I can’t believe it.
“This is what I want.” Fiona shows him a drawing in her sketchbook. It’s of a tree, branches bare and spindly. You see the detail of the trunk, the knots of the branches. And then, stuck off to the side, its dark shadow.
“Do you think this is a good idea?” I whisper as she hands me her tote bag. “I mean, tattoos are permanent.”
“It’s not like I’m picking something random off the wall, Emily. I made this. This is me. This is who I am. I believe in my art, and I don’t care if anyone else gets it or not.”
I understand what she’s saying, especially after Mr. Frank’s crit, but I’m still nervous for the pain she’s going to feel. The man takes the sketchbook back to a photocopier and returns with a spray bottle and a plastic Bic razor. “So, where did you want this?”
Fiona takes off her shirt and hops up onto a long black medical table, the kind you’d see in a nurse’s office at school. She lies there on her side, in her bra and a long beaded necklace and a pair of ripped denim shorts, and cranes her arm up over her head.
“Wait, you’re getting it on your ribs?” I cry out.
Both Fiona and the tattoo guy laugh at me.
He sprays her side with the solution and gently shaves away any small hairs on a six-inch section of her creamy white skin, from the top of her rib cage to the bottom. Then he uses the photocopy to transfer the drawing right onto her skin.
It’s not as big as I thought, just maybe five inches tall. It looks cool … I think.
“Aren’t you nervous?” I ask.
“Yes!” she says. “Come hold my hand!”
I step forward and position myself next to her. The man gets the tattoo gun ready, pressing his big black boot on a petal to make it buzz. I can’t watch him actually touch the needle to her side, but I feel her body tense up.
“Are you okay?” I ask, squeezing her hand. “Does it hurt?”
She talks out of the corner of her mouth, trying not to move. “Kinda. But not as bad as you’d think. More like my entire chest is vibrating.”
After a few minutes, I muster the courage to look. Fiona’s skin is red and tender and inky. The tattoo guy runs the needle for a few seconds at a time, then wipes the skin with a paper towel. I can see the shape forming.
“Do you think your mom is going to get mad?” I ask her.
“What? No. Of course not. If anything, she’ll be pissed that she wasn’t here for my first one.”
“Hold still,” the man says, refueling with more black ink.
She takes a couple quick breaths like women who are in labor do. Her whole face scrunches together. “What’s it like to draw with a tattoo gun?” Fiona asks him.
“It’s definitely different than a pencil. I was a Fine Art major, but I wanted my art to have more of a life than just hanging on someone’s wall. So I got an apprenticeship here a few years ago and did a bunch of tattoos on honeydew melons to practice.”
“Cool,” we both say at the very same time.
Since the tattoo isn’t that big, it doesn’t take long for him to do the outline, which he says hurts the most. Then, he fills in the shadow portion all black. Finally, it’s time to do the shading and detail of the actual tree. He mixes up a bunch of different paints inside these tiny plastic thimbles, combinations of gray and one of pure white. Fiona is able to relax. In fact, she says she doesn’t even feel the needle anymore. Her side is totally numb.
“So, Emily, what are you going to get tattooed?” Fiona asks me.
I freeze. My mom would absolutely kill me if I ever did anything like that.
“Come on. Pick something in your sketchbook! I’ll pay.”
I’m too chicken.
Fiona looks over at her side and smiles. “Breathe, Emily. I’m just kidding!” Then she takes a deep breath. “But I wanted to thank you for what you did in Mr. Frank’s class today. I know I don’t handle criticism well. And I really appreciated that you had my back.”
“Of course, Fiona. I love your stuff. And I do think —”
“We don’t need to get into it again. It’s just great to have a friend who understands how important this is to me. I mean, I can’t see doing anything else in my life but this, you know? It’s just art for me, I know it. And for someone to get that, to believe in me. It’s just … awesome. It sounds corny, but I’m so glad we became friends.”
I give her hand a squeeze. “Me too.”
