Mr. Tompkins starts to explain the symbols he’s drawn on the board. There are plus signs. I’m comfortable with plus signs. It’s that arrow instead of an equals sign that gives me trouble. What goes on in that arrow, the invisible transformation of molecules from one thing into something entirely different, always seems just out of reach to me.
Still, I copy down everything from the board just as he has written it. I even use his oddly shaped J for joules. When I look up from my paper, Mr. Tompkins is standing by the door. Just beyond him, on the other side of the glass, Dominic stands in the hallway. He’s staring right at me, and when he notices I’m looking at him, he starts to gesture at me to come out and meet him. I frown and glance at Christian, who, as if the glance has weight, looks up, first at me, then to Dominic in the hallway, then back at me. In the hallway, Dominic smirks. But then he beckons again, softer this time. I trace over the letters of the equation.
“So, let’s start working through this thing.” Mr. Tompkins claps his hands together. “Come on, guys, show me what you’ve got.”
Adam, he of the hard but evidently scientifically inclined head, raises his hand.
“Adam, awesome. You’re going to take a break from tackling girls in the hallway to help us solve the mysteries of chemistry.”
I run my hand over my bruise, which is more green now than blue.
“Actually I need to go to the bathroom,” Adam says, blushing.
“Rookie move there, Adam.”
“As soon as I get back, Mr. Tompkins, I’ll be all over the problem.”
On the way out, he taps my desk and mouths the word “Sorry,” which is, by my estimation, his seventeenth apology.
I look down at my paper. I know I can figure this out. It’s not that hard. My attention is drawn back to the hallway, but when I look out the window, Dominic is gone.
“Any actual volunteer who wants to explain his or her process?”
Stupid Dominic. I didn’t even get a chance to think about the problem with him out there waving his arms around. Mr. Tompkins calls on Christian, who explains that when the sodium hydroxide is mixed with the hydrogen chloride, it neutralizes the hydrogen chloride.
Neutralizes. It’s like that sodium hydroxide comes in and just takes over all the spicy acidity of the hydrogen chloride. I’m not one for personifying inanimate objects—Nonnie would call that sentimentality—but I almost feel bad for that hydrogen chloride, giving up all its personality in the arrow.
“So,” Christian goes on, “we take our specific heat capacity equation and plug in the known values.”
Our specific heat capacity. What is our specific heat capacity, Christian? Have we reached it? I smile for a moment, catch myself, then frown at my paper. I can’t help but feel like Christian is explaining this in a slow and deliberate manner for my benefit. I’m not used to feeling this way, left behind in a science class. I can’t say that I like it.
ii.
Ms. Pickering is waiting for me at my locker. Frowning. This is not normally the way I am greeted by the assistant principal and it makes me feel about as uncomfortable as my floundering in chemistry class. “I had hoped this was a mix-up,” she says, pointing to my locker.
“I didn’t write it there,” I tell her.
“Of course you didn’t. I just wondered if perhaps you might have some idea who did.”
“No,” I lie, annoyed with Ms. Pickering for finding it completely impossible to believe that I might have written on the locker myself.
She nods her head. “Well, if you could clean it up, that would be grand.”
“I think it was done with a Sharpie. It might need new paint.”
She sighs. Sighing is something else I’ve never gotten from an assistant principal. “Just do the best you can, okay?”
This seems like especially poor leadership on her part. She just told me that she knew I hadn’t done it. Of course not. What other court requires the victim to clean up the crime scene? Next thing you know the police or whoever are going to be making Nonnie clean the bottle caps off our house with a toothbrush. Maybe if Ms. Pickering were doing a better job looking after the school, Dominic wouldn’t have had a chance to write on my locker in the first place.
She starts to go, but then says, “How’s the class up at the college going?”
“Great.” Now we are back on familiar territory.
“We’re awfully proud of you, Veronica.”
“Thanks.”
