How to Be Brave

by E. Katherine Kottaras

  “I’m tying a ribbon around my finger so as not to forget,” I muster like a total dork. A ribbon? Around my finger? Liss is right. I am eighty.

  “Great,” he says as he follows the last few students filing out the door.

  Holy hell. I’m a wreck. I’m shaking with dread and excitement and nervousness.

  I place my paper on Marquez’s desk, but he doesn’t sit down. Instead, he picks up his keys and says, “I’d like to walk with you for a few minutes, if we can, Georgia.”

  “Um, okay.”

  “I want to talk to you in private, but we’re not allowed to meet with students alone in our classrooms—lawsuits and such, you know.”

  “Oh, right.”

  “I thought we could go out to a bench and talk about your art.”

  My art? What art? My feeble attempts at creative expression? And he doesn’t want to talk about my delinquency?

  “Sure.” I shrug. It’s like forty degrees out, but what do I know? I pick up my paper, zip up my coat, and put on my hood.

  He locks up, and we head outside.

  It’s only been a few minutes since the last bell of the day, but already the campus has emptied out. The winter cold makes people disappear.

  We sit on a bench right outside the front door.

  “Show me what you got.” Up close, I can see that Marquez is older than I ever realized before. He smells old, too—not a bad old, just like aftershave and oranges. He kind of smells like my dad.

  I hand him my paper. “Lee Mullican,” I say.

  “Yeah? Of the Dynaton movement?” Whoa, he knows exactly who he is. My mom would have loved Mr. Marquez. “Well, that’s obscure. Why, may I ask?”

  “Well…” I fumble, “he was one of the most important artists of the twentieth century, and yet one of the most undervalued.”

  “How exactly did you hear about him?”

  “Oh, my mom was a huge fan,” I say. “She wrote her graduate thesis on him.”

  “Ah…”

  “Yeah, and I always liked his stuff okay, but I never really understood why she loved him so much. So I’d like to use this assignment to figure it out.”

  “I see.” Marquez is half skimming my paper, half listening to me. Then he puts down the paper and turns to me. “Look. I said I wanted to talk to you about your art. Here it is: You’re good. Very good.”

  Say what now?

  “Out of the one hundred and fifty students that pass in and out of my classroom each year, I see about a dozen or so truly talented ones. But usually, I only see one or two each year who have the gift. This year, I see it in you.”

  “What gift, exactly?”

  “You are an artist. Sure, you have a lot of work ahead of you, but you have what I can’t teach: vision and clarity and depth. You say something with your work.”

  “I do?”

  “And better yet, you don’t even know it.” He shakes his head. “I love it.”

  Well, this came out of left field. A) Marquez is not being sarcastic and snarky for once, and B) he’s telling me I’m good at something. Like, for real.

  “Thank you, Mr. Marquez,” I say. I’m stumped for more words. I wish my mom were alive so I could tell her. I’m finally doing what she wanted.

  “I’m worried, though, that you might lose yourself in this project. It sounds like Lee Mullican was your mother’s muse. I don’t want you to get consumed by her artist.”

  Wait, what?

  “You can focus on his art, if you want.” He shrugs. “Just be careful not to lose sight of yours.”

  Ouch. That’s kind of harsh. As though I can’t have my own voice and do this, too? I mean, I was never planning on losing myself in anything.

  But all in all, I still have to say, cordial Marquez is much more pleasant than caustic Marquez.

  “Also, stop skipping class. You’re too much of a good kid to be a loser.”

  Ah, there it is.

  “Now, go home, warm up, and keep sketching. I expect to see great things.”

  He stands up, shakes my hand, and walks back inside.

  I sit there a while in the cold, thinking about what he said.

  I’m well on my way to crossing off #6. Learn how to draw, like Mom.

  I don’t care if he thinks I might “lose sight” of my art.

  I know this, for sure: She would have been so happy.

  10

  Avery Trenholm’s party is the exact opposite of what I thought it would be. Liss said it was invite only, but I thought that was just a guise for it being open to everyone except dorks, nerdherds, emos, and wannabes, and that the party would be a swollen mass of drunken seniors guzzling kegs upside down and writhing to some lame-ass house music or some such scene. As it turns out, it actually was invite only, and there are only about fifteen people here, who are all just huddled quietly in the candlelit living room, sipping on something they’re calling Jungle Juice. I think it’s a mix of Kool-Aid and vodka with frozen fruit in it. How very classy.

