Isla and the Happily Ever After (12 page)

Josh stares at me for a long time. I keep my eyes on his bedspread – blue-and-white plaid, very male – and try to remember how Isla-of-the-past would have fainted if she could see Isla-of-the-present. “If I show you something,” he finally says, “you have to promise me that you’ll take it as a compliment. No judging.”

I tilt my head in question.

“I’m serious. You have to promise.”

“Why? Is it bad?”

“No, I just…wasn’t planning on showing it to you. At least not yet.”

“And now you’re worrying me.” I’m only half joking. “Is this the part where you confess that you’ve been taking pictures of my discarded yogurt cups?”

“I lied,” Josh says.

My worry becomes whole as he slides open a drawer, removes a battered sketchbook, and places it in my hands. I turn it over. WELCOME, the blue sticker says. “That’s the one I was using last June,” he says. “I didn’t leave it in New York. Obviously.”

“This is it?” My relief is profound. “Yeah, I know. I’ve seen it in your bag.”

He blanches. “You have?”

“It’s okay. I understand. I mean, the drawing isn’t flattering, right? I was so out of it. I understand why you wouldn’t want to show me.”

“Uh, no.” He’s squirming. “That’s not it. Not even a little bit. Not even at all.”

Consider my curiosity
way
more than piqued.

Josh sits down beside me. He sighs. I open the book, and it flips right to it. As if he looks at it. A lot.

I stare at the page.
Pages.
There are
two
drawings of me. In the first, my elbow is propped up against the table in Kismet. My head rests in my hand, and my hair tumbles loosely around my face. My eyes are closed in reverie. In the second, my head rests on my arms, which I’m using as a pillow. My hair spreads across the table in sweeping waves and curls. My lips are oh-so-slightly parted.

The pictures are…
sexy.
His brushstrokes are all curves.

Josh reaches over and turns the page.

There’s a third drawing.

This one is from memory. I’m standing in the rain. My hair is wet. My sundress is soaked. More curves –
mine
– are exposed. A giant garden rose floats behind my head like a halo, and I’m staring straight ahead at the viewer. The artist.

My heartbeat pounds in my ears. I look up at Josh, eyes wide.

“Kurt asked to see it,” he says. “When I thought you were dating. I thought he’d kick my ass.”

“My dress
is
rather clingy.”

Josh groans. “And now you think I’m a pervert.”

I smile. “Only if the rest of the book is like this.” I bump his shoulder softly as I proceed to thumb through it. At first I don’t realize what’s happening, but…I
am
looking for others. There are plenty of women, of all ages, inside – even some pretty ones – but as I continue to search, it’s clear that mine are unique. They’re the only drawings that look like
that.

Josh bumps my shoulder in return. “Feel better? Or am I still on par with that Finnish photographer?”

“No.” I’m still smiling as I set down the book. “Definitely not. For sure not.”

“Good.” His voice is deeper, quieter.

I stare at him. He stares back. His fingers comb through my hair, and he cradles my head in his hands. My eyes close. I slide my own hands up the nape of his neck, and then further upward, nails raking against his scalp. Our mouths hover, a murmur apart. Our breathing is fast and warm. He parts my lips with his.

And then we clash together like the ravenous animals we are.

I climb onto his lap,
needing
closeness, pushing my hips against his. The skirt of my dress rides upward. I feel desperate, in agony. A ragged sound escapes from between his lips. Our kisses grow frantic, and his mouth is assertive and his hands are strong and—

“
Ah hem
.”

We bolt upright. Nate is standing in the doorway. I tumble off Josh, and he grabs the sketchbook and lunges into his desk chair, strategically planting the book on his lap. Every square inch of my skin is on fire.

“Have a nice day,” Nate says wearily. He trudges away.

I groan. “I can’t decide if the new rules suck more for him or for us.”

Josh bangs his forehead once against his desk. “Definitely us.” Before I can reply, his phone rings. He lifts his head to peek at the screen. And then he swears under his breath. “I have to take this, or she’ll never stop calling.” He picks it up. “Hey, Mom.”

Don’t think about the sketchbook.
Do
not
think about what it is covering.

