A Little Friendly Advice (14 page)

As if I couldn’t have guessed, Charlie’s dad acts like a total spaz once we arrive on the Kent campus. We park in the faculty section, near the Fine Arts building. After turning off the car, he sits still for a while, his hands gripping the wheel. I’m kind of afraid to move or make any noise, but Charlie gets out of the car like it’s no big deal, so I do too.

Charlie and I unload the trunk while his dad gets it together. I honestly don’t mind the weirdness. We have a good time piling up each other’s arms with more crap than we could ever possibly carry in a comfortable way. A little bit of green ink, left on one of the screens, smears across my favorite jeans and I don’t even care.

When we get up to the printing studio, I’m pretty blown away. The space is huge and empty and white, with a bunch of wooden workstations and a huge pushpin wall to display everyone’s work. Charlie carefully unfurls big pieces of beige paper from the cardboard tubes. His dad’s prints are amazing. Most of them are enormous wall-sized landscapes, built up with hundreds of passes of ink done over and over and over with different colors, in tiny little shapes to make one huge picture. I hold up one corner while he tacks the other with a pushpin and take a closer look. It’s pretty insane. Some of them are so detailed, they look like photographs.

Charlie explains that it can take his dad hundreds of passes to complete one piece of art. And if the paper slides askew just the teensiest bit, then the whole print is ruined. When his dad is working in his home studio, Charlie’s not even supposed to walk around downstairs, for fear the vibrations might shift a screen or screw something up. It sounds like life at home is stressful for him too.

Charlie’s dad trudges into the room after us and sits on a metal stool near one of the big picture windows. He stares down at the campus below, taking quick small sips from a sleek metal thermos. I think he might throw up.

“Is he okay?” I whisper to Charlie as he arranges tubes of paint on a desk in an order I don’t really understand but seems very intentional.

“Yeah, he’s fine.” He looks up at me and rolls his eyes. “Sorry if this isn’t fun, but I just have to finish up a few things and then we can go exploring.”

I just smile. I don’t want to rush him.

After ten more minutes of arranging, and another ten of Charlie whispering things to his dad as his students and a few adults file in, we head to the elevator and press the ground level. Students get on and off during our ride to the ground floor. I wonder if they think we are college students too.

Charlie presses something into my hand. It’s a blue button that says
I DON’T GO HERE
in electric-yellow type. I laugh while he pins the same one to his sweater and rustles his hands through his majorly messy hair. Then, he rustles mine.

We go for a slow walk outside. The wind is blowing crazy hard against us. Charlie loops his arm into mine so we can both keep our hands stuffed in our pockets for warmth.

“Thanks for all your help in there,” he says.

“No problem,” I say. “Your dad’s stuff is amazing. He really doesn’t need to be nervous.”

“Yeah, I know. He’s just been a little off since the whole Pittsburgh incident.”

I don’t know if I should press Charlie for details. So I just turn a little to the side and pretend like I’m really interested in the group of kids who are cuddled around a laptop underneath a tree on a big plaid blanket.

“You can ask me what it is I’m talking about. I mean, if you’re interested in, you know, knowing.”

He sounds a little hurt at having to extend the invitation, but I was only trying to protect his feelings. “Ah, okay. What are you talking about?”

“He lost his job. Well, I guess you could say that he didn’t get the promotion he was looking for, so he quit. He thought the director would chase after him, but he didn’t. So his pride was really wounded, because my dad thinks he’s hot shit. Which he kind of is, but whatever. So when he got the chance to teach a few master’s classes at Kent, we up and moved. And he’s been miserable ever since.”

“Wow.”

“Yeah. The best way to deal with him is to treat him like a kid. Helping him, telling him he’s doing a great job, convincing him that his stuff is still innovative and whatever else. I think most artists are really insecure. I mean, I know I am.”

“Come on. You?”

“Seriously. You should have seen me last night, trying to figure out if I had the guts to call you.”

I push my hair off my shoulder in an attempt to hide my smile. “I’m definitely the most insecure person I know.”

“Well, you’re an artist, so I guess that makes sense.”

I kick around a few pebbles. “I don’t think it’s that exactly.”