  Everything about her house is catalog perfect. Gray walls. Sleek gray leather couches. Odd table-side sculptures of human forms. Over the gray marble fireplace, artsy black-and-white photos of unnamed skyscrapers are juxtaposed next to equally artsy black-and-white photos of Avery when she was a kid, five years old maybe, and then in middle school, and then last year the whole family, her wide, smiling face sandwiched between her mother and father, all three faces monopolizing the frame.

  She’s got the fireplace lit, snow is falling outside, and this dim winter’s evening, everyone I’ve known since the first grade suddenly looks so adult. Maybe it’s just that I haven’t really spoken to any of them since we were twelve. I swear it was only yesterday that we were all wearing pigtails and swapping friendship bracelets. I don’t know where time went.

  I also don’t know how Liss convinced Avery to include Evelyn and me on this Very Exclusive List even though I couldn’t be included on the cheer squad; but we’re here, and I think I might be having some sort of out-of-body experience.

  First of all, Avery Trenholm is being nice to me. When I first walked in, she gave me a hug. It was the World’s Most Awkward Hug, but still she reached her arms out and wrapped them around my neck for a good half second. She smelled like a mix of vanilla and Jungle Juice, so I could probably just credit her sudden familiarity to the fact that she was inebriated and didn’t know who I was. And now she’s laughing and smiling at me like I’m actually part of the group. Chloe, too. Then again, I think I’ve been too hard on Chloe. She was never really that mean to me. And actually, a few of the cheer girls are here and they’ve all acknowledged my existence in one form or another (while all year I’ve been another body in the hallway). I keep sort of looking over my shoulder because I think they must be looking at someone behind me, but they’re not.

  And I’m drinking, too, which is a first for me. Of course, I’ve consumed plenty of Evelyn’s special brownies, which always lead to a weird combination of elation and hallucination, but beyond the random sips of wine and ouzo (blech) my dad has given me (“She should know what it tastes like”), I’ve never been drunk, and I’ve never had more than maybe an ounce of any kind of alcohol. It’s different, this sensation of drinking—I’m just calm, and my bones feel heavy, like they’re filled with water. And I’m only on my second glass of their Kool-Aid creation.

  There’s also the additional fact that Daniel’s here. And he’s sitting on the leather couch right next to me. We’re so close, our arms are touching. I can feel his skin against mine, his muscles, his every little shift and laugh. Everyone’s talking and laughing around us, but I hardly hear any of it. I’m in this long tunnel where everything is dark and relaxed and happy and all I see at the end of it is Daniel Antell.

  I look up at him.

  “Hey,” I say.

  “Hey.” He smiles.

  “How are you?” I ask.

  “Pretty good,” he says. “Pretty good. Glad to be here, I guess.”

&nbs
p; But then that’s it. He doesn’t ask how I am or say anything else to me. Five days ago, he was all excited about “hanging out” with me at this party, and now here we are, and he’s not saying more than ten words.

  Don’t think, Georgia. Just drink.

  I take a sip of juice and look over at Liss. She’s sitting next to Gregg and she looks pretty happy, too—her face is all red and shiny. She told me on the way here that she’s been practicing her tribal moves for later. Tonight’s the night. Actually, in like an hour, I guess. She’s planning on sneaking out after the socializing calms down so they can go back to his place and do it. Crazy. She’s really going to have sex with Gregg. She’s going to take this giant leap into adulthood and sexuality and all this stuff that requires responsibility and maturity and—holy shit—condoms. She’s going to have to use real-life unwrapped Trojan condoms out of a box tonight. That’s insane.

  Don’t think, Georgia. Just drink.

  Jungle Juice, good. Responsibility, bad.

  My glass is getting empty again rather quickly. Chloe leans over and fills it back up. I should probably slow down.

  I listen to the talk about getting carded at the 7-Eleven and spring break in the Bahamas and safety schools. I have nothing to contribute, so I take another couple of sips of juice.

