It Looks Like This (16 page)

I say, I did, it’s just small.

He says, You were supposed to make it the main part of the drawing.

I don’t say anything.

He looks at me a bit longer.

Then he walks away.

He tells me I’m getting a zero for the day, but he lets me keep my drawing so I don’t care. Plus he always says stuff like that.

I don’t care.

On the way to my locker after Art, I hear my name. It’s Victor.

He says, Hey, Mikey!

I pretend not to hear and I walk faster.

He says, Hey! Mikeeeey!

He holds out the
eeee
just like that. He does that sometimes.

I’m at my locker now and have it open, and I don’t have anywhere else to go, so I turn around. It’s Victor, and Tristan is with him. Fuller isn’t there because he has a class way on the other side of the building that he has to rush to right after Art. I hear him complaining to Victor sometimes about how he’s always late and his teacher gets mad and doesn’t care that he has to run. Victor usually tells him to shut up. Victor tells everyone to shut up.

I wish he would shut up sometimes.

He says, Hey there, Mikey!

I just look at him. I can feel my knuckles cramping from holding on to the backpack strap too tightly.

He says, Aren’t you gonna say something?

I just look at him.

I know I should say something and maybe that would be safer, or maybe just start putting my Art stuff in my locker and getting out my English stuff, but I can’t make myself move.

So I just look at him.

He says, That was a real pretty drawing you did today. Sucks about the zero.

He’s got this sort of lopsided grin that he has sometimes. Tristan looks annoyed, like he doesn’t really want to be there.

I say, Okay.

He says, Can I see it?

I say, No. I gotta go to English.

He says, Come on. I just wanna see what you drew. It was a sunrise, right? Sounds pretty.

I don’t say anything.

He says, I bet it had lots of colors. I bet you like lots of bright colors, huh?

I say, I gotta go to English.

He snickers. His little sideways grin comes back.

He says, I bet you do, Mikey. We’ll leave you alone.

Then he walks by, but bumps me with his shoulder when he passes. I guess he hits me pretty hard, and the back of my head slams into the corner of my open locker door.

Some other kids in the hallway see and a few of them giggle.

Like not loud enough so that they want me to hear but loud enough that I know what they’re laughing about.

My head hurts a lot but I try not to let it show.

I take my Art stuff out of my bag and put it in my locker. The drawing is in my folder, and I take it out. I sort of look around to make sure Victor is gone and no one’s looking, and then I stick it on the inside of the locker door with a magnet.

I like the drawing.

I leave for school earlier than usual. Today is the last day of the semester and our French project is due.

Sean picks me up in his Bronco at six forty-five with all the materials.

Dad’s still home. He waves me a bleary good-bye as he sips on his coffee. I’m much more awake than normal.

We rush to school, Sean speeding and taking turns faster than he should. The neighborhood zips by, still dark and sleepy and quiet. It’s finally cold out. There was a freeze last night, and some icicles are still hanging off tree branches and drainpipes this morning, twinkling in Sean’s headlights.

Every now and then he rests his hand on my thigh, when he’s not shifting gears. The touch feels warmer than I expected. I watch the crystal neighborhood zoom by, wishing this car ride could last all day, and I smile.

We get to the cafeteria a full forty-five minutes before first period and put the magazine together quietly. There are only one or two students already here. We take a table near the corner and work next to each other. We sit as close to each other as possible.

Sean puts the pages in order while I look them over for last-minute mistakes.

I say, My birthday’s coming up in a couple weeks.

Sean pulls a few little binder clips from a box and then makes sure all the pages are even.

He says, Oh yeah? When?

I say, December thirty-first.

He says, Oh cool, New Year’s Eve.

I nod. It’s actually kind of annoying having a birthday so close to Christmas, but I don’t say this.

Sean puts a few of the clips on.

He says, What are you gonna do?

I say, I dunno. We’re not going anywhere for Christmas, so we’ll probably just be at home.

He nods and says, Cool, we’re going to Boston for Christmas, but we’ll be back right after.

Sean will be here on my birthday. I don’t say anything at this, just watch him put the clips on.

Then he says, We should hang out for New Year’s.

He glances up and then back down at the pages and binder clips.

I nod in response, just a little. Shy suddenly. But also excited.

We go our separate ways when the first bell rings.

Sean takes the magazine. We decide that he will bring it to class.

I walk to my locker before first period. The drawing of Mill Point Beach is there on the inside of the locker door, full of color.

I put my body in front of it and look around quickly, but Victor’s not around.

I look back at the picture and smile a bit.

Then I get my Geography book and slam the locker closed.

Jared has some notes spread out in front of him at lunch.

He’s slurping on a fountain iced tea and flipping through some pages when I reach the table. Ronald’s looking at him in this kind of annoyed way.

When he sees me, Jared says, What tests do you have today?

I sit down with my tray. Vegetable lasagna.

I say, I already had Biology. Then Art and Algebra later.

Ronald snorts.

He says, What kind of test are you going to have in Art?

I shrug. Mr. Kilgore will probably just make us draw something quietly, which isn’t much different from a normal day.

I say, What are you studying for?

Jared says, Biology and English. How was Mrs. Ferguson’s test?

Jared has a different Biology teacher, Mr. Howards. I don’t know much about him except that he’s bald and fat and supposed to be really boring.

I say, It was pretty hard. And long. I just barely finished in time.

Jared says, Yeah, but you’re slow. Did it cover the whole semester or was it just the last few weeks?

I say, Just the last few weeks.