“I can tell the way you look at stuff. You’re definitely an artist, whether or not you know it yet.” He smiles at me.

I take out my camera, and Charlie helps me make a photo flip book, which I guess I’ll give to Beth for her birthday. Since she always complains that I never smile like a normal person, we take about ten photos as I go from a tight-lipped, plain face to a big, normal grin.

Then we go and get vegan sloppy joes at this crazy place called Zephyr’s. I’m a little afraid of fake meat, being that I’m a huge fan of the breakfast sausage at Dodie’s, but it actually tastes good. Not quite like meat, but still yummy. Charlie saves me some of his hero to feed to the weird black squirrels Kent has running all over campus.

We follow some flyers and enter a gallery for the fashion school. They have a whole bunch of costumes on display in glass cases from the fibers majors. I wonder if Beth knows you can major in fibers. I certainly didn’t.

“What are you going to be for Halloween?” Charlie asks, checking out one insane butterfly costume made completely out of woven labels from Mountain Dew bottles.

“I found an old Girl Scout uniform at the thrift store. But I have to make my own badges.”

“Cute,” he says. “What kind of badges?”

I think back to the printout Beth had placed in the bag of felt scraps. “Probably classic stuff, like birdhouses and rainbows and a guitar.”

Charlie stops walking and puts both his hands on my shoulders. “Wait. You know how to play guitar?”

“No,” I say, shrugging him off to get a better look at a knight’s suit of armor, knit entirely with Christmas tinsel. “That’s just one of the badges.” Sometimes I think I disappoint Charlie, in a way. Like he’s expecting me to be cooler than I am. Like the more he gets to know me, the lamer I’ll get.

Charlie tsks. “You can’t wear a guitar badge if you don’t really play guitar.” He raises his right hand and twists his fingers into some kind of weird gang sign. “Scout’s honor.”

I laugh. “I don’t think the Girl Scouts give out badges for my kinds of expertise,” I say. And then I get a great idea. “Oh my God, you know what? In the spirit of Halloween, I think subversive badges would be way more appropriate. Like … I don’t know. Something like a divorced-parents badge.”

Charlie recoils in mock horror. “You’re not a Girl Scout. You’re the anti–Girl Scout.” He throws up devil horns. “From hell.”

“Exactly,” I say, popping up and down on my toes. My good idea is pumping excitement through my whole body. “I could make a therapy badge with someone lying down on a couch!”

“That’s awesome. Hey, I could help you if you wanted. We could do them all as buttons.”

“That’s all right. I’ve got a mess of felt scraps that Beth gave me to use.” Then, there’s silence. A pretty uncomfortable one. It’s like I’m programmed to make things as awkward as they can be. “But thanks.”

Charlie nods and smiles a little bit. He walks over to another case and pretends to be really interested, even though there are only naked dress forms inside. “Where are you going for Halloween anyway?”

“I’m not sure yet,” I lie. I still haven’t decided if I should ask Beth if Charlie could come as my date.

“Teddy Baker is having a party, but it’ll be stupid. All the Lambert girls are going to show up in plastic slutty nurse outfits and the Fisher guys are dressing up as pimps or Mafia guys.” He sighs. “You know, in Pittsburgh my friends and I made a tradition of going to the midnight showing of
Night of the Living Dead
and then we’d all walk the streets as zombies and scare the crap out of people. Every year we had more and more people coming along to haunt the streets with us. It was awesome.”

“You miss home?” I ask.

“Yeah. Sometimes. Mostly I miss having my mom around. She was a good buffer between me and my dad. She kept me from having to deal with his tantrums. I guess she needed a break, so I’m kind of handling him in the meantime.”

I really want to invite him to Beth’s. I mean, I don’t think she’ll have a problem with it. I like Charlie, and the only reason I’m here with him right now is because of her. This is a good thing. She’ll be happy for me.

“Well, I do think my friend Beth is planning on having a party. But you have to come in a costume.”

Charlie breaks out into a grin. “Will I be going as your boyfriend? Because if so, I’ll need to prepare accordingly.”

My face ignites. I try to play off this very awesome and exciting development by examining a Kent brochure on campus recycling procedures. “You can if you want.”

“Are you kidding? I’m going to surprise you with the most awesome costume accompaniment in the history of coupledom ever.”

