How to Be Brave (18 page)

But being brave isn't about living every minute exhilarated. It's about waking up and knowing that despite the worry and the sadness and the deep, dark fear, you're going to go forth anyway. That you're going to try anyway. That you have a choice, and you're going to choose to live, today, bravely.

Maybe that's all any of us can do. Maybe that's all I can do.

My mom did that, for a long time. She lived bravely through the hospitals and the procedures and the constant fear of death. The reality of the inevitable.

Maybe she didn't realize it, but I know she tried. I know she moved through each day with the suffering and the fear, as well as the desire for a fully engaged life, as best as she could. She was the one who kept us going.

And she's gone now.

But it's okay.

It's still okay.

Life will turn us upside down, and it will still be okay.

My mom thought so. Lee Mullican thought so. Sitting here on my bedroom floor, surrounded by nothing else but the ghost of my mom's infatuation with another ghost, I don't have much choice but to think so, too.

I'm trying, Mom. I'm really, really trying.

*   *   *

Dad bought me some cold press illustration boards and a new set of gouache paints, which was what I had asked for. Considering I missed a good fifteen hours of Marquez's class this semester, I have a lot of catching up to do. Five paintings and a seven-page reflection paper. And now I have to finish it all in a week.

It moves slowly, this act of creation. I try to make it meditative, like Lee Mullican described. I try to just make the canvas appear, but I'm rusty. I put oil on the canvas, but there's nothing there. I have nothing to say. I don't know how to make the metaphysical real.

Maybe I should call up Evelyn and enjoy one more round with the brownies. That would get the juices flowing. That would get this project done.

Ugh. I know that's a very bad idea, for multiple reasons.

Reason #1: Ever since the party, I've been blowing Evelyn off. She's texted at least six times that she wants to get together, but I've been lying and telling her I'm sick. Which is kind of true. Technically speaking, I'm afflicted with something bad, like a severely allergic reaction to drugs and other human beings.

Reason #2: Evelyn's sweet and all, but I can only take so much of her. She's so far on the edge of not caring about anything—school, college, family, state and federal laws—that she wears me out. Without Liss around to balance her out, I don't know how much of her I can take.

And then there's Reason #3: I made a promise to myself not to get high anymore.

Shit. Now, why'd I go and do that?

I check my phone. Evelyn hasn't texted since the day before Christmas Eve.

This was our last conversation:

Her:
hey what's up?

Me:
Nothing. Sick. You?
(I refuse to misspell my texts.)

Her:
nm. get 2gether?

Me:
Sorry. Can't. Achoo.

Her:
ok. feel bettr. merry xmas.

Me:
You too.

And that was it. I haven't seen her in two weeks. Anyway, it would be just a bit awkward to text her out of the blue and say,
I want brownies. I want to get high.

So I sketch and I paint and sketch and paint, but after a full day's work, I have nothing—a few ideas and one messed-up canvas—hopefully I can paint over it tomorrow. And hopefully I can fill up the other four with something respectable.

I pull out the list. #6. Learn how to draw, like Mom.

I need to do this. It's as much for me as it is for her.

I made a promise.

*   *   *

I pack up all of Mom's Lee Mullican papers and carry them to the basement, and then I head back to my room. I have no other place to work. Mom had a studio she worked out of, but we closed it up when she died.

I shove my bed out from the center of the room against the wall. I push aside my desk, pile up my dirty clothes that cover the floor, and stuff them into my closet.

I put on my favorites: Lorde and Jack White and First Aid Kit, and yes, even some Taylor Swift, and, of course, Nina Simone. I blast the music, and I force it out.

I force myself to do this.

First, I draw faces on my paper. My face. Her face. His face.

I glance at photos, but mostly I work from memory.

I copy them onto a canvas. I sketch the lines of our faces, mix the colors with my knife. Cadmium red and yellow ochre with a dab of titanium white turns into my mother's hair, which is also my hair. Ivory black mixed with burnt sienna and a bit of the yellow becomes my father's hair.

Terra rose and cobalt blue for our skin.

Viridian for our eyes.

I etch lines like Mullican's crop circles onto our cheeks. Our eyes fade into our skin. Our jaws fade into the ether. We form a triptych. A blurred map of a lost land.

I refuse the real. I embrace the abstract.

I eat bowls of cereal and toast with peanut butter and cold bacon-and-egg sandwiches brought home by my dad, who ignores my locked door.

I sleep in two-hour spurts and then I wake up and paint again.

I am outer world and inner world.

I am energy.

I am vision.

I am Lee Mullican.

I am Diana Melas.

I am Georgia Askeridis.

*   *   *

On the sixth day, I go to bed at eight
A.M.
after a full night of painting my last canvas, and I sleep for sixteen hours straight. I wake up to the sounds of firecrackers and horns.

Oh right, New Year's Eve. I squint in the dark at the clock. Midnight. I guess I missed the countdown. Maybe Dad knocked on my door, maybe not. It doesn't matter. All I know is that the worst year of my life is over. Hallelujah.

I turn on the light, but the rods and cones in my eyeballs protest. I'm groggy and starving and surrounded by a mess. Even though I put down old towels, I dripped paint all over the carpet. I should have used a tarp. Dad's probably going to kill me when he sees this.

Nothing I can do about that now.

I feel like I spent the last six days dreaming, but when I look, the paintings are really there. I don't know if they're good. I don't care, really. I see them, and they're mine. They're the first real productive thing I've done in months. Or maybe ever.

I reach to my nightstand and check my phone for the first time in a week.

Three messages, all from Evelyn.

Her, four days ago
: u better?

Her, two days ago:
hello? call me. im worried about u.

Her, yesterday
: did u see insta? u ok, georgia? call me if you need to talk.

Instagram? Why the hell would I be on Instagram? Like I could give a shit.

I don't want to go on Instagram. I don't want to know what other people are doing. And I certainly don't want to think about the fact that, come Monday, only a few short days away, I have to actually face Liss and Daniel and Evelyn and Gregg and Marquez in the living flesh. I don't want to go back to reality.

But I can't help it. Her fucking text has piqued my curiosity. Now I need to know.

I open Instagram and scroll down.

There it is, three photos down. I know exactly why Evelyn texted me.

There's a beach, a sunset, bare feet.
Skinnydipping! Second time in three weeks. #life #love #friends.

And she's tagged four people:
Daniel Antell, Felicia Carter Kevin Lee, Rosie Cabrillo.

She did #5—again, and without me—and even worse, with Daniel. And that probably means she also did #15, with Daniel. I bet she kissed him. I bet they're together now. I mean, she tagged him first in the damn post.

It's really not okay.

So much for new beginnings.

So much for positive thoughts.

I reach into my bag and pull out the list.

Do Everything? Be Brave?

Fuck it all.

I rip up the list into a dozen tiny pieces, and then I throw it in the trash.

I turn off all the lights and dig my head under the pillow. I scream into the mattress in a lame attempt to drown out the blasts of celebration that reverberate through the city.

Sorry, Mom. I failed you.

*   *   *

This is also what it was like:

She had curled up on the couch,

three blankets over her near-naked body,

the TV blaring, with Ellen or Dr. Oz or Alex Trebek.

It didn't matter. It was noise on the screen,

and she wasn't listening.

She had destroyed them all.

She worked for months on them,

her canvases. She'd sketched and planned

and worked and worked, but then,

it wasn't right. None of it.

So she blacked them out and came home.

I'm done,
she said.
There's nothing left.

And:
They'll forget me when I'm gone.

And:
I'm almost gone.

She was fever and chills, sweat and tremor.

I could blame it on what we didn't know:

the sepsis in her veins, the infection as insidious as fear.

But it only made her speak what was true.

