Empress of the World

by Sara Ryan

  “Well, of course it will be different! You obviously didn’t fall into such fabulous company last year. I personally guarantee that everything will be at least fifty percent more interesting this year,” says Katrina, flourishing her fork like a magician, narrowly missing knocking over Kevin’s soda. “And it will be even better if you all drop your classes and take Computer Science with me. It’ll be great, you’ll see!”

  “It’s better not to be in classes with friends,” Battle says.

  Are we that already?

  My heart actually starts to beat a little bit faster.

  It’s not like I have no friends back home, but they are all associated with activities: theater friends, orchestra friends. I’m pretty short on just plain friend friends.

  “Just because then you pay more attention,” she continues. “I mean it’s lame, but it helps.” She takes a bite of lasagna, which is apparently what the red mass is supposed to be.

  “Geek!” accuses Isaac.

  “This is goddamn geek HQ, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Battle says. With an elegant hand gesture, she indicates the other tables full of kids, most of whom look like they always sit by themselves at their regular school.

  “I have to see if I really want to be an archaeologist. That’s sort of the whole point of this summer,” I explain to Katrina.

  “Why do you think you want to be one?” Katrina asks.

  Spotlight on Nic. I blush and mumble, “I guess . . . I just like the idea of fitting pieces together. Figuring out how people lived. Mapping it all out.”

  “You don’t want to find treasure?” Battle asks, sounding slightly disappointed.

  I shake my head. “Just plain people from the past, how they worked, what they were like,” I say.

  “Then the teacher will love you,” says Battle. “At least if it’s the same one as last year. If it’s a different one—”

  “You’ll decide to do something totally different with your life, and it’ll all be because of this summer,” Isaac says in a deep scary horror movie preview voice.

  “My mom said she became a software developer because the coolest guys were in those classes in college,” Katrina says.

  “Your mom must have some weirdass taste in guys,” says Kevin in the draggy way he seems to say everything.

  “Don’t even get me started,” says Katrina, holding up her hands to discourage us further from getting her started. “I mean, at least my dad has, like, some personal hygiene standards! Not that he has any other kind, mind you. But Mom’s last couple of boyfriends—ugh, not even.”

  So Katrina’s parents are divorced.

  “Who else’s parents are divorced?” I ask. There’s silence. After a little while, Katrina says to me,

  “So we’re the only products of broken homes, huh, Nic? We’ll have to stick together.”

  I say quickly, “Oh, my parents aren’t divorced. I mean, they almost got divorced a while ago, but they’re better now. They’re actually traveling this summer, which is one of the reasons I’m here. My dad’s an artist and he’s traveling to different summer art fairs and stuff. And Mom’s coming with him even though she’s a scientist.” God, Nic, shut up, who cares?

  “What kind of artist?” asks Isaac.

  I shrug. “He draws. Teaches. He’s kind of goofy.”

  “Aha! DNA rules all!” says Katrina. “Nic, show Kevin your notebook!”

  I don’t want to show Kevin my notebook. I want to go back to my room and write in it.

  But again, I don’t know how to say no, so I hand it over.

  “See, she’s an artist, too, just like her dad! Isn’t that cool?” says my personal redheaded cheering section.

  Kevin looks at the sketches. He looks at the one of Battle longer than the other two. I must have really screwed that one up. “Awesome,” he says finally, and gives me the notebook back.

  “Oh, man, you guys, don’t make her all conceited—you know they were weak,” says Isaac. Then he grins.

  I say, “Thanks for telling the truth, Isaac.” I smile at him.

  “Yeah, well, someone has to.” He takes a bite of his stuffed cabbage and grimaces. “It’s not bad once you get used to the texture.”

  “What was that about telling the truth, again?” asks Katrina.

  June 15, 1:30 a.m., My Room

  field notes: isaac:

  -is from san francisco

  -was here last year (took world history, remembered battle)

  -is funny

  -seems nice

  kevin:

  -is from seattle

  -dresses interestingly

  -is a bizarre combination of incomprehensibly smart and incomprehensibly stupid. maybe he’s just stupid.

