Same Difference

by Siobhan Vivian

  But I was still conscious of dodging Fiona. I took a later train, so I’d arrive once classes had already started. And I sat alone in the Starbucks on the corner of school for the lunch period. Just sat there and did nothing.

  Meg shrugs her shoulders. “Well, it’s up to you. Just give it some thought, is all I’m saying.”

  I stare down at my bare legs and trace lines with my finger, connecting the dots of my freckles. I guess it’s stupid to ask someone for her opinion when you just want her to agree with you.

  Rick comes back over. He looks sad that there are no more nachos. “Meg, I’m starving. Can we go to the diner after the game?”

  “Sure. Emily, you’ll come, too, right?”

  “Yeah, okay.” Then I think about it, just like Meg said. If I quit my art classes, something here is going to have to change. I can’t let things go back to how they used to be. I can’t be the third wheel anymore. “Maybe I’ll ask Chad if he wants to come with us.” I mean, who knows. Maybe I was wrong to judge him. After all, I don’t really know Chad. But he seems more like me, more in my league than someone like Yates. And Meg’s always saying what a nice guy Chad is and that it would be so fun if we all double-dated. I could at least give it a try.

  Meg beams an excited smile at Rick. “That’s a great idea!”

  When I stand up, I feel a bit shaky. “Do I look okay?” I wish I had worn something cuter than my plaid shorts and a plain peach tank, but I can’t do anything about that now.

  Meg takes her pink flower and slides it behind my ear. “You look better than okay.”

  I feel silly with the flower, considering it was part of Rick’s bouquet to Meg, but I wear it anyway.

  The crowd claps for the last out. I walk up to the chain-link fence near the dugout. Chad sits on the team bench, untying his cleats. His white baseball socks are stained from the dirt.

  “Hi, Chad,” I say. “Great game.”

  He looks up at me. Kind of surprised. “It was okay,” Chad says. “But thanks. I didn’t think you liked baseball.”

  “Oh yeah. I definitely do. Meg and I came to cheer you all on.” There’s an awkward moment of silence, as I stand there and watch him pull off his shoes. He doesn’t loosen the laces to make it less difficult. He just wrestles them off. I take a deep breath, then a deeper one. “Listen … Rick and Meg and I are going to go to the diner to get some food. Do you want to come with us?”

  He looks up at me and smiles, like he’s been waiting for me to ask him that very question his whole life. My heart jumps. And then I realize Chad’s gaze is a little off to the left. He’s not actually looking at me, but just past me instead.

  A tiny body struts up next to me.

  Chad says, “Hey, Jenessa.”

  I take a step back.

  Jenessa loops two fingers into the chain-link fence and hangs off seductively. Her white tube top is lower than low and her bottom lip, dewy with strawberry gloss, pouts. “Can we leave now?”

  “Sure,” Chad says, and looks at me apologetically. I’m grateful that he doesn’t decline my invitation out loud.

  “I’ll wait at the car,” Jenessa says pointedly. She spins on her toe.

  “Umm, okay,” I say, and take a few unsure steps backward, until it hits me that there’s nothing else to say.

  I rush back over to Meg and Rick. Meg’s flower falls out from behind my ear, but I don’t even care. Meg is waiting with a huge smile on her face, but it quickly falls.

  “He’s hooking up with Jenessa!” I hiss.

  “What?” Meg turns toward Rick, accusatory. “Chad is hooking up with Jenessa? Since when?”

  “He is?” Rick smiles for a second, then thinks better of it. “Weird.”

  Meg hands Rick her trash. “Did he ever say anything to you about Jenessa?”

  Rick stutters for words. He doesn’t know why he’s in trouble, but he knows he’s in trouble. “No! I mean, nothing. Just that he thought she was hot and—”

  “Shhhh!” I practically scream.

  “Sorry, Emily,” Rick says, truly apologetic and quiet. But he and Meg get into it, like she blames Rick for the fact that Chad likes Jenessa and not me. I know Meg really wanted this for me. It would have been the easy solution to all our problems. But nothing easy ever seems to happen for me.

  “Can we please just go?” I beg them.

