“I think fashion is art. But really, what do I know?” I joke, mimicking Professor Picasso’s really.
Ford bursts out laughing. Even though I made a joke of it, remembering Professor Picasso’s really feels like someone pricked me with a needle.
“I do understand the parent thing,” I say and nod knowingly. “My mom wants me to do something practical even though she doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”
Ford smiles back. “I think it’s practical to follow your dreams since that’s what will make you happy. Isn’t it actually impractical to do something we don’t like? That’d be setting ourselves up for failure,” he says and winks. “I’ve got to run, but I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“It was really nice to meet you, Ford!” I call out.
Even if Professor Picasso wasn’t impressed with me, at least someone out there thinks I have an eye. And I can’t forget I’ve met two people since I arrived here who can talk art, which is two more than I’ve ever met in Texas. It’s been a nice turn of events from Broken Spoke, where most conversations play out like an episode of BSFN, Broken Spoke Football Network, with reruns from the last fifty years playing on a loop.
When I’m outside on the street, I turn my cell phone back on. Four texts.
Waverly: Big party tomorrow! Corrinne told me to invite you. Call me.
Kiki: Are you famous yet?
Hands: Coach wants to get breakfast tomorrow and “talk.” Not good.
Corrinne: How’d it go? I can’t believe I’m in the country at camp, and you are in the city. Talk about funny!
I’m shocked that Waverly actually invited me even if Corrinne did ask her to. And a party on a Tuesday? I mean, it’s summer, but isn’t it technically still a school night?
I should call Hands or Kiki to talk and catch up with them both about New York and home, but I need my thoughts for myself right now. I start walking back toward the Corcorans’, figuring I’ll save some money and skip the subway fiasco. I know that Hands especially needs Mockingbirdette Kitsy right now, but I’m feeling a little more like Struggling Artist Kitsy. I need my own personal cheerleader so Hands will have to wait.
As I walk down the streets of the West Village, I already feel calmer. I take a deep breath and try to think good thoughts. This is the place of dreams, even if today wasn’t perfect. You can’t expect to wake up and have your dreams come true instantly. You have to earn them, and if I’m good at anything, it’s working hard.
To: [email protected]
From: [email protected]
Date: Monday July 16
Subject: Missing you!
I’m not sure if you’ll get this since you’re at camp, but just wanted to say hi. It’s hard navigating this place without you!
The first day of school went okay—not sure the professor likes me, but I’m planning on charming him into it. I also met a new friend—I think you’d love him because he has as many opinions as you. Maybe more. ☺ And I’m going to a party with Waverly soon. It was really nice of her to invite me. More later. Wish you were here.
Chapter 6
How High Have You Been?
“TIME’S UP FOR TODAY. HAND me your sketches,” Professor Picasso announces and immediately starts circling the room like a vulture. Simultaneously, everyone tries to make frantic last-minute changes to the best figurative drawing from today’s class before he collects them.
Ford pushes down his glasses. Today, they are candy-apple red. “You’d think we’re on Survivor,” he whispers seriously.
Like with most classes, where you sit on day one is most often where you’ll always sit. Anything else would disrupt the order. Although at first I was uncomfortable with my close-up views of our model, I’ve decided I like my seat. Ford’s entertaining, and I’d like to make a friend here.
Ford checks out my red skirt from the Proenza Schouler for Target collection, which I paired with Corrinne’s Milly pink-and-yellow-striped top. Fashion magazines are always telling you to mix high and low, and it’s easy to do when I mix and match Corrinne’s clothing with mine.
“Who inspired today’s outfit?” he asks. He gently touches the skirt’s material.
“Georgia O’Keeffe’s Red Canna,” I whisper and smile. It’s especially nice to have someone admire my artistic sense of dressing. Nervously, I finish my shading. “I’m freaking out because of what Iona said about Professor Picasso roasting us today.”
“I think that’s a rumor,” Ford says, putting down his pencil and pointing to Professor Picasso. He continues to silently roam the room, collecting and stacking the sketches as he walks.