As she walks away, Christian arrives from his locker on the other end of the hall. When he gets close, he gives me the peck on the cheek that I avoided during chemistry. “What’s up with your locker?”
“I don’t know, but it’s the topic du jour.”
He grins. “I love when you speak French to me.”
I giggle. Isn’t that what girls are supposed to do in these situations? Giggle? Sometimes it’s exhausting just trying to get it right. He looks away from me, and at my locker, reading the lyrics. “Depressing song.”
“I don’t know. It grows on you.”
He wraps his arm around my shoulder and says, “We got Portugal for Model UN. Can you believe it? Portugal!”
“I can’t think of anything wrong with Portugal.”
“Can you think of anything right?”
“Um, I can’t say that I know that much about Portugal. Modern Portugal anyway.”
“Exactly. It’s a nonentity. We will have no pull. We might as well be nonvoting members.” He shakes his head. “I was hoping for Pakistan this year.”
“Portugal used to be a huge power. They had all those colonies.”
“Hundreds of years ago.”
“It could change back. You never know.”
“Somehow I doubt that they’re going to get back on top in the next three months, but I admire your optimism.” He starts going on about the economic situation and debt ratios and the utter hopelessness of Portugal being anything but a second- or third-rate country.
I try to listen to him, but instead I’m thinking about Ms. Pickering’s assumption. Okay, sure, it would be tremendously stupid to scrawl graffiti on my own locker—especially song lyrics about my own name—and everyone knows that I’m not stupid. But someone like Dominic or Ramona, they aren’t stupid, and if there was graffiti on their lockers, no one would doubt that they could have done it themselves.
“Why do you think Ms. Pickering was so sure I didn’t write on my locker?”
“What?” Christian asks, breaking off his monologue. “Well, because that’s just not something you’d do.”
“I might. If I had a good reason.” I think of the bottle caps glued to our house: there has to be some reason for them. Someone is trying to say something about Nonnie—or to her. Whatever it is, the message is unclear. I glance at my locker. Two acts of graffiti in two days. Maybe the bottle caps aren’t about Nonnie.
“What would be a good reason for writing on a locker?”
“Well, maybe not writing on a locker per se, but some act of graffiti maybe.”
Christian shakes his head. “What type of vandalism is acceptable?”
“I don’t know. Something artistic. Or political.”
He wrinkles his nose. “There are more effective means of political expression.”
We’ve gone way off course from my original question. All I want to know is what would happen if I just ignored people’s expectations. What if, for just one day, I didn’t want that to be me? What if I decided to be like Ramona and only focus on math the way she focuses on art? Or like Dru, and come to school with a new look and a new name and just expect everyone to play along? What if I did want to glue bottle caps to my house? My mind is reeling. I’m like a little kid on the playground who’s just been pushed off the swing by a bigger kid, one old enough to know better, stunned and sore at the unfairness of it all.
Christian is back to griping about Portugal, and I’m nodding, but I guess not in the right places, because finally he says, “Is everything
okay?”
“Sure, of course,” I say hastily.
“I thought maybe your grandmother had taken a turn for the worse or something. You’re just not quite all here.”
I shake my head. “It’s nothing.”
“In chemistry, too. You kept looking out in the hall like you were expecting someone to come in. So I thought maybe you were anticipating bad news. But the only person I saw out there was Dominic Meyers.”
“Who?” I ask, the word escaping from my lips like a bubble from a wand.
“Dominic Meyers. It kind of looked like he was waving at you. Again.”
“I didn’t notice. I was trying to figure out that specific heat capacity problem. How the sodium hydroxide neutralizes the hydrogen chloride.”
“Actually, they neutralize each other. I’ll help you with it later.”
“Thanks.” I lace my fingers through his. “And I’m fine.”
“Good.” He nods as if we’ve settled something. “I like your outfit.”