  . . . i know much more about battle and katrina b/c the 3 of us went to k’s room after dinner and were there till after 1 a.m.!

  katrina

  -smokes (duh)

  -is from new york, but is now living in santa fe which she hates (“men with ponytails and kokopelli earrings have no reason to exist”)

  -her laptop is covered with stickers and writing in black marker and is named ada after ada byron lovelace who i have never heard of before but was i guess important

  -has had sex online (!!) but not in real life yet (“santa fe boys bite the flaming donkey weinie”)

  -has a purple stuffed penguin, many green and red plastic lizards, and a giant orange beanbag that she uses instead of a desk chair

  -keeps all her clothes in a huge cardboard box

  battle:

  -hates smoking

  -is from north carolina (slight drawl)

  -has two dogs named dante and beatrice that are a special kind that starts with a c but not collies

  -is a minister’s daughter (!!)

  -has gone out with guys, but “it’s always just to a movie and then to the waffle house”

  -her parents “pretty much keep me chained up to the house like the dogs” and don’t let her do anything (but she’s gone out with guys??)

  things k and b have in common:

  -prettier than i am, especially battle

  -better senses of style than me

  -more confident in groups than me this is depressing! so instead i will write down the things we all have in common:

  -theater!!! i do lights and sets, katrina does costumes and acts, and battle dances. “it’s better being onstage when you don’t have to talk.”

  -taste in books (lord of the rings, madeline l’engle, ursula k. leguin)

  -hated elementary school

  -never go to school dances (battle says she intended to go to one back in middle school, but when she was within twenty feet of the building and could already hear the horrendously bad music, she just turned around and walked home)

  -have parents who are older than other people’s our age

  -all on our periods right now (what are the odds against that??)

  June 15, 7:30 a.m., My Room

  I can barely lift my hand to hit the snooze button on my new alarm clock, but as soon as I do, I jerk fully awake, suddenly paranoid that I didn’t set it right last night and I’m already late to class. You’d think that at nearly sixteen, I would know how to operate a simple device like an alarm clock, but you’d be wrong.

  But it really is seven-thirty A .M ., not P .M . So I launch myself out of bed, walk over to the wall by the door, and look into the mirror. My hair is fine—that’s the advantage of long, straight, boring hair. But then again, it is also long, straight, and boring. And not red, despite the fact that just a few weeks ago, I spent two hours with henna, tinfoil, and towels wrapped around my head. It apparently wants to be brown, and whatever I do to convince it otherwise fails to signify.

  I wonder what Battle and Katrina are going to wear today.

  I put on a black T-shirt and, after a minute, the same black shorts as yesterday. I feel like they’re not the right shape—not long enough, or loose enough—but the T-shirt is huge—it’s one of Dad�
��s that I stole—so the shorts don’t matter so much. It’s not quite hot enough for sandals yet, so I put on green socks and green high-tops. I can hear my semi-friend Margaret: “Nic, you’re such a techie, do you even own a skirt?”

  Tech people always wear black, because you spend the show backstage, and you don’t want the audience to be able to see you. And you’re not about to wear a skirt when you have to climb the ladder up to the catwalk to hang lights.

  When I get down to breakfast, I see that I’m dressed almost exactly like Isaac, which is embarrassing. The only difference is that he’s wearing sandals. I don’t see Kevin—maybe he sleeps late.

  Battle’s in a sleeveless dark blue blouse, tan leggings, and brown leather boots. Katrina has a white dress with pictures of buildings and people silk-screened onto it in black—it’s like she’s wearing a silent movie—neon green tights, and purple combat boots. She has her hair up, clipped into several clothespins that she has spray-painted silver.

  I am boring. They probably don’t even want to talk to me.

  “Hey, Nic! Over here!” yells Katrina.

  I can’t stop smiling.

