I smile quickly at him and go back to looking through my papers. But as I shift my weight up off my knees and the rough pavement, the breeze catches the papers and a couple of them flutter out of my bag and into the air.
Luckily, the cute boy steps off the line and grabs them for me. He actually has to jump in the air for one, and his shirt lifts up from his waistband, revealing a very flat stomach, a stretch of gray elastic band from his Calvins, and a couple of star tattoos across his hip bones.
“I’m sorry,” I say, heated. “I made you lose your place in line.”
“No problem,” he says with a smile. “Coffee can wait.” But I’m not so sure. He looks half asleep, and a bit of toothpaste flakes off the left corner of his mouth. “Are you lost?”
“Is it that obvious?” I say, still digging frantically. “Ow!” My fingertip gets sliced on the edge of a paper. I squeeze the tip to stop the burn, and it bleeds a deep red drop.
“Maybe you just need coffee. I’m always lost without coffee.” He looks down at his sneakers. “Can I buy you a cup?”
It’s sweet how awkward he is. I can tell by his refusal to make eye contact and the worried look on his face that this is probably the first time he’s ever done something like this. And it’s painfully clear that it’s the first time I’ve ever been asked by a cute stranger if I want some coffee, since I’m so surprised by the question that my answer comes out as “Yes?”
“It’s okay if you’d rather have tea,” he says. “I mean, I’ll still want to buy you a cup if you prefer tea. Even if I don’t personally understand it.”
I personally don’t understand drinking a hot beverage on a humid summer morning, but I seriously doubt this silver cart makes anything close to a frozen peppermint mocha. Whatever. Suffering through a few sips will be totally worth it for this guy. “Coffee would be great,” I say. “Milk and sugar, please.”
He acts like he’s a waiter writing on a pad. “Milk and sugar, coming up.”
While he returns to the silver truck and my heart skips all over my body, I finally find my orientation packet. “Thank goodness!” I say, and when he returns with two steaming cups, I triumphantly show him the bunch of red papers with the words PHILADELPHIA COLLEGE OF FINE ART printed on them in a big bold font. “Can you tell me how to get here?”
“Oh, sorry!” The boy takes a step back, and suddenly notices the bags of art supplies at my feet. “You’re a summer student?” His eyebrows pop up, like that wasn’t at all what he was expecting. He is now very much awake.
I nod, though I don’t get what he has to be sorry for. “Do you know where the university is? I’m so late.” Then my cell phone rings loud in my bag. It’s a lame beeping version of Madonna’s “Like a Virgin” that Meg downloaded for me as a joke one time when I was in the bathroom. We’ve always laughed at it, but now, in front of this boy, it makes me feel incredibly lame.
I fumble to ignore the call. “My mom,” I tell him. I don’t know why. “She’s checking in on me. I think she’s nervous because I’m in the city all by myself.” And then I laugh, but it sounds so uncomfortable, I close my mouth and decide never to speak again.
“Interesting,” he says, with a teasing sort of grin. “No need to stress. It’s just around the corner on your left.”
He hands over my coffee, and I’m not sure what to do. I’d really love to stay. But I really have to go.
He makes up my mind for me.
“Maybe I’ll see you around sometime,” he says. “After all, you know where I get my coffee in the morning. That’s practically like knowing where I live.”
I point to the intersection. “I guess that makes us neighbors,” I say, and take off, grinning. A cute boy was just interested in me. That never, ever happens in Cherry Grove. People know each other too well there, so much so that surprises never really happen.
As soon as I step into the crosswalk and glance to my right, I see the Philadelphia College of Fine Art, all massive and stone and old like a castle, occupying almost an entire city block. It’s not what I imagined at all. When I had pictured a college, I thought about a big green lawn, kids outside playing Frisbee, a real campus. It’s a bit jarring, seeing it sandwiched between the sleek architecture of the surrounding silvery skyscrapers.