  And then they all start getting nostalgic, as though senior year is coming to an end tomorrow. They talk about parties and dances and football games and soccer games and it’s like they’re speaking a foreign language—it’s like I’ve been living in a completely different world. I look over at Liss and Evelyn, who are listening and laughing as though they were there, too, living these normal high school lives with these people, when we all know for a fact that none of us have.

  But then they start reminiscing about teachers and classes, and I tune back in. Avery and Chloe are telling us about Mr. Fillmore, our sophomore-year history teacher who mysteriously disappeared after wearing bunny slippers to work and muttering about UFOs and the Second Coming; and about Mrs. Stanfield, everyone’s favorite English teacher, who was diagnosed with cancer last year. They’re talking to Liss and Evelyn and me as though we didn’t know. I’ve sat next to these people for nearly twelve years. We know the stories. We know the same people. We’ve been there the whole time. What strikes me as I take another sip is that I don’t think they realized it.

  “And Linberg’s fucking crazy,” Avery remarks. “Like she might be absolutely certifiable. She’s been around forever, makes no sense, old as hell, and still, she’s back every August, her hair dyed a darker shade of brown.”

  I chime in, hearing my voice aloud for the first time all night. “And she doesn’t look at you when she looks at you. Instead, she stares at the space above your head—”

  Daniel laughs and adds, “Yes! And it’s fucking creepy!”

  “I think she’s looking at our third eye,” Liss says, suddenly the expert on all things metaphysical.

  “Kind of, man,” Evelyn says. “It’s more like she’s looking at your aura, except she’s not seeing it.” I get why Liss and Evelyn get along.

  Avery adds, “We were always cheating in that class. I’d look over Rosie Cabrillo’s shoulder to get the answer, and then I’d turn around and tell Althea White, who’d turn around and tell Felicia Carter, who’d spread it to the whole class.”

  Everyone except me, I think.

  Don’t think, Georgia. Just drink.

  “And then,” Avery continues, “Linberg would inevitably yell at poor Rosie, even though she was the only one who understood trigonometry. Seriously, she was the only one actually doing the work.”

  I remember that. How Rosie Cabrillo, freakishly smart nerd extraordinaire, would sit in the front row with Avery and some other moocher next to her, and she’d have her nose headfirst into her trigonometry book. She taught herself all of it from start to finish. Rosie’s so smart—way smarter than I’ll ever be. I never understood why she gave all the answers away to people like Avery Trenholm. Maybe it was the only way she knew to survive.

  “Oh!” Liss adds. “And she’d stare above our heads at the corner of the room.” Liss had Linberg last year for AP calculus.

  “Yes!” Avery is nearly yelling now. “Oh my God, this one time freshman year, Kevin Lee did the craziest thing—”

  “I remember this!” I say. I know what she’s talking about, the crazy stunt that Kevin Lee pulled that almost got me killed. I remember it well. I sat in the back row, right next to the scene.

  “You do?” Avery looks at me like she’s never seen me before.

  “Yeah,” I say. “I was in class with you. I sat right next to Kevin, in the back.”

  “Oh. Yeah. You were, I guess, huh?” Nope. She doesn’t remember at all.

  But Avery still smiles. And it’s so freaking weird because it looks genuine. Or drunk. I’m not sure. “So, tell everyone what happened!”

  “What?”

  “You were there. Tell the people the story!”

  Everyone’s looking at me, waiting to hear how Kevin Lee almost ended my life.

  Daniel nudges me. “Tell us!”

  Okay.

  I take a sip.

  “So this one day, Linberg has to go to the bathroom or something, and she leaves us all in the room by ourselves. Well, needless to say, this is a very bad idea.

  “Kevin Lee decides he’s going to climb up on a desk to draw some faces in the corner of the room, I guess to give Linberg something to look at while she stares over our heads talking about vectors and shit.

  “So first, he stands up on the desk, but he can’t reach. Then, he piles up one desk upside down on top of the other and starts balancing on the wire basket that, you know, sits under the seat of the chair.”

  Everyone’s murmuring and laughing and shaking their heads.

  “He’s drawing this face in the corner of the room, balancing and drawing. Now, mind you, the window is wide open. Third floor, man. Top of the building.

  “So of course, he’s drawing and drawing—a little stick figure with hair and glasses, if I remember correctly. And then he slips—slips!—and the desk flies—”

  Evelyn screