Boy Proof (4 page)

My GPA is higher than hers.

Sometimes I almost think that I would like to be Nelly Melendez’s friend. She’s the student editor of the
Melrose Lion.
She’s in all my AP classes. She’s on the tennis team. She has a brain.

She’s chewing the eraser off a pencil and twisting her really long brown hair with her skinny manicured finger. And I bet even though she’s looking up at me that she doesn’t know what I look like. I notice that she never really looks in my eyes, as though I scare her. She treats me like I am an alien or a monster. She’s afraid that she’ll awaken the demon inside of me.

Nelly tries to be so nice — so welcoming, so understanding, so sweet, so everything a nice girl should be — that I try to convince myself that there is something deeply wrong with her. Like she’s got some deep-rooted psycho issues.

But she’s smart, and not a social retard like most of the people who talk to me, so I try with her. And I don’t try anymore with anyone.

“I like your shirt,” I say. “It’s shiny.”

Now she really looks up at me. I’m wearing my Egg cloak over jeans and a T-shirt.

“Yeah, um, I dig your cloak,” she says. Only she says it like a question. Like I’m a joke. Like she’s grabbing for straws to find something nice to say to me because she’s
that
kind of nice girl. I convince myself of this because with me she always seems awkward. Forced. Fake. It upsets me, because there is nothing about me that she really digs.

She’s finishing up the
Los Angeles Times
crossword puzzle that I already completed this morning while sipping on a latte and waiting for school to start. I can see that she can’t get the answer for twelve down, “A Tolkien Tree.”

I realize that she would never think to ask me for help. She probably just hopes I’ll go away.

“It’s ‘Ent,’” I say.

“What?” Nelly says.

“The answer to twelve down.”

“I would have gotten it eventually.”

“Whatever,” I say. “Just trying to be helpful.”

I go and grab a seat for the meeting and wonder yet again why I try being friendly to people.

Mental note: Don’t bother.

Ms. Dicostanzo comes in. I notice that she’s put more blond in her hair and she has hip new chunky black glasses. She changes her look every four weeks. It corresponds to the exact same time all the new fashion magazines come out.

Max Carter is following her and they are deep in conversation. She pulls out a chair and Max sits next to her.

“Does he have to be everywhere?” I ask.

Nobody answers me.

“I’d like to introduce Max Carter, our new editorial cartoonist,” Ms. Dicostanzo says.

“Do we need one?” I ask. “I mean, don’t we have enough people on the paper?”

“There’s always room for one more on the team!” Nelly says.

Ms. Dicostanzo nods in agreement.

Nelly leans forward in her chair trying to get a closer look at Max. Nelly likes everything new, and that includes boys.

“I think that there are already too many on the team,” I say.

“Now, Egg, that’s no way to treat a newcomer. Please welcome Max Carter to the
Melrose Lion,
” Ms. Dicostanzo says.

Across the table, I see that Nelly’s still checking Max out. I notice when she perks up, she pushes her chest out first and then rises in her seat. She fancies herself a kind of Lois Lane. I believe this might be an actual Nelly flaw. It makes me feel better. But Max Carter doesn’t look like Clark Kent. I hardly think he’s hiding a Superman outfit underneath his
Preacher
T-shirt.

“Wait, your name is Egg? Like in
Terminal Earth
?” Max asks.

I nod my head.

“Oh, now the cloak makes sense,” Max says.

When I look up to meet his eyes, I notice that Max Carter has washed his hair.

“How do we know he can draw good?” Inez says.

Ms. Dicostanzo peers over her glasses at Inez.

“Please don’t use street language here at the paper,” she says.

“I was just being colloquial,” Inez says.

Max holds up his sketchbook. It’s a drawing of our mighty mascots, the Melrose Lions that guard the front of the building, dressed up to look like Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. I have to admit that he’s got talent.

“Oh,” Nelly says. “That’s cool.”

“Do you even know who they are?” I say.

“You’re not the only person who watches a lot of movies,” Nelly says.

Nelly may be a cinephile, but it’s only because she’s starstruck. I bet she’s never set foot in the Silent Movie Theater for one of their special screenings, even though it’s practically across the street.

Then Nelly begins to hand out assignments.

“Okay, people. Egg, can you take pictures of the installation that went up two days ago at the empty lot down the street? The artists are being sued by the city, and I want coverage on the lawsuit. I’ll write the story. Plus, I think it would be nice to document the art before the city tears it down.”

I nod and tune out everything else she says until she tells us that we can go.

“Okay, that wraps it up. Good work, guys,” Ms. Dicostanzo says.

I grab a new roll of film from the cabinet and head out of school and across the street.