It takes about thirty-five more minutes before the whole thing is done. And when he’s finished, it looks really pretty. It looks so great I almost wish I have the courage to get one myself. I look at my watch and know we’re going to miss the afternoon session of Mr. Frank’s class. I kind of feel bad about that, but I know Fiona needs this right now.
“I absolutely LOVE it!” Fiona screams and hugs the tattoo guy.
Fiona sends me to the ATM with her card to get the $200 the tattoo costs while the tattoo man takes a picture of her for his portfolio and bandages up her side with some ointment and a fresh paper towel. I enter in her pin and try for $200, but get rejected. I check her balance, and she only has $40 in her account.
I put in my own card and withdraw the difference. After all, that’s what friends are for.
On Wednesday’s field trip, we visit the Institute of Contemporary Art up near the UPenn campus. They have a big exhibit of Nara — a Japanese artist who makes cartoon-looking sculptures and drawings, but instead of being happy like the ones on cartoons usually are, his characters are all a little sad and weird. There’s one enormous sculpture of a white puppy with sleepy eyes. And lots of drawings of a small girl with the creepiest, most mischievous look on her face — like the dark side of a little kid world.
When we return from the field trip, Fiona and I walk off together. Yates lurks by the headlights and when I step out to the street, he taps me on the shoulder.
“Hey,” he says. “Do you have a second? I want to show you something.”
I freeze and glance back at Fiona. “Um, we were going to walk to the train station. I usually catch the five o’clock back to Cherry Grove.”
Fiona interrupts and hip-checks me. “Trains run like every fifteen minutes during rush hour. Don’t worry, Emily. I’ll see you two later,” she says, and walks toward the train station, away from me.
I hear Fiona’s voice in my head: If you want this, you’ve got to make it happen. I wish I could be that sure of myself. And I only ever see Yates during school hours. When he’s off-limits.
But then again, classes are technically over for the day. This could be an extracurricular field trip.
Yates and I race across the street and head into the art building.
“You never came back to class yesterday,” he says, holding the door open for me.
“Did Mr. Frank notice?” I ask, twirling past him.
“Of course he noticed. But it wasn’t a big deal. I told him that Fiona wasn’t feeling well, and that you took care of her.”
“Thanks. That’s not far from the truth, actually. She was really hurt by the stuff Mr. Frank said.”
“What did you think of her piece?”
“I love Fiona’s stuff. She just gets really sensitive when anyone challenges her. It’s because she’s so passionate.”
“Yeah, I totally understand that, but it’s also a dangerous state of mind. People are going to tell you over and over that you’re not good enough. Not everyone can love your work, you know? But you have to have the strength to overcome that and to keep going if this is what you want to do.”
I raise my eyebrow. “She’s got the strength. Believe me.”
We take the elevator up. A few other kids are in it, and I notice that Yates edges over a few steps away from me. I understand him being careful, but we’re not even doing anything. We’re riding the elevator. So I do something bold. I slide next to him, close so that our arms touch. His muscles tighten. He’s definitely nervous, looking around out of the corner of his eyes, checking if any
one sees. But he doesn’t pull away, either. He lets me do it.
The elevator doors open, and Yates and I walk down the empty hall together. We stand so close, our arms touching, but not holding hands or anything like that.
“I’ve been working on a new painting and I wanted to hear what you think,” Yates says as he opens the door to his studio.
We step inside. The door closes behind us, before Yates can get his hands on the bulb cord overhead. The room is suddenly super dark, and the only light is a strip that seeps from the hallway through the gap between the door and the floor.
Yates fumbles and swats the air. When he finally clicks the light on, we’re practically standing on top of each other. He’s behind me, and so tall he could put his chin on the top of my head. The heat of his body tingles against my back.
Then he steps past me and grabs a corner of a paint-splattered sheet. It’s covering a huge canvas, nearly as tall as the ceiling. When it drops, I almost drop with it.
It’s a painting. Of me.
