Boy

by Blake Nelson

  I’d been accepted. I let out a long breath. I sat back and closed my eyes for a few seconds. I waited for a feeling of great happiness to come over me. And it did. A little bit. But what I mostly felt was a growing sense of now I’ll have to go. It had been such a pleasant daydream: art school, being an artist, me and my camera. But what was the reality going to be? And I had no backup plan. I’d basically thrown myself off a cliff. This was the direction I was going, whether I wanted to or not.

  • • •

  Kai didn’t get into Oberlin, her first-choice college. She didn’t get into her second or third choices either. She did get into New York University, though. She called me from in front of the supermarket where she was with her mother. I could hear the shopping carts banging together. She read me the acceptance notice. She was of course relieved that she got in somewhere. But NYU? From everything she’d read, it was huge and impersonal and there was no real campus. You were dumped in the middle of New York City, basically. She wasn’t sure she wanted that. She didn’t know if she could handle the stress.

  “But you want to be a writer,” I reminded her. “New York is great for that.” She had told me this a couple months before.

  “Yeah, but I’ll be all alone. And the dorms are tiny. And there’s no grass.”

  “Maybe that’s a good thing,” I said.

  There was a pause. I heard a sniffle on her end. “I wanted to go to a real college,” she said, her voice filling with emotion. “With courtyards and Frisbees and all that.”

  “Frisbees?” I said. “You’ve never thrown a Frisbee in your life.”

  “You know what I mean.”

  “Maybe they’ll have other things. That are good in other ways.”

  “I don’t want to go to New York,” she said. “It’s too much. It’s too scary.”

  “But how do you know until you get there?”

  • • •

  Antoinette got accepted to a college called St. John’s. It was a small school in New Mexico where you only read the classic books. That was the entire curriculum. You started with Plato as a freshman and then went right through the rest of civilization. It was for weirdos and geniuses, it sounded like. I imagined skinny dudes with wire-rim glasses, wearing tank tops and sandals to class.

  Antoinette didn’t say much about it. And then she made fun of Kai for being afraid of New York. “You’re going to love it,” she said one night as we drove to Burrito Express in Kai’s Subaru. “Are you kidding? You’re going to be so glad you’re not surrounded by frat boys and football games. NYU will be perfect for you.”

  “I hope you’re right,” said Kai.

  “Oh my God,” said Antoinette. “I am so right.”

  • • •

  By mid-April, it was mostly settled where people were going to college. Grace Anderson would not be going to Puget Sound with Austin, but instead was going to University of Oregon. So were Petra Jones and Logan Hewitt. Logan Hewitt would be living in the Hewitt-Lonsdale dormitory, which his father had donated the money for, since he’d gone to Oregon too. Claude was going to Santa Clara College near San Francisco. I didn’t know anything about it but someone said everyone was preppy and good-looking, which sounded about right. Emma Van Buskirk was going to Yale. Olivia Goldstein was going to Smith College back East, which Kai wanted to go to, but didn’t get in. Bennett, I found out, was going to University of Portland to study electrical engineering. Which people joked about. “If you want to have your brain rewired, who better than Bennett!”

  And last but not least, I was going to Cal Arts. Which, I found, confused people. Or at least nobody really said anything about it. I was tall and blond and good at tennis. That’s how most people thought of me. But nobody really cared that much. High school was almost over. We were already starting to drift away in our own directions.

  58

  Once the college stuff was settled, a new feeling of freedom set in among the seniors. People really started to flake then. The photographer who was supposed to do sports suddenly couldn’t do it anymore, which left me to take pictures of Althea Jones, who was our school’s best girl athlete. She was a sophomore and a sprinter and was already the district champion in the 100 and 200 meters and 100-meter hurdles. This year she was projected to be the #1 girls sprinter in the state. The yearbook people needed pictures of her, and Emma wanted to put her on the cover of the Owl, and the track coach actually came and found me at my locker and wanted me to take some pictures of her for the trophy case, where she would probably be for the next twenty years.

  I drove to one of our rival high schools on a cloudy day and stood around at the girls track meet. When they began running the sprints, I found Althea and introduced myself and took some pictures of her warming up. She was tall, with long legs but a very young-looking face. There was a sweetness there, but also an edge, too. I remembered tennis players in the twelve and unders often had a similar appearance. They looked like children. But they were going to take you down, just the same.

  They announced the 100 meters. Seven girls lined up, and I walked down the track a little ways and got a bunch of different shots of Althea and the others as they stretched and shook out their arms and adjusted their blocks. I noticed a new energy come into the crowd. Everybody stopped what they were doing. Nobody was going to miss this. When the girls got into their stances, a deathly quiet came over the stadium. You could actually hear the flag waving over the stadium for a second. The girls crouched down and then crouched a little more, and then the gun fired. They were all fast. After twenty yards they were still bunched together. But then Althea switched into another gear. She surged out ahead of the others. I blasted away and kept shooting, even after she’d won and come bouncing to a stop and then turned and fist-bumped some of the other girls, who seemed in awe of her.

  I didn’t say anything to her afterward, but I followed her around for several minutes, still shooting, while she waited for her next event. She was the best. That was the story. You kept seeing glimpses of it in her face and the way she did things. She was very nice, very polite. But then, as she looked at her hand, or fiddled with her shoe, you could see a kind of maturity in her face, a kind of firmness. She was the best. It sent a shiver up your spine. It was the most interesting thing I’d shot since the riot in Seattle. And I was pretty sure I’d got something usable, since I took about two hundred pictures.

  • • •

  Later that week, when my father heard about my college acceptance, he did what he always did: he made a reservation for dinner.

  I met him in a new restaurant near his apartment.

  “So,” he said, putting his napkin in his lap. “I understand congratulations are in order. You’ve been accepted to art school.”

  I smiled. I couldn’t help myself. “Yes,” I said. “I’m very excited.”

  “I understand Henry Oswald had some connections there.”

  “That’s right,” I said, nodding, trying to give Mr. Oswald the credit he deserved but not making it sound like he had overshadowed my father in any way. “His brother went there.”

  “It always helps to have an alum recommending you,” said my dad. “Especially one who has done well.”

  “I went to see his brother in Tacoma,” I said. “He makes movie posters. And does layouts for advertising.”

  “So you actually met with him? And Henry set this up for you?”

  “Yeah. It wasn’t a big deal or anything.”

  “How did Henry know you wanted to go to Cal Arts?”

  “I told him.”

  “When did you tell him?”

  “I don’t know. In the fall.”

  “He came to the house?”

  “Yeah. He came over a couple times . . . to check on us.”

  “To check on you.”

  “Yeah,” I said. “To see how we were doing. What do you care?”

  “I don’t care,” said my father with perfect calm. “I don’t care at all. Except that if someone takes an inter
est in my son to the point of getting him admitted to an expensive, out-of-state art college, it seems odd that nobody told me about it.”

  “Well,” I said quietly. “I hadn’t been accepted yet.”

  “You’ve been accepted now.”

  “And now you’ve been told,” I said.

  “Yes, after everything has been decided.”

  I looked across the table at him. “You can’t blame Mom for not keeping you in the loop.”

  “Why can’t I?”

  “Because you totally fucked up her life,” I said.

  My father sighed. “Your mother and I will have a good relationship once the situation has normalized. Once the emotions have worked themselves out.”

  “And when will that happen?” I said. “Never?”

  My father stared at me then, with a special look he used in certain situations. He let his eyes go dead a little, to let you see the hardness in his soul. Like if you thought you could manipulate him emotionally, you were sadly mistaken. “It will happen when she has the good sense to let it happen,” he said.

  • • •

  During dessert, though, my father’s mood improved. He wanted to hear more about Cal Arts.

  “A lot of famous artists went there,” I said.

  “Famous like how? Like they make posters for movies?”

  “No, like really famous. Like their paintings sell for millions of dollars.”

  “Does the school guarantee that? The millions of dollars?”

  I knew what he was referring to. He had once explained to Russell and me that if you went to the right law school, you would average an income of a million dollars a year for the rest of your life. It was practically guaranteed.

  “No, of course it’s not guaranteed,” I said. “It’s art.”

  “How much does your friend the photographer make?”

  “You mean Richie? He does pretty well at times. And other times he works at his uncle’s photography shop.”

  “I see,” said my father, adjusting his napkin. “I’m not trying to be critical. I just don’t know how one makes a living as an artist. I’m sure that some people make a very good living at it. But I would guess that the percentage of those people would be very small. And that the vast majority . . . well, they would be grateful to have a job making movie posters or whatnot.”

  I didn’t like the direction this was going.

  “And then one wonders,” he continued. “What makes an artist popular? How do you make a success of it? I would imagine you would need some sort of gimmick. And it would probably be useful to appear mentally deranged to some extent. That seems to be something people associate with great art. Someone like van Gogh, where would he be if he hadn’t cut off his ear? And mailed it to his girlfriend! I mean, people like his paintings, sure. But it’s all about marketing when you get right down to it. Who has the craziest backstory.”

  My father was mocking me with these comments. I was used to this. He had said worse to me. But at that moment, some part of me could not let these insults stand. I had the thought that I could ram the table into him. Or throw the butter bowl at his head. Instead, I lifted my head and stared at him across the table, letting my eyes go dead a little, letting the hardness of my soul show through.

  • • •

  When I escaped the restaurant, I drove straight to Kai’s. I didn’t text first, so I didn’t know if she was home, but I rang the doorbell anyway. Her mother, who knew me by then, sent me up to her room.

  Kai was in the shower. So I flopped on her bed. Her laptop was open. She had been writing something. I read a little of it. It was about a girl who was moving to New York to go to college, and how scared she was.

  The shower turned off. I could hear Kai pushing the shower curtain back. I heard her say something. She was talking to herself, not a lot, just a few quiet things.

  “Hey, Kai, it’s me,” I said loudly toward the door.

  “Oh my God, what are you doing here?”

  “I just had dinner with my dad.”

  “Oh. Poor you.”

  I heard bathroom drawers opening and closing. The hair dryer came on for a minute. Eventually the door opened. She came out with a towel wrapped around her.

  “I’m reading your story,” I said. I was on my stomach, on her bed, with her laptop.

  “Don’t read that. It’s terrible.”

  “No it’s not.”

  “Don’t look. I have to put my clothes on.”

  I didn’t look.

  “What did your dad say?” she asked me.

  “Nothing. He was being his usual dickish self.”

  “My mom doesn’t want me to go to NYU,” said Kai.

  “Why not?”

  “It’s too far away.”

  “Maybe you shouldn’t go.”

  “Now I want to go.”

  I turned back toward her. She was still in her underwear, looking for her pants.

  “Don’t look! I’m not dressed yet.”

  But I did look. Not in a sexual way. I just wanted to watch her. Kai would not be around forever. Time was ticking away.

  59

  Meanwhile, spring had snuck up on us. We were seniors, of course, so what did we care if the air got warmer, if the flowers bloomed? Our whole lives were about to change. We didn’t care about spring. We were spring.

  I found myself hanging around the Owl office. The staff had thinned out by then. I was taking all the pictures. Emma was writing all the articles. The two of us would stay late and fiddle around with the layout. It had become a two-man operation. Emma didn’t mind. She liked to do everything herself, which was probably how she got straight As and was going to Yale. She paid great attention to detail.

  We would hang out in the office until six or seven some nights, drinking coffee and feeling very responsible and adult. Mr. Hull, the faculty adviser never stayed after school anymore. Emma had convinced him to leave it to her, which he happily did. It wasn’t like Emma was going to do something edgy or controversial. She wasn’t capable of that.

  • • •

  One night we locked up the office and walked across campus to the parking lot and I noticed Emma seemed especially chatty, in a different way than usual. As we crossed the parking lot, Emma continued to talk in a rushed, nervous voice. We came to my car.

  “All right,” I said. “See you tomorrow.”

  “Oh, uh, Gavin?” she said.

  Her voice ran out of air as she said this. I could see her chest heave. Her eyes bounced around in their sockets.

  “Yeah?” I said.

  “Would you, uh, want to go to a play with me on Saturday?”

  “A play?” I said. I wasn’t sure what she meant. “Like a school play?”

  “No, a real play. My parents have tickets they’re not going to use.”

  “Oh,” I said. “So not for the magazine?”

  “No. Not for the magazine.”

  I was confused. Why would she think I wanted to go to a play? “What’s it about?” I said.

  “I’m not sure,” she said, her chest heaved again. “But it’ll be good. It’s at the Civic. They only have good plays there.”

  I almost said, Why are you asking me? But then I understood. She was asking me out. On a date.

  “Oh,” I said, my confusion about the play turning into confusion about how to respond to Emma.

  She could see I was unsure. She probably thought since we hung out so much, and talked a lot, that maybe something was happening between us. And being the studious, nonsocial person she was, she didn’t know how to tell if a person actually liked you or not.

  “Uh . . . ,” I said. I had never been in this situation before. A girl was asking me out. A girl I was not attracted to. All I could think to do was not hurt her feelings. “Uh. Yeah. Okay . . . ,” I said. “I mean, if you need someone to go with.”

  “You would have to drive, though. I can’t use my mom’s car that night.”

  “Okay,” I said. “I can driv
e.”

  • • •

  At home that night, I got an e-mail from Emma with her address. I looked it up. Her house was in a neighborhood I didn’t know, which was surprising. I thought I knew every nook and cranny of our high school boundary. But this was on a road I’d never heard of.

  That Saturday, before the play, I watched tennis on TV. Then I took a shower and went through my ritual of getting ready for a date. This time was different, though. Usually I went out with girls who I liked and wanted to impress. Girls like Rachel Lehman, who I would put on extra deodorant for, since I would be nervous in their presence, since they had been on lots of dates, usually with guys who were as cool or cooler than me. But Emma? Had she even been on a date before? Probably not.

  I drove the RAV4 to the Van Buskirk house. It wasn’t that nice. I mean, it was fine, but it was small and on a dead-end cul-de-sac. It seemed odd that Emma was going to Yale. But she did have a 4.0 grade-point average. And she was the editor of the Owl.

  I parked and rang the bell at her front door. Her mother answered. She was very excited to meet me. She invited me into the small entrance area and told me about the play: who wrote it, who directed it, how great the local theater productions were. Then she yelled—too loudly—up the stairs for Emma, which I was sure Emma didn’t appreciate. And then Mr. Van Buskirk showed up, taking off his reading glasses to shake my hand. He also told me about the play and how great it was. I felt like saying, If it’s so great, why aren’t you going?

  It was all very weird. Emma was still upstairs. “So Emma tells us you’re going to art school in California,” said her mom. “You’re a very talented photographer.”

  “Yeah,” I said, looking up the stairs.

  “That’s wonderful. Your parents must be very proud.”

  “They’re sort of occupied with other things.”

  “What do your folks do?” asked Mr. Van Buskirk.

  “My dad’s a lawyer.”

  “Oh,” said Mrs. Van Buskirk. “A lawyer!”

  Finally, Emma came downstairs. She was wearing a dress. She looked pretty good. She had cute shoes on and a bit of lip gloss. But she also had a small orange scarf tied around her head. I’d never seen her wear anything like that before. We were going downtown, to the big theater, so I guess that’s why she went for the scarf. Her parents were still talking and asking me questions about myself. But the scarf had thrown me off, and with everyone talking at once, it was hard to focus.