The Suburban Strange

by Nathan Kotecki

  It upended her week. Time she would have spent laboring over a page in her sketchbook was spent sprawled across her bed, her ear close to the speakers of her CD player. By the time she returned Tinderbox to Regine the next week, Celia had made a copy for herself and nearly memorized all the songs. Regine was exuberant when she heard Celia’s reaction.

  “I knew you’d like it!” Regine clapped her gloved hands. “There are so many things I want to show you!”

  Regine meant what she said. Each week she lent Celia a new CD and eagerly heard her reaction to the previous one. “You don’t have to like it all. I’m just trying to figure out what your tastes are,” she explained. Celia didn’t understand quite what Regine meant by that, because every new song was a revelation to her. As her collection of dark musical treasures grew, so did her appetite for them. She played some of her new favorite songs for her mother and enjoyed her mystified response.

  After a month, her mother said, “I’ve never heard you talk about anyone as much as you talk about Regine. Why don’t you invite her over?” It took two more weeks for Celia to work up the nerve, and then she was mortified when Regine readily accepted. Celia felt as though she was going to receive a distinguished ambassador, and she judged her own house wanting. She had plenty of conflicted feelings about the house. Her family had started building it shortly before her father had died two springs ago, leaving Celia and her mother to move into it alone. If they had stayed in the old house, memories of her father would have crowded every room, but in the new house it felt sometimes as though she had left him behind. Either way, the white siding and green shutters and evergreen trees didn’t feel impressive enough for Regine. Worse, she thought Regine might actually get a rash if she entered Celia’s pink bedroom, which was dominated by a ruffled pink queen-sized bed. But Regine had come, and if she passed judgment she was too gracious to let it show.

  Perched on the edge of Celia’s bed, seeming every bit the foreign dignitary in a vintage-looking dark plaid jumper, Regine said coyly, “I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.” She handed Celia the sketchbook she had brought. Celia reached for her own and turned it over to her. Before she even opened Regine’s volume Celia could tell it was of a different species than hers. The outside was covered completely with all manner of stickers, most with names of bands or graphic designs. One sticker advertised a Hong Kong company that specialized in obscure rock T-shirts. Celia believed without a doubt Regine ordered T-shirts from Hong Kong, and she was sure T-shirts looked very different on Regine than they did on her.

  On the inside of Regine’s volume, page after page was covered with hundreds of things she had collaged intricately together, no space left blank. The battered binding had stretched almost double to accommodate all the paper. In one picture a rustic woman sat at a farmhouse table piled high with hundreds of crisply folded men’s white dress shirts. There was a black-and-white image that looked like a film still of a wide-eyed Scandinavian woman in a drab room. Another picture showed a woman in profile, her blond hair cut in a severe bob halfway down the back of her head and shaved to the skin underneath. There were portraits of men named Olivier Theyskens and Hussein Chalayan, and photographs of dramatically lit rooms and foggy tree-lined courtyards. She saw a copy of a poem by Emily Dickinson alongside a picture of a dancing woman with her wrist pressed to her forehead as she bent over, kicking her long white skirt up behind her. There was a page on which all the images contained spirals: conches and staircases and raked stone gardens. On another page everything was a shade of blue. Celia thought Regine must have spent years compiling this book. She wished she could look out her window and see the world Regine had pressed into these pages. “This is amazing.”

  “Peter Beard is my idol,” Regine said proudly. “If you’ve seen his books, you’ll know I’m an amateur compared with him.” Meanwhile, she was paging through Celia’s sketchbook as though it were an illuminated manuscript. Celia knew what Regine was seeing: portraits of Celia’s mother and father, sketches of people she’d copied from photographs, a few attempts at landscapes and still lifes, and some self-portraits from the mirror. There were studies of hands, torsos, dancers in motion, but Celia spent most of her time drawing faces. Her greatest talent was in capturing the life in someone’s eyes, the subtleties of a facial expression.