He makes his way to Ford, then to me. After taking my sketch, Professor Picasso pauses for a long minute, looking at it closely before he puts it on the top of the pile and walks to the front of the room.
I close my eyes and ask for anything other than a really. Maybe I prayed too hard because Professor Picasso launches into an entire speech.
“Kitsy,” he says to the class, “is using a technique called chiaroscuro, which I hope most of you know is a strong contrast between dark and light.”
Last night, after I studied Rembrandt’s nudes online, I scoured art websites for information about the proper technique for chiaroscuro. I was determined to change Picasso’s really into a wow. I smile, thinking I’m being complimented.
“While Kitsy has made a valiant attempt to use an incredibly advanced technique, it falls flat with her skill set. I want you people to draw what you see instead of focusing on reinterpretation, especially when using techniques above your skill level. Please remember this.”
The class nods as one, and I use all my energy to retain my posture and quietly say, “Thank you for the advice, Professor Picasso.”
Inside, I feel like I’m wilting.
Once we’re outside the classroom, Ford puts his arm around me and says, “Hey, Kitsy, I think you made the model look way better than he did in real life. He needed a little bit of chiaroscuro if you ask me.”
“Thanks,” I say, looking at my watch, and remember that I need to be showered and ready for Waverly’s party in the next hour. Something I definitely don’t feel like going to anymore.
“Can’t wait to see you tomorrow, especially to see what you’re wearing. Want to start a fashion line someday? Ford and Kitsy? Or if you really want, Kitsy and Ford.”
“Let me see how this art class goes,” I say, wishing I was going to hang with him, not Waverly. “I’m feeling a bit discouraged.”
“It’s only day two, Kitsy. Just yesterday, you were the one giving me a pep talk about art. You need to give yourself the same one right now. Besides, Professor Picasso did call it a valiant attempt. You have to hear the good stuff, too,” he says, giving my shoulders a quick squeeze before heading the other direction.
As I walk toward the building’s exit, I aim to try to take his advice, hoping that the Village streets can calm me down two days in a row.
I hear Iona calling my name from down the hall, but I pretend not to hear and keep going. I’m not exactly in the mood to give her ketchup to go with my roast.
Hear the good stuff, too, I remind myself.
Ding-dong goes the bell. I still can’t believe I’m standing at the door of the Wicked Witch of Uptown, Miss Waverly Dotts.
But before I have time to change my mind about being there, Waverly opens her front door and pecks both of my cheeks with little kisses. I don’t return the favor because I’m so knackered.
“Earth to Kitsy. I know Manhattan’s, like, a new planet for you, but you’re really spacing out.” Waverly’s looking me up and down, and I watch her mouth drop open. Honestly, it’s not Waverly’s best look.
“Closet, Kitsy. Now,” she orders and beckons me to follow her. I had been hoping for a tour of her apartment, not her closet, but I’m not about to ask since I’ve never known what to expect from Waverly.
Looking down at my simple black dress from home that I’ve paired with Corrinne’s accessories, I’m
ready to protest. I look fine. I might not feel fine after my second day of art school, but I look totally acceptable.
“How are you, Waverly?” I ask, trying to renegotiate this encounter back into a normal human one versus Hurricane Waverly storms Kitsy once again.
“No time for chitchat, Kit-Kat,” Waverly says before shrilly laughing at her own joke. Then she pulls four dresses out of the closet and hurls them onto her wrought-iron canopy bed. I let the Kit-Kat thing slide even though I only let Hands call me that and only in private.
Surveying Waverly’s room, I decide the theme is Princess and the Pea in New York City. There must be a dozen pillows on her bed; her white-and-pink fluffy down comforter has her monogram stitched and stamped all over it like zebra spots. Money sure doesn’t buy taste.
I try again with civil conversation. “What are your plans for the summer? What kind of job do you have? Corrinne mentioned you had a work event.”
Waverly digs her hand into a jewelry box as if it were a treasure chest. She tosses a few long chains on top of the dresses.
