How to Be Brave (14 page)

Ah, that old Marquez. He's a laugh a minute.

I shuffle through my backpack to dig out my paper. We were assigned a one-page proposal previewing our chosen artist and our motivation for choosing him or her for our midyear project. Today, we're meeting with Marquez individually to get approval. I've titled my project “Parallel Uplifts: An Exploration of Lee Mullican, California Painter.” I printed out copies of a few of his paintings, in case Marquez isn't familiar. I don't expect that he is. My mom always talked about how he was one of the most underrated painters of the twentieth century. She thought it was a crime that no one, except for the art historians on the West Coast, had heard of him.

“You will all work on your sketches or paintings—or whatever you want, really, your math homework, your dating schedule, your nails—while I meet with you individually.”

Marquez calls people up one by one. He starts with Eddie Yang. Because our names both start with A, Daniel and I are going to be last up. Marquez's sole purpose in life is to do things opposite of their normal order, even the alphabet.

My sketchbook is pretty full, so I spend half the class drawing in whatever empty spaces I can find and half the time working on my chemistry homework, which is like trying to learn Mandarin. I've never been so close to failing a class before, but chemistry seems to be my Achilles' heel. Oxidation numbers and covalent bonds and complex ions. And crazy Zittel yelling at us if we walk behind his desk (“Do not invade my van der Waals space!”). When will I ever have to use this shit in my life?

I bet Daniel is good at chemistry. He'll have to use it. I glance over at him. He's busily painting at his desk (he creates these sorts of geometric mountain landscapes, and he's pretty good at them). I should just go over there and ask him for help.

And I'm about to, but Marquez yells out, “Mr. Antell, come on up! You're the next contestant on
The Price Is Right
!”

That's weird. I should be next. Working from the bottom up, Askeridis should be before Antell. I wonder why Marquez skipped me.

Daniel sets down his paintbrush, picks up his paper, and heads to the front of the classroom. I overhear them talking about Paul Cézanne, Daniel's chosen artist. I should have guessed from his stuff that he would choose a post-impressionist. Makes sense.

They're chatting and laughing and getting all chummy-chummy. I look at the clock. Only three minutes left until the bell. I guess I won't have time to meet with Marquez today. Sucks. I was actually looking forward to hearing his opinion.

Daniel gets the thumbs-up from Marquez and goes back to his seat.

The bell rings. Marquez turns his head toward me, winks, and points his index finger, like he's looking down the barrel of a gun. “I have not forgotten about you, Miss Askeridis. I'd like you to stay for a few minutes, if you can.”

My heart drops. Shit. Am I in trouble? I've been trying not to miss his class. Why does he want to talk to me?

Everyone packs up around me and disperses out the door. I take my stuff over by Marquez's desk and sit down. As Daniel passes by me, he presses my shoulder
again
(siiigh) and whispers, “Good luck!”

“Thanks,” I say. Dear Lord, I think I need it. I'm about to get busted for all the cutting.

Then Daniel adds, “Don't forget about Saturday!”

Yes!
Zero to eighty in 8.2 seconds. How is it humanly possible to be simultaneously terrified of the imminent consequences about to be imparted by an angry teacher and elated to the point of dizziness?

“I'm tying a ribbon around my finger so as not to forget,” I muster like a total dork. A ribbon? Around my finger? Liss is right. I am eighty.

“Great,” he says as he follows the last few students filing out the door.

Holy hell. I'm a wreck. I'm shaking with dread and excitement and nervousness.

I place my paper on Marquez's desk, but he doesn't sit down. Instead, he picks up his keys and says, “I'd like to walk with you for a few minutes, if we can, Georgia.”

“Um, okay.”

“I want to talk to you in private, but we're not allowed to meet with students alone in our classrooms—lawsuits and such, you know.”

“Oh, right.”

“I thought we could go out to a bench and talk about your art.”

My art? What art? My feeble attempts at creative expression? And he
doesn't
want to talk about my delinquency?