This is one of the things that perplexes me about Christian. I’m wearing capri-length jeans and a pink T-shirt. It’s pretty similar to what I wear most days, not worth commenting about. “Oh, thanks.” And then, because it seems only right to balance things, I add, “I like your shirt,” though he, too, is wearing just a simple T-shirt. “The color, it looks nice with your eyes.” There. At least I added a detail to make it more personal, more plausible. And he does have beautiful eyes.
He seems to blush. “Thanks, Very. That’s sweet.”
I’m walking on a tightrope. Every day. A little too far one way or the other and I’ll come crashing down to the pavement.
iii.
That night, with time I’ve set aside for looking up college information online, I instead research graffiti. Sitting in the living room with my laptop resting on my knees, I read about Banksy, who painted murals of peace around the West Bank, gorgeous silhouettes against crumbling walls. And Keith Haring, whose brightly colored figures ended up being used to increase awareness about AIDS. It’s not all just people scribbling to leave a mark.
As I’m bouncing around the web I find a page about the Guerrilla Girls. The website has a woman with a gorilla mask on holding up her arm like Rosie the Riveter. They’re a group of woman artists who’ve been around since the 1980s and they do all this art, almost like pranks, to counter the sexism they find.
My phone buzzes with a text from Britta: Any more bottle caps?
When I’d looked at the house after school, there had seemed to be more caps. They were starting to fill in the spaces in the fan.
It’s definitely growing. Do you know anything about the Guerrilla Girls?
Do I???
Then, another bubble of text: FWIW, as rad as they are, I don’t think they’re the ones gluing things to your house.
I know. I just thought it could be something like that.
If only Essex was cool enough to have a group of renegade artists.
Maybe not a group? I thought of the words on my locker. One renegade artist. Dominic. I still wasn’t sure what he was trying to say, though.
True. I’ll come take a look soon, and maybe Google up some other ideas.
Thanks.
See you tomorrow. Dickinson day!
Emily Dickinson can, as Grace would say, suck it. And take her stupid bird with her.
You just need some more feathers, dear.
I click off my phone and look back at the computer. The Guerrilla Girls are all political, a single mission. I take out a piece of paper and draw the T of a geometric proof.
STATEMENT REASON
1. Dominic wrote the lyrics to “Veronica” on my locker. Given.
2. Bottle caps appeared on our house one day prior. Given.
3. Therefore, Dominic put the bottle caps on our house. Transitive property.
It wouldn’t hold up. There’s not enough evidence. I have hunches. I have Dominic’s sudden interest in me, but I don’t have proof. I need to find out more about graffiti and renegade artists, and maybe even Dominic himself.
Ramona and Dad come in as I’m looking at the site. “Nice,” he says. “That’s what I’m talking about. That’s the type of stuff you should be studying.”
“It’s not really for a class. Just something Christian and I were talking about—graffiti and street art and their role in society.”
“You and Christian were talking about graffiti?” He scratches at his stubble. “It’s not for debate team or anything?”
“Let’s call it a friendly disagreement.”
He grins. “What side were you on?”
“That occasionally there is a purpose for this type of vandalism. Like with the bottle caps on our house.”
And writing song lyrics on someone’s locker.
Ramona looks up from the orange she is peeling. “Do you think the bottle caps have a meaning?”
“Maybe.”
“Like what?”
“You tell me,” I say. “You’re the one who knew that square of blue was the ocean. I’d say these things were open to interpretation.”
Ramona drops a whole, perfect spiral of orange peel onto the coffee table. “But what’s your interpretation, that’s what I’m asking.”
“That’s what I’m trying to research. I’m trying to find information about more personal messages.”
“That is way cool, Very. I’m impressed.” Dad sits down in a chair across from me. “I mean, a lot of people think graffiti is just young men screaming to be heard. After all, that is why the tag is so important.”
“The tag?”
“Like a signature, but stylized.”
“Does all graffiti have a tag?”
He laughs. “It’s not like there are rules, Very.”
“Oh, there are totally rules,” Ramona says. “Like all graffiti must be completed between one thirty and four thirty a.m., local time. And all graffiti must have a tag, though said tag may not be obvious or ornate.”