  “Do you still want to come with us to the diner?” Meg asks.

  I shoot her a look. Of course I don’t want to go to the diner. I’d rather die than go to the diner.

  I try not to watch Jenessa and Chad kiss on the hood of his car as we walk past to Rick’s truck. I worry how many people saw me get shot down, or if Chad will tell Jenessa and then Jenessa will tell everyone. Like I’m some big joke.

  “Maybe we should have a sleepover tonight,” Meg says, looping her arm through mine. “I mean, it’s not like you have class tomorrow. It’ll be like old times. We can make brownies and then go for a midnight swim and have diving contests for quarters like we used to.” Meg tries to skip, but it’s like I’ve got sandbags strapped to my sneakers.

  “I just want to go home.” It’s nothing personal. I wouldn’t be any fun tonight. And, anyhow, Rick is hungry. Meg shouldn’t break her dinner plans just because I’m all depressed.

  “Okay,” Meg says, glancing up at Rick with a sad face.

  Rick fumbles for the keys, and Meg strokes my arm. The funny thing is, I don’t even care about Chad. It’s just … everything.

  I drop my chin to my chest. The shadows bloom all around in the parking lot from the trees overhead. I stare at them. Hard. They are the only beautiful things about tonight, and I am so grateful that I see them because I really, really need them right now.

  Big surprise, I can’t sleep. The fact that it’s only nine o’clock on a Friday night doesn’t help me feel any better about it.

  My room is dark except for the lamp with the grosgrain ribbon shade on my night table. I sit up in bed, braced by a mountain of pillows, and stare down at the first blank page in my new sketchbook. I try not to be afraid of it.

  I tell myself that drawing will make me feel better, give me something to focus on, like it always does. I don’t worry about an egg timer or a teacher circling the room. I sit quietly, force my eyes to move as slowly as possible across my bedroom, and let my pencil follow.

  I quickly discover, as I peer down at my comforter, that fabric is just about the hardest thing to draw, especially in this kind of light. There are so many little peaks and valleys, where the cloth buckles and wrinkles over my legs. It seems impossible.

  But I take some of Mr. Frank’s advice and just capture the basic lines and folds and shadows, like an outline. I start from the bottom corner of the left side of the page and make half a rectangle that finishes on the bottom right side.

  I fill that shape with the tiny rosebud pattern of my bedspread. My hand picks up a rhythm of a small spiral, the letter U, and two oblong leaves, until the entire thing is covered. That pattern continues on the two sets of window curtains to my left. Those are way easier to draw than the bedspread. They hang in long, crisp folds that pool on the wood floor.

  It’s creepy, how clean my room always is. I bet Fiona’s room is covered in dirty clothes and half-finished art projects, and has spots of hair dye on the carpet. We have a cleaning lady who comes twice a week to straighten up and do laundry. Even if I were messy, it wouldn’t have a chance to actually stay that way. I mean, I like having a neat room, but tonight it looks sterile. And cold. And boring.

  My eyes follow the thick white baseboards over to the tall white bookcase near my bedroom door. There are a few books on each shelf, stories I don’t remember reading, artfully arranged in pyramids and clusters. And then, on the top shelf are my ballerina figurines — white ceramic, their glaze reflecting the light from the streetlamps outside. The long-legged girls twirl gracefully, wearing bristly tutus and huge smiles.

  I put down my pencil and rub my hand.


  I’ve never taken a dance class. I’ve never wanted to. But here these ballerinas are on my shelf, displayed like Claire’s soccer trophies, like something earned or reflective of who I am.

  The ballerinas are from my mom. She picked them out for me.

  She picked out the bedroom furniture, too.

  And the rosebud comforter.

  My room has always looked like this. No one bothered to ask how I wanted it to look or what my favorite color was.

  Fiona’s words circle through my brain. I can’t stop thinking about what she said about me, about my smile. Fiona saw right through me.

  This room, the one down on the page, might as well be a stranger’s. There’s nothing to make me recognize that it’s mine. It’s as blank as a piece of notebook paper, and not in that good, full of possibilities way — just in a nothing kind of way.

