Meanwhile, I was bringing up the rear and freaking out while nobody noticed. This was starting to look like a suicide mission. There were paintings and drawings all over the place, and as far as I could tell, every kid who went to this school was a way better artist than me.
“Maybe we shouldn’t have come,” I said.
Everyone looked at me. Even Georgia.
“Rafe, you’re going to do fine,” Ms. Donatello said.
I looked at the office door. “What’s going to happen in there?”
“First, they’ll take a look at your portfolio…”
“… and then ask a few questions about some of your drawings.”
“After that, you’ll be asked to leave the room, and they’ll take some time to consider your application.”
And before I even know it’s happened, I’m at the point of no return. The door to the office is already swinging open. They’re waiting for me inside.
“Anything else I should know?” I ask Ms. D.
Except, Ms. D. isn’t Ms. D. anymore. Her eyes have re-formed into yellow slits, and her breath has turned to smoke. She paws at the big black folder I’m holding. “Everything you need is right in there,” she says.
When I look, I see that she’s hidden my old sword inside the portfolio. Amazing! The Dragon Lady, once my enemy, is now my ally.
But she’s also taken me as far as she can go. Whatever’s waiting on the other side of that door, I’m going to have to face it alone. The only question now is whether I’ll be coming back alive…
… or not.
THE INTERVIEW
The inside of the interrogation room is cold. I can see my breath in the air, but none of the three strangers sitting across from me seem to notice.
They all look human enough, but I know better. It’s a careful disguise, meant to make me feel comfortable, so I’ll drop my guard.
“Khatchadorian, is it?” says the tall one in the middle. He smiles and beckons me closer.
“That’s right,” I say. “Rafe.”
“Ms. Donatello tells us you were named for Rafael Sanzio, the great painter. Are you a fan of his work?”
I play along, for now. “Sure,” I say, but I keep my eyes moving around the room. There could be hidden traps anywhere, just waiting to spring.
“Well, let’s see what you’ve brought with you,” another one says. I can see the warts just under her fake human skin as she puts out a hand to take my portfolio.
This is it. If I’m going to make my move, now’s the time. I reach inside—and my sword comes out in a flash.
Chairs go tumbling. Skins fly off. Claws extend. In less than two seconds, I’m facing down the ugliest set of triplets you’ve ever seen. They stretch into their new bodies and bare their fangs. One of them lets out a long, angry growl.
No. Not angry, I realize. Hungry. That was someone’s stomach.
Then all at once, they attack. I keep my head down and follow my instincts.
I swing!
I weave!
I dodge!
A trapdoor opens under my feet, and I jump out of the way just in time.
I thrust!
I thrust again!
And again!
So far I’m holding my own, but I don’t know how long I’m going to be able to keep this up. Meanwhile, they keep coming—one at a time, and then all together, screaming to each other in their secret language.
I lose a little ground and back up. Lose a little more ground and back up some more.
Then, before I even know it’s happened, I’m cornered. Exactly where I don’t want to be. They’ve got me on all sides now.
I keep my sword raised, waiting for them to close in. But instead they hold their ground—and it doesn’t take long to figure out why.
The walls behind me start to rumble. I hear the ceiling crack overhead. It’s another trap!
By the time I look up, it’s too late. All I see now is a shower of boulders headed my way as the whole place caves in around me.
That’s it.
I had my chance and I blew it.
This interview is over.
IN
I’m sure it wasn’t as bad as you think,” Mom said afterward.
“It was worse,” I told her. “Even I wouldn’t let me into this school.”
It’s like the whole Cathedral interview was just a blur. I showed them my portfolio and gave a bunch of dumb answers to their questions, but I couldn’t even tell you what I said.
Now we were stuck out in the hall again, waiting for them to come out and give me the bad news.
“Don’t worry, kiddo. If they don’t want you, it’s their loss,” Grandma said.
“Why don’t we just wait and see what they say?” Ms. Donatello told me.
“I have to go to the bathroom,” Georgia said.
I didn’t want to talk anymore, so I just made like Leonardo the Silent and kept my mouth shut after that.
Finally, the office door opened, and Mr. Crawley, the director of the school, came over to talk to us. I tried not to look like I wanted to disappear. Or self-destruct. Or both.
“First of all, Rafe,” he said, “you should know there are three things we look for in an applicant. One of those is experience. A lot of the students at Cathedral have been studying art since before they could write.”
“Sure,” I said. “I get it. No problem.”
But he wasn’t done yet.
“The other two things we look for are talent and persistence,” he said. “Not only is that portfolio of yours full of artistic promise, it’s also just full. When I see that, I see a boy who would probably keep drawing whether anyone was paying attention or not.”
I looked at Mom, trying to see if she was happy. I still couldn’t tell if this was good news or bad news yet.
“All of which is to say—”
Mr. Crawley put out his hand for me to shake, and I felt like everything was moving in slow motion.
“—we’ve approved your application.”