She looks at her mess and keeps walking. She probably has a maid to clean that for her. Waverly’s perfectly manicured nails don’t look like she’s ever cleaned a day in her life. I’m not ashamed that I’m responsible for most of the cleaning back home. Like my grandma always said, “No one has ever drowned in their own sweat.”
Waverly pulls out a black dress that looks nearly identical to the one I’m already wearing and a stack of bangles.
“This.” It’s as if I’m Waverly’s own personal Barbie doll.
She looks down at my flip-flops. “Flip-flops are not city chic. They are daytime shoes, but only in resort locations like Bermuda and Bora Bora,” she declares. Kicking off her own shoes, pink heels, she chirps, “These. On your feet.”
I quickly change into my “new” outfit as Waverly goes back to her closet and puts on a pair of four-inch magenta high heels.
“I’m working for a stylist,” she says. “If you couldn’t tell. I totally should’ve taken before-and-afters of you to put in my portfolio. I work, like, what’s the word . . . magic,” Waverly finishes, looking at me as if I were a mannequin rather than a human being with ears to hear and feelings to be hurt.
Great. According to Miss Waverly Dotts, teen stylist, magic is required to make me look suitable for the city. I guess I’ll need to invest in a fairy wand if I want to make it through my month here. I totally understand why Iona cut Waverly’s ponytail off. I might need to write her a belated thank-you note for that.
Glancing down at her watch, Waverly perks up. “Time to go. And don’t tell Corrinne, but I invited Rider. Always helps to have an inspiring musician and his band on the guest list even if he is from nowhere.”
“Nowhere” echoes in my head. If you are from nowhere, I think, does that mean you’re a no one, and that you’ll always be a no one?
Waverly gracefully turns on her heels as if they were ballet flats and not monstrous stilettos. I fumble into my Waverly-approved outfit and stumble after her as I try to adjust to walking in someone else’s shoes.
Arriving at another high-rise in the Upper East Side, we take an elevator up twenty-three floors and enter a party already in session. Music is playing but it’s difficult to hear it over all of the many conversations.
Rider, who has already swapped his Broken-Spoke emo look for the hipster style, barely gives me a head nod when I spot him near the kitchen. No matter that we’re from the same remote corner of earth. Now that Rider’s in New York and part of a New York band, I reckon he’s too cool for the girl who held paper towels to his bloody nose when he fell on the playground in fourth grade. Maybe that means I can reinvent myself, too. I’m off to a good start since I’m not even wearing my own clothes and I’m here with girls I don’t even know.
Before running off to the bathroom with a girl named either Octavia or Ophelia, Waverly gives me a few introductions. I take some rosé wine, which tastes disgusting, and settle on the couch next to one of the twin brothers, Blake or Breck, from Vladlena’s birthday party. I’m ready for take two. Hopefully, this time I’ll find some common ground with them.
“So, Kitsy, as a Texan, where do you see the future of oil going?” he asks me earnestly, moving closer to me.
Was that some sort of a pickup line? And if it was, who in the world gets sweet on someone talking about oil? I set my glass on a side table and stand up. “As a Texan, I’m going to search for deeper wells,” I say confidently.
I’m only in New York for four weeks, and I’m not spending four more seconds with either of those twins—or Waverly. I need to make my own friends, not tag along with Corrinne’s crew. I have got to get out of this party. I’m here to forge my own path, so why not explore New York on my own? I’ll text Waverly that something else came up. I maneuver my way through the party and out the door.
In the hallway, I notice a door marked ROOFTOP and decide to see if I can go up. I push it open, and start to climb a steep flight of grated metal stairs. After charging up the stairs, I rest near the top and take a deep breath. One advantage of my tiny house: no stairs. Summoning my energy, I move to tackle the last stair when my three-inch pink pump heel—or rather Waverly’s pink pump heel—gets wedged into a crack in the stair. I want to leave it and keep going up, but then I’ll be barefoot and have Waverly Dotts after me. I knew I shouldn’t have listened to her and worn flip-flops like I wanted.
