Saanvi snaps her fingers and points at me. “Excellent idea.”
“Terrible idea!” Holden says. He looks like we’ve asked him to roll in a pigsty.
But he could find out what’s going on. Easily.
Although it’s supposed to be all about academics, our school is actually all about money. “Mitchell Academy is designed for the enriched pursuit of academic excellence,” Ms. Plante said at the assembly. It would have been more accurate if she’d replaced “enriched” with “filthy rich.” And while Saanvi comes from a well-off family, and George never seems to blink at my tuition bill, Holden is loaded. Fully, obscenely, ridiculously rich.
To people like Josh, that means everything.
Holden still looks appalled.
“We need to know what’s going on,” I say.
“This will end sooner if we leave them alone,” he insists.
“Really? Are we going to wait for another video?” Saanvi asks.
He can’t hold out for long against both of us.
Although he tries. “I’m not like those guys. I’m not one of them.”
“Of course you’re not,” I say. “But you can pretend.”
I don’t understand why he’s making a big deal of this. We’re not asking him to get a bathroom wedgie or have his butt shoved in a locker. Holden is every bit as cool as Josh or Max. Twice as artistic and probably twice as coordinated, too.
“Unless you’re scared.” Saanvi’s eyebrows arc in an evil way, which I resolve to practice in the mirror when I get home.
Holden grunts.
“If you get drawn into a life of crime, and a mobster wraps you in bricks and tosses you in the ocean, I will personally swim down and fish your body from the depths,” I tell him.
“And I’ll rush to your side with emergency blankets,” Saanvi adds.
When he sighs, I know we’ve won.
“Give me a day or two. I’ll see what I can find out. NO promises.”
It doesn’t exactly have me brimming with confidence, but at least it’s something.
We’re about to leave the table when our phones simultaneously buzz. Saanvi’s the first to grab hers.
“It’s Ana.”
“She’s texting us from across the room?” I can see Ana, two tables over. When she notices me looking, she waves manically.
ANA: Hey guys! Got your numbers from Miranda. We’re planning a meet-up at Cheesecake Castle tomorrow night! Can you come?
HOLDEN: Already booked, sry. Have fun.
ME: Meeting my mom’s new boyfriend.
ANA: Wow! Hope he’s great!
SAANVI: Miranda’s coming tomorrow?
ANA: Yup! Me, Miranda, and tiramisu cheesecake!
SAANVI: k, I’ll try.
ANA: YAY!!!
Ana waves again, with both hands this time.
I glance at Saanvi. “Are you really going tomorrow?”
She blushes, which makes very little sense.
“With Ana?” I try not to sound incredulous, but I’m pretty sure I fail.
“And Miranda. It’s a good chance to talk, outside of school. You know, about her blog posts and stuff.”
Which would sort of make sense, if Saanvi weren’t still a vivid Toluidine red.
I’m about to ask more when there’s a burst of laughter from Josh’s table. One of the guys is shimmying out of his shirt in slow motion.
It’s entirely stupid, but that doesn’t stop me from turning the same shade as Saanvi.
“C’mon. Let’s get out of here,” Holden says.
He grabs my hand as the three of us weave our way from the cafeteria. Part of me wants to collapse on his shoulder and cry, but that would be letting Josh win.
I suck in a deep breath and disengage my hand.
“I should get ready for class.” I need a few minutes of quiet, just me and my mental map of the school’s blind spots.
“Those guys are jerks!” Saanvi calls after me.
I’m too busy fast-blinking to look back at her.
* * *
—
I draw another squirrel while on a “bathroom break” in the middle of third period. I put him in an alcove just around the corner from the office. The whole time, I’m sure Ms. Plante’s heels will clack-clack around the corner and she’ll catch me, but she doesn’t. I draw this new squirrel as if it’s been caught in a searchlight. THE PANOPTICON, I write beneath him.
I’m getting strangely attached to these squirrels.
* * *
—
Saanvi’s mom idles in front of the school in her black Mercedes.
“Hello, my artistes!” she calls, waving to the two of us so enthusiastically that Saanvi cringes. Saanvi’s Labrador retriever, Lucky, has his huge head out the passenger-side window. He looks equally excited to see us.
“My brain is tired,” I say once we’ve climbed into the back seat. (Lucky refuses to relinquish the front.)
I let my head fall onto Saanvi’s shoulder. She puts a hand on my head, I put my hand on top of hers, and we sit in the back seat like a shoulder, head, hand, and hand sandwich until her mom swings into the parking lot of the arts center.
“What are you working on, girls?” Mrs. Agarwal asks. “Perspective again, or something new?”
“Shading,” Saanvi tells her.
“Oooh,” she says, as if shading is art’s most exciting innovation. “How interesting!”
Saanvi’s mom is a well-known arts patron, which basically means she gives scads of money to the ballet, the city art museum, and the theater. When she and George found each other at The Mitch orientation, they were almost as happy as Saanvi and I were. And before you could say Picasso, we were sharing private lessons at Beaux Arts. It’s entirely across the city from The Mitch, but Mrs. Agarwal never seems to mind.
