Boy Proof

by Cecil Castellucci

  I stand on the sidewalk looking through the chain-link fence.

  “They tear everything down that’s truly human,” I say.

  “Like Egg says,” Max says.

  “Yes, but it’s true.”

  “I’d be interested in what you thought.”

  “Well, maybe art is only meant to last for just a moment, a wink in the span of the universe. Maybe it’s a moment remembered and treasured. A private moment, one unshared.”

  “That’s interesting,” Max says.

  “You think art is forever,” I say. “Ars longa, vita brevis.”

  I’m sure I mangled the Latin.

  “Well, you never know. Maybe I’m wrong,” he says.

  I take out my camera and start snapping. It’s too bad I’m stuck out on the sidewalk. I’d like to get the details of the statue, but I don’t have my zoom lens with me.

  Mental note: A good photographer always has her camera. A great photographer always has the right lenses as well.

  “You’re too far away,” Max says.

  I keep my eye behind the lens and ignore him and make him invisible. Snap. Snap. Snap.

  “Come on,” he tugs at my cloak. “There’s a way in over there.”

  I look up at him despite my desire to ignore him. He’s heading toward the alleyway. I follow him. Lo and behold, there is a gap in the bottom part of the fence. He gets down on his hands and knees and crawls into the lot.

  Once inside, he sticks his hand out from under the fence.

  “Give me your camera so it doesn’t get scratched.”

  I want to get inside. I look down the alley both ways. I’m a little afraid. But then again, Egg wouldn’t be, so I shake off the fear. Egg would’ve scaled the walls or jumped the fence. She does what she wants. I do, too. I get down on my belly and slither into the lot.

  Max hands me my camera and starts to walk toward the sculpture. He puts his backpack on the ground and takes out his sketchbook, sits cross-legged on the dusty ground, and starts to draw. He looks completely at peace, like a Buddha.

  I move toward the sculpture. Lady Liberty’s dress is made of watercolor-washed green magazine ads. They are cut in strips so that they flutter a little in the wind made by the heavy traffic coming off the street. Her feet are two rusted oilcans. Her body is the old gas pump. Her torch is the nozzle. A rod of iron holds her arm up high. Her crown of liberty is made of shredded tire. She makes me feel strong.

  “Somebody thought this up,” I say. “Somebody took the time to construct it and put it here.”

  “Yeah, ideas. They come and go, but this is action. This is like a whole sentence being spoken. It’s like a quiet revolution,” Max says.

  That’s exactly it.

  “A point where something silent intersects with volume,” I say.

  I’m taken aback that someone can go there with me, since no one ever gets it when I speak. Usually there is so much explaining to do that I just keep my mouth shut, but it seems like Max could almost pluck the next thought from my head.

  Suddenly it feels like I’ve been starving for meaningful talks with someone. It freaks me out. I turn my back to Max and get busy with more photograph taking.

  “Come on,” Max says after a while. “Let’s go to Canter’s and get a sandwich.”

  “Nah,” I say. “Not hungry.”

  He shakes his head.

  “You ought to try to be more social,” he says, and then slips himself under the fence and heads down the street.

  I stare at his retreating figure. I put the viewfinder of my camera up to my eye and take a picture of his back. I contemplate for one second meeting Max over at Canter’s, but I change my mind and I go to Mäni’s Bakery instead.

  I notice that Max talks easily with people. He smiles easily. Engages easily.

  I hear him make plans with everyone.

  “We should totally do that!” he says about everything.

  He’s been here just over a week and already he knows every single person in the senior class. And they know him.

  “Maybe I’ll be valedictorian,” I hear Max say to a group of people after class.

  Maybe not, I think. I will beat him. I will win.

  Twenty minutes have gone by and I’m still confused about question number one.

  I actually consider cheating, but Ignacio is sitting next to me and I know for a fact that he won’t do well on the test. He’s an idiot. So I don’t bother looking at his answer sheet.

  I know I’m not supposed to waste time on just one question. My SAT prep class taught me that, so I move on to the next question. I plug in numbers. I pretend I know what I am doing.

  The bell rings sooner than I think it should. I have barely finished filling out the exam.

  “Whew! That was hard!” I say to no one in particular.

  “Really?” Ignacio answers. “I thought that was really easy.”

  I had a sinking feeling at the beginning of the quiz that I was going to fail. Now, it morphs into a certainty.

  Dr. Gellar, our dean of students, is annoyed with me because I am not getting to the point.

  “Victoria, I have papers to grade.”

  “Okay, Max Carter has a higher GPA than me. But he transferred over from a school in England. So does that weigh in? I mean, he’s been here just over a week. And they have a whole different system over there.”

  Dr. Gellar looks at me over her glasses.

  “Max Carter hasn’t even taken the SATs,” I say. That’s something that Dr. Gellar will understand for sure.

  “Victoria, I don’t know what you’re getting at. If you’re asking me if you’re still in the running to be valedictorian, I suppose the answer is yes. You’re a gifted student with an excellent academic record. You’ve had near-perfect attendance and are an exemplary student.”

  “You suppose the answer is yes?” I say.

