Starry Night (26 page)

“Uh-huh.” He kept going. I was following, but I sort of do try to do everything in the way that you are supposed to, so I felt muddled.

“I'm going to be in New York all summer until November. If you go away, you will go for the fall, right?”

“Yeah, it'd be from September through December.”

“
Right.
We will miss each other. I'll be gone when you get back.”

“So what are you saying?” Suddenly I felt really stupid in what seemed to be a pretty important conversation, with a huge, foaming chocolate milk shake in front of me.

“I'm saying, isn't there some amazing art program in New York that you could do?”

“And not apply to Saint-Rémy?”

“I guess, yeah, don't apply. I want you to stay here.” He was asking me to be with him all the way until the following year. This was not just a flimsy tenth-grade romance, this was
real.
My heart rate went up dramatically.

“I don't know … I have wanted to go to Saint-Rémy for so long. It's been a dream of mine for—ever, and, well, I have a plan with Mrs. Rousseau and my parents and everyone.”

“I know. This is stupid. I am being totally selfish and crazy, actually. If this is meant to be, you and me, which I think it is…” He smiled in his easygoing, confident, friendly way. “It doesn't matter where we are. I'm just saying that sometimes life can change our paths, and that's okay. I think that is part of the deal.”

I was speechless.

“Hey, you know what?” he said cheerfully.

“What?”

“I was Googling that Cy Dowd. He seems like a creep.”

“Yeah?” I felt my body relax at the change of subject, and I took a long drink of my milk shake like you see people take long drinks of a scotch in a movie. “I think you're right. But what do you mean specifically?”

“I mean, he's definitely a genius and everything, but he's blatantly with a different model every night all over
Page Six
and the blogs. Is Farah still messing around with him?”

“Yeah, I think so, and you know, I'm kind of freaked out by it.
Really
freaked out.”

“You should be. It's sick that he is taking advantage of her.”
Right!
I thought. He was taking
advantage
of her in his creepy, genius art loft with his tiny pig running around, and she was clueless about it. Nolan's assessment made me crazy in love with him. His protective instinct reminded me of my father.

“I want to tell my
dad.
” I pointed at him with another french fry.

“Oh, I don't think you should do that.”

“No?”

“No, no. Just wait. If you involve parents, it could get out of hand. What he is doing is illegal.”

“But Dad will help her, and if it's illegal—which I know it is, by the way—then it should be stopped.” I pictured telling Dad at the kitchen island. I pictured his face turning red and him rushing to the closet to get his Barbour coat to go find Cy Dowd. “Or he will challenge him to a duel and kill him.”

“That's hilarious. Your dad would totally wield a sword instead of beating the daylights out of the guy. He's so civilized.”

“Maybe he would call the police!” I was getting excited.

“Maybe.” He thought for a moment. “But perhaps, instead of totally ruining the life of a mack-daddy artist, we should talk to Farah and get her to stop. No harm, no foul,” Nolan said earnestly.

“I don't think she would listen to me,” I said, and sucked more sweet comforting milk shake into my mouth.

“She would listen to all of us.”

All of us. I loved that Nolan felt like he was included in “all of us.” Like he was a Turtle, or the boyfriend of a Turtle.

“I wonder if there
are
any good after-school art programs in New York?” he said, looking at me with a half smile. “I mean, I don't know, but I wonder.” He put his hand up between us in the air, with his elbow still on the table. I put my hand up on his, like we were seeing whose fingers were longer. I thought to myself that if I didn't have to apply to Saint-Rémy, if I didn't have to draw that self-portrait, I would feel the weight of a thousand stones tumble off my shoulders.

“You have big hands for a girl.” I clenched my hand into a tight fist of embarrassment. Like one of those sea creatures that are all open and flowing, but then something scares them and they retract into a little ball.

“No, stop!” He pried open my fingers and pressed them back onto each of his fingers.

“That is terrible, I don't want to have big hands!” I was laughing, but dying the curse-of-the-tall-girl death inside.

“No, nooo, it's badass. It's strong.” I could feel the heat in my face as I eased up on my hand, letting our fingers touch lightly and then collapse and intertwine and be together.

 

44

“Oh my god. You look so pretty
right now,” Reagan said, looking up from her math homework on my bed. It was the Wednesday before the December 15 deadline and I was attempting to draw myself. Reagan said she would keep me company and finish a bunch of corrected math assignments she had piled up. (In Math C, which Reagan and I both take, our teachers make us take the problems we get wrong home to “rework.” It's such a pain in the butt to do homework not once, but twice.
However
, “We learn from our mistakes,” Mrs. Hotchkiss loves to remind us.)

“Eww, no I don't—I'm totally Wilma Flintstone. I have charcoal everywhere.”

“No, you have that I-don't-know-I-look-pretty-but-I-do thing going on. You look pretty when you draw.”

“That's whack,” I said, and went back to fixing the curve of my ear on the smudgy paper.

“You do,” she said. “I remember thinking it in sixth grade when we had art together. You concentrate when you draw in a way that makes you look like you're thirty.”

“What's pretty about being thirty?” I looked up at Reagan. From where I was sitting on the floor, and how she was sitting on the bed, I could only see half of her face, and her crossed legs.

“Because when we're thirty, we'll be in the groove of our lives and it'll be badass. When you draw, you can tell that it's what
you
are supposed to do,” she said, and sat up. “Like, you can see your badass-who-you-are-going-to-be self on your face. It's more than pretty … see, you have that look on right now. I'm going to take a picture of you and post it on Quickypic.” She swiped on her phone, typed in the password, and then put it in front of her face to take the picture. “And then Nolan will see it and he will so fall even more in love with you.”

Click.

“Nolan follows you on Quickypic?”

“Yeah.” I felt a little jealous ripple in the back of my throat. “He follows me too. But I only post my drawings,” I said.

“I'll hashtag it #wrendraws,” she said while typing with both thumbs.

“Can I see it?” She handed her phone over. My hair was piled on top of my head, and there was even a smudge of charcoal on my forehead, but I have to say I liked the picture. I wasn't smiling or anything, but it looked like a me that I would want Nolan to see.

“That is so Cyrano of you,” I said, handing her back the phone.

“Who's Cyrano?” Reagan said and took a nonsmiling selfie. Click.

“Cyrano was a smart poet guy who loved this woman, Roxanne, but he had a big nose so he didn't think she would love him. And this other guy, I forget his name, loved Roxanne too, but he was a dumbass, good-looking, but not a poet. So, for some reason, Cyrano said he would write really beautiful, smart love letters for the dumb guy, so Roxanne would fall in love with him. And she did. I don't think she ever found out that Cyrano was the one writing the letters. But I do think she died.”

“But I don't love Nolan,” Reagan said.

“Right, but you are helping me by sending him a picture of me drawing and looking pretty, so you are kind of doing a selfless thing in the name of someone else's love,” I said.

“Well, I don't have a big nose,” she said and took another selfie, this time giving the camera a wink.

“No, you do not.” She showed me her selfie. Reagan had
Mad Men
looks. Her thick black Welsh, mojo hair naturally tumbled around her shoulders and fell on her soft black angora sweater. All the black made her skin white as half and half cream. She could really bring it in a picture.

“Want to take one together?” I asked.

And we did.

 

45

I guess it's global warming,
but that December, instead of snow, the city was enveloped in fog. The weather warmed, you didn't need your parka, and Manhattan had a bank of mist rolling across it all month. It was supremely cozy. You kind of felt like you lived in Scotland, and each morning when you woke up you could hardly make out the branches on the trees. This fog fed Nolan's and my knights-of-the-round-table plans to kidnap the fair Farah away from the dubious, older, mysterious Cy Dowd.

As much as we wanted to meet and scheme in a tree house or somewhere (we, meaning Nolan, Oliver, Padmavati, Charlie, Reagan, and myself), we lived in the city and couldn't see each other all that much. We didn't live in the suburbs with basements and garages, where I imagine kids in the suburbs gather. In any case, this plan took shape on our phones in text messages. Facebook ended up playing a key role too, but I was a little out of it there because my parents had ironclad restrictions on my computer for all social media. Reagan and Nolan, however, had free rein in their houses, so they could spy on Farah, who, like a dingbat, posted every move she made or was going to make, even parties and gallery openings that were obviously all about Cy. And as it turned out, even though Cy Dowd was ancient, he was as deft at social media as us teenagers and his Facebook page was a road map.

GROUP MESSAGE

Charlie:
Farah is in trouble. I read on Gawker Cy Dowd was married.

Me:
I think he was married. Dad said divorced.

Reagan:
U told ur dad?

Me:
No way. I asked in a totally nonobvious way.

Nolan:
Mr. Noorlander would never suspect someone his daughter's age would be with that guy.

Vati:
Farah said she thinks she has crabs.

Me:
What????

Charlie:
That is disgusting.

Nolan:
Doesn't surprise me. The guy gets around.

Oliver:
Don't talk about that shit. Farah is like my sister.

Me:
She's like my sister.

Oliver:
I'm going to throw up.

Reagan:
She didn't come to a sleepover at my house but told her mother she was here.

Me:
Why isn't she talking to me?

Vati:
She thinks you are judging her.:(

Me:
Aren't we all worried?

Vati:
Worried is different than judgmental.

Nolan:
She might be freaked because Cy is in the same circles as Wren's parents.

Reagan:
He is having a “Not So Silent Night” party right before Xmas. Saw on FB.

Me:
U r his “friend”?

Reagan:
He is everyone's friend. Has like 60k friends.

Nolan:
Anyone know if she is going?

Charlie:
Of course she'll go. She's a super freak about him.

Nolan:
Just found the party on his FB page. I think we are all going to this. It's on the 19th. Friday night.

Me:
Last day of finals. My parents will let me go out that nite I'm almost sure.

Oliver:
I'll say I'm taking you and Vats to a party. I'm golden now that I got in to MIT early.

Vati:
☺☺☺☺

Reagan:
Cambridge is f-ing cold.

Nolan:
I have a gig that night but it's early. I will meet up with you guys.

Reagan:
I'm in.

Charlie:
I'm in.

Me:
We'll go get her.

Nolan:
Intervention style. Peace out. W—call you later.

Vati:
Awwww

 

46

The last episode of the season
that Dinah shoots is the New Year's episode. This year she decided to ask the network if she could do something different and have five of her school friends in the episode. In some version of
The View
format, the girls would sit around the kitchen table, eat hoppin' John, a black-eyed pea dish that Dinah wanted to make for the show, and tell their resolutions. (Apparently it's like a three-hundred-year-old tradition to eat black-eyed peas in the South on New Year's Day—it brings you good luck.) Dinah said it would connect her with her audience if they saw she actually had friends, and I think she saw a similar year-end episode on
Barefoot Contessa
, where Ina Garten had a bunch of her friends over. Dinah is so ambitious, I am telling you.

So anyway, Mom wanted me around to help with the girls. In real life, none of the ten-year-olds were allowed to wear anything but ChapStick yet so the TV hair/makeup part was insanity. The girls went crazy trying on fifty different colors of lip gloss and having their hair blown out with a hair dryer the size of their arms. It was like
Alvin and the Chipmunks
meets
Little Women.