Sort of.
The canvas is a huge photograph. It takes me a second to recognize that the picture is the one Fiona and I took the last time I was in his studio. Maybe because Fiona, who was standing right next to me, has been all but cropped out. She is background. Blurry. I am the focus.
Yates has painted over my picture, just like he did in the Space Invaded show. But he’s taken it a step further. Instead of painting beautiful landscapes over urban shots, he’s painted over my face, a thin layer that still allows the photograph to be visible underneath.
I stuck out my tongue for that picture. The sight embarrasses me now, and I feel myself blushing. I was doing that to impress Yates, to make him think I was more like Fiona. But he’s painted over my contorted, funny face and made me look classically beautiful, like the old Victorian portraits we saw in the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
“Do you like it?”
“I …” Somehow, the collision of those two images, those two versions of myself, presents the most accurate split that my personality has gone through this summer. “I feel like you get me better than I get myself.”
He stares at the floor. He wants to tell me something.
“What?” I say.
“Emily,” he says, “I’ve liked you ever since that first day I met you out on the sidewalk.”
I shake my head. “But why? I was just this idiot girl from the suburbs.”
“You were never an idiot,” he insists, and finally looks me in the eyes. “You’re so pure and genuine and humble.”
“Humble?”
“I’m telling you, Emily. You have so much talent — only without the confidence to match it. Mr. Frank knows it. I know it. Fiona knows it. Everyone knows but you.”
“You can’t be serious.”
“Why? Just because you don’t look like the rest of these kids here, you think that makes you less than they are? Your potential is … limitless.” He steps closer to me. “I just wish that circumstances were different.” He rustles his hands through his hair, frustrated. “As a TA, I had to go to this crazy day-long seminar about how it’s completely unacceptable to fraternize with the students. I went through the same thing when I got the RA position for next semester. I need these jobs. The paintings I’m able to sell cover my tuition, but that’s about it. I can’t risk getting in trouble with you, even though I really, really want to kiss you right now.”
“Me too.”
Only instead of kissing me, Yates turns away and puts the sheet back over the painting. I feel the moment slipping away.
But the Fiona part of me takes over, and suddenly I feel a charge of confidence. I walk over and squeeze in the small space between him and the painting. I reach up and grab his face and pull it down to mine. I kiss him first, soft on his bottom lip.
And a second later, he kisses me back.
I lean across the car door and stare at myself in the side-view mirror. After you kiss someone, you’re so much more conscious of your lips.
I can’t wait to run up to my room and call Fiona. I would have called her from the train, but I just sat quietly and let it all wash over me.
As Mom pulls into our driveway, her car screeches to a stop. I look up. She can’t park because Rick’s truck is already there. He’s standing on our front lawn with a shovel and a wheelbarrow, scooping dark wet dirt on top of a brown patch of dead grass.
“What are you doing?” I ask. Rick is probably the last person I want to see right now.
“I noticed this a few weeks ago and I thought I could help. It might be a soil issue, but I figured I’d try some of this heavy-duty fertilizer first.”
“Well, stop.” I fold my arms across my chest. “I like it the way it is.” It’s true. I love the imperfection. There’s about a million shades of brown in that patch of dead grass. A million shades, right in my very own front lawn.
Rick opens his mouth to argue with me, but he thinks better of it, and jams the shovel into the pile. “Listen, Emily,” he says, wiping his brow. “You have to talk to Meg.”
“Why? I don’t have anything to say to her.”
“Look, I’m sorry about your sketchbook, okay? It was a stupid joke. But don’t use that as an excuse to be mean to Meg.”
I don’t need an excuse. “Rick, you don’t know anything about our friendship, so stay out of it.”
“Maybe not. But I know Meg’s needed you this summer and you’ve been nowhere to be found.”
Please. The only thing Meg’s needed me for is to pass the time in between her hangouts with Rick. “What could she need?” I ask. “She’s got you, Rick. I honestly have no idea what you’re complaining about. Isn’t this your ideal situation? You’ve finally gotten rid of me! Congratulations!”