“Sure.” I shrug. It's like forty degrees out, but what do I know? I pick up my paper, zip up my coat, and put on my hood.

He locks up, and we head outside.

It's only been a few minutes since the last bell of the day, but already the campus has emptied out. The winter cold makes people disappear.

We sit on a bench right outside the front door.

“Show me what you got.” Up close, I can see that Marquez is older than I ever realized before. He smells old, too—not a bad old, just like aftershave and oranges. He kind of smells like my dad.

I hand him my paper. “Lee Mullican,” I say.

“Yeah? Of the Dynaton movement?” Whoa, he knows exactly who he is. My mom would have loved Mr. Marquez. “Well, that's obscure. Why, may I ask?”

“Well…” I fumble, “he was one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, and yet one of the most undervalued.”

“How exactly did you hear about him?”

“Oh, my mom was a huge fan,” I say. “She wrote her graduate thesis on him.”

“Ah…”

“Yeah, and I always liked his stuff okay, but I never really understood why she loved him so much. So I'd like to use this assignment to figure it out.”

“I see.” Marquez is half skimming my paper, half listening to me. Then he puts down the paper and turns to me. “Look. I said I wanted to talk to you about your art. Here it is: You're good. Very good.”

Say what now?

“Out of the one hundred and fifty students that pass in and out of my classroom each year, I see about a dozen or so truly talented ones. But usually, I only see one or two each year who have the gift. This year, I see it in you.”

“What gift, exactly?”

“You are an artist. Sure, you have a lot of work ahead of you, but you have what I can't teach: vision and clarity and depth. You say something with your work.”

“I do?”

“And better yet, you don't even know it.” He shakes his head. “I love it.”

Well, this came out of left field. A) Marquez is not being sarcastic and snarky for once, and B) he's telling me I'm good at something. Like, for real.

“Thank you, Mr. Marquez,” I say. I'm stumped for more words. I wish my mom were alive so I could tell her. I'm finally doing what she wanted.

“I'm worried, though, that you might lose yourself in this project. It sounds like Lee Mullican was your mother's muse. I don't want you to get consumed by her artist.”

Wait, what?

“You can focus on his art, if you want.” He shrugs. “Just be careful not to lose sight of yours.”

Ouch. That's kind of harsh. As though I can't have my own voice and do this, too? I mean, I was never planning on losing myself in anything.

But all in all, I still have to say, cordial Marquez is much more pleasant than caustic Marquez.

“Also, stop skipping class. You're too much of a good kid to be a loser.”

Ah, there it is.

“Now, go home, warm up, and keep sketching. I expect to see great things.”

He stands up, shakes my hand, and walks back inside.

I sit there a while in the cold, thinking about what he said.

I'm well on my way to crossing off #6. Learn how to draw, like Mom.

I don't care if he thinks I might “lose sight” of my art.

I know this, for sure: She would have been so happy.

 

10

Avery Trenholm's party is the exact opposite of what I thought it would be. Liss said it was invite only, but I thought that was just a guise for it being open to everyone except dorks, nerdherds, emos, and wannabes, and that the party would be a swollen mass of drunken seniors guzzling kegs upside down and writhing to some lame-ass house music or some such scene. As it turns out, it actually was invite only, and there are only about fifteen people here, who are all just huddled quietly in the candlelit living room, sipping on something they're calling Jungle Juice. I think it's a mix of Kool-Aid and vodka with frozen fruit in it. How very classy.

Everything about her house is catalog perfect. Gray walls. Sleek gray leather couches. Odd table-side sculptures of human forms. Over the gray marble fireplace, artsy black-and-white photos of unnamed skyscrapers are juxtaposed next to equally artsy black-and-white photos of Avery when she was a kid, five years old maybe, and then in middle school, and then last year the whole family, her wide, smiling face sandwiched between her mother and father, all three faces monopolizing the frame.

She's got the fireplace lit, snow is falling outside, and this dim winter's evening, everyone I've known since the first grade suddenly looks so adult. Maybe it's just that I haven't really spoken to any of them since we were twelve. I swear it was only yesterday that we were all wearing pigtails and swapping friendship bracelets. I don't know where time went.