We continue to walk the halls, now hand-in-hand. His is a little bit sweaty, but I don’t even care. It’s like I am living another life with Charlie, one where I don’t have any problems or worries. It’s an amazing feeling. He leads us to a huge library. We walk inside, past all the kids cramming at big oversized desks or checking their e-mail on rows of computers. We go down into the basement, following the signs for
ART SLIDES AND FILMSTRIPS
. Charlie walks like he knows exactly where he’s going, and leads me into a small viewing room, no bigger than a closet, with only one chair. But we don’t need a lot of room. He shuts the door and we kiss for what feels like both forever and a minute.

For the first time, I’m not worried about where my hands should go, or how slobbery I’m getting, or if I’m breathing too heavy out my nose, or if I’ll feel ticklish when his hands slide up and down my sides. I let myself be vulnerable.

After a while, we head to the Michener Gallery to see the university’s collection of photographs. There’s a glass door leading inside. A few other students and some adults mill around the stark white gallery. I’ve never seen pictures blown up this big before. Each one has its own spotlight and dark black frame.

I’m so glad it’s not crowded, because I get to stand in front of each picture and really take it in. Charlie moves a lot faster than me, but I don’t mind. I want to take my time. He also offers to hold my book bag — he wears mine on his back and his strapped on his front.

The first really cool photo I see is called
Water and Foam,
by Ansel Adams. I read a little plaque and learn that he’s famous for taking landscape pictures. This one is black and white. I can tell it really is what it says — a close-up of running water dotted by swirls of bubbly foam. But it’s more than that. It looks otherworldly too, like outer space, complete with shooting stars and the Milky Way. In a very tiny way, it reminds me of the photo I took of that tree that looked like an umbrella. Not saying that I’m anywhere near as amazing as Ansel Adams, of course. But I can understand a little of what he was going for and it makes me feel … I don’t know … smart, I guess.

Another print catches my attention and I make a beeline for it. All you see is a close-up of a girl making a damsel-in-distress sort of face, but the thing you really notice are her eyes. They have very long and very fake eyelashes stuck to them. And she’s crying. But instead of real tears, they are drops of silicone or plastic or something. They look completely artificial on purpose.

I love the way this picture makes me feel. Aware of the phoniness of emotions. The photographer’s name is Man Ray. I wonder if that’s his real name. I definitely want to learn more about him.

Charlie comes over and grabs my hand. “Are you having fun?”

“Oh, yeah!” This is seriously awesome. Looking at all these photographs makes me want to run wild with my own camera. I’m feeling really inspired. I’m so glad we came here, together. Somehow it feels like this never would have happened, I never would have felt this good today, if not for Charlie. It’s totally magical.

We get to the last wall of the gallery. A sign explains that this section features some of the last of Diane Arbus’s photographs before she committed suicide. Which is a downer. I guess she had problems too. Maybe all artists do. But I’m really excited to see her work anyway … and, like Maria had mentioned, it might be a little bit like mine.

The first print is of four young kids, each wearing homemade Halloween costumes made of paper-bag masks and big sheets. One girl has cut out a couple of bats from black paper and stuck them on her dress. It’s pretty cute. The next is of a single over-weight girl, wrapped up in a sheet and wearing a mask, standing in a field. It’s weird and sad.

When I step over to the next print, my smile fades.

I notice now that the people featured in these particular pictures are mentally retarded. There’s a shot of them smiling and running through a field with their masks, innocent and happy, like little kids would be. But they are older. Some probably older than me. And their faces are soft in a way that tells you something’s wrong with them.

I let go of Charlie’s hand and step over to the next print. Now the people look less happy. They look like they don’t know what’s going on. One young guy has an old-fashioned mustache drawn sloppily across his mouth. An older woman in a black mask is leading him forward, and he’s just kind of dragging limply behind her.

“This isn’t right,” I say and turn to Charlie.

“I know, it’s insane, right?”

“No. It’s. Not. Right.”

“Wait …” Charlie says slowly and carefully, sensing how upset I am. “Talk to me. What’s not right?”

“I mean, everyone’s happy and smiling and having a good time, but you know.” I turn away from him and stare deep into the photograph.