“Get over yourself, Emily. All I’ve tried to do is pick up your slack. But I’m not Meg’s best friend. You are. So start acting like it.”
“No, seriously. I’m sure Meg’s had tons of big, emotional problems to deal with, like which bikini to wear when you came over swimming and what lie about hanging out with me to tell her mom so she can sleep over at your house. She’s got it rough.”
Rick steps up. All the kindness and dopiness washes off his face. He’s pissed. “I know you think I’m some jerk who isn’t good enough for your best friend. Well, I love her, okay? There’s nothing I wouldn’t do for that girl. I only want to see her happy. Which is more than I can say for you.” He lifts the wheelbarrow and dumps his whole pile of fertilizer on our lawn. Some falls over my feet.
Rick doesn’t say another word. He just gets in his truck and roars out of my driveway. I stare across at Meg’s house, wondering if she’s watching from one of the windows. They all look dark, but in case she is, I smile like I don’t care in the slightest and strut back up to my house, wet dirt squishing between my toes with every step.
When I was a kid, I measured growth in lines on the pantry doorframe. Every couple of months, I’d press my back to the wall and let Mom rub a pencil across the top of my head. Then I’d step back and look at the white space.
The gap between two lines represented so much — old sneakers now too tight, the realization that I suddenly needed a bra, skinned red knees that healed to pink and then back to creamy white so fast I didn’t even remember getting hurt. I used to think that if there was so much about me that could change in a millimeter’s time, I might just grow straight up to the sky.
That’s the first thing that comes to mind when my Mixed Media teachers explain our final project.
Hanna steps forward. “Your self-portrait should use the techniques we’ve been discussing — collage, painting, graphic design.”
“Hopefully you’ve been amassing a nice image library to draw from.” Charlotte holds up two fists full of paper snippings. “This piece can be as abstract or realistic as you want. Basically, anything goes.”
“Just have fun with it,” Hanna says. “And make it as you as possible.”
It occurs to me that
maybe my self-portrait shouldn’t be about who I am now, but how I’ve figured out who it is I don’t want to be anymore. Mr. Frank’s lessons roll around my head. This must really be that personal perspective stuff he talked about when he first assigned us the sketchbooks. This project shouldn’t be about staring at my face in the mirror, like some of the other kids in class are doing around me. It’s about what I’ve lived.
Only it seems impossible to catalog how much you’ve changed or grown with a single picture. How do you track the history of transformation? How do you make sense of where you used to be?
Yates did it one way, covering things up with layers. But that’s not how I want things to be. I can’t avoid who I used to be. My past is fresh, just seconds behind me.
I’ve been collecting images in a large manila folder. I dump them all out on my worktable. There’s the ticket stub and the backstage bracelet from the Romero show. The textbook heart I found.
I take a look at the salvaged scraps from my old room, stuff that I was sure was garbage but kept anyhow, because something inside told me to rescue it from the trash. Strips of rosebud wallpaper, a cut of fabric from my drapes, a slice of the red halter, shards of broken porcelain, an old Starbucks receipt. It’s a complicated, colorful snakeskin of my path to this moment.
I weave all these things together in a silhouette. I cut out delicate images and sew them together with a needle and thread. I make a patchwork shape of myself. Then I draw my street on the middle of a fresh sheet of paper. It’s funny, how a cul-de-sac doesn’t actually lead anywhere. You walk straight down, like you’re going somewhere, like you’re on your way, but you could get lost forever in the loop at the end, rolling round and round.
When I lay the silhouette shape down on the paper, it’s as flat as a paper doll. Dimensionless … but still interesting. I move the shape to its side. It looks like a shadow.
The shell no longer represents the mystery I’m supposed to be. It’s the shell I’m leaving behind.
I work straight through lunch. I lose track of time, of blinking, of breathing. I lose track of myself in finding myself.