I couldn’t believe it. Like maybe it was a joke, or they had the wrong Rafe or something.
“Are you serious?” I said.
“Serious as Picasso’s Blue Period,” Mr. Crawley said, and Mom and Ms. D. cracked up while I shook his hand. “Welcome to Cathedral!”
And even though it still didn’t feel real, I’ll tell you what else. Those were the three best words I’d heard in a long, long time.
GREETINGS FROM THE BIG CITY!
Back at Grandma’s place, I got up my nerve to do something absolutely terrifying: I wrote a note to a girl.
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Subject: You’re never going to believe this
Hey, Jeanne,
How’s it going over there in bad old Hills Village? Anyone miss me yet? (Anyone even notice I’m gone? )
You’ll never believe how things are going here. On a scale of one to ten, I’d give it about a fourteen, because guess who just got into Cathedral School of the Arts? (I’ll give you a hint. It starts with an R and ends with an AFE.)
Are you still there? Or did you just die of shock? I was pretty surprised too, but I won’t tell them they made a mistake if you won’t, ha-ha. School starts on Monday, so wish me luck because I think I’m going to need all I can get.
And write back if you want. (No pressure.)
Rafe
TWENTY-TWO HOURS AND FORTY-NINE MINUTES LATER (NOT THAT I WAS COUNTING OR ANYTHING)
To:
[email protected] From:
[email protected] Subject: Re: You’re never going to believe this
Hi, Rafe—
That’s great. Congratulations!
—JG
THE FIRST DAY OF THE REST OF MY LIFE
That weekend, Mom got me a bus pass so I could get myself back and forth to Cathedral while she drove Georgia to her own school in a different part of the city.
But on Monday morning, she said sh
e wanted to drive us both, just for the first day. I think she was more excited about Cathedral than I was.
“You’ve got your sketchbook?” she said.
“Right here,” I said.
“And your good pen?”
“Got it.”
“Should I come in with you?” she asked when we pulled up in front of the school.
“Nah, I’m good,” I said. About a million kids were hanging out on the sidewalk, and there was no way I was going to let them see my mommy walking me inside for the start of seventh grade.
“Okay, then. Well…” Mom kept looking at me the way she does when she’s about to get all mushy. And then sure enough—
“You know, art school was always a dream of mine,” she said. “And even though I never got to go, it feels like that dream is coming true right now.”
I was afraid she was going to start crying next. If there’s one thing I can’t deal with, it’s when Mom cries, even the happy kind of tears.
But then—for once!—my sister’s big mouth actually came in handy.
“Come on, come on, LET’S GO! We’re going to be LATE!” Georgia screamed from the backseat, like there was some kind of lifesaving information handed out in the first ten minutes of fifth grade.
“All right,” Mom said. “Well… good luck, honey!”
“Let’s GOOOO!” Georgia said. “Rafe, get out!”
That was fine with me. Before Mom could kiss me good-bye in front of the whole school, I opened the car door and made my getaway. Then I headed straight inside for my first day as a real, live, actual art student.
Whatever that meant.
FIRST DAY ON PLANET CATHEDRAL
When I walked inside the school, the first thing I saw was this huge painted banner that said WELCOME TO PLANET CATHEDRAL!
They weren’t kidding either. The whole lobby was fixed up with little twinkly lights like stars, and a bunch of papier-mâché planets and asteroids hanging from the ceiling. There were kids playing weird, science-fictiony music on synthesizers, and all the teachers who were telling everyone where to go were wearing outfits made out of aluminum foil, like robot aliens. I guess it was some kind of first-day welcome-back-to-school thing.
That’s when I knew for sure that I’d left Hills Village Middle School about eighty million light-years behind.
First up, I had something called New-Student Orientation. Basically, it was me and about a hundred sixth graders, learning everything there was to know about being a student at Cathedral School of the Arts.
After Mr. Crawley told us how happy we should be to be there (and I was!), they divided us up by program—theater, music, and visual arts. My group went with Mrs. Ling, the head of the art program, and she gave us a tour of that part of the school.
I guess if I had to pick one word to describe everything Mrs. Ling showed us on that tour, it would have to be… totally, amazingly cooler than I ever expected. (Lucky for me, I don’t have to pick just one.) I couldn’t wait to try everything I saw, and the more I saw, the more I wanted to try.
I mean, I was still going to have to get up and go to school five days a week. There was no way around that. Still—seventh grade was looking up, up, UP!
THE BIG CATCH
(AND I DON’T MEAN FISH)
Except, of course, it wasn’t exactly that simple. (It never is, right?)
After the tour, Mrs. Ling sat us all down in one of the art rooms and gave us a big talk.
It started off with the usual stuff about rules, and classes, and I’m not sure what else, because I wasn’t exactly listening. I was still too excited about everything else.
But then, right near the end, she threw in the big catch.
