I try to suck up some of Fiona’s overflowing confidence. After all, I’ve consistently made a fool of myself in front of Yates, looking like the inexperienced kid who doesn’t know anything. “Well, I think your paintings are great,” I say. “I mean, not great.” My mind spins to find the right word. “Incredible.” Ugh. Even when I’m inspired, I can’t seem to express it.
“Thanks, Emily.” Yates looks at me. “You look so dressed up, I hardly recognized you.”
“I gave her a makeover,” Fiona offers. “I’m plotting to steal Emily from the suburbs. She’s too good for her hometown.” And then she cackles deviously, like a witch.
What Fiona says makes me anxious, but mostly I just feel thankful. She’s making me look better than I can make myself look.
A young guy in camouflage pants and a nose ring grabs Yates on the shoulder. “Hey. Some guy wants to talk to you about the whole set.”
Yates smiles at us apologetically. “I gotta go. But you guys should stick around and hang out. Just don’t let me actually see you holding any beers. Then I won’t have to feel guilty not reporting you to Dr. Tobin, okay?”
We watch him disappear into the crowd. A few seconds later, a punk-looking boy in a mohawk comes over and puts little red stickers next to all of Yates’s paintings.
Fiona bites her finger. “God, he is so hot, it’s not even funny. How did I not notice this before?”
Adrian walks away from us. “I’m going to get a beer.”
My phone buzzes in my pocket. Another text from Meg.
hello?!?!? i need you!
My excitement instantly evaporates. I wish I never told Meg I’d come back. I whisper into Fiona’s ear, “I think I have to get going. Is the train station around here or should I take a cab?”
“No! Don’t go! Tell your mom you’re sleeping at my house. Things are just getting awesome!”
“But —” Robyn looks pissed. “I thought you were going to sleep over at my dorm and then meet my parents tomorrow for brunch!”
Fiona shakes her head at Robyn, embarrassed. These plans were a secret I wasn’t supposed to know. But I do know, and now I can’t help but feel left out.
“Oh right.” Fiona contemplates. “Robyn, I’ll just meet you in the morning for brunch. Emily will have to go home by then. Back to her real life, poor thing.”
Robyn stares at me, and the niceness drains out of her. “Yeah, whatever.”
“Excellent! Sleepover party!” Fiona hugs me before walking over to the open window with a cigarette and a lighter.
Fiona does seem to want me to stick around, enough to piss Robyn off, anyhow. I don’t want to start trouble between Fiona and Robyn. And it seems like I already have, in a way. But, honestly, I don’t feel like leaving yet. At all. So after I call my mom and convince her it would be much safer for me to spend the night with a friend than ride the train home alone, I send Meg a text. It takes me a few minutes before I have the courage to hit SEND.
don’t think i will make it. soooo sorry!
I hold my breath and grip the cell tight, waiting for it to vibrate. An excruciating ten minutes later it does. The buzz rattles my bones.
My stomach sinks.
don’t call me when you get home
“You okay?” Fiona asks me and hands me a beer. She puts her hand on my shoulder. She’s not sarcastic or jokey at all. She’s genuinely concerned.
“Oh yeah,” I say, wiping the sad away. It’s better not to think about it and let it ruin my time here. I can always explain things to Meg later, when I’m home and my life has settled back down. Meg never stays mad for long, especially not at me.
The sidewalk is already warm from a few hours of morning sun, and the dew on the grass sparkles as it waits for eventual evaporation. The train station is eerily peaceful on Saturday morning. Apparently, I was the only one coming to Cherry Grove, and no one else is interested in leaving.
While I wait for my ride, I rub the end of a thin, spindly stick in circles against the concrete. The bark leaves behind faint brown lines until it wears completely away, exposing a hot point of white pulp. I hold it just under my nose and feel the warmth radiating against my lip. The heat gives a smoky smell.
I don’t know why, but I touch the point to my callus like a magic wand. A quick tap, just in case it burns. Then I hold it there longer, pressing down, because it doesn’t hurt at all.