  “These are brilliant.” Regine looked up at her. She spoke carefully, as though she had rehearsed what she said next. “You know, when I look at these and then I look at you, it’s hard to imagine them coming from you. You take such care with them, and your attention to detail is so perfect. Do you ever think of doing the same thing for yourself?”

  That had been Regine’s coded invitation to make Celia her project, and Celia had deciphered it easily and accepted it gratefully. She was completely enthralled with Regine, who offered answers to questions Celia hadn’t been quite able to articulate. Regine made it clear she wasn’t out to clone herself. She gave Celia all sorts of options and let Celia choose. Had Celia ever thought about bangs, or wearing a ribbon as a headband? Had she ever considered wearing deep colors against her fair skin? Had she ever worn jewelry? In the weeks before school started Celia found a new sense of herself by investing more in her appearance. She thought she was developing a new style, then admitted that perhaps she was developing a style for the first time. It was a dark style, probably inevitable with Regine as her mentor. It felt sophisticated. And, Celia realized with pleasant surprise, it was somewhat bold. Clothes stopped being something in which to hide. Now they were something in which to be seen.

  “I told my friends about you,” Regine said as she worked systematically through Celia’s closet and drawers, rejecting almost all of Celia’s clothes as too big, too worn, too bright, or too boring. “I think they’ll like you, too, and maybe you can be a part of our group.”

  “What kind of group?” Celia watched her vagabond wardrobe pile up on the bed. She was not sorry to see any of it go and only wondered what she was going to wear once it was all gone. Already she was living almost exclusively in a black T-shirt and the one pair of jeans Regine had deemed acceptable. Celia felt practically naked in the little cap-sleeved tee she had worn only as an undershirt before then. But one of the first things Regine made clear was that no matter what Celia wore, it had to fit her properly, not envelop her like a cocoon. Slowly Celia was becoming more comfortable revealing the shape of her long, slender body.

  “There are five of us who like a lot of the same music and the same style. During school we do almost everything together. This is nice.” Regine examined a black pencil skirt she pulled from the closet. Celia didn’t recognize it. She guessed it was her mother’s, put there by accident. The moment Regine left, she would try it on. “And this”—Regine set aside an orange floral dress Celia had worn to a party under duress from her mother—“this we’ll keep for a special occasion.” Celia couldn’t guess why such a garish dress had made it through Regine’s harsh triage. “We are definitely going to have to go shopping, and I’ll lend you some things until we get your wardrobe in order.” Regine smiled at her. “We’re all juniors or seniors, but I think we’ll enjoy having a protégé.”

  Celia hadn’t needed to hear any more. She just hoped Regine’s friends would be as nice to her. It was a risk she was willing to take, regardless. No one ever had made such an offer to Celia, and for all she knew, such an offer might never come again. The summer class had ended, and Celia’s steadfast drawing habit relaxed its grip on her life just a little as the school year approached. Her initiation into Regine’s music and dark sense of style was the new focus of her days and her new dream at night.

  THE HOMEROOM TEACHER ARRIVED, bells rang, and the room became a focused hive of activity. There was no more time for Celia to reminisce, avoiding the reality of the strangers around her. Then they were launched out into the morning, scrambling to navigate a rushing current of teachers and books and first assignments. She hunted her way through Suburban's tributaries to find ea
ch new destination. By lunchtime the top shelf in the locker that had been assigned to her was full of books.

  Celia barely had spoken all morning. It still came naturally to her to be silent and unimposing—one of the things Regine hadn’t asked her to change. It was easy to keep to herself when everyone else already knew each other, and her classmates seemed to expect it of her based on her somber outfit. Celia found herself on the receiving end of a few raised eyebrows, but that was all. She knew she could live with that. In fact, she had to admit it was kind of gratifying.

  When it was time for lunch she was swept off to the cafeteria in a river of chattering students, but she stopped short at the sight of a sea of crowded tables. She faltered while students brushed by her, wondering where she could find a place to be invisible and eat, but then she saw Marco standing and waving at her from a table in the middle of the room. Brenden sat by his side. Marco no longer wore the suit jacket she had seen him in before school, and on the front of his T-shirt large embroidered letters spelled DRINK ME in elaborate type.