A bunch of signs lead the way through a set of red wooden doors. I have to push on them a couple times before they open into a huge atrium, with a glass ceiling and three levels of catwalks running along the sides.
The noise inside is deafening. High school kids are everywhere, bright flashes of color and personality, meandering from registration table to registration table, filling out permission slips, getting their temporary IDs laminated, picking up the keys to their dorm rooms, and not-so-subtly sizing each other up. Rows and rows of metal folding chairs are set up in the middle of the atrium, facing a low stage and podium. The seats are almost all filled.
A few older kids — students who are actually enrolled in this college, I guess — stare down from the catwalks, underneath a big WELCOME PRE-COLLEGE STUDENTS banner, and laugh at the whole crazy scene.
And it is crazy.
Two boys in striped shirts like Bert and Ernie are hugging and crying. They look like they are mid-good-bye. One boy fishes a red marker out of his pocket and draws a heart inside the other boy’s palm. It makes them both cry harder.
Next to them, a chubby Asian girl with blue-black hair, dressed in a high-neck beige lace dress that looks incredibly out of season for the last week of June, allows her mom to wipe some tomato-y lipstick from the corners of her mouth with a tissue while she taps away on her mini video game player.
A couple of feet ahead, a tall boy with an asymmetrical haircut and swollen acne awkwardly navigates the crowd toting three canvases — one under each arm and one strapped to his back. He swats people with the corners, unintentionally branding them with touches of wet pink paint.
I take small steps backward until I’m pressed against the wall. The place is crawling with the types of people you find huddled in groups of two or three at a typical high school. I don’t see anyone here who looks like me, and that feels strange. There are always people like me around. We are everywhere.
A hand squeezes my shoulder. It’s a slender lady wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard marked STUDENT HEALTH SERVICES. She seems like a regular nurse, except for her orange Afro and the lei of hibiscus tattoos ringing her collarbone. “Sweetie, do you have your schedule and your ID? We’re about to get started.”
I shake my head. “I — my train —”
“Do you know who your roommate is?”
“No. I mean, I’m a commuter. I’m not staying in the dorms.”
“Breathe. Breathe. Breathe,” she chants in a warm, friendly voice. “Come with me.”
I follow the nurse down through the crowds. She leads me to several tables, helps me get checked in, and fills my arms with even more papers and information. I’m glad she’s taking charge of the situation, because I can’t seem to concentrate on anything. There’s too much to look at.
There are way more kids here than I expected, at least two hundred total. Everyone seems to have at least one creative detail on them, something that shows that they belong here. I’m plain by comparison. It’s embarrassing, how much effort it took for me to wear something that looks exactly like a blank piece of paper. No wonder no one makes eye contact with me.
Though it’s not like the other students are mingling all that much, either. Everyone seems cautious and careful around each other. The only people who are enjoying themselves are the parents. They talk and laugh in little groups, an Aha! look on their faces, like suddenly, in this context, their weird kids make sense.
“Please take a seat, everyone, and we’ll get you off to classes as soon as possible,” a low female voice booms out of a microphone I can’t see from where I’m standing.
“What’s your name?” a boy asks me from behind a table. He’s wearing a T-shirt that says STAFF,
and his black hair pokes out like carpet fringe from underneath a plaid yarmulke, covered in crudely sewn yellow lightning bolt patches.
“Emily Thompson.” A flashbulb pops in my face.
He thumbs through a file box. “Okay, here’s your schedule, Emily. And here’s your ID.” He hands me a stack of papers and a warm, plastic square. My eyes are closed in the picture, like I’m sleeping. “Go ahead and find a seat.”
There are not many empty chairs. The ones that are vacant seem uncomfortably sandwiched between people who lean across them to whisper to each other. I get a hollow feeling in my chest. If I had gotten here earlier, maybe I would have met some people already.
Maybe.
I walk toward the back of the atrium and take the very last chair in the row. The section reserved for parents.