Mom’s convertible speeds into the lot and pulls to a stop in the no-parking zone. The stereo blasts a chorus of bongos and maracas. Mom listens to this stuff exclusively since she asked our cleaning lady to make her a copy of whatever it was she was vacuuming to. Mom thinks she’s some kind of expert now, because she picks out her own CDs from the World Music section at Barnes & Noble. It’s so embarrassing. “Welcome home,” she calls to me. “Did you have a nice time?”
I nod as I struggle to my feet. My legs ache like I’ve just run the mile in gym class. All evidence of last night’s adventure is like this — hidden inside where no one else can see: I’m wearing my own clothes; Fiona’s hand-me-downs are tucked inside a plastic Superfresh bag. I tried to sleep in my bobby pins so that my hair would still look twisty-cool, but it was too uncomfortable, so now it’s all back up in my trademark ponytail. I washed my face clean of glitter eye shadow, but a few rogue flecks twinkle on my arms.
“You don’t look like you got much sleep.”
“Yeah, you could say that.” I laugh as I click my seat belt. Then I realize I should be more discreet, if I ever want to stay over at Fiona’s house again. “But it’s always hard the first time you sleep at someone else’s house. When it’s not your own bed.”
Mom sniffs the air. “Have you been smoking?”
“No.”
“Well, was someone around you smoking?” She asks this equally accusatory, like she is everyone’s parent.
“Yes, Mom. Geez.”
She stares at me for a second, concerned, and then turns her eyes back to the road. “I’m glad you’re making friends in Philadelphia, Emily, but it’s strange for me to not know who you’re spending time with. Why don’t you invite your new friend to sleep over here one night, so we can all get acquainted?”
I can’t help but laugh. “Fiona’s not going to want to come here,” I say.
Mom looks wounded. “Why not?”
“Because she lives in Philadelphia.”
“So?”
I can’t believe I have to spell it out for her. “There’s nothing fun to do in Cherry Grove.”
Mom makes the turn into Blossom Manor. The tires roll over the brick and make a buzzing sound that hurts my head. “I bet Meg would be surprised to hear you say that.”
I sink low in my seat when we pull into the driveway. Meg’s window is dark. She’s probably still in bed; we always sleep in late after parties. I don’t like the feeling that comes over me — how making a new friend feels a little like cheating. I guess I did lie to her, saying last night was a school obligation, even though I just didn’t feel like coming home. But that’s just not the sort of thing you can tell your best friend. Especially someone sensitive like Meg. She wouldn’t get it. She’d take it too personally.
Mom offers to make me something to eat, but I’d rather just crawl into bed and take a nap. I walk straight to my room and toss my bag of clothes from Fiona on my floor. And then I peel back the covers.
I think if I had taken a deeper breath, I might have screamed. But all I do is suck in air, as much as I can take in as fast as possible.
Meg is asleep in my bed.
She sits up, startled and fearful. She’s got on a cropped white sweatshirt, a jean miniskirt, and dangly white beaded earrings. “Where have you been?” she mumbles.
“I slept at a friend’s house.” It feels like I’ve been caught doing something bad.
Concern washes over her, and she pushes her hair off her face. “You didn’t call my house, did you?”
“No,” I say, remembering her text message from last night. She looks relieved
and lies back down, inching toward the edge of the mattress to make room for me.
Meg doesn’t seem mad, which is a relief. I kick off my flip-flops and get in next to her. The bed is warm.
“What are you doing here?” I ask.
She bites her lip. “I decided to sleep over at Rick’s house, since his parents were at the shore. I told my mom I was staying at your house. That’s why you couldn’t call. Rick had to leave early for work, and my mom knows if I came home earlier than noon, I’d be lying. So when Rick dropped me off at five, I climbed in your window, expecting to find you here.”
“Oh.” I’m relieved. I guess last night worked out perfectly for both of us. But it’s also crazy to think of Meg using me as an alibi. That’s never happened before, because we’re always together.
I wonder if she did anything with Rick. Like, anything serious. I don’t want to ask her straight out, though. It could sound like I’m accusing her of something.
“So,” I say, “did you have fun?”