“It would be easier if people just came out and said what they wanted to say,” I muse.
Dad slaps the table. “You’ll like this. Way back when I first came to Essex, there was this bridge in Portsmouth. An overpass, actually. And there was a message that had been spray-painted there forever, it seemed. ‘Pam I love you sorry Julio.’ But you see, there was no punctuation. So it was always a question: was the person who wrote the message apologizing to Julio for stealing Pam away? Or was it Julio himself who wrote the message and he was apologizing for loving her? And then over time I guess it faded or maybe was painted over. But then probably ten years later, a new message came up: ‘How do you like me now Julio?’”
“So Pam wrote back?” I ask.
“Maybe. Or maybe it was someone else who knew the message—and knew that everyone in the area would know it, too—and he was playing with it.”
“Or she,” Ramona says.
“Right. Or she. That’s what’s cool about graffiti—about any art really—the conversation, the dialogue that can go on.” He stands up. “I’m proud of you, Very. It’s nice to see you branching out, breaking out of your shell.”
I shut my laptop. Dad gave me some important information, like that stuff about tagging. I’ll have to check my locker and the house to see if I can find anything that looks like a tag.
It’s the story of Pam, though, and Julio that I think of when I’m brushing my teeth, because I’ve got a picture lodged in my mind: Dominic scaling the overpass, can of spray paint in his hands.
Very, I love you. Sorry. Dominic.
iv.
There are no tags.
I mean, unless there is something hidden in the bottle caps, like some secret code. There’s no name, no signature, no symbol. And the words on my locker are just the lyrics. Nothing to tie either of them to an artist or an underlying message. Nothing to support my theory that Dominic had something to do with the bottle caps.
I am sitting on the wall again after school, contemplati
ng the lack of tags and wondering if Dominic will show up, when Ramona emerges from the school. She looks like she has ants crawling all over her legs. When she gets closer, I realize she has completely covered her right pant leg in drawings.
“Not drawings,” she says as I back the car out of the shady spot I always choose. “Drawing. See, it starts down here with under the ground.” She holds her leg up on the dashboard and points toward the cuff of her jeans, where vines tangle together. “Then it comes up to the earth, and we’ve got trees, and flowers.” She turns onto her side and looks at her butt. “Back here I did some birds, but I couldn’t reach all the way around.”
“Put your seat belt on.”
“Yes, Mom,” she replies, and we both kind of laugh since it’s more likely we’d have to remind Mom to buckle up.
“Anyway,” she says, “if you would actually look you’d see it’s a whole scene.”
“I’m driving, Ramona. I can’t look right now.”
“You could stop the car.”
“I’ll look when we get home. How long did that take you to do anyway?”
“I started third period. I had to stop to go from class to class.”
“You did that in class?”
“It keeps me focused.” She trails her finger along the window.
“Focused on class?”
“On life.” She clenches her hand into a fist and then straightens out her fingers. “It’s like sometimes my brain gets going and going and drawing lets me slow it down.”
I glance at her sideways: she’s adding leafy details onto her knee.
“I love this time of year,” she says. “I love the way the light starts to clarify. Everything is crisp and perfect and you think that maybe the world is a beautiful place after all.”
“Maybe,” I agree. “Oh, hey, I forgot to tell you that I ran into Haylie. I told her that if you guys want to hang out, I can drive you both home.”
“Haylie?”
“Yeah, Haylie, or anyone you want. Rose. Mika. We can squeeze at least three of your friends back there.”
“Three of my friends. Sounds great.” I figure that’s as close to a commitment as I’m going to get from her these days.
We reach a stop sign and wait for a day care group to cross the street. The teacher holds a long rope, and each child has his or her hand through a loop. “Look at that.” Ramona points. “It’s like a multiheaded toddler dragon. They’re marching off to fight the evil sorcerer that lives up in the mountains.”
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