“Yep. Everything’s fine.” Pause. “I’m doing homework.” Pause. “No.” Pause. “No, I’m not.” Pause. “Yeah. I know.” Josh rolls his eyes as he tosses the sketchbook back to the bed, a twofold message that the mood is beyond repair, and I’m welcome to look at anything inside. “No. I know.” Their conversation continues like this for five minutes until he cuts her off. “Oh, man, fire drill. Gotta run, bye.” He hangs up. And then he slings his phone across the desk and drops his head into his hands.

I give him a moment before asking. “Fire drill?”

Josh lifts his head. “Usually I come up with a better excuse.” He stretches out a leg and taps one of my shoes with his. “Hard to think with you sitting there.”

I tap back. “I take it you aren’t close with your parents?”

“No. I’m not.”

I wonder how often they talk. I only talk to mine about once a week, but our calls always last for at least an hour. “Is that why you’re here? In France? I have to admit, I’ve always thought it was kind of odd that a senator would send his kid to a foreign country to be educated.”

“Paris wasn’t exactly their first choice.” And then he gets this strange expression, as if he’s surprised by his own words.

“What do you mean?”

“I…I’ve never admitted that to anyone before.”

My brow furrows.

Josh stares at his hands, massaging his left thumb into his right palm. “My friends were aware that I don’t get along with my parents, so…they sort of
assumed
that I was shipped here because I’m
difficult.
Or whatever. And I never corrected them. I guess I wanted them to believe it, because…it’s less embarrassing than the truth.” He looks back up at me and holds my gaze. “I chose this. Being stuck here is my own fault.”

My eyes widen. I wait for him to explain.

“When my parents started looking at private high schools in New York and DC, I talked them into believing that sending me overseas would be better for my education. And I was immature, and I was dumb, and Paris sounded romantic and artistic and all of that bullshit, but the moment I got here, I realized…it’s just a city. You know? And, yeah, it’s beautiful and cultured and everything the cliché says it is. But, I don’t know. It’s always felt like I’m killing time here until my real life can begin.”

Killing time.
I don’t think he counts me as a part of this, but the words are still wounding. I try not to let it show. “So where would you like to be? New York? DC?”

“No. And
definitely
no. I’m going to Vermont next year.”

I frown. “Vermont? What’s in Vermont?”

“The Center for Cartoon Studies.” Josh perks up at my confusion. He scoots closer in his chair. “It’s the only one of its kind – it completely focuses on sequential art. And it has this insane faculty, all of the best cartoonists visit to teach there.”

“Cartoonists? Like, what? The guy who draws
Calvin and Hobbes
?”

He shakes his head. “No, anyone who draws sequential art is a cartoonist. Superhero stuff, graphic novels, graphic non-fiction. It doesn’t just apply to the people who draw comic strips.”

“Oh.” And now I feel dumb. “How big is the school?”

“It’s not big. It’s about half the size of SOAP.” He picks up a pencil and rocks it between two fingers. “So what’s next for you?”

The nerve is struck. Just like that. “I…I don’t know.”

His pencil stops.

I should have seen the question coming, but it blindsides me. I’m humiliated to find myself fighting back tears. “I’m applying to both la Sorbonne and Columbia, but I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t know where I belong.”

Josh moves onto the bed, beside me again. “Hey. It’s okay. You still have plenty of time to decide.”

“No. I don’t. And you wanna know the worst part? I kind of
hope
one of them will reject me so that I won’t have to make the decision myself.”

His eyebrows raise. He’s silent for a long time, debating something in his head. “I’ve seen the charts in the head’s office.” He’s choosing his words carefully. “You’re the best student in our class. Both schools are going to accept you.”

So he
does
know. I scratch at my peachy-pink nail polish. Chip it away, bit by bit.

“What do you want to study?”

The pit in my stomach grows deeper. “Nothing.”

“Nothing?”

“I mean…I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do, or who I want to be, or where I want to live. It’s like everyone else has their entire future mapped out except for me.”

Josh’s expression falls. “You know that’s not true.”

“Maybe at other schools, but at ours? People have plans.
You
have plans.”

“Well. Which city do you like better?”

I tug on my compass. “They both feel like home. When I was young, my family spent summers here and the rest of the year there. Now it’s the reverse. I’m a citizen of both countries, I’m fluent in both languages, and I’m comfortable in both cities.”