I'm the broken one,
she said.
Everyone knows it.

I'm their mirror, a reminder of their own deep sorrows,

how far down they're buried in their old, hurt souls.

There's nothing left for my art to prove.

I begged my father.

There's nothing I can do,
he said.

I was the one who called her doctor,

told him she was sick again,

that she wasn't making sense.

But it was different this time.

The urge to destroy is also a creative urge.

It was different this time

because she knew exactly what was coming.

She knew it was the last time,

for her.

 

Part Two

 

12

I trudge through the snow with my art case by my side. I'm weighed down on all sides, textbooks pulling me backward, squeezed by the many layers of winter clothes—two sweaters, a down coat, scarf, hat, and gloves, all black. (I've given up on fashion.) Two inches of snow and a windchill of twenty-five. In April. First day of spring was two weeks ago. Oh, Chicago, you sadistic city. When I was a kid, my dad only read the d'Aulaires myths to me at bedtime. I think it was the only way he could think of to try to make me Greek. My favorite was about Hades, lord of the underworld, who captured Persephone while her mother, Demeter, cried above. I liked the idea of the pomegranate seeds, how the cold, hard winters were caused by Demeter's angst during Persephone's time in hell. The freezing wind slaps my face. It seems as though Demeter is especially pissed this year.

I push myself forward into what is nearly a blizzard. Of all the places my dad could have chosen to move to, he chose Chicago? He had sun and water and mountains and olive trees, and he chose this? A city full of congestion and potholes and snow that turns to giant piles of slush? I know he left for a better life. My mom liked to remind me of that—of the sacrifices he made so that I wouldn't live in poverty like he did. But so many Greeks went to Australia and Florida. Not my dad. He had to come where winter rules most of the year.

I walk up to this building, Webster High School, which is my Own Personal Hell. It's like I'm Persephone; I'm the one stuck here with no way out. Today is going to be like every other, where I spend my days ducking in and out of classes, talking to no one, my hood tied tight around my jaw. Evelyn transferred to Choices mid-January after she was caught selling pot. We text occasionally, but we never actually speak. I miss her, but she's also part of a time in my life that I wish I could forget.

Liss and Daniel returned from their trip tanned, blissed out on Belize, and chummier than ever. They won't make eye contact with me, yet I could hardly get through the entire month of January without hearing about their trip: from strangers in the hallway (“Oh my God, the rain forest! Could you imagine?”), from our crappy little school newspaper (“Central America Biology Expedition: Exclusive Interview of Environmental Heroics!” Hyperbole much?), and even from Marquez (“So, Mr. Antell, did you stay out of trouble? No smuggling illicit substances in prehistoric vases, I hope.”). Liss and Daniel are always together, and usually, Avery and Chloe and their respective boyfriends are not far behind.

The other thing is that Avery and Chloe are on this new mission to, and I quote, “be nice to everyone. To end the madness of high school gossip.” That was in the paper, too. I guess Liss has bought into this PR stunt. She's with them all the time. And despite the fact that they'll smile and wave at me, I refuse to believe it. And Liss refuses to talk to me.

I'm alone, but that's nothing new. It was like that before Liss entered my life. I should have known it would be like that again.

It's also been months since I turned in my project Monday morning, 8:03
A.M.
on the dot, per Marquez's instructions that were relayed from my dad to me. But he never said anything about what I did, just put a checkmark in the book and handed it back to me a week later. He probably just figures he was wrong about me. He's probably sorry he ever sat me down on a bench in forty-degree weather.

It's fine.

My sole purpose in life is now this: Get Through Senior Year. One more month. That's it. Walk through the door, go to class #1 (Twentieth-Century World History), sit down, do my work, leave, rinse, repeat (times twenty-nine more days).

The only thing I have—the only thing I like—is my art. I draw every day, and I occasionally paint on the weekends.

It's not for the grade.

It's not part of the overarching Get Through Senior Year project.