  “Victoria, these things aren’t decided until all the grades are in, and there are many gifted seniors who are very close together in merit.”

  “But he just got here. It doesn’t seem fair that someone can sneak in and steal away my place.”

  “Victoria, please stop wasting my time. I’m not going to guarantee anything until all the grades are in.”

  This answer will have to satisfy me. I push myself out of the metal chair, which unfortunately makes a horrible noise, and head out of Dr. Gellar’s office. I am just about to close the door when I remember I should say thank you. No use in making her all mad at me. She might let my standing slip.

  I poke my head back in.

  “Dr. Gellar?” I say.

  “What?” she snaps.

  “Thank you,” I say.

  I close the door, pull an apple from my bag, and take a big bite out of it. It is delicious.

  “You’re late, Egg,” Martin says.

  “So what?” I say. “I’m sure I didn’t miss anything.”

  It is unfortunate that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Club is filled with geeks. But they are the only people that I can talk to ad nauseam about the kind of stuff I actually like. The truth is, socially, most of them are even worse off than me.

  “Okay,” says Hasan. “Who’s in favor of taking a field trip to the Museum of Television and Radio and watching their screening of Pilots of Science Fiction Television on the thirty-first?”

  We all raise our hands.

  I agree to go only because I was planning on going anyway. No use in running into everyone there and making it be all weird. Might as well join the group.

  “Don’t forget that we have tickets to the midnight screening of New Mars tonight,” Hasan says.

  “New Mars is going to SUCK,” I say.

  “Egg, you say that about everything,” Rue says.

  “Not everything.” Hasan comes to my defense, just to sound as though he has his own opinion. “And she’s mostly right.”

  “I have high standards,” I say. “I don’t settle for flashy special effects and an overly dramatic
soundtrack.”

  Martin winces. Those are his weaknesses. Martin only likes Hollywood science fiction. He’s never read the books. He’s never seen a foreign science fiction film or an indie science fiction film. No one here has. I like to see everything. So I always have the broader net to draw from.

  “But I’m still coming to the screening,” I say. “I’m always curious about a new space film. I hear they used a new technique on the animatronics for the Martians. I’m interested in seeing it in action.”

  We finish up some more club business and then the meeting is over.

  Martin and Rue, the only people I can stand talking to, come up to me outside after the club meeting.

  “We’re going to the New Bev to see Raiders of the Lost Ark beforehand. Want to join us?”

  “No can do,” I say. “I’ve got my internship at the American Cinematheque.”

  I flick Rue’s fedora with my fingers.

  “Get rid of the hat, Rue.”

  “Get rid of the cloak, Egg.”

  She smiles at me. I want to smile back, but it might break me.

  Egg is a woman who can’t afford to get too close to anyone.

  “So I need you to label and stuff all these envelopes for the gala party,” Wanda says.

  There are about a million invitations.

  “I’d like to go to the special screening of A Dream for the Moon,” I say.

  “I think Lark Austin has totally sold out,” Wanda says. “This doesn’t compare to her earlier, low-budget films. I can’t believe she spent millions of dollars to make a film only to take all the color out of it in post-production. Why not just make it a black-and-white movie?”

  “Saba Greer will be there with the director for a Q & A,” I say. “And the movie’s not coming out in theaters for another two months.”

  Wanda likes obscure independent films. She programs all the cult films. She’s a big purist. Unlike me she doesn’t also like the big splashy Hollywood films.

  “She plays Egg in Terminal Earth,” I say.

  “I know who she is, Egg. How could I not?” Wanda points at my cloak and smiles. She’s not laughing at me, like other people do, and I like that most about her.

  “How about I put you on duty for the special prefilm reception? You can help Eduardo set up the tables and then mingle at the party,” she says.

  “That would be great,” I say, and then I stuff the envelopes with much more gusto.

  In a little over a month, I will meet Egg herself!

  Making a life cast involves slathering someone’s face with alginate. I know how to do it, but I don’t have anyone to make a life cast of. So today, since Dad isn’t so busy, he takes the time to make a new life cast of my face. I sit extremely still so I don’t distort the mask. I am completely enclosed, ears plugged, senses shut off. The only thing I can hear inside my head is my own steady breathing and the strong sound of my heartbeat. Some people freak out during the process, but I like it.

  When the alginate hardens, Dad pulls off the mother mold. I love seeing the inside of my own face.

  I pour the plaster in to make a positive cast. I pull it out after about an hour and then I leave it to dry. Next week I’ll have my own face to sculpt my creations on instead of a stock one that Dad has on the shelf.

  I go over to the area where my positive from last week is waiting for me. I get the modeling clay and begin creating.

  I like the way the clay softens in my fingers and how the monsters and aliens spring to life under my capable and sturdy hands.

  I take the tools and make the pores in the face. I crease the line where a growl or a snarl is frozen in place. I determine the age of the character by the lines I press into the clay.

  I am not doing this for anyone but myself.

  I work and work and work silently next to Dad as he tinkers with an eyeball or an alien or ears that he needs to make for this project or that project. He is always tinkering.

  After I spend two hours working and molding and pressing and poking the clay, Dad comes over to observe my work.

  He turns the positive around. He circles it. He nods. He scrunches his face. He picks up a tool and adds something, an obvious wrinkle that I forgot.

  “You’re getting better, Egg,” he says.

  I make a two-piece mold over the entire head, then I open the mold and clean the clay out. I’m ready to make the foam latex. Soon, I will have a new mask for my collection.

  “Document, document, document,” Dad says.

  I take out my camera and photograph the mask I finished painting last week.

  “You have some great ideas for monsters,” Dad says.

  “My mind is a scary place,” I say.

  I sit in the most out-of-the-way corner with my math book open. The numbers in the problems I am trying to solve morph into monsters. I abandon the math and begin drawing monster ideas in my notebook.

  The light in the café is yellow, and I notice that everyone here is with someone else. They are with friends. I am the only one alone. I throw my Egg cloak over the empty chair at my table so it looks like someone is coming right back to sit with me. So that the chair looks occupied.

  It’s 7:37 P.M., by the big antique clock on the wall. The café starts to fill up.

  A girl comes over to me. She is wearing nerdy cat eyeglasses with rhinestones in them. One of the rhinestones is missing. It looks like a gap tooth. She doesn’t seem to mind the moth holes in her green sweater, or her greasy, faded pink hair, or the obvious paint crusted onto her jeans. I notice she wears her piercings with much more ease than I do.

  Bitch, I think.

  “I noticed you sketching,” she says.

  “I’m doing my homework.”

  “We’re doing a bande dessinée en directe here tonight. I could give you a board to draw on.”

  “I don’t have any money.”

  “You don’t need money. I give you a board and then you draw on it and then give your drawing to someone else to ink and then we collect them and make a mini-comic out of it. See?”

  She slips me a mini-comic.

  “This is from the last event,” she says.

  “I’m not really a joiner,” I say.

  Unfazed, she moves on to bother the people at the next table. They eagerly take a board from her.

  I put my notebook down and look around at the other people in the room. I look at the person at the next table. He’s drawing stupid stick figures. I draw way better than that.

  Maybe I could draw something. I get up to find pinky nerdy girl with the blank boards.

  “Oh, great!” she says as she hands me my board.

  I can always leave, I say to myself. I don’t have to have anyone ink my pencil picture. I start to walk back to my table and run right into Max Carter. My blank board falls to the ground. Max picks it up.

  It takes me a long time to find a place that I can call my own. Somewhere I won’t run into anyone I know. Somewhere I can be alone. And yet here is Max, invading my territory, again.

  “Hey. Wow. I didn’t know you did stuff like this,” he says.

  “I don’t,” I say.

  He laughs. “Yeah, obviously not.”

  “No, really, it’s an accident that I’m here. I didn’t know they were doing this tonight.”

  “Do you have an inker yet?”

  “No. I’m probably not going to even do it.”

  “Where are you sitting? Let me get a board and we’ll ink each other’s drawings.”

  He leaves me there to go off and find his own board. I shouldn’t let a stupid blank board drive me into a fit of not doing anything. I go back to my seat. I feel fluttery, like I am on a tightrope. I am exposed in the air. Naked. Out of my element. Feet not on the ground. The fluttery feeling turns into nervousness. Which then turns into anger. Which then turns into action.

  I attack my blank board. I start with wide lines and circles and begin to draw my newest alien creations, the ones I am keen on making into ma
sks.

  Max moves my cloak from the back of the other chair and begins to draw. We don’t even talk once, even though the café is buzzing with conversation. The silence stretches out between us, and that suits me just fine.

  After a bit Max hands me his board.

  I scan it. It’s a sketch of an apartment building with eight windows. Each window reveals a scene about the loneliness of the person inside. Growing up the side of the building is a vine of flowers.

  I don’t say anything about the drawing, but it moves me.

  “It’s an idea I have for a story in the graphic novel I’m working on.”

  I nod.

  He takes a marker out and starts on the board with my multiple monster alien faces on it.

  “I love the way you draw with such detail,” he says. “Where do you get your ideas for these?”

  “My dad’s workshop, I guess,” I say.

  I decide to ink his drawing in grays and blacks, but make the flowers a hopeful dusty pink.

  “I’m glad I found this café,” he says. “It reminds me of a place where I used to hang out in London. They were always doing cool shit like this there.”

  “Uh-huh,” I say.

  I don’t know how to make small talk. But Max does.

  “It’s essential, don’t you think, to find a place that you can call your own?”

  “Yeah,” I say. “I really don’t like to run into people I know.”

  “I know, me neither,” Max says. “I like to be alone sometimes. Especially when I’m drawing. Especially when I’m doing stuff like this.”

  Suddenly I find it strange. Max and I are sitting together and yet somehow I feel just as clear as when I’m alone.

  “I think clearer, study better, when I’m alone in a café,” I say.

  “Me too!” Max says. “Even though there is so much going on around me, I feel like I’m in my own world.”

  “In the flow,” I say.

  He nods as he picks up another marker color to add to one of my monsters.

  “Some people go to cafés just to see and be seen,” Max says. “I hate that they don’t get it.”