  But the thing is, I’m seeing it now. I’m seeing it, and, like Fiona said, once you do, you can’t turn back.

  You have to move forward.

  When I wake up Tuesday morning, I hate my closet. All my clothes are so plain, so personality-less. Just because you can buy J.Crew tank tops in every color they sell, it doesn’t mean you should. It’s practically a uniform. I need … I don’t know. Something.

  Before I even know what I’m doing, I grab a felt-tip marker and a lemon-yellow J.Crew tank. Then I turn seven years old and draw a doodle of my old cat Meowie, really big, right across the chest. I draw her crooked ear and her long, long whiskers. I draw her with a set of angel wings, and I put the years she lived underneath. It feels weird, and totally not me, but I do it anyway.

  It doesn’t look that great, because my pen keeps slipping over the fabric, breaking the lines. And some of the ink seeps through, leaving a bunch of polka dots on the backside of the tank and on my comforter. I flip the comforter over so Mom doesn’t notice.

  It’s funny, how clothes can make you feel so different. But when I slide the tank over my head, I’m someone else. Someone more interesting than me.

  I’m a bit nervous when I get into the car, but Mom doesn’t notice my tank. She’s too busy talking on her cell.

  Claire spots it when I get out of the backseat at the train station. Her head drops to the side for a better look, kind of like she can’t believe it. I thought she might have been too young to remember Meowie, but she just smiles. Like it’s cool.

  It’s exactly the reaction I want.

  When I get onto the train, I make my way to an open seat. I wonder what people would say if they saw me wearing this at DQ. They’d probably think I went crazy, because it’s so not me. I feel like a spy, or someone with two identities. I’ve got a secret. A secret I can’t wait to show to Fiona, to Yates, to everyone in my drawing class.

  A hand touches mine.

  “Emily!” Meg’s dad motions to the empty seat. “Wait until I tell Meg about my new commuter buddy. She’s going to be so jealous. You know how much she’s been missing you while you’re at your classes.”

  “Mr. Mundy.” I fall into the seat and cover my chest with my bag. “Hi.” I know it’s stupid, that Meg’s dad won’t say anything to her about my tank, but I keep myself covered anyway.

  “Come on in, Emily,” Yates says when I get to class, gesturing like there’s a big comfy couch in the center of the studio, instead of a tangled clump of paint-splattered easels. He sees my Meowie tank and double-takes with a wry smile.

  I shoot him one back, and squeeze past him as he drapes a white sheet along a long table at the head of the room.

  Two boys are in the back of the class, perched on another table, legs swinging in unison. Their skateboards are lined up against the cabinets. A couple of girls walk in together. They look tired, like they’ve all had a long, fun night.

  Fiona’s still in the hallway. She’s wearing a black T-shirt that scoops low on her shoulders, a hot-pink-and-black striped miniskirt, and slouchy brown canvas boots that graze her calves. The pink in her skirt is the exact shade of her hair, and I know that’s no accident.

  I kind of want to tell her about the shadows that night at the ball field, and how I figured out what she meant about my smile. How everything she’s been saying to me suddenly makes sense now. I hope I get a chance.

  Yates looks spacey. He keeps putting his hands over his head and squinting his eyes, like he’s trying to remember something. Then he takes a couple of big aluminum clip lights from out of a supply closet. He plugs one in and clicks the switch, but it doesn’t turn on.

  “Hey, Emily,” he says. “Can you set up these pears while I find some new lightbulbs?” He lays some lumpy plastic bags on the table. I guess I don’t move quickly enough, because he laughs and says, “I’ll give you extra credit.”

  “Sure,” I say. “Do you want them in a specific order?”

  Yates laughs and shakes his head. I’m hilarious to him. Or I make him really nervous. “However you want.”

  I take out three green pears, two red pears, and two yellow pears. I peel off the supermarket stickers and set them all up in a row, in color order because it just seems right. One doesn’t want to stand up, so I let it lie down on its side. I hope that’s okay.

  Yates comes back in with a package of new lightbulbs. “Guys, Mr. Frank is running late today,” he tells us. “I’m going to get things started.” He drags over two easels, clips lights to them, and clicks them on. “Okay! Now we’re getting somewhere!”

