Simon Says (9 page)

"Congratulations!" Dad says, a little too heartily.

Mother says, "Send us copies."

Right.
What's she planning to do—stick them up on the refrigerator like the lollipop trees and stick figures with fake smiles? Show them to the DA next time he visits her
office
about a case? "Sure."

"And talk to your counselor," she continues, "or, what is he called? Your mentor? About courses you need to take so you're ready for those college applications next year. And ask about financial aid applications, too."

"That's a year away," my father tells her. "He's taking good courses. He'll get good grades before it's time to send in applications."

"I just want him to remember his grades are important," she says sharply. "If it weren't for the fact that he got a scholarship to Whitman, we couldn't afford to send him there." Her tone is resentful.

"Well, I'm sorry the economy was down and it was a tough year for moving real estate," Dad snaps. "We've got savings set aside for his college."

"It's just that college tuition is so expensive," my mother frets. "Those savings may not be enough."

I've heard all this before. Did they only call to argue with each other across the extensions? "I'm doing fine in classes," I interrupt "There won't be any trouble with the college applications." And there won't I may not even go to college, despite what I promised them. I would have said anything to get them to let me come here so I could meet Graeme Brandt I still can't quite believe he's not what I'd imagined.

"You're sure, now?" Mother says doubtfully. Maybe
she suspects I'm willing to lie for my paintings, if I have to. "Your transcripts are important, Charlie. Remember our agreement—if you don't make good enough grades this semester, you'll have to come back—"

"He knows," Dad tells her. "Don't worry, Charles. I'm sure you're studying. We just wanted to say hi and make sure you're off to a good start."

"I am—everything's going to be fine," I assure (
lie to
) him. "And I'm glad you called."
Strangely, not a lie.

"Let us know if you need anything," Dad adds.

"I will Thanks."

Adrian sighs as I hang up the phone. "How nice. How can politicians wonder where family values have gone? Even just hearing one side of the conversation, I think it's clear we have a real American family here: hardworking, respectable parents calling their artistic son to make sure he's all right."

I suspect he's itching to ask me about my relationship with my parents so he can tell me about his. All I answer is, "Yeah." But I can't help studying him as he sits at his desk, the bright light creating a silhouette as he feces into the room. Only the outer edges of his hair have any color—a rusty halo framing his shadowed face. I'd like to paint that image.

"You know," he says, "some guys actually get homesick here. Boarding school—first time away from home and all? That's one of the reasons for putting new kids in with survivors. We provide sympathy and comfort." I can hear a smile in his voice, like he's joking, only I can hear he's not, too.

When I don't answer, he adds, lightly, "So if you feel
homesick, just let me know." His tone sharpens. "Or do calls from home ease the ache within?"

Not the real ache.
But I don't want to talk about me. "Don't your parents ever call?"

The halo of hair shudders as he shakes his head. "They've gotten me out of the way so I'm not an embarrassment," he says flippantly. "TUition here is a small price to pay to forget about me. They'll fork over money for college after I graduate, as long as I promise never to come back home."

Before I can stop myself I ask, "They're not music lovers?"

Adrian laughs, and it's not a pleasant sound. "They like music all right It's
me
they can't stand."

I guess they don't like his being gay. Well, he could hide it if he wanted to, the way I hide my paintings. Who's really homesick here? I think it's Adrian, for what he wishes, he had. More than me, anyway. "Well, if you miss having attentive parents, feel free to talk to mine anytime."

"I can borrow them? How sweet" I can tell from his tone that he's smiling now, even though the backlighting still hides his face.

I reach for my pack, and he asks, "Off to your studio?" He drawls the words as though they don't matter, but I hear a trace of disappointment.

"Yeah. A still-life project due." I watch him pick up his headphones. "How come you're never in your studio?" I ask suddenly. "Aren't you supposed to be composing music, not just listening to it?"

He laughs, fluttering his fingers at me limply. "You're in your studio such long hours, dear, you have no idea how much I've written since school started!"

