perspective drawing lessons and color-wheel combinations over and over. I would try to finish up any assignments as quickly as I could so I could get back to the sketching that I had been doing all day anyway.

“You think the school would let us have extra studio time?”

“If it was for a club, I'm sure they would.”

I picked up the paper and examined it. Half of it was lines for signatures and email addresses to list other students who might be interested in joining.

“And you want me to start it?”

“Just get any ten student signatures and you've got yourself a club. I'll be your advisor.”

I could feel my hands start to sweat as I stared at those lines. Ten people. I hadn't even talked to ten people in the past week.

“It would be great for your college application too,” Peter said. “Starting a club shows a lot of initiative.” He dumped the contents of his lunch bag out and started unwrapping a tuna-fish sandwich.

“But I don't have a lot of initiative,” I said.

“Listen, I know you would love to get more time in the studio, and if it means taking on a small leadership role to get it, then that's the price of admission.”

“You're just trying to get me to talk to people, aren't you?”

He smiled and took a bite of his sandwich, sat back in his chair, and looked at me while he chewed.

“I'm being set up,” I said.

“Just get ten signatures and we'll go from there,” he said. “I promise it won't hurt.”

“Easy for you to say,” I said, shoving the paper into the back of my sketchbook.

“It wasn't easy for me to say, I have a mouth full of tuna fish.”

I did have friends before everything that happened. Or at least I had people that I talked to. There was Simon, the sci-fi obsessive and chess player from middle school who moved away after eighth grade. And Ahmed, newly made captain of the math team who now hung out exclusively with the other math team members. But that was all before last spring. And now I couldn't even think of ten people who would sign a stupid piece of paper for me.

I sat in Peter's English class that day staring at the sign-up sheet, compulsively pulling it halfway out from the spot in my sketchbook where I had stashed it, then pushing it back.

Peter's class was mostly sophomores like me, kids who had been indoctrinated into the cult of Peter the previous year and were now back for more. Almost everyone spoke up in class, wanting desperately to say something smart to impress him. The most aggravating of the Peter kiss-ups was a girl named Talia, who always got to class early to make sure that she got the seat directly to his right at the large round table that Peter preferred for his classroom. She was tiny with a commanding
voice and white-blond hair that she wore in a conservative braid down her back.

On this day Talia was lecturing us about the fact that you couldn't read Kurt Vonnegut's
Slaughterhouse-Five
, the book we had been assigned over the summer, without reading William Faulkner's
The Sound and the Fury
. Peter, who seemed perpetually amused by his students, was the only one listening to her.

“You can't really understand Vonnegut without knowing the reference,” she was saying.

Talia and I were both St. Francis lifers. We tended to be an awkward species. Lifers started St. F in kindergarten at the lower school building, moving across town as they progressed to the middle school and finally high school. After ten years together in an institution this small we all knew far too much about each other. A claustrophobia had set in somewhere around third grade that was proving to be difficult to shake.

So when someone new came into this world of preordained power structures, someone who looked like they might understand a certain kind of emptiness, you might notice her. Or I might. I noticed her.

“Mira.” She said her name on the first day of class when we went around the table to introduce ourselves. Her curly hair was tied up in a ribbon, her silver-painted fingernails tapped absently on the table.

I was so desperate not to look into familiar faces that I often found myself focusing on her. The back of her head in my history class in the morning. Her sitting across from me in Peter's
class in the afternoon, her curls making progress in their mission to escape order as the day went on. She was the only other person who was as quiet as I was. While I sat there drawing, she often not-so-subtly worked on homework for her other classes. An open algebra textbook in front of her was only half concealed by her English notebook.

I had seen her after school too, always running down the hill to meet a lanky boy in street clothes who waited for her on the bench every day. The afternoon sunlight would shine on his blond hair, giving him a backlit halo.

Now I was sketching in between sneaking glances at the sign-up sheet, hoping that each time I pushed it back into my sketchbook it would disappear forever. An image of myself sitting alone in the art studio flashed through my mind. Would they let me have a club for only one person?

Talia was still insisting that “it's a direct literary inspiration,” when I looked up from my sketchbook and saw Mira looking at me, or at least at the space that I happened to be occupying. She didn't seem to really be looking at anything. But then I was looking at her looking at me. It took a minute before her eyes registered our accidental crossing of planes of vision. I felt myself freeze in embarrassment. But then she smiled, tilted her head toward Talia, who was somehow still talking, and rolled her eyes. I laughed, more out of shock that she had noticed me than anything else, that someone would make a joke for my benefit. The girl next to me glared at my drawing and Mira's blatantly open algebra textbook. Mira smiled and went
back to her homework.