“Comfortable.”

Something about the way he says it. “What?” I ask.

“It’s just…don’t you want to try something new? What about all of those adventure stories weighing down your bookshelves?”

I don’t know.
I don’t know.
I like reading about adventure, sure, but I also like doing it from the safety of home. But what
is
home, besides a quilt-covered bed? Where is it?

Josh sees that I’m getting upset with myself, so he tries to lighten the mood. “You know where I think you should go? Dartmouth.”

“Yeah. I don’t even know where that is.”

“It’s in New Hampshire, on the Vermont border. And the Center for Cartoon Studies? Just so happens to be on the other side. And I’ve heard that Dartmouth has an amazing programme in Nothing. The best Nothing programme in the world. That’s what people say.”

I finally crack a smile. He’s teasing, but it’s still nice to know that he wouldn’t mind me living nearby. Or, at least, that he likes me enough to joke about it. I nod at his drafting table. “So show me your real work. Show me what you do in here all day.”

Josh is surprised and happy to give me a tour through his workspace: dozens upon dozens of brushes, pens and pencils, India ink, oil paints, watercolours, nibs, erasers, reference photographs, a hair dryer for speeding up ink-drying time, several different-size pads of what he calls his semi-precious paper, and an elephantine box where he keeps his best. Like me, he’s crammed a skinny bookcase into his room, but his shelves are packed with bound sketchbooks, art books, reference books, and what appears to be every graphic memoir ever written – Jeffrey Brown, Craig Thompson, Alison Bechdel, James Kochalka, Lucy Knisley, and tons of others I’ve never seen before.

There is a distinct absence of school-related work. The strap of his bag pokes out from underneath his bed, so I assume the rest has been shoved down there, as well. And below his dresser – where I’ve placed a second dresser for more clothing – he’s placed a large metal flat-file. His own graphic memoir has been divided between its drawers. They’re labelled: BSB FRESHMAN, BSB SOPHOMORE, and BSB JUNIOR.

“Do you have a senior drawer?” I ask.

“Not yet.” Josh taps his temple with a finger. “I’m still storyboarding last summer.” He shows me what he’s been working on – blue-pencilled thumbnails of his annoyed self in DC, attempting to block out the sound of his father recording an attack ad about Terry Robb. Terry is his opponent in the upcoming election. “It’s easier to start like this. It keeps me from making bigger mistakes later.”

“What do your parents think about you writing about this? About your private lives?”

He shrugs. “They don’t
know
I write about our private lives.”

I wonder if that’s actually true. “What does ‘BSB’ stand for?”

“
Boarding School Boy.
That’s the title.”

I glance at the top drawer, his junior year, and then at him. He nods. I slide it open and find a stack of thick paper with fully inked illustrations. The top sheet is a drawing of his friends in graduation caps, smiling, arms around one another. Josh stands apart from them, small and distant. I lift it up, delicately, to peer at what’s below. It’s a multi-panelled page of Josh wandering around a city that is unmistakably Venice, Italy.

Cartoon Josh is familiar. It’s the same Josh that I used to see wearing silly costumes on his door. It’s an accurate – though exaggerated – portrait of who he really is. His nose is more prominent, his frame skinnier. But he’s still beautiful. He looks sad and angry and tender and lonely. I lower the top illustration and slide the drawer shut. His work is so personal. I don’t feel as if I’ve earned the right to look at it. Not yet.

“I hope I get to read this someday.”

I know he’d let me, right here and right now, but he looks relieved that I’ve chosen not to. “You will,” he says.

The rest of our day is spent in companionable silence – Josh with his sketches, myself with my textbooks. When the sun begins to set, he turns on his desk lamp and scrounges for food. His fridge is packed tight with ready-made items.

“Aha!” Josh yanks out something from behind the orange juice.

I cap my highlighter. “You do remember where the cafeteria is located, yes?”

“And
you
remember that I saw your electric kettle? The one against school rules?”

“As if you don’t have one.”

“I have two.” He grins. “And a hotplate.”

“The cafeteria serves food. Fresh food. Made by actual chefs! If it wasn’t closed for dinner on Sundays, I’d prove it to you right now.”