“What does getting grounded even mean? That’s, like, so 1950,” Reagan said, cupping her hand around a cafeteria mug of lentil soup, flicking the carrots to the side with a spoon.
Vati wasn’t speaking to Reagan. None of us really were because nobody had gotten to the bottom of what had happened between her and Oliver. I was supposed to get the scoop, but I never got to talk to my brother because I was drawing that owl. So we had to wait for the juice to come directly from Reagan.
“It means I can’t do anything but go to school and work on my application for France for like what, two weeks?”
“A little more,” Vati said quietly, looking at her bagel and tuna that she lifted up toward her mouth but then put back down again without taking a bite.
“I guess you won’t be going to Nolan’s gig at Columbia this week then,” Reagan said. That was so not what I thought would come out of Reagan’s mouth that I audibly gasped.
“How do you know about that?” Vati blasted. I was going to say something too, but now the energy had shifted to a Reagan/Padmavati thing and I had to sit back and watch that show.
“Oliver told me,” Reagan said, as cool as a cucumber. “He’s going.”
We all sat in silent shock.
“Reagan, why are you being such a cunt?” said Farah.
“Hey, whoa,” I said, feeling panicky—that is quite a word, and I don’t think any of us had used it before, let alone directed it at another Turtle.
“You did not just call me that,” Reagan said, sounding like a Kardashian.
“Yeah, I did.” Farah didn’t back down for a second. Padmavati’s eyes were the size of jelly doughnuts. “You know, Reagan—we all know for a fact that Vati has been in love with Oliver for, like, her whole life and you are just blindly and meanly acting like you had no freaking idea.” Vati’s bottom lip started to tremble.
“Vati. I. Am. Sorry.” Reagan looked around at all of us but Farah. “But what did you want me to do? Oliver totally macked on me.”
“Oh yuck,” I said, and watched poor Vati go over the edge from about-to-cry to full-on crying.
“See?” said Farah. “What are you even doing? Now she’s crying.”
“I’m sorry, but it’s not that big a deal, all we did was make out.”
Vati made a very sad sound.
“Oh my god, we made out for like two minutes next to dead people. I don’t even like him.”
“Then why would you kiss him, Reagan?” Vati wept. “Why?” She put her head down dangerously close to her open-faced tuna sandwich.
“You could have said no, Reagan,” I said.
Reagan hunched over and looked down, rubbing the side of her tray with her thumb. I felt sorry for her. It wasn’t her fault that Oliver chose her. Who wants to be the girl to screw over Padmavati? No one.
“I don’t think Reagan was doing something directly mean to you, Vati.” I put my hand on her trembling back. “Right, Reagan?”
“No, I just … I just kind of didn’t think of you, Vati.” Well, okay, that came out wrong, but I got what she meant.
“Oh thanks,” Vati said and wiped her nose with her sleeve, streaking snot along her lilac purple cardigan.
“I’m thinking of you now though, I’m sorry now—I just didn’t think through what I was doing then. Does it really matter if I don’t even like him?” Reagan’s eyes darted around at all of us.
“Well, you’re stupid, Reagan.” Vati sniffed. “Because, well, you just are.” She took a deep breath in and out and stopped crying. “I would do anything to kiss him.”
“Maybe you will one day, Padmavati,” Farah said.
“Maybe,” Vati said dejectedly. Then, right as Vati was getting it together and it seemed like the tension at the table was subsiding, Reagan said, “Farah, what is the deal with you and that artist?”
Farah put her fork down, forgoing the bite of beets she was about to put in her mouth.
“You know, Reagan, I don’t think that is your business,” she replied. All that tension cranked right back up again.
“Just asking. I saw you leave the party with him.”
“We did leave together, yes.”
“And?”
“And then we went to his studio to see his artwork and then I went home right after that.”
What? Farah just lied to Reagan and Vati? I tried not to look surprised, but these were new waters—lying waters.
“Look, he is an extremely interesting person. What was I going to do? Not go and get a tour of this famous guy’s workspace? We all had spent the entire night looking at his paintings on the walls of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.” The expression on her face was like, Duh? “Of course I went with him—to see his process. And his really tiny pig.”
“Ohh, he has one of those teacup pigs? What color?” said Vat, drifting off into a happy piggy place without a shred of distress in her voice. I think in the universe of Vati, miniature pigs and all of their blinding cuteness anesthetize all boy badness. But Reagan was immune to pig cuteness.
“Did he come on to you?”
“No! God, Reagan,” Farah whispered.
“Okay, sorry.” Reagan jutted out her neck, and put her hair behind her ears with both hands. “I just think it’s super strange you went home with him, and really, I’m kind of sure everyone here does too.”
Farah gave me a look to keep my mouth shut and I totally did. I didn’t tell anyone what had happened between Farah and Cy Dowd, at least not for a while.
“Doodle, his pig, is unbearably cute.” She pulled the dark red beets off her fork with her teeth and started chewing like the cat that ate the canary. “He’s adorable.”
33
I had to get home. I had so much homework. I had three papers: history, lit, and Latin, all of them mired in briar patches of reading. Primary sources, secondary sources, cross-referencing, translations, biographies, and endnotes, all due before the end of the semester. I had ungodly amounts of math. Math can seem finite because you know there is an end, but that’s an illusion, because each problem has at least four additional problems embedded in it like jalapeño peppers in nachos. Hidden, unexpected bummers. A problem looks easy enough with its six numbers all neatly lined in a row, but to solve it you use three sheets of graph paper only to find out the answer is wrong, and if you are me you have no idea where you made the bad turn. I had a science project researching the anatomy of a hummingbird, which sounds fun because hummingbirds fall under the magical creatures category, but like math, this project was more complex than it first seemed. The way hummingbirds fly and their habits are an evolutionary wonder. They are way more technical than their Tinker Bell reputations lead you to believe.
So do the teachers even talk to each other? Does each one have any idea how much work the others are assigning? How do they think we can do it? Do they think we have more hours in the day than they do? And they trick you too. They psych you up for the work way before it starts by giving an inspired introduction to the assignment. They dangle the project in front of your nose like a juicy carrot. You are the dumb horse. When they assign the paper it’s their chance to wine and dine you. They suck you in, they wind you up, they make you feel like what they are asking you to do is not only doable, but enthralling. Sure, write a paper on Sense of Place in Faulkner and compare it to your own Sense of Place—what is it about where you come from that makes you who you are. You get so interested in the prospect of figuring out who you are that you lose sight of the fact that you also need to figure out who Faulkner thought he was. And that requires close reading and careful analysis.
Anyone can imagine they will do a good job before the job starts. Anyone can hold the hope that maybe this time they will wail on it and get a big fat A that will raise their grade point average so high they have endless opportunities to succeed. But sitting in your room with the task at hand, alone, without the encouragement of your teacher or the determined faces of your classmates providing peer pressure, the bleak and scary r
eality that you may not be able to accomplish what you want—that shining A, that insightful, fascinating paper—is real and like a cement wall two inches from your face. And you have to bust through and just do it, there’s no getting out of it, if you don’t you fail, you might fail anyway, even if you try. You have to be brilliant. You have to be better than you have ever been before.
And if all of that wasn’t enough, I had to draw myself. I had to, I had to, I had to. Within the next month. I had to reproduce who I was on paper and pray it was enough to get me into that school. If I could get in, if I could go to Saint-Rémy and feel what van Gogh felt, if I could see the colors, smell the air, look into that night sky, I might be able to reach the stars. They felt too far away in New York City. In fact, you can’t even see stars in New York City. I felt like if I could just go to France, I would be able to move myself forward and do something important. But here’s a secret—you can’t find anything worthwhile by simply looking in the mirror. You have to look beyond what you see in the mirror. I didn’t know that then though; if I had, maybe everything would have been different.