The final period of that day was interminable because I had decided that I was going to ask Mira to sign the Art Club sheet.

My last class was in the first-floor biology lab and it provided an excellent view of the parking lot where some of the seniors, who had the privilege of arranging their schedules, had managed to get themselves a study hall for their final period. Teachers in final-period study halls were notoriously willing to let students leave early, since it meant they could leave early too. A moment of truth, that none of us wanted to be stuck in that building anymore.

It was fifty minutes of fruit-fly lecturing before I could bolt out of the classroom, grab my jacket and backpack from my locker, and push my way through the throngs of kids bottlenecking at the front door, out into the welcoming afternoon air. I was standing with the form in my hand, trying to search with my eyes through the groups of kids pouring out of the building. I didn't see her. The bench at the bottom of the hill was empty.

I looked down at the piece of paper in my hand. Why did I think she would sign it? Because she was new? She didn't know any better? Did I think that she hadn't gotten the message yet that I was invisible?

I had taken my backpack off my back and unzipped it to shove the form inside when she walked past me, her uniform kilt passing close to my face. I looked up to see her unmistakable
messy bun, secured with a purple ribbon today, and matching purple lipstick.

“Mira!” I was still crouched over my backpack.

She turned to look at me.

“Yeah?” she said.

“Um, it is Mira, right?” I said, standing up.

“Yup.”

“I'm Jeremy, from your English class.”

“Yeah. I know. What's up?”

“Oh, uh, I'm . . . getting signatures to start a new club. It's an art club. Just for anyone who wants to have some extra time in the art studio after school. I need ten signatures and I was wondering if you might, uh, if you want to . . . sign up?”

I pulled the form back out of my bag and held it up like a shield in front of me.

“I don't take art,” she said.

“That's okay. You don't have to actually be in the club. I just need signatures from any ten students.”

Mira took the piece of paper from me.

“Do you have a pen?”

I produced one from my shirt pocket. Was this really working? All I had to do was ask?

“You need my email too?”

I looked at the form as if I hadn't been studying it nonstop for the past three hours. “Yeah. I guess so. Then I can just email anyone who signs it and let them know if it's happening.”

She took the pen and paper and tried to balance it on her
other hand to write.

“Oh, here.” I pulled a book out of my backpack and held it out for her to lean on.

She signed the page, wrote her email, and then took the book from me, handing back the paper.

“What is this?” she asked, opening the cover. It was a book of work by my favorite artist, Nick Cave, a birthday present from my dad and Dave.

“Oh, he's an artist. He makes these crazy costumes.”

She was flipping past images of people covered head to toe in plush toys and colorful fringe.

“That one's my favorite,” I said, pointing to a photograph of a small stick creature peering out from the cave of his own body, his face obscured in the blackness of the wooden cocoon.

She examined the picture for a minute, then closed the book and handed it back to me.

“So are we going to make stuff like that in this club?” she asked.

“Just whatever we want, I guess.” I leaned over to put the book and signup sheet back in my bag.

“Cool. Thanks for asking me.”

I looked up at her, sure that this must be sarcastic, but she was smiling, as if we were sharing a joke that I just hadn't figured out yet.

Suddenly the boy from the bench was behind her, grabbing her around the waist and picking her up.

“Do I have to carry you to the mall, woman?” he yelled.
“What could possibly be taking so long?”

“Put me down, evil she-beast!” she cried, attempting to kick him. He let her go, laughing.

“This nice young man is asking me to join his secret society.” Mira pointed at me. “These things can't be rushed.”

“Oh, in that case.” The boy turned to me and held out a hand. “Sebastian Tate. Sebby. If you're starting a secret society, you're definitely going to want me to be your secretary.”

“He's got the outfit for it,” Mira said.

“Oh, I . . . it's a school club,” I said. I felt as if a tornado had descended on me. The air around me seemed to be spinning.

Sebby turned to Mira. “What's his name?”

“Jeremy.” She was still smiling in that way that was trying to assure me that this was not at my expense.

Sebby turned back to me. He grabbed my hand. “Jeremy, I am coming to your club, okay? This is for your own good. When is it?”

“It doesn't exist yet,” I said. I could feel my hand getting hot.

“You'll tell Mira the minute that you know.”

I nodded, mildly terrified.

“What do we do in this club?” he asked.

“Art,” I said. “It's an art club.”

“Fantastic. I love art.”

“Sebby, come on,” Mira said. “Release the poor boy. We've got places to be.”

He smiled at me, raised my hand to his lips and kissed it, then let it go.

“Released,” he said.

Mira was already halfway down the hill.

“See you later, Jeremy,” she called back.