A short woman with stringy black hair and burgundy lipstick stands behind the podium on the stage. She beams a smile out into the crowd. Even from this distance, her teeth look gray and dull, like she is definitely a smoker. Of cigars.
“Hello, students. My name is Dr. Tobin, and I am the Program Director of the Pre-College Summer Art Institute. I want to welcome you to Philadelphia and to six weeks filled with personal growth and artistic discovery!” She’s leaning in too close to the microphone, and her deep voice vibrates along my metal chair. “I want to begin by going over the housing rules for the summer for those of you staying in the dorms.”
The funny thing is, there are very few rules for her to go over. Obviously, no drugs or alcohol are allowed, but students who live in the dorms can come and go from the campus as they please until 1:00 a.m., when curfew begins. It sounds pretty good, considering the new strict summer curfew Mom’s imposed.
I actually considered living on campus when Ms. Kay first gave me the brochure, but now I’m glad I decided against it. The dorms don’t have air-conditioning, and the beds are probably not nearly as comfortable as mine. And what would I actually do here all by myself at night? I’d miss home too much.
Dr. Tobin asks everyone to look at their schedules. Mine is damp and wrinkled from being squeezed in my hand. I have Drawing on Tuesdays and Mixed Media on Thursdays. Those were my first-choice classes, which is pretty nice.
“Classes will run from nine until four-thirty Tuesdays and Thursdays. Wednesdays are reserved for program-wide field trips to museums and creative destinations all over the city. Everyone will be assigned designated studio space where you can store your supplies, and you should feel free to use the campus on non-program days to continue working on your projects.”
I’m relieved to hear we get studio space, because the muscle between my shoulder blades is throbbing from carrying all my bags and I definitely don’t want to lug this stuff in for every class. But I doubt I’ll be coming into Philadelphia on the days I don’t have class.
“Finally, the summer program will culminate in a gallery reception, where student work will be displayed for faculty, friends, and family. There will be a special section where the best student work will be displayed, juried by faculty consensus.” Dr. Tobin clears her throat dramatically. “But I want to remind you all that art is not about competition. It’s about self-expression and discovery. I hope you will allow yourself the opportunity to explore your own creativity, to strip yourself of the hesitations and insecurities that might have limited you in your high school, and create in an environment free of judgments and established social mores. Here, you are among your true peers, people who value originality.”
It’s sort of nice, what Dr. Tobin is saying. From the looks of everyone around me, you can tell these kids take art seriously. It’s not a joke like Ms. Kay’s class. These kids actually care. They want to be here. And, honestly, I do, too.
“Now, please welcome Joe Farker, our Director of Campus Security….”
Two parents want to get into my row. When I stand up to let them pass, I notice something outside the glass doors behind me. There’s a girl lying flat on the ground, like she’s dead.
Weird.
Her sea-foam jellies have bits of glitter on them, casting small rainbows on the concrete. She’s wearing a navy cap-sleeved dress, and the elastic pinches in on the flesh of her upper arms, making rings much pinker than the rest of her pale body. The dress is covered in tiny white polka dots and reminds me of something I wore on the first day of school when I was a kid. The stringy, raw ends of a pair of gray shorts, probably cut from a man’s suit pants, peek out from underneath the hem. The girl puts a dark brown cigarette to her lips, flashing five colorful rhinestone rings — a gaudy one for each finger, jewelry you’d find in a glass dish on an old lady’s dresser. After a second or two, she lets the smoke out in a cloud.
The most striking thing about this girl is her hair — brown, blunt, and cut in a pageboy falling just past her chin, with bangs straight across her forehead. But there’s also a bright streak of electric pink underneath. That thick pink strand is about five inches longer than her brown hair, and it cascades over her shoulder and onto the concrete like a Kool-Aid waterfall.
My eyes wander back to her face, only to see that the girl is now staring at me from the ground. Like, obviously staring at me. She lifts one hand and waves, a fluttering gesture, demure like a beauty queen.
I quickly turn away and lower myself back in my chair.
Dr. Tobin returns to the podium. “Okay, students. It is now ten o’clock. You will be free to finish up the registration process, say your good-byes to your parents, and get some lunch. All of you will be expected to report to your first classes by twelve-thirty. If you have questions or need any more information, please report to my office on the third floor.” She claps her hands together. “Have an exhilarating first day!”
Everyone stands up and scatters. I wait a few seconds before moving, just in case that girl is still watching me. As I lean over to grab my stuff, I glance outside. I don’t see her.
I walk outside to the courtyard between the east and west dorms. Everyone’s looking down at the ground. Pointing. Smiling. The girl has traced shadows all over the pavement in smooth lines of colored chalk — a tree, a bush, a statue of a stone head perched on a big marble pedestal, a trash can. The sun has already shifted the shadows just outside her lines.
By the number of tracings, it’s a safe bet that this girl probably didn’t go to orientation at all, if she’s even a student here. She was outside by herself the whole time, making art.
My phone rings. It’s my mom again, but I still don’t answer. Instead, I walk the edges of the shadow outlines the girl has drawn, careful like I’m on a tightrope. Other people around me do the same. Someone’s mom asks a security guard who did this. He shrugs and calls maintenance on his radio, telling them to bring a hose. He doesn’t get that the lady wasn’t complaining. He doesn’t get it at all.
I try to line myself up to where the girl was when she waved at me. There, her outline is traced on the ground. It’s different from the kind you see police draw around dead bodies — there’s detail and depth to it. I can see the wrinkles of her clothes, the fringe of her choppy hair, features I never thought possible to capture with sidewalk chalk.
When no one is looking, I step inside the lines. My shadow doesn’t come close to filling it up.
On my way out of the university cafeteria, I accidentally bump into a thin, frail girl hovering over the food bar.
The force knocks the serving tongs out of her hand and into a nearby tray of thick, mayonnaisey tuna salad. Splats fly everywhere. One clump hits my capris, just above the knee.
“Oh! I’m sorry,” I say, and then catch myself staring into the girl’s take-out box with fear and concern. Strips of fake bacon are piled high. They look like plastic play food, technicolored in an entirely unconvincing way.
“The vegan entrée has been contaminated!” the girl screeches to no one in particular, but glares at me through her thick shaggy hair like I’ve just slaughtered a pig right in front of her. A cafeteria lady in a white apro
n and black hairnet rushes over and pushes me out of the way.
Oh well. So much for good first impressions.
I walk through a door, up a set of stairs, and out onto the street. Philadelphia feels huge. If I squint, I can see City Hall in the distance, dead center in the middle of Broad Street. It’s a really ornate building, a stone-colored wedding cake. A statue of William Penn is perched at the very top, watching over the whole city. It was probably the tallest building at one time, but now it’s dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers.
My very first class, Drawing, is held in the main art building directly across the street from the atrium. It’s a totally uninspiring location, where you might expect the office of an accountant, except that it has a huge, empty gallery space in the lobby. I walk to the corner and wait for the traffic light to change while other kids dart across the street when they see holes in the oncoming traffic.
I flash the security guard the college ID dangling around my neck, even though he’s too busy talking on his cell phone to notice, and head down a long hallway to a set of elevators. There’s a bunch of people already waiting. I delicately squeeze my way onto an elevator and reach out to press the button for the seventh floor, but it’s already lit up. As the doors shut, a girl with a corncob blond pixie cut, tight pencil-leg jeans, and a red silk scarf knotted around her neck runs toward us. No one holds the door for her, though, and she looks annoyed as it closes right in her face.
The elevator moves incredibly slow. I’m stuck in the corner near the buttons, and can’t see the people behind me. But I hear two iPods playing different songs in a musical mess, and someone smells like they haven’t learned what deodorant is yet.
I think the first stop is a photography floor, because the chemicals make my eyes water as soon as the doors open. That, and one of the kids who steps off the elevator turns around and, with his camera dangling mid-chest, takes a picture of us.
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