I almost wince at the wave and the casual "dear," including me as if I were like him, and I guess he can see something (
disgust
) on my face. He turns away, and with his face no longer silhouetted by the light I see his smile fade. Well, it's his own fault, for acting like that "Why do you do that?" I blurt out "Can't you at least try to sound—I don't know—normal?"

For a moment Adrian just sits there, his eyes fixed on his limp-wristed hand gently dangling the headphones. Then he slowly rises, his fingers tightening into a fist around the band connecting the earpieces. Instead of easing into his customary slouch, he draws himself straighter, until he's taller than I suspected. He pushes his shoulders back, clenches his other fist and thrusts out his jaw. He glares at me and drops his voice nearly an octave, demanding in a brusque, aggressive tone, "Is this what you'd prefer? Do you think I'd pass like this at some football tailgate party?" And the scary thing is—yes, I think he would.

Then his face dissolves into a wry smile, his posture relaxes, and his voice slides up to its regular pitch. "Though why I'd want to be caught dead at some jock tailgate party is beyond me."

He drops the headphones on his desk, and suddenly his hazel eyes are serious. "Sounding like that—acting like that—that's playing games, and I won't do it This—" Adrian spreads his hands helplessly—proudly.
"This is me. No games. Just me. And I won't pretend to be anyone else. Not for anybody."

I bow my head, embarrassed (
by what I said, or by how he answered?
), and turn away. I half expect him to call me back, but he's silent as I head out of the room, shutting the door behind me (
shutting him firmly out of my mind
), then follow the tree-lined walk into the main campus, trying to think about the new painting I'm working on.

The birds canvas is done, and I've discovered you can go up to the roof of the studio building. Most days it's too hot, but after dark it's almost like sitting in the stars, high above the trees, above the birds. There aren't even as many mosquitoes up there. I've started a painting of stars—a dear, shimmering night sky, with just the hint of buildings straining up at the edges of the image, like teeth ready to slice the sky to shreds. I thought about turning it in to my Landscape class, but why risk it? Instead, I'm doing a field. With cows. And a barn. Even a silo.
Sigh.
At least the cows aren't smiling.

Still Life is the worst, though. The teacher—a short, balding man with bushy eyebrows and a chip on his shoulder the size of a mural—reminds me of Mr. Birkin from third grade.

"And what is that, Mr. Weston?" He acts like it's a major sign of respect to call us by our last names while he's ripping into us.

"Ifs a pile of books, Mr. Wallace."

"It is not the pile of books on that table." He shakes a bony finger at the still life setting.

I study the table. "You see, the Dickens was crying
out for Thackeray instead of that paperback Melville. And the book that's propped open really needed an illustration on the left-hand page to balance the color of the spines on the books behind it. I just added in what was missing." I'm not in third grade anymore.

Someone smothers a giggle behind me. Mr. Wallace stares at my canvas. "You just added in what you thought was missing?"

More giggles, and a loud chuckle.

I look at my painting, at the balance I created from his chaos. "Yes sir."

He raps a brush hard on the top stretcher bar of my canvas. "That is not the purpose of this class, Mr. Weston! The purpose is to paint what you see."

That
is
what I see, you moron. The purpose of art is to interpret, to express, not just to make a cheap photocopy.
I stare at him, and he suddenly backs away from me a step. "We are starting fruit tomorrow," he tells me. "I will give you another chance." His voice is shaking—with anger? with fear? with what?

Sure enough, we start fruit I dutifully rough in a blue-and-white uneven potter's bowl, and a tasty (if not tasteful) pile of apples and oranges and pears and grapes. There's a bruise on one of the pears, a nice study in hazels. I wonder if he'll replace the pear before it discolors completely, but each night he carefully puts the bowl into the refrigerator, and each afternoon, takes it out for our class.

I told Adrian I had to work on that still life, but I don't. It's going disgustingly well. I switch on autodraw and the colors ooze around on the canvas. Maybe I
could write a computer program that does that for you, takes a photograph of something and scans it in, then lets you paint it like a fill-in-the-numbers chart—a salvation program for artists who are trapped by creation-destroying teachers.

Actually, I'm not even going to my studio. I have an appointment to see Rachel Holland. I don't know why I didn't just tell Adrian that I push open one of the heavy bronze doors at the student center and remember him opening it for me the night I met Graeme Brandt
Adrian says ... show time!
Another performance.

The elevator has doors you have to pull open—an old-fashioned cage that stinks of machine oil as it creaks and shudders and strains its way up to the third floor. You'd think Whitman could afford a newer model. Maybe they think it adds to the charm. Maybe I should take the stairs down. It's all too easy to imagine this thing shuddering to a halt trapped between floors. Actually, with the sketch pad in my pack that wouldn't be so bad. A few hours out of time, with nobody telling me what to draw. But it's even easier to see the ancient cables snapping at last, twanging like shots in the elevator shaft as the metal cage crashes toward the basement I'm not ready for that, at least not yet.

Glass windows line the hallway to make the place look bigger—maybe to let the kids see out of their cages. The
Ventures
office is at the end of the hall, silent outside the glass, a chaos of activity inside.

"You're new around here," a girl says, looking up at me briefly from a computer screen. "Whatcha need?"

"Where's Rachel?"

The girl looks at me more carefully. "She's really busy, y'know? We're putting together the first issue, and it's always a panic."

So?
"She told me to come by."

"Yeah? What's your name?"

"Charles Weston. If you just point in the right direction—"

"Come on," she says, punching a button on her keyboard and jumping up—the tight jeans and stretched T-shirt type. She glances at me over her shoulder to make sure I've noticed. "I'm Buffy," she tells me.

Of course she is...

I follow her, threading my way between computer desks and tables with unruly stacks of papers and file cabinets with drawers half open. She knocks on a closed door, half hidden between two tall file cabinets, then pushes it open.

"Rachel? There's a Charles Weston here asking for you?"

"Good. How's the layout coming?"

Buffy shrugs one shoulder. "I've got all the headlines and subs set, y'know? I'm playing with caption highlights now."

"I'll take a look when I'm done with Charles."

Buffy eases out of the doorway and grins at me. "Go on in."

I shut the door behind me. Like magic, an oasis of calm in a disaster area. "How do you get anything done in this place?" I ask.

Rachel smiles from behind a desk lined with in- and out-boxes neatly stacked with papers and file folders. "I have a door and I keep it closed."

I smile back, knowing that solution all too well, and slide into a chair. File cabinets and shelves line the walls in here as well, except for a window that lets in a square of blue sky and a wedge of sunlight It makes me think of a dormer window, the way it's framed between the file cabinets. Across the tops of the cabinets, and at the ends of the rows of books on the shelves, there are wooden shapes—puzzles, I realize. The kind where you have to pull a brass ring over a ball or a disk that's bigger than the ring. And a Labyrinth game with a steel ball bearing you have to maneuver around a maze without it felling into holes. "You like puzzles?" I ask.

She reaches for one and idly slides the ball and trapped ring back and forth on the cord that runs into the wooden base. "I like seeing into things and working out how they fit" She looks up at me. "That's why I like your sketches. You see into people, how the pieces of them fit together, and then you draw what you see so that other people can understand them."

I shrug uncomfortably, thinking of the way I've drawn so many teachers over the years. It's true—I knew just what to draw to hurt them the way they'd hurt me. I still hate them, and the kids who attacked more bluntly, but I wish I could find a way to deal with them other than stooping to their level and hurting them back. What I draw is true, even if it hurts, but hurting people doesn't make them change.

I don't like the way my thoughts are headed—and I
don't like the way Rachel is sitting back, observing me through her clear brown eyes (
not blue-black like Cindy's eyes, not admiring me the way Cindy's eyes seemed to do
). I don't want her to think she understands me (
to think she likes me
) from seeing me sketch. Next thing, she'll want to be friends, and then she'll want to see my paintings, and then her eyes will slide away, the way Mrs. Geller's did, the way Steve's did (
or she'll laugh, like Cindy
).