“Thanks for the ride,” I tell her.
“Go and be great!” she says.
We hold onto our smiles as we close the SUV door, but we give matching sighs as we head for class.
“I have the artistic talent of a chicken,” Saanvi says.
This is true. And while I usually love our lessons together, today I feel as if all the energy’s been leached from my body.
“Okay, let’s think of this as our outlet,” Saanvi says. “We’ll get all our feels out.”
Unfortunately, our instructor makes that difficult. Andrei doesn’t see art as an outlet. To him, it’s a calling.
“Now you varm up, girls,” he calls in his thick Romanian accent. “Qvick, qvick. Vithout lifting your hand from ze paper.”
This is our usual warm-up exercise. It might be sort of fun, if Andrei didn’t critique as he walked by.
“Commitment,” he shouts as he passes behind Saanvi.
“Less theenking, girls. Trust, only trust.”
As soon as I think about not thinking, I’m bombarded with thoughts. My fingers get confused.
“You know, it’s not just your videos that have disappeared. The entire forum’s shut down, homework discussions and all.” Saanvi starts whispering the minute Andrei busies himself with organizing pencils. “Ms. Plante must have done it.”
This is good news, at least. I don’t want to log on to the forums ever again.
“Dominica, maybe you break vist as child?”
When I stare blankly up at Andrei, he mimes a gnarled hand. “Not just vist. Use your arm, shoulder!”
I sigh and adjust my posture until he nods grudgingly.
“Did your parents hear anything?” I whisper when he wanders away again. “My mom never got a call.”
“Nothing.”
Andrei shakes his head at Saanvi. “Vhat, are you ballerina? Zis is supposed to be graceful? You are not touching zee paper. Commit!”
I snort, then Saanvi snorts, then neither of us can hold our pencils up
right.
“Focus,” Andrei demands.
I do try to focus for the next few minutes, and I at least avoid being called a ballerina. After a while, Andrei either decides we’ve learned something, or that we’re hopeless. Probably the latter. He sets us free to work on our own sketches.
I wait until he’s absorbed at his easel.
“So what do we do about Josh?” I whisper.
“Hang him by his fingernails.”
“I love when you get feisty.”
“Feisty is a sexist word.”
“Is it?”
“Do you ever call guys ‘feisty’? Would you say that about Holden?” she asks.
“Well, Holden is entirely un-feisty. But I get your point.”
“I’m angry.”
Without her usual adjectives, it sounds even sharper.
“Me too.” I realize it’s true at the same time as I say it. “We should be angry.”
“I’m going to find out how Josh got these videos,” she says.
“Okay. And then? Revenge?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet. I’ll let you know.”
“Here’s to anger,” I say.
We click our pencils together as if already toasting to her success.
Then I look back at my picture, and I realize I’ve drawn a panopticon squirrel. Quickly, I tear the page from my drawing pad before Saanvi can see it.
Andrei glances over. Saanvi raises her eyebrows at me.
“Starting over!” I chirp.
But when I lift my pencil to the paper, my fingers are shaking.
I’m angry. There’s a compressed ball of rage sitting in my chest and if I let it escape, I’m not sure what will happen.
Now’s not the time, I know that much.
I force myself to draw something happy. A long-eared bunny stealing vegetables.
Andrei is not impressed. “Ziz is not your best vork,” he says, next time he walks behind us.
Zis is entirely true.
* * *
—
Mom’s still sound asleep when I wake up on Saturday morning. I pour myself a bowl of cereal and sit at the table, clicking through my texts. There’s a new notification from Miranda’s blog.
The Mitch Mash
Forum Fiasco
by Miranda Bowen
Administrators have closed the student forums indefinitely, after several security breaches last week. Five inappropriate videos were anonymously posted.
“The forums are to be used responsibly, for organizing student activities and coordinating group projects. This sort of misuse will not be tolerated,” Principal Plante wrote to this reporter, via email on Friday evening.
Asked when the forums might reopen, she said the matter would be discussed with the PAC and the school’s board of directors.
Meanwhile, some students are concerned that their studies will suffer. “This poses a serious disadvantage to those of us who prefer to work collaboratively,” said eighth-grader Ana Kavanaugh.
Fellow eighth-grader Josh Plante echoed her opinions: “Sucks, dude.”
Don’t expect the forums to reopen anytime soon. The next meeting of the Mitchell Academy parents’ association is more than two weeks away, on Monday, May 13.
I roll my eyes at the quotes from Josh and Ana. Typical. Then I set my phone aside and vow not to think about the stupid forums for the rest of the day. My brain needs a break, and George has invited me shopping for the morning. I don’t normally love shopping, but today it might be the perfect distraction.
A couple hours later, when Mom is still in her housecoat, sipping coffee, George buzzes from downstairs. We set off for our retail therapy session.
When she parks in front of the posh stores along Robson Street, it feels as if we’ve escaped into another world. I try to forget school and Josh and the video—everything. Here, the only things that matter are whether a teal sweater will go with the beige pants George has at home in her closet, and whether owning two of the same tank top is practical (me) or unimaginative (George).
We end up extending our date so we can have lunch and see a matinee. When we finally get back to the apartment, carrying a half-dozen store loyalty cards, a new cardigan (leopard-print rather than teal), and a tank top in an unusual peach color (our eventual compromise), there’s classical music playing. The air smells faintly of cologne.
This weekend, Mom’s everybody-meet-Frank Saturday dinner has replaced our usual La Patisserie Sunday brunch.
“Mom?”
“We’re in here!” she calls. “Come and say hello!”
I hang George’s sweater for her, then I pick up Mom’s sunglasses from the floor. George hovers behind me. Maybe we’re both procrastinating.
“There you are!” Mom smiles when we finally get to the living room. She and Frank nestle side by side on the couch, goblets of wine on the coffee table in front of them.
Frank stands to shake our hands. He’s tall and thin, with a slightly receding hairline.
“Georgina, a pleasure to meet you,” he says, kissing her cheek. “And Dominica, your mother raves about you.”
“Not in the lunatic way, I hope.”
He looks confused.
“As in ‘raving lunatic’?” I explain.
“Uh…no. I believe she thinks quite highly of you.”
Kill me now. I already know what I’m going to tell Holden: Frank has the sense of humor of a tree stump.
George perches on the edge of the recliner, crossing her ankles as if she’s the queen of England. Frank settles himself back onto the couch and puts an arm around Mom’s shoulders. And I’m not sure what to do with myself, because I am certainly not sitting on the couch with the two of them.
“I’ll put dinner in the oven while you three get acquainted,” Mom says.
She’s practically glowing. We all watch her float from the room.
This leaves me space on the couch. Beside Frank. There’s really no way to avoid it.
“How did you two meet?” I ask, squeezing myself as far toward the armrest as possible.
“At an event,” he says. “I was enjoying an appetizer—a delicious appetizer—when your mother appeared on the other side of the table.”
“It was the yoga studio’s open house!” Mom calls from the kitchen. “Remember in March, when I donated the nibbles?”
“What kind of law do you practice?” George asks.
“Wasn’t that just fate?” Mom interrupts, returning with one of her specialties—Lebanese carrot dip and pita triangles.
“Must have been,” I agree. Though I’m quite sure people don’t end up at yoga-studio open houses because of fate. Fate is not that cruel.
“And your area of law?” George asks again.
“Civil rights,” he says.
George looks impressed, and Mom smacks a kiss on Frank’s cheek.
I try not to roll my eyes.
“Tell me more about yourself, Dominica.” His voice goes perfectly with his navy suit and his red tie: polished, smooth, and possibly a bit slippery. I’m withholding judgment. “Interests? Clubs? Sports teams?”
“I take art lessons. Did you say civil rights?” I ask.
“He helps keep people safe,” Mom says. “Refugees, or environmental activists. He’s even been on the news.”
“It’s not that glamorous,” he says. “Mostly it’s paperwork.”
I wonder if there’s a law that says your bra can’t be posted on a school forum. If Holden can prove that Josh posted my video, maybe I can have him thrown in prison. Solitary confinement. A life of gruel and water.
Except then I’ll have to go to court and explain how I decided to flip my shirt right-side-out in the middle of a library, thus flashing the security cameras. So maybe not.
“…basically means that everyone should be treated equally,” Frank
says, “regardless of skin color, gender, sexual orientation. That sort of thing. We also do free speech cases.”
“Privacy?”
“That too,” he says.
There’s a brief pause while I consider all of this. Frank reaches for the hardcover book upside down on the coffee table…my Banksy book, I realize. I must have left it there.
I have to resist the urge to snatch it from his hands. I’m kind of in love with it. I’ve already told George not to give me a new title this week, because I’m not relinquishing this one.
“An interesting fellow,” Frank says, scanning the pages. Then he smiles. “Someone who might be in need of a civil rights lawyer one day.”
“Do you know his work, Frank?” George asks, leaning forward.
“Doesn’t everyone? Did you hear about the stand in New York, where he gave away those signed prints for ten dollars, and no one realized they were getting original Banksys?”
George nods eagerly. I can see her being won over, sentence by sentence. Soon, they’re talking about a violin virtuoso who played in a Washington, DC, subway, without anyone recognizing him.
“Only a few children stopped,” George says.
I’m done listening, because I’m still thinking about Banksy.
“Excuse me for a minute,” I tell George and Frank, not that they hear me. Sweeping up my book on the way past, I head for my room.
“Don’t disappear!” Mom calls as I pass the kitchen. “Dinner’s almost ready!”
“Back in a sec,” I tell her.
I close my door and lean against it. The tight ball is roiling in my chest again. Angry, not feisty, Saanvi said. I’m angry.
I drop the Banksy book on my bed and flip through the pages until I find the piece I’ve been thinking about.
It’s an angel painted in honor of Ozone, another graffiti artist. After Banksy painted the image, he posted a note on his website about it. He said that he’d originally painted “a crap picture” of two gunmen in banana costumes. Then his friend Ozone wrecked it, and left a note scrawled in the corner.
Me and Banksy Page 8