Jared nods and says, Excellent. Howards usually does whatever Ferguson does.

Ronald says, Didn’t he tell you whether it would be over the whole semester or not?

Jared waves his hand and says, He just said to study the whole semester, but that’s what all teachers say to cover their bases.

I look over at Victor’s table, where he’s sitting with Tristan and Fuller. They all look kind of cranky, but Fuller especially.

I’m guessing he’s annoyed about the Biology test.

Most of the other kids took the whole period to finish it too, which was kind of nice because it meant Victor was too busy to bother me.

Still, he finished it before me and didn’t seem like he thought it was too hard.

Fuller, though, was still working on it when the bell rang. Every now and then I could hear him swearing under his breath.

Victor just sat through the rest of the period, doodling.

When the bell rings at the end of lunch, I find myself hoping Mr. Kilgore gives us a lot of busywork in Art.

He tries to but it doesn’t do much good.

When everyone gets quiet after the tardy bell rings, Mr. Kilgore looks around the class with this half smile on.

He says, For your semester exam, you’re all going to draw something. Whatever you want. But it has to incorporate all the major elements we’ve learned so far this year: depth, lighting, shading, color, tone, texture, perspective, and proportion. You will be penalized for any element you leave off, so I suggest you take the whole period. If you think you’re finished before the end of class, check again.

He waits, maybe for some reaction, but there is none. So he says,

You may begin.

I roll my eyes when Mr. Kilgore turns around. The big surprise exam in Art class is to draw something. Like we do every day.

I think for only a minute before deciding what I want to draw.

I put a few lines on the paper, adding color here and there. It takes a bit before the shapes start to form:

It’s me, from behind. Three years old.

Mom and Dad on either side, holding my hands. Pulling me up just a bit, my feet leaving the sidewalk.

Sunset in Milwaukee, skyline to the left, Lake Michigan to the right.

It’s sort of weird because I have to imagine this angle. It’s a different perspective from the real memory, the sight of Dad grinning down at me, Mom pregnant and laughing as she helps pull me up.

But it starts to come together, and I think this is what it must have looked like.

Then something soft hits my head and I’m snapped out of the image.

I look around and hear it before I see it: Victor snickering. Giggling softly.

Near my left foot is a crumpled piece of paper.

I look up at Mr. Kilgore. He’s walking around, paying no attention.

So I pick up the paper and roll it out.

It’s a fat hairy bald man, naked, behind a drawing of me on all fours. It’s dumb but I’m recognizable and the detail actually isn’t all that bad — I think that’s what makes me so mad.

Victor and Tristan and Fuller are all shaking with quiet laughter now, barely controlling themselves.

I don’t even think, I just crumple the paper back up and throw it at them.

It misses by several feet and then I hear a hard slap on my desk, so loud I jump.

Everyone looks.

Standing over me, Mr. Kilgore says,

Mikey! What the hell are you doing?

I stare up at him.

He takes the drawing off my desk. Glares at me a bit more, then says,

Since you are apparently so bored that you’re throwing trash across the room, I’ll assume you’ve finished your exam. How about I just grade it as is, then?

I say, Victor —

Mr. Kilgore says, Shut up.

From my left I can hear Victor and his friends giggling but I don’t look over. My hands are shaking.

Mr. Kilgore glances at my drawing and says,

I can already spot a few elements you’ve missed. I don’t expect this to be a very flattering grade, Mikey.

I glare back at Mr. Kilgore and all I can think about is how angry I am, and before I can stop myself I say,

It’s Mike, you dick.

There’s silence in the room now.

My words hang there, stopped by nothing.

Mr. Kilgore’s lips are tighter than I’ve ever seen. He stands there, nostrils flaring, eyes piercing into me. Mustache quivering.

Then he turns on his heel and walks to the beige intercom phone by his desk. He picks it up, waits a second, then says,

Claire, can you send an office assistant down with a referral slip? Thanks.

It seems like he’s trying to keep his voice from shaking.

Then he turns to me and raises my drawing up before his face. Slowly, he rips it down the middle into two pieces, eyes never leaving mine. He takes the two pieces and rips them into four, then into eight, into sixteen.

Still looking at me, eyes wide, lips tight, he drops the pieces into the wastebasket, letting them flutter down.

He stares at me for a few seconds afterward and says, You will receive a zero on your exam.

I stare back. I don’t say anything.

There’s a minute of tension before the office assistant opens the door. I stand up as she hands Mr. Kilgore the referral slip. He signs it quickly and practically flings it at me.

I take the slip and my books and leave with the office assistant.

She’s a junior or senior. Straight black hair just past her shoulders, dark skin, loose clothes. Careless, sort of clumsy walk. She looks at me kind of funny as we walk down the hall in silence.

Then she says, What’d you do?

I look at her.

I say, I called him a dick.

She raises her eyebrows and says, Damn, dude.

The assistant principal is middle-aged and completely bald and has a beard.

I know that his name is Mr. Whitman but that’s all I know. It’s a big school so each grade has its own assistant principal. They introduced themselves at freshman orientation, and that’s the last time I really heard him speak.

He looks at me across his desk, reading the referral slip again.

He says, You called your teacher a dick. Is that true?

I’m surprised he actually says the word.

I nod.

He says, What were you thinking?

I look at my hands. There’s an answer to this, I just don’t know if I want to get into it.

He says, I asked you a question, Mr. Matthis.

I say, I dunno.

He says, You don’t know.

I shake my head.

He says, You just thought you’d swear at your teacher, is that it?

I don’t say anything.