  “Hi,” he said when she made it to them. “You looked like a deer in headlights over there.”

  “I felt like one,” Celia said. “How did you guys get a table to yourselves?”

  Marco’s expression suggested he hadn’t ever considered the question. “Leave your stuff and go get lunch. We’ll be here. I don’t know if you like soup, but they make really good soup.” He sat down and Celia gratefully went to get food.

  “So, Regine told us you’re a talented artist,” Brenden said when she returned.

  “I don’t know . . . I like to draw.” Celia wondered why she was being modest. Out of the corners of her eyes she felt nearby students looking at the three of them curiously, but Brenden and Marco were oblivious. There at the table with them she felt insulated from the rest of the students in their athletic clothes and cargo pants, and she enjoyed the feeling of being separate from those others. “What does your T-shirt mean?” she asked Marco.

  “Well, Eat me would be vulgar,” Marco said, laughing. “This is more mysterious.”

  “I’d love to see your drawings,” Brenden said to Celia. “What style do you work in?”

  “Realism, I guess? As realistic as I can get.” Celia turned over her sketchbook and watched the two of them handle it delicately, just as Regine had.

  “What artists do you like?”

  “I—I don’t really know that many,” Celia said.

  “It’s good to have heroes,” Brenden said. “Admiring someone makes you want to be better in your own way. You should check out da Vinci’s drawings, or maybe Albrecht Dürer’s engravings.” Celia wished she had thought to say da Vinci. She took out her notebook and scribbled down the second name; she wasn’t sure she was spelling it correctly, but she didn’t want to ask.

  “Regine’s really happy she found you,” Marco said.

  “She is?”

  “Sure—now she has someone to ride with her. And I know she wanted another girl in the group. She and Liz aren’t all that close.”

  “That’s not true,” Brenden said to him. They exchanged a loaded glance and Marco kept silent. Celia wondered if she would come to understand the things they weren’t saying out loud.

  “Thank you again for the mix,” Celia said.

  “You’re welcome! I hope you like it—did you know any of the songs?”

  “No,” Celia admitted. “Regine’s given me a lot of music, but I really don’t know very much. She says you write a blog.”

  “I do. You should check it out.” Brenden scribbled a website address on a piece of paper and handed it to her. “Actually, before you got here Marco and I were having one of our ongoing discussions about music. You’ll get to hear quite a bit of those if you hang out with us. Today’s topic: best opening lines to songs.”

  “My vote is: ‘Love is a stranger in an open car, to tempt you in and drive you far away,’ ” Marco said.

  “And mine is: ‘Come closer and see, see into the trees; find the girl while you can,’ ” Brenden said. “We must have been thinking about you,” he added, smiling.

  Celia blushed. “I don’t know either of those.”

  “That’s okay. What’s yours?” Marco asked.

  Celia thought for a moment, trying to come up with something impressive. She felt it was a test, whether they intended it as one or not. “How about: ‘Every finger in the room is pointing at me’?”

  Marco nodded in admiration and Brenden said, “That is a good one. I wouldn’t have thought of that.” They ate in silence for a moment and Celia breathed an inward sigh of relief.

  “So, what do you think of Suburban so far?” Marco asked.

  “It’s a lot bigger than my old school. And the teachers are going really fast. But I think I like it.”

  “We all take school very seriously, and we get good grades,” Brenden said. “You should get involved in a lot of things, but classes always are the most important.”

  “We all do other things, too, of course,” Marco added. “Brenden’s on the student council, and I would spend all my time making clothes if I could. But school always comes first.”

  “If you’re having trouble with any subject, we can help you.”

  “A lot of kids come down here on their free periods and waste time. We go to the library and get our homework done,” Marco said. “Let me see your schedule.” Celia turned it over to him and Marco studied it. “We have some free periods together.” He drew a little star in some of the boxes on her schedule. “Look for us in the library.”

  Celia noticed a group of black-clad students off at a corner table. Most of them had hair of multiple colors and lengths, and so many metal accessories; though the kids were sitting still, Celia thought she could hear them clanking. Even at a table in a school cafeteria they looked like they were loitering. But the darkness and the severity of their style made Celia wonder if they might share some interests with the Rosary. “Do you know them?” she asked Brenden and Marco.

  “Not really,” Brenden said. “We don’t have that much in common.”

  “Every day is not Halloween,” Marco said. “But they show up in their costumes nonetheless.”

  “More than that, they don’t take school very seriously, and they seem a little lost,” Brenden said. “Besides, if all your strangeness is on the outside, doesn’t that make you kind of dull on the inside? What’s that quote Liz says all the time?” he asked Marco.

  “The one by René Char? ‘A new mystery sings in your bones. Develop your legitimate strangeness.’”

  Celia repeated it to herself, trying to tease out the meaning. She could tell Brenden and Marco subscribed to it, but she wondered how one went about doing such a thing. “I see what you mean,” she said, because she could understand at least how those other kids weren’t polished or ambitious enough to have a place in the Rosary.

  “What’s your last name?” Brenden asked. “Regine told me and I thought it was beautiful, but I can’t remember.”

  “Balaustine,” Celia said. “It means ‘flower of the pomegranate.’ ”

  “Really? That’s fantastic. It reminds me of my favorite song, ‘The Spangle Maker’ by the Cocteau Twins. Do you know them?”

  “No,” Celia admitted.

  “I wrote a blog post about the song. You can read it if you like.” Brenden pointed at the piece of paper he had given her with the website address. “It’s kind of impossible to understand her lyrics, and in the chorus I’m pretty sure she sings, ‘It’s pomegranate,’ but who knows what she’s really saying.”

  “I’ll definitely check it out.” Celia tucked the paper inside her sketchbook. “How long have you guys been together?”

  “The five of us, or the two of us?” Brenden smiled. “Ivo and Liz and Regine and I have been friends since we were sophomores and Regine was a first year. Marco transferred here last year, and we’ve been dating since last fall. It’ll be a year in October.” He grinned at Marco, who winked at
him.

  “Do you not say freshman?” Celia said.

  “Were you a man last year?” Marco asked.

  “No, of course not,” Celia said.

  “There wasn’t any doubt in my mind,” Marco said. “You’re gorgeous. You have such an elegant neck.”

  “Thank you,” Celia said, blushing again. She couldn’t remember a boy saying anything like that to her before. It didn’t even matter that this one was gay. She pushed her hair back on her shoulder, relieved it was smooth and shiny now that Regine had steered her to some products and a good brush.

  “Regine’s going to be really protective of you. Just make sure she’s not doing it because you’re getting more attention than she is,” Marco said.

  “Hey!” Brenden said. “What’s with the snide comments about Regine?” He turned back to Celia. “I don’t think she cares how much attention you get.”

  “But she’s dating Ivo, right?” Celia asked. “She told me almost nothing about all of you, but she must have told me she was going to homecoming with Ivo a dozen times.”

  “They are going to homecoming,” Marco said carefully, “and Brenden and I are going with them, but I think it means something very different to Regine than it does to Ivo.”

  “Oh,” Celia said. She wanted to know more, but she didn’t feel comfortable asking.

  LATER CELIA SEARCHED OUT the chemistry lab and discovered that the man who had tried to help Elsie in the parking lot that morning would be her chemistry teacher. He wasted no time distributing books and a permission slip for a field trip to the water purification plant. Then he asked them to choose lab partners. There was a flurry of movement, and as the class sorted itself from oxygen atoms into oxygen molecules Celia's timidity reared up, and she was rooted in place. Across from her a girl was looking at her with an expression she couldn't interpret. She didn't think anyone ever had looked at her this way before — as though Celia might be the answer to someone else's question. The other girl had made no attempt to find a partner, either, and by then they were the only two left. Celia crossed her fingers and went over to her.