“Hey. Wait up.”

It’s Max Carter. I don’t want to share another single moment of my day with him. It is beginning to feel like he’s living all over me. Enough already.

“I wait for no one,” I say, and keep walking at my brisk pace. It’s one of Egg’s lines from the movie. It’s one of my favorites. I quote her all the time.

The installation is beautiful. It is a model of the Statue of Liberty, made out of a broken gas pump.

I stand on the sidewalk looking through the chain-link fence.

“They tear everything down that’s truly human,” I say.

“Like Egg says,” Max says.

“Yes, but it’s true.”

“I’d be interested in what
you
thought.”

“Well, maybe art is only meant to last for just a moment, a wink in the span of the universe. Maybe it’s a moment remembered and treasured. A private moment, one unshared.”

“That’s interesting,” Max says.

“You think art is forever,” I say.
“Ars longa, vita brevis.”

I’m sure I mangled the Latin.

“Well, you never know. Maybe I’m wrong,” he says.

I take out my camera and start snapping. It’s too bad I’m stuck out on the sidewalk. I’d like to get the details of the statue, but I don’t have my zoom lens with me.

Mental note: A good photographer always has her camera. A
great
photographer always has the right lenses as well.

“You’re too far away,” Max says.

I keep my eye behind the lens and ignore him and make him invisible.
Snap. Snap. Snap.

“Come on,” he tugs at my cloak. “There’s a way in over there.”

I look up at him despite my desire to ignore him. He’s heading toward the alleyway. I follow him. Lo and behold, there is a gap in the bottom part of the fence. He gets down on his hands and knees and crawls into the lot.

Once inside, he sticks his hand out from under the fence.

“Give me your camera so it doesn’t get scratched.”

I want to get inside. I look down the alley both ways. I’m a little afraid. But then again, Egg wouldn’t be, so I shake off the fear. Egg would’ve scaled the walls or jumped the fence. She does what she wants. I do, too. I get down on my belly and slither into the lot.

Max hands me my camera and starts to walk toward the sculpture. He puts his backpack on the ground and takes out his sketchbook, sits cross-legged on the dusty ground, and starts to draw. He looks completely at peace, like a Buddha.

I move toward the sculpture. Lady Liberty’s dress is made of watercolor-washed green magazine ads. They are cut in strips so that they flutter a little in the wind made by the heavy traffic coming off the street. Her feet are two rusted oilcans. Her body is the old gas pump. Her torch is the nozzle. A rod of iron holds her arm up high. Her crown of liberty is made of shredded tire. She makes me feel strong.

“Somebody thought this up,” I say. “Somebody took the time to construct it and put it here.”

“Yeah, ideas. They come and go, but this is
action.
This is like a whole sentence being spoken. It’s like a quiet revolution,” Max says.

That’s exactly it.

“A point where something silent intersects with volume,” I say.

I’m taken aback that someone can go there with me, since no one ever gets it when I speak. Usually there is so much explaining to do that I just keep my mouth shut, but it seems like Max could almost pluck the next thought from my head.

Suddenly it feels like I’ve been starving for meaningful talks with someone. It freaks me out. I turn my back to Max and get busy with more photograph taking.

“Come on,” Max says after a while. “Let’s go to Canter’s and get a sandwich.”

“Nah,” I say. “Not hungry.”

He shakes his head.

“You ought to try to be more social,” he says, and then slips himself under the fence and heads down the street.

I stare at his retreating figure. I put the viewfinder of my camera up to my eye and take a picture of his back. I contemplate for one second meeting Max over at Canter’s, but I change my mind and I go to Mäni’s Bakery instead.

I notice that Max talks easily with people. He smiles easily. Engages easily.

I hear him make plans with everyone.

“We should totally do that!” he says about everything.

He’s been here just over a week and already he knows every single person in the senior class. And they know him.

“Maybe I’ll be valedictorian,” I hear Max say to a group of people after class.

Maybe not,
I think.
I will beat him. I will win.

Twenty minutes have gone by and I’m still confused about question number one.

I actually consider cheating, but Ignacio is sitting next to me and I know for a fact that he won’t do well on the test. He’s an idiot. So I don’t bother looking at his answer sheet.

I know I’m not supposed to waste time on just one question. My SAT prep class taught me that, so I move on to the next question. I plug in numbers. I pretend I know what I am doing.

The bell rings sooner than I think it should. I have barely finished filling out the exam.

“Whew! That was hard!” I say to no one in particular.

“Really?” Ignacio answers. “I thought that was really easy.”

I had a sinking feeling at the beginning of the quiz that I was going to fail. Now, it morphs into a certainty.