We Are the Goldens (4 page)

I wanted to argue that our futures were intertwined, that if she was worth her salt, she could look at your palm and tell my future or look at mine and tell yours, but I knew she wouldn’t budge.

We stepped out to the sidewalk and debated. Were we ready to roll the dice with Madam Mai? We decided that if we went to the new burger joint and skipped the fries we could probably still get a decent meal, and so we went back in and forked over two ten-dollar bills.

She took us separately into a back room with red velvet walls. She must have put up that velvet to soundproof the space, because I pressed my ear to the door when it was your turn, and I couldn’t hear a word.

She said I’d marry, have children, I’d find fulfillment. My lifeline was nice and long.

“You are searching,” she said, staring at me meaningfully. “You have voids in your life you wish to fill. But you should know that the answers are not where you might expect to find them.”

Wow.

What a total heap of steaming cow shit.

I mean, find me anyone off the street: man, woman, child. You could say everything Madam Mai said about me, and it would just as easily fit that stranger.

I came out and rolled my eyes at you. Your turn. As I mentioned, I put my ear to the door.

Nothing.

You came out minutes later with a smile stretched across your face. She held a motherly hand to your shoulder.

“Thank you so much,” you said.

“My pleasure.”

Out on the sidewalk you spun around like the actresses do in Dad’s lame black-and-white movies.

“I’m going to fall in love,” you said. “Real love. Very soon.”

Okay, I’ll admit it: I was jealous. Who doesn’t want to fall in real love? In fact, the idea was so appealing to me that for a minute I forgot Madam Mai was a con artist who didn’t even bother to dress the part.

“She’s full of it,” I said.

You raised one eyebrow at me. “Time will tell.”

If only I could have looked at your palm and seen your future and then done something to change it.

You worked so hard on that portrait. And it was really good, despite the fact that we have no talent. Mom and Dad stocked their houses with art supplies—reams of white paper, pointy pencils, an array of colored Sharpies. We spent hours at the art table drawing, painting, cutting, gluing, never making anything worth keeping, but enjoying each other’s company. Remember?

City Day takes its arts pretty seriously. What other school would stage a production of
Les Misérables
? Why not
Oklahoma!
or
Annie
? At City Day you can learn any instrument known to man, and once you learn it you can join the
orchestra or the jazz ensemble or the school rock band. You can take electives in photography, graphic design, pottery, even the basics of architecture.

But every freshman must begin with Intro to Visual Arts, a survey course taught by Mr. Barr.

I made my own charcoal portrait this fall. Every freshman makes one, and I hated doing it. I hated the way the charcoal smelled, like poverty and illness, and I missed sitting at a table with you and our Sharpies. The result was a girl who looked wan and ugly.

Anyway, everyone loves Mr. Barr. He’s fun and funny and he’s young and he dresses cooler than any boy in school and he talks to us like we’re his equals. He knows about the music we listen to. He’s seen the movies we see, not the kind favored by Dad and Sonia. Going to his class feels like a break in the everyday.

You’d mentioned him to me. Lots of times. You’d never thought to mention Sam Fitzpayne, but you’d mentioned Mr. B.

I was looking forward to Intro to Visual Arts because I’d heard it was one of the best classes taught by one of the best teachers. Felix, who’s genuinely talented, adored Intro to Visual Arts, and Mr. B., from day one.

That Sunday after the first week of school he’d called to ask about our Spanish homework, but I knew he was really calling to hear about the party at Hazel Porter’s house, and to find out if I thought there was some sort of wormhole through the City Day space-time continuum that might allow him to make her his girlfriend.

“She’s a senior, Felix,” I said. “She could be your babysitter.”

“If that’s my only way in, I’ll take it.”

“I love you”—I really did, though I couldn’t ever just come out and tell him that without turning it into a joke—“but she’s so totally out of your league she’s playing in a different time zone.”

“Ouch.”

“Sorry. Truth hurts. Want an ice pack?”

“Was she with anyone? Like, did you see her talking to anyone who’s objectively better looking than I am?”

“Objectively?”

“Yes.”

“No, I did not.”

“Didn’t think so.”

I told him what I could about the party, who was talking to whom, who drank too much, who went out onto the balcony to smoke a joint, all of this reporting somewhat unreliable considering I hardly knew anyone by name.

I didn’t tell him about Sam Fitzpayne. I wasn’t ready to turn Sam into the official Object of My Affection.

He asked, “What do you think of Intro to Visual Arts?”

“It’s fun.”

“Isn’t Mr. B. the coolest?”

“Yeah, he’s really cool.”

“Does your class have the swearing jar?”

“The huh?”

“The swearing jar. He has this jar on his desk and he says whenever someone uses a bad word in class they have to put
a dollar in the swearing jar and at the end of the semester we’ll have a pizza party with all the earnings. So I raised my hand and said,
Doesn’t that kinda encourage swearing? Like, the more money we have the better the party is gonna be?
And he said,
Mr. De La Cruz, right?
And I said,
Felix
. And he said,
Mr. De La Cruz, you’re goddamn right!
And then he took a dollar out of his wallet and put it in the jar!”

Who wouldn’t love a teacher like that? Our class didn’t have one, because among his many attributes, Mr. Barr is uneven and unpredictable. Sure, a swearing jar is a pretty egregious example of buying off student affection, but considering most teachers don’t seem to care what you think of them, it’s nice to know, I suppose, that Mr. B. actually gives a crap.

The kinds of rumors that follow Mr. Barr are textbook. Simple math.