“Boys and girls, I believe every one of you can do extremely well here,” she said. “However—
“—not every student is invited back to Cathedral at the end of the year.”
Now she had my attention. And there was more too.
“As some of you already know, all visual arts students at Cathedral are required to reapply for the program after our Spring Art Show in March,” Mrs. Ling said. “In the meantime, if you can’t keep up with your academic classes and your art assignments, and show us that you really want to be here, you might find yourself somewhere else next fall.”
In other words, if I couldn’t figure out a way to do this…
… then at the end of the year, I was going to be doing this:
To be honest, up until then I kind of thought it was a big deal that I had gotten into Cathedral at all. But it turned out that was the easy part.
Getting in was one thing.
Now I had to figure out how to stay in.
THE STUFF OF ART
After orientation, my first three periods of the day were math, social studies, and…
You get the idea. All that stuff is just as boring in art school as it is anywhere else.
But then for fourth and fifth, every seventh grader had a double period of art, every single day. That meant ten periods a week I could actually look forward to, which was ten more than I had at Hills Village. Not too bad.
My first actual art class was drawing with Mr. Beekman, and let me tell you a few things about him. If there was ever a contest for world’s oldest teacher, I’d definitely enter Mr. Beekman, and he might even win. He talked with an English accent and said stuff like “ladies and gentlemen” a lot.
The very first thing he ever said to us was this:
So there it was, thirty seconds into my first art class, and I was already totally confused.
I was still trying to figure out that last part when Mr. Beekman turned on the slide projector and showed us a drawing of a big, fat horse. (At least, I think it was a horse. I wasn’t sure about anything right then.)
“Twenty-three thousand years ago, someone created this image on the wall of a cave,” Mr. Beekman said. “Now, who do you suppose was the artist here?”
“Was it you?” I heard someone say, too quietly for Beekman to hear.
“The answer, of course, is that we can’t possibly know,” he said. “Even so, these early images can tell us quite a bit about the people who created them—the animals they hunted, the stories they told each other, the elements of the world around them, and the objects of their everyday lives. Do you see?”
No, I did not.
Then Beekman turned around and wrote on the board: ART = LIFE = ART.
“In this class, I’ll teach you about proper materials, line quality, composition—all the techniques you might use as artists. But the rest of it depends on what you bring to the table.”
He was really getting into it now and walking all around the room. In fact, he didn’t seem so old anymore either.
“What fascinates you? What life experiences have you had? What makes you you?” Beekman said. “Because that, ladies and gentlemen, is the true stuff of art!”
“I’m going to throw up the true stuff of breakfast in a second,” the same kid from before said. This time, I looked over.
He was sitting all the way in the back, like me, drawing a fake tattoo on his arm while Beekman talked. And I’d say he was dressed weird, but this was Planet Cathedral. Weird is kind of its version of normal.
Meanwhile, Beekman was still going.
“With all of this in mind, your first assignment of the year will be a self-portrait,” he said. Then he wrote on the board again: WHO ARE YOU?
“I want you to answer that question with your drawings. Then tomorrow in class, we’ll have our first crit,” he said. “Remember, ladies and gentlemen, bring your life to your art, and your art comes to life!”
I didn’t understand half of the stuff he said, but all the other kids were nodding their heads like crazy. I mean, like, what the heck is a crit? And that’s when I started to think maybe I’d missed out on more than just sixth grade at this place.
I was going to have to make up for some lost time.
WHAT’S THE BIG IDEA?
That nig
ht, I stayed up late and did all my homework before I went to bed.
And no, you didn’t just accidentally pick up someone else’s book. This is still me, Rafe K. I just figured that the first day of the year was the wrong time to start falling behind.
But even then, after I finally turned out the light and tried to go to sleep, I couldn’t stop thinking about everything.
I never thought art school would be so complicated. I just thought it would be, well, art and school. But now I had all this other stuff I had to think about. Like not getting kicked out, for instance. And getting a life in the meantime.
“Sounds like a mission to me,” Leo said right away. “When do you want to start?”
This is the thing with Leo: There’s no off switch. He’s ready to go anytime.
Also, he loves a good mission.
The last one was called Operation R.A.F.E., which stood for Rules Aren’t For Everyone, and it earned me an all-expenses-paid trip to summer school.
“Slow down,” I said. “I can’t start getting in trouble all over again. I promised Mom.”
“No, you promised yourself,” Leo reminded me. “Besides, who said anything about that? I’m talking about something better. Bigger!”
“Like what?”
“Like real life! All that ‘stuff of art’ Beekman was talking about. Maybe being an artist is supposed to be about more than just showing up at Cathedral every day and sleeping on this couch every night.”
I couldn’t argue with that part, but still—
“What am I supposed to do?” I said. “Just start… living?”
“You’re closer than you think,” Leo said. “It can be whatever you want. Ride the subway standing on your head. Eat chocolate-covered tarantulas. Go to twelve movies in a row. As long as you’ve never done it before, it’s on the list.”