  It’s weird, how random fruit from inside a dirty shopping bag can look elevated underneath those lights. Like a museum painting come to life. Some are lumpy and fat, some are tall and slender. Some still have delicate green leaves attached to their stems. No two look exactly alike, but all the colors seem brighter. Suddenly, I’m excited to get to work.

  “Everyone position your easel so you’re perpendicular to the still life, like in archery. If you’re left-handed, you should be looking over your right shoulder, and vice versa.”

  The noise of everyone moving around lures Fiona and Robyn into the room. Fiona spots the pears on the sheet and rolls her eyes at Robyn, like this is going to be the most boring class ever.

  “Drawing is about fooling your viewer to see a three-dimensional object on a two-dimensional surface. That is accomplished by the use of light and shadow.” Yates goes on to explain a style of drawing called charcoal reduction, in which you cover your paper in charcoal and then use an eraser to wipe away your image. Instead of drawing the object, you carve out the light. So I cover my paper with three layers of dark charcoal, unwrap a fresh eraser, and start to clean small sections of it off to make the biggest, fattest red pear rolling on its side at the edge of the table.

  I know there is a learning curve with any new thing, but I wish I were doing better than I am. I’ve got the roundness of the base okay, but it just looks like a circle. It doesn’t look three-dimensional at all. How can I work backward, when I’m not even confident working forward?

  Yates puts his hands on my shoulders and gently ushers me away from my easel. He stands in my place then, stares at my paper, and then at the view I have of the still life.

  “Is this the green one on the right?” he asks.

  I rub the back of my hand across my forehead. “No. The fat red one on the left.”

  “Ahh.” He claps his hands together. “Okay. I’m going to teach you a trick. When doing these kinds of reduction drawings, you should always start with the brightest spot. An easy way to find the brightest spot of your subject is to squint your eyes.” And he squints his eyes so tight at me that I’m not even sure he can still see me at all. His hand reaches out and touches my cheek really softly. “Yours is right here.”

  I get the chills. I hope he doesn’t notice.

  It seems more like a joke than a real technique. But I try it. I turn toward the pears and squint. Suddenly, I see a big white dot on the curve of the pear’s belly and I know exactly where to start. It’s kind of amazing. “Wow.” I face Yates, still squinting. His brightest spot
is at the side of his forehead, right near his hairline. Maybe I shouldn’t reach out and touch him, but that’s what I do.

  His skin is so soft.

  Yates reaches like he’s going to take my hand, and I think my heart might lift me off the ground. But he just removes the piece of charcoal from my grip and fills back in all the white space I’ve erased. I think I actually make a gasping sound, as all the work I’ve done so far disappears.

  “Don’t worry.” Yates puts a hand on my shoulder. “You’ll draw at least ninety-nine bad pears before you draw one good one.” Which isn’t exactly comforting.

  He moves on to Fiona’s easel and looks around, curious, for her eraser.

  “I’m more of a fingers kind of girl,” Fiona says, matter-of-fact. She rubs her thumb across her paper, then wipes her hand with a paper towel that’s already covered in dark smudges. Her hands look like they’ll never get clean.

  “But you can’t get pure whites without an eraser,” Yates reasons. “I’d be happy to lend you mine if you don’t have one.”

  Fiona blinks a few times. “I always use my fingers with charcoal,” she repeats again, totally unapologetic. “It’s just how I do it.” Fiona’s not being mean or rude. Just confident, if not a little stubborn.

  I wait for Yates to challenge her, but he seems to respect Fiona’s answer enough to let it go. The two of them look perfect together, staring at Fiona’s piece and discussing their artistic processes. Like two real artists. Exactly the opposite of how it is with me … a kid who needs dumbed-down tricks to help me get it together.

  When Yates steps away, Fiona looks at Robyn, but Robyn’s working diligently on her pears with her iPod on, unaware of the power struggle that just took place. Fiona’s eyes scan the rest of the room, searching for her audience. They meet mine, just like that first day at orientation. She gives me a hard look, and it takes me by surprise. If she notices my Meowie tank, she doesn’t let on.