I also don't know how Liss convinced Avery to include Evelyn and me on this Very Exclusive List even though I couldn't be included on the cheer squad; but we're here, and I think I might be having some sort of out-of-body experience.

First of all, Avery Trenholm is being nice to me. When I first walked in, she gave me a hug. It was the World's Most Awkward Hug, but still she reached her arms out and wrapped them around my neck for a good half second. She smelled like a mix of vanilla and Jungle Juice, so I could probably just credit her sudden familiarity to the fact that she was inebriated and didn't know who I was. And now she's laughing and smiling at me like I'm actually part of the group. Chloe, too. Then again, I think I've been too hard on Chloe. She was never really that mean to me. And actually, a few of the cheer girls are here and they've all acknowledged my existence in one form or another (while all year I've been another body in the hallway). I keep sort of looking over my shoulder because I think they must be looking at someone behind me, but they're not.

And I'm drinking, too, which is a first for me. Of course, I've consumed plenty of Evelyn's special brownies, which always lead to a weird combination of elation and hallucination, but beyond the random sips of wine and ouzo (blech) my dad has given me (“She should know what it tastes like”), I've never been drunk, and I've never had more than maybe an ounce of any kind of alcohol. It's different, this sensation of drinking—I'm just calm, and my bones feel heavy, like they're filled with water. And I'm only on my second glass of their Kool-Aid creation.

There's also the additional fact that Daniel's here. And he's sitting on the leather couch right next to me. We're so close, our arms are touching. I can feel his skin against mine, his muscles, his every little shift and laugh. Everyone's talking and laughing around us, but I hardly hear any of it. I'm in this long tunnel where everything is dark and relaxed and happy and all I see at the end of it is Daniel Antell.

I look up at him.

“Hey,” I say.

“Hey.” He smiles.

“How are you?” I ask.

“Pretty good,” he says. “Pretty good. Glad to be here, I guess.”

But then that's it. He doesn't ask how I am or say anything else to me. Five days ago, he was all excited about “hanging out” with me at this party, and now here we are, and he's not saying more than ten words.

Don't think, Georgia. Just drink.

I take a sip of juice and look over at Liss. She's sitting next to Gregg and she looks pretty happy, too—her face is all red and shiny. She told me on the way here that she's been practicing her tribal moves for later. Tonight's the night. Actually, in like an hour, I guess. She's planning on sneaking out after the socializing calms down so they can go back to his place and do
it
. Crazy. She's really going to have sex with Gregg. She's going to take this giant leap into adulthood and sexuality and all this stuff that requires responsibility and maturity and—holy shit—condoms. She's going to have to use real-life unwrapped Trojan condoms out of a box tonight. That's insane.

Don't think, Georgia. Just drink.

Jungle Juice, good. Responsibility, bad.

My glass is getting empty again rather quickly. Chloe leans over and fills it back up. I should probably slow down.

I listen to the talk about getting carded at the 7-Eleven and spring break in the Bahamas and safety schools. I have nothing to contribute, so I take another couple of sips of juice.

And then they all start getting nostalgic, as though senior year is coming to an end tomorrow. They talk about parties and dances and football games and soccer games and it's like they're speaking a foreign language—it's like I've been living in a completely different world. I look over at Liss and Evelyn, who are listening and laughing as though they were there, too, living these normal high school lives with these people, when we all know for a fact that none of us have.

But then they start reminiscing about teachers and classes, and I tune back in. Avery and Chloe are telling us about Mr. Fillmore, our sophomore-year history teacher who mysteriously disappeared after wearing bunny slippers to work and muttering about UFOs and the Second Coming; and about Mrs. Stanfield, everyone's favorite English teacher, who was diagnosed with cancer last year. They're talking to Liss and Evelyn and me as though we didn't know. I've sat next to these people for nearly twelve years. We know the stories. We know the same people. We've been there the whole time. What strikes me as I take another sip is that I don't think
they
realized it.