Slipping my foot out of the wedged high heel, I see that my toes have started to bleed into Waverly’s Loubi-bottoms or whatever she called them. Oh, great. Please, God, I pray, don’t let Waverly make me buy her a new pair. If she does, I’ll have to become her indentured servant for life.
Bending down, I try to yank the heel up with two hands. No luck. Is it too soon in my friendship with Ford to ask for a rescue?
I sit on a narrow step of the dark, dank stairwell to ponder my options. I sort of want to cry, but I think the lack of fresh oxygen in this city has dried up my tear ducts because they don’t come.
And then the door downstairs creaks open. I’m hoping it’s not Waverly: I don’t want to throw my one-shoe self off the roof.
“Hey there,” an unfamiliar male voice calls from the bottom. “What are you doing up here?”
Great! Now this scene has added an additional character, a no-good city man who is ready to take my country innocence away. Amber, Hands, and every other Broken Spoker warned me this would happen in New York City, and I have no one to blame but me for not listening to them. What was I thinking?
“Um-m,” I stutter, trying to make out the figure to discern what my assailant looks like. I’ll probably have to do a sketch composite later.
“Don’t worry,” the voice calls out to me gently and I hear him start walking up the stairs. “I’m Tad. I think we were just at the same party. I saw you sneak out and I figured that you might be coming up here.”
I sigh a huge breath of relief. I just might not end up as a victim on Law & Order: SVU, which I’m sure has filmed in this exact stairwell.
Tad climbs the stairs to me before he stops to look at my shoe that’s being held hostage by the stair. He points and says, “I can honestly say that’s the first time I’ve seen a high heel like that.”
I soften up and laugh. “It’s very urban Cinderella, isn’t it?”
“It’s only Cinderella if I’m a prince, and you end up running away. And I’m no prince”—and I can finally see his face. With full lips, jade-blue eyes, and a Roman nose, Tad looks fit to play a fairy-tale prince. Like many of Disney’s leading men, he’s tall (at least six feet), dark (his hair is chocolate brown), and definitely handsome. Strangely, he also looks familiar.
Pointing toward the roof, Tad adds, “I’m hoping that you don’t run away. In fact, how about a smoke on the rooftop?”
“Only if you can retrieve my shoe,” I say, smiling. “It’s actually not mine. That’s part of the problem.”
With one hand, Tad
bends down, yanks the heel, and frees it from the stair. “Not bad for a musician,” he says and pats his own back before handing me the high heel.
At the very top of the stairs, there’s another door that Tad pulls and holds open for me. This is the very first time in New York—minus doormen, who are paid to do it—that someone has opened a door for me. Light coming from the roof shines on Tad’s face, and my heart races as I realize how I know him. I stop and don’t move any closer.
“Something wrong?” Tad asks me, still holding the door.
“I know this may sound weird, but were you at MoMA on Saturday?” I ask.
I cross my fingers that I’m not going crazy.
Tad snaps his fingers and winks.
“That’s it!” he exclaims, pointing at me. “When I saw you at the party, I thought I knew you. Funny how New York isn’t that big after all. And if I remember correctly, you ran away.”
Smiling, I think how I’m here less than a week, and I’m already having a New York moment. Somehow I’ve met Art Boy not just once but twice in a city of millions.
“I didn’t want to leave,” I say, looking directly at him as I step through the door and out onto the rooftop.
Before I can tell him about why I didn’t stay and talk at MoMA, I see it. Rather, I see all of it. I forgot that we’re twenty-four floors up. The city looks like a jewel box, an urban landscape of twinkling skyscrapers. Who knew electricity could be so beautiful? Maybe Texas isn’t the only place that’s God’s country.
I walk straight past Tad and go to the rooftop’s edge. To the east, I see the river and the moonlight dancing on its smooth surface. From another angle, I see the park. The bright street lamps illuminate its greenery. I keep turning and see the Chrysler and the Empire State Building, rising high in the sky. It’s like the movies. It’s how I thought it would be.
A Long Way from You (Where I Belong) Page 8