So, I was going straight home and nothing and no one was going to stop me. I had a plan and I was determined. I was going to go directly to my house, be good, put my head down and make my parents happy—make myself happy. Doing the right thing definitely makes everyone very happy. At lunch, Vati and I had decided we would walk home together across the park. A brisk walk would be useful before a long afternoon and night of work and kicking ass. Maybe I would even stop at the deli and get a Diet Coke. There is something about a can of Diet Coke that makes me feel like I can study all night. It’s not the caffeine, it’s the look of the can. Not a bottle, not a glass with ice, a can. School ended and Vati and I met at sign-out. I definitely signed out that day. I pushed open the heavy brass doors and who-the-freak was standing right outside, leaning on a car, just like the day before—Nolan. But this time Oliver was standing right beside him.
Whoosh. That is the sound of all of my determination and every single one of my well-intended-head-in-the-right-place plans blowing away with the mid-November wind.
He found me just like he said he would in the note, the very next day. And not only did he find me, he brought Oliver to Vati.
* * *
“No, no,” protested Nolan. He was wearing his guitar on his back again. In all the time we spent together, I’m not sure I ever saw that guy without his guitar. “It won’t take much longer … Don’t go, don’t go…” he begged, like he knew I wasn’t going anywhere. “He’s almost done, look.” He pointed through the glass windows at Oliver, who was paying for two orders of hot french fries from Le Cafe, a coffee shop on Madison where seniors who are allowed to leave Hatcher for lunch go for chef salads and Diet Cokes. Vati was standing at the cash register looking up at Oliver, talking to him. I couldn’t hear what they were saying, but the way Oliver was looking at Vati, it was like he was seeing her for the first time.
“What did you say to him?” I asked Nolan.
“I said he had the wrong girl.”
“And he changed his mind? He just switched? Like that?” I pulled the sleeves of my sweater down and over my hands, which felt like they were starting to freeze off.
“I don’t know—look at them.” We watched Vati explode into head-thrown-back laughter at something Oliver said. Sure looked like he dug her.
“Sometimes, guys don’t know what’s right in front of them. And anyway, your friend told him that night she wasn’t into him.”
“Really?”
“Yeah, Oliver said he tried to kiss her, and she let him, but she bailed on him pretty soon. I guess she’s sort of direct?”
“Yeah, Reagan doesn’t mess around. But if she didn’t like him, why would she even kiss him at all?”
“Who knows. People are always kissing.”
“What? That is insane.” I laughed. He turned to me and held the sides of my thin black Patagonia parka that I was wearing over a long almondy-brown sweater—it’s probably my nicest sweater and I wonder now in retrospect if I didn’t wear it hoping, or knowing, he would show up.
“It’s not nuts, I’m right. There are probably hundreds, no, thousands of people kissing in this city right now.” I got that sex feeling again. (I’m embarrassed to write about it, but I think the sex feeling you get when you just kiss a boy leads to someplace big. It just does.)
“And you think that Vati will just forget that Reagan did that, or Oliver for that matter?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know Vati. Or Reagan.”
“I have to go home. I can’t be late, or bad. I’m not free. My wings are clipped, and it’s because of you.” I pointed at him.
“But—but here’s the thing.” His big smile made me ask myself, What is there to lose? What is more important than this cold, Wednesday afternoon corner in New York City, with Nolan, french fries, Vati, and an afternoon in Central Park? My brother was even there. And couldn’t I fly away to somewhere new, with Nolan? Wasn’t that what kids are supposed to do? Wouldn’t my parents want me to have this brand-new happiness?
“Here. Is. The. Thing,” he said right in my face. So close. “How else am I going to see you?” I laughed.
“Yeah, you think it’s funny?”
I laughed again.
“I can’t stop thinking about you.”
“I … I…” I didn’t have any of the words he had, so I copied him. “I can’t stop thinking about you either.” I held my breath.
“Righteous,” he said, to my delight.
“But I’m late,” I said almost inaudibly, because I was sick of repeating something that clearly had no meaning for me anymore.
“What you are, is beautiful.” Nobody, but nobody, has ever called me beautiful the way Nolan did. He said it like it was a fact. Not in some cheesy “Ohhh, you are so beautiful” way. He said it like how you would say a sandwich was good. “Now that is a good grilled ham and cheese.” He put his arms around me and kissed me like there was nothing else in the world but him and me and the sidewalk under our sneakers, and like that was the way it would always be. It surprised me like you can’t believe to be kissed like that, but part of me thought, Well, my time has come.
“Hi, guys!” Vati stood in front of us holding bags, ketchup packs, and sodas in paper cups with straws sticking out of them. Oliver came up next to her, tucking his wallet in his back pocket, and took all the french fry stuff from her like a gentleman.
“Let’s go to Belvedere Castle and eat those, then you guys can go home. I have rehearsal later downtown,” Nolan said, putting his arm around me as he headed in the direction of the park. The light was getting dim, the sky was chalky white. I thought it might snow. I thought I might die.
“Oh, I love Belvedere Castle. When I was little my dad used to tell me a princess lived in there, which enraged my mom because she hates the Disney princesses so much, and Dad always let me watch all those movies at his house,” Vati said.
“What’s up with your mom? She didn’t even like Snow White? I don’t think she was a princess,” Oliver said.
“She was a princess!” Vati skipped in front of Oliver and turned so she was walking backward, facing him. She looked radiant. “But she only wakes up because the prince kisses her. It’s one example in many of the man coming to save the day and the girl having no part in it. She was asleep,” Vati said, sounding flirtatious and not like a feminist.
“Yeah, but she never would have been asleep if that bitch queen hadn’t poisoned her. It’s not like the prince got paid more for the same job; he just did her a favor and woke her from the dead so she could keep rocking on,” Nolan said, cracking Oliver up.
“Bitch queen,” Oliver repeated, laughing.
“Oh my lord, that queen was such a bitch and she had no hair!” Nolan laughed.
“She was kind of hot though,” Oliver said.
“Ol-i-ver—she was hateful and vain!” I punched his arm.
“What? You spend a
ton of time looking in the mirror.”
“Shut up. I’m drawing myself because I have to.” I glared at him.
Vati turned back around, falling in line with the rest of us. “That is another reason my mother couldn’t stand all those movies. The mean women who were jealous and ruinous were either gorgeous, with cleavage, or totally bizarre-looking with green skin, or enormously fat. None of them looked real.”
“Right, it’s totally not real. It’s Disney,” Nolan said.
“Yeah, but real people can be mean. People you know. You don’t have to have two-toned hair like Cruella to be a villain,” Vati said a little sadly.
Silent walking. I pictured Reagan animated like a Disney character for a minute. She had gigantic purple boobs, thin sexy eyebrows, and a black cape.
“You look like Princess Jasmine,” Oliver said to Vati, who actually does look like Princess Jasmine from Aladdin. “And she’s strong. I don’t think the prince saves her.”
“No,” Padmavati said as she looked up sweetly. “I think she saves the prince, who wasn’t even a prince. He was like a street urchin or a rapscallion.”
“Yeah,” Oliver said, and I saw him take Vati’s hand.
“So, you guys can’t come to my gig Thursday, huh?” Nolan asked.
“I can’t,” I said, and gave Nolan a sad face.
“I can,” said Oliver. “Wanna come with me, Vati?”
“Sure, yeah! I mean, I think my mother will let me go.”
“How will your mother let you go? It’s a school night.” I said. Vati is never allowed to go out on a school night.
“I don’t know, I think she just will.” She looked at Oliver, who was looking down at the ground smiling. It was hard not to be jealous of the plans being made but, (A) I was grounded, (B) I had to be super happy for Vati, and (C) you can’t feel that happy and jealous at the same time. Emotions have to take turns.
Once we got to the castle the four of us perched on the huge rocks around the moatlike Turtle Pond that surrounds the fairy-tale castle.