  Appropriately enough, the Archaeology classroom is in the basement. There are more desks than people; there are only about twenty of us in the class.

  The teacher—professor, actually, which is a big deal because a lot of the other classes are taught by graduate students—is sitting on the edge of her desk with her legs crossed, holding a coffee mug from the dining hall.

  Her name, which she has written on the board in large sloppy letters, is Ms. Fraser. She pushes her curly brown hair out of her eyes and says, “This is the Archaeology class. Anyone who’s here expecting anything else should leave now. Don’t be embarrassed, we’ve all gone into the wrong room at one time or another.”

  No one leaves. She continues. “All right. So first off, we’re going to go around the room and you’re each going to say your name and why you want to study archaeology.”

  Most people’s answers are boring: “It just looked like it would be interesting.” Two boys, Alex and Ben, are arrogant, too: “I wanted something challenging—I’m so far ahead of my grade level that there’s really nothing for me at my regular school.” “I was already studying Greek and Latin, so I thought this would make a good addition.” The only funny answer comes from a girl wearing all black in the back of the room: “I want to desecrate graves.” I don’t think she meant it to be funny, though.

  I’m last, and I tell the truth, that I’ve wanted to be an archaeologist since I knew what archaeology was. “And when was that?” asks Ms. Fraser.

  “When I read Come, Tell Me How You Live—it’s this book Agatha Christie wrote about going on a dig with her husband,” I say.

  Anne, the girl next to me, says, “I read that too!” We smile at each other.

  Ms. Fraser takes a sip of coffee, then says, “All right, people, now that we all know each other so intimately, I’m going to talk at you for a while. I don’t have very much time with you—this is a third as much time as I get when I’m teaching college—so I’m going to go fast.” She goes on: “I’m here to tell you the truth, and I’m telling you now so you can get out while you still can and sign up for English Lit or Political Science.

  “Archaeology is garbage.”

  She takes another sip of coffee.

  “Let me say that again, in case you didn’t catch it. Archaeology is garbage. It is, to be precise, the art of sorting through the fragments that people have left behind, and trying to draw conclusions about their lives and their cultures based on those fragments.

  “Your job in this class is to learn various ways to find the garbage, and then various other ways to classify it once you’ve found it. You won’t get a lot of hands-on in this course, and I’m sorry about that, but at the very least you’ll get to visit an in-progress dig, and you may get to do more than that—I’m still working out some details. Any questions so far?”

  “Yes, I have a question. I want to know how you can call the promulgation of the whole human race garbage. I think it’s totally disrespectable and I’m surprised that you as a professor would indulge in such mockery.”

  This comes from Alex, Arrogant Boy Number One.

  Ms. Fraser blinks a couple of times, then laughs. “Thanks for raising that point, Alex. When I say archaeology is garbage, I don’t mean to be disrespectful. I’m a professional garbage collector, and I’m getting paid not very much money to entice you all to be garbage collectors too. If I didn’t love what I do, I wouldn’t be here.

  “But I think it’s very important to impress on you from the beginning that glamour is not what this is about. You need to be able to do painstakingly detailed work, keep scrupulous track of what you find, be conscious of your own biases—and always be ready to be surprised. I’ll be preparing you for the ‘surprise’ part by giving some pop quizzes throughout the term.”

  Everyone groans. She smiles.

  “I’m looking forward to teaching this class. I always do. And I also think it’s important for you to know that I don’t stop being available to you when the class ends. I’ve written lots of recommendations, and I’m delighted to give feedback about archaeology and anthropology programs at various colleges and universities. I know lots of people in this field. And I do answer my e-mail, although sometimes it may take a while.”

  Alex raises his hand again. Ms. Fraser nods. He asks,

  “Do you think the program at Harvard is worth anything these days?”

  Good God, what a putz. He makes my stomach hurt. I always get embarrassed when I’m around people who have no idea how annoying they are. Ms. Fraser says, “You can come to me with questions about specific programs outside of class. We’re too pressed for time as it is.”

  Nicely done! I smile at Ms. Fraser. Then I whisper to Anne, “Can you believe he even asked that?”

  She whispers back, “Yes, unfortunately. He’s from my school. We rode up together.” She makes a face.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry.”

  Anne adds, “His dad is just like him, only worse. I wanted to have my boyfriend drive me up, but John had to work. He’s a lifeguard.”

  I immediately conjure up a mental picture of a beefy tanned guy with a whistle around his neck and a baseball cap on backwards, zinc oxide painted on his nose.

  “Do you have a picture of him?” I ask, and Anne beams. I think I’ve just scored several points. She opens her neat gray leather purse, removes a matching wallet, and flips it open to reveal a picture of her in a severe black dress with her hair up, next to a guy in a white tux and black cummerbund. I would have thought he was her brother if I didn’t know already that he was her boyfriend John the lifeguard.

  “I miss him so much already,” she whispers. “This was at Homecoming last fall.”

  I smile, deciding not to tell her that I think school dances are some of the most outrageous wastes of time and money that I can imagine.

  Ms. Fraser clears her throat, from directly behind me. “Any other questions?” she asks. Anne and I blush and stop talking.

  Ms. Fraser passes out the syllabus and tells us that she has a few extra copies of each book in case we didn’t get a chance to order them before we got here, “or if you put them in that suitcase that got sent to Belize by mistake.”

  It’s going to be more reading than anything else, and then discussion of what we’ve read. Good—I was nervous about the idea of actually digging up anything. I’m so clumsy that I’d probably end up falling into the trench onto some incredibly valuable artifact. I wonder if part of the training to be an archaeologist involves learning how not to do stuff like that.

  “That’s all I’ve got for you today. I’ll see you tomorrow morning, and we’ll talk about the first reading. Any general questions?”

  I raise my hand.

  “I don’t know if you want to answer this, but what’s the most interesting thing you’ve ever dug up?”

  “You want me to
give away my secret this early?” asks Ms. Fraser.

  “Am I not supposed to ask until the fifth week?” I only talk like this to teachers when I’m very sure I’m going to get along with them. I’m kind of impressed that she caught us talking, actually. Teachers usually don’t notice me doing anything besides raising my hand. Sometimes not even that.

  “Well, maybe the fourth week. But I’ll tell you part of the secret now: I haven’t dug anything up, out of the ground—but I’ve discovered some fascinating artifacts. Bonus points to anyone who can figure out how I’ve done that. Tell me your guesses tomorrow.”

  Since Ms. Fraser let us out early, what I should do is start the reading for tomorrow. What I want to do is look for Battle and Katrina, but I think that would make me an eager little puppy dog tagging along after them. So I decide to practice viola instead.

  I’m not that good of a viola player. I don’t think there are many good viola players. Most of the ones I know are ex-violinists who weren’t getting anywhere. I am the only person I know who wanted to start as a violist. That’s probably why I’m first chair at school.

  My viola feels warm when I take it out of its case, and I regret leaving it so close to the light from the window. I’ll have to start keeping it under my bed. It takes forever to tune, and it will only get worse when it gets more humid. I jam the A-string peg as far in as possible, but I’m afraid that it’s going to slip out of tune as soon as I let go.

  As I’m struggling to tune the other strings, I look out of the window at the courtyard, which is full of trees, with a couple of benches at each end. There are some people I don’t know playing Frisbee, and I think I see Kevin with some other guys playing Hacky Sack.

  I turn away from the window, open my scale book, and start to play.

  “Carl Sutter is a god in human form,” announces Katrina at dinner, which is soggy but not entirely awful-tasting pizza. I wonder if I’ll get so used to this swill that I won’t be able to recognize good food when I get home.

  “Who the hell’s Carl Sutter?” asks Isaac.

  “He’s a genius, a snappy dresser, and, it just so happens, also the Computer Science teacher. You should really all drop what you’re taking while there’s still time to get in on the power and the glory that is Carl.”