“Yeah, I guess,” Meg says. She closes her eyes. “Things just got kind of rowdy toward the end of the night, people being drunk and stupid. Joe Bukowski tried to do a keg stand to impress all the girls. He’s so big, you know, and the guys and Rick had trouble holding him and he slipped and cracked his front tooth on the edge of the keg. I felt bad for him, but he thought it was funny and he was running around the rest of the night trying to bite all the girls with his snaggletooth.” Meg taps around until she touches my hand. “Oh! And Chad and Jenessa were totally fighting the whole night. I doubt they’re even together anymore.” She gives it a squeeze. “Looks like you have a shot after all.”
Nothing comes out of my throat, even though I open my mouth to let it. So I smile at her instead. I know it feels fake. I don’t have to see it to know it.
Meg doesn’t notice a thing. To her, everything’s fine. I’m still the Emily she’s always known. It sucks that she can’t tell that something happened to me last night.
I feel even worse because she also hasn’t bothered asking.
She rolls over, her back to me. “I am so freaking tired. Rick has a twin bed and he’s so huge. I was on the very edge of the mattress the whole night, wide awake. He snores. Loud.” She sighs. “It’s weird to sleep next to someone for the first time. It’s not like what you’d think, all cozy and romantic. You’re aware of absolutely everything.”
I pull the covers up to my chin. It only takes a minute before Meg’s breathing slows down and she’s back asleep. I give it a few minutes more before I reach out for the bag of clothes Fiona gave to me and push them far underneath my bed. Then I close my eyes.
Two hours later, we are at Starbucks, back at our favorite table. But nothing about this peppermint mocha trip feels like our normal routine.
Meg barely looks at me. She’s just gazing out at the highway, like she’s counting cars. And she still hasn’t asked one thing about my night. It’s like she’s trying to punish me for not showing up at the party.
“My friend Fiona is so crazy,” I say suddenly.
“Oh,” she says, surprised, like she just remembered I was here.
“In this one gallery, Fiona started talking all loud about how the artist was a crackhead. Some old people nearby were obviously eavesdropping and, like, getting excited, as if being totally messed up somehow made his art more valuable.”
Meg takes a slow sip. “It’s sad when talented people have drug problems.”
I shake my head. “He didn’t. She made it up to be funny.”
Her face pinches. Meg’s not getting it. But instead of making me want to be quiet, I want to keep going, telling her more. Because this is how I always felt when she would go on and on about Rick. I sat there for months while she’d reenact their private phone conversations. I had to listen to her read the funny notes he’d write to her inside Hallmark cards sent for no particular reason.
“So, then we went to this other gallery, which was soooo stuffy, and everyone was giving us dirty looks like we didn’t belong there. I went to use the bathroom and Fiona came in and drew my shadow on the wall with this big fat marker!”
Meg sets her drink down. “Like graffiti?”
I shrug. “I guess you could call it that.”
“And this was on a school field trip?”
Whoops. “I mean, it’s really lax. It’s kind of like anything goes in art school. People are as wild and crazy as they want to be. It’s actually encouraged.”
“That doesn’t sound like you.” She says it like I am trying to trick her, like she doesn’t believe I could be a part of something like that.
“Well, it wasn’t me, exactly,” I concede. “It was Fiona.”
“Right.” Her eyes drop to the table as she looks for a napkin. “Fiona.”
We both get kind of quiet then. I take a sip of my peppermint mocha and stare out the window. Across the highway, workers are transforming the old Pizza Hut into a Taco Bell. A new sign is going up, and they’ve got a guy hanging colorful decals of burritos in the windows. But the actual building is the same tan rectangle, same sloped red roof, same flat top. Fast food architecture.
The view is achingly depressing in so many ways.
If only I had my sketchbook.
On Tuesday morning, Mr. Frank arranges the stools so we’re all sitting in a straight line, facing the front of the room like the firing squad I feared on my first day. He tells us we’ll go one by one, presenting what we think is the best drawing from our sketchbooks so far.