Take one good-looking male in his mid to late twenties with a Salvador Dalí tattoo on his bicep. Add a student body that’s 50 percent female and unusually mature and worldly. Put all that into a progressive environment. And
BAM:
rumors that the teacher sleeps with his students.

You told me they start up again every year before they go wherever it is rumors go to die. If they were true, you said, Mr. B. wouldn’t be working at City Day anymore.

Of course I believed you; you don’t lie to me. And also because it was unthinkable that any teenage girl could be lucky enough to have Mr. B. all to herself.

Your freshman year, the rumors were about Mr. B. and Yelli Rothman, who’d since gone on to study art history at Yale. Last year’s star of the show was Hazel Porter, but she’s
a senior now, and isn’t taking any art classes, so she’s off the hook. In the end, everyone admits this is only gossip. But still, the rumors come back every year like the swallows at Capistrano.

This year they were slow to start. Meanwhile, you seemed less than thrilled with the everyday goings-on at school, with the talk in the halls, the parties, the boys, and even the soccer team. You seemed distant. Not like you.

I chalked it up to the stress that comes with being a junior and having to think about the future, leaving home, and knowing that your grades actually matter.

From where I was standing with my brand-new City Day student ID card, the everyday that bored you was bursting with life and electric possibility and the question of who I would become in the months that stretched out ahead.

It made me think of a fortune I’d gotten on one of our Chinatown outings with Dad. Remember? He took us to the fortune cookie factory, hidden away down a narrow little alley. Dad told us this was our secret, we should never reveal its location to anyone, or else it would lose what made it so special. I watched the old man work the machine, pressing the square of dough around the white slip of paper and into the signature crescent shape.

I opened mine as we wandered along the main drag with throngs of Chinese families doing their Sunday shopping. Such stock we put in fortune-telling. I read my words of wisdom and then crumpled up the paper and shoved it deep in my pocket because it made no sense to me and I just wanted to eat the cookie.

But I kept it, because you know me, I’m sentimental and
superstitious and also I’m a strong candidate for that reality show about hoarding. But I like to think I kept that fortune because I knew that someday it might make sense to me.

With time and patience, the mulberry leaf becomes the silk gown
.

When school started this year, I was the mulberry leaf, but I was waiting. I had patience. You, Layla, were the beautiful silk gown, and I had every intention of becoming one too.

ON THE MORNING OF OUR
first soccer game I woke up feeling like I had to hurl. A stomach virus? I stayed in bed, clutching my middle, and buried my face in my pillow.

It’s just nerves
.

I opened one eye. Parker was sitting on my desk with his feet on my chair.

Get up and put on your uniform. Grab something to eat. You’ll feel better
.

My stuffed animals were never this bossy.

Why are you even nervous? You know you’re just gonna sit on the bench the whole time
.

This is what I liked about Duncan. He never sugarcoated anything.

He sat at the foot of my bed, eying the last stuffed animal I kept in view. The rest lived high up in my closet.

I mean, no offense
, he said.
But you’re just a freshman
.

I checked myself. Sick or nervous?

Parker was probably right. I had game-day jitters. I needed to go downstairs and eat something. I needed to remind myself that playing soccer was one of the only things I could do well. But Duncan was probably right too; it was unlikely I’d leave the bench.

I climbed out of bed.

Atta girl
, Parker said.

I rubbed my temples.

Duncan walked over to my window and peeked outside.
Fog in September
, he said, shaking his head.
What field are you playing on?

The Polo Fields.

We used to play there
.

I knew that because Dad took us to one of their games. He thought it would be good for us to see some soccer at the high school level. I doubted they remembered.

I went to my closet and took out my new City Day uniform. N. Golden. Number 13. I grabbed the purple shorts with the gray stripes down the sides. The socks, my sports bra. I laid it all out on my bed.

These are the kinds of moments that can be awkward. Duncan and Parker may not be real, but that doesn’t mean I want to get naked in front of them.

I closed my eyes tight. Opened them again.

The Creeds were gone.

* * *

The crowd was larger than I’d anticipated. Maybe because it was the first game of the year. Or because the fog had lifted and it was a glorious San Francisco day, warm, blue, and sharp, and where better to spend such a day than deep in the heart of Golden Gate Park?

The most likely explanation, however, was that we were playing back-to-back with the boys’ varsity, so the turnout wasn’t for us.

Duncan was right. I didn’t leave the bench except for huddling around Coach Jarvis as she scribbled on her whiteboard. I made a show of paying attention when those x’s and o’s and arrows had as much relevance to my life as the NASDAQ charts in Dad’s
Wall Street Journal
.

We won 2–0. You played beautifully in midfield, anchoring and supporting the team. Chiara Vittorio made both goals and reaped all the glory, but neither goal would have occurred if it hadn’t been for you.

Mom and Dad were there. You’d think I’d be used to seeing them together by now, since they don’t let the fact that they can’t live with each other, or that he’s gone on to marry someone younger and, I hate to say it, more beautiful, interfere with raising us. They stood side by side and cheered together and they gave each other a high five after each of Chiara’s goals.

Felix was there, of course. And a pretty decent chunk of the freshman class.

I scanned the crowd for Sam Fitzpayne while trying not to look like I was scanning the crowd. I wanted it to seem like my head was in the game on the off chance that Coach
Jarvis might soon see her way clear to making me one of those
x
’s on her whiteboard.

No Sam. I saw your best friend, Schuyler, who didn’t go to City Day but still came out to cheer you on, and I saw Liv, your City Day best friend—their rivalry put them on opposite ends of the crowd. Mr. Frank, dean of students. Ms. Palladino, head of school. I saw Mr. B.