Most of the kids show traditional still lifes, where they’ve drawn a bottle of Snapple or a pair of sneakers. As boring as those kinds of drawings sound, a few are really good, like staring at black-and-white photographs. Robyn’s sketch of Adrian’s glasses is particularly amazing. The lenses truly look like glass. I have no idea how she did that.
“This is a good start,” Mr. Frank tells a girl named Jane, who’s drawn a basket filled with fruit. “But I can tell you shorthanded this drawing. Don’t just make lines at random. Count the woven strips. Be as exact and authentic as possible. You are not drawing any basket, you are drawing a particular basket.” He clears his throat. “Emily?”
I stand up and walk to the front of the room. Yates folds his arms and nods his head at me. Fiona makes a funny, presumably supportive face. Robyn stares out the window, completely uninterested. I open my sketchbook and flip to the last drawing.
Last night, after taking a late swim with Meg, I left to go home. And I did initially, but just to change out of my wet bathing suit and grab my sketchbook. Then I snuck out to the top of the sandy hill just outside Blossom Manor.
My hands split the pages and crack the stiff spine of my sketchbook. I hold it up in front of my face, so I won’t have to see anyone’s reactions.
“And what is this?” Mr. Frank asks.
“Well, I drew the same building twice. Once as a Pizza Hut and once as a Taco Bell, to show that they’re actually the same thing.” I cough away a tickle in my throat. “The same shape, anyway.”
The room is silent.
I peer out at Mr. Frank from behind my sketchbook. “Can I sit down?”
“No,” he says. Then he clears his throat. “Would anyone like to comment?”
I want to throw up. He hasn’t asked anyone to comment before.
Yates steps forward, like he wants a closer look. “I think it’s neat.” He’s just trying to be nice. Someone as talented as Yates couldn’t possibly be impressed by my dumb sketch. “It’s like an examination of suburbia and mass consumption. It’s original thought presented through its antithesis.”
Umm … what?
A few seconds pass and one of the two skateboarding boys raises his hand. “To me, it says corporations are soulless.”
A few other kids add their thoughts — including Robyn, who says, “There’s a self-hatred here, because Emily is clearly attacking the McMansion culture of her hometown.”
“Yeah,” I say. “Sort of.” r />
Finally, Fiona says, “People just shove this processed food in our faces and tell us to chew, even though it’s killing us. The proof is right there, right in front of us, but we don’t do anything about it. It’s absolutely disgusting, and I mean that in the very best way.” She smiles at me.
“I would agree with all that,” Mr. Frank says. “Emily, this is exactly what I hoped would come from these journaling assignments. Fantastic job.”
I smile back, even though I’m not sure I had any of this in my mind when I was drawing. I thought it was just kind of funny, in a depressive way. But I’m thrilled that everyone likes it. It’s my first piece that has gotten any kind of response in class.
When I sit down, Fiona grabs my arm. “See? Once you start seeing things the way they really are, it’s like you can’t stop looking. And think, if we never became friends, you probably wouldn’t have ever noticed something like that.”
I nod and whisper thanks. I don’t mind Fiona taking some of the credit. She deserves it.
Fiona goes next and shows a page covered by black spots. They look like puzzle pieces, totally amorphous. There’s a tiny newspaper clipping taped to the corner of her drawing, but I can’t make out what it says from where I’m sitting.
“I’m very into shadows these days. Like, showing something in an undefined way, capturing something at its essence, stripping away the audience’s pretension. Basically, I focus on the shell of something”— she winks at me — “and let you project whatever meaning you want to on the object. So these are a series of shadows that I saw in the water off Penn’s Landing, drawn over one afternoon. I’ve also included a copy of the weather report for that day.” Fiona is so sure of herself, so confident.
Everyone stares. I think the shapes look cool. But no one says anything. I think it’s because Fiona kind of said it all herself.
“Interesting,” Mr. Frank says.
Fiona curtseys, pleased as punch.
Mr. Frank goes through a few more sketchbooks until it’s time for lunch. Then Fiona, Robyn, and I walk out and meet Adrian on the steps. He takes a graphic novel illustration class on Tuesdays, which is in the other building across the street. A bunch of papers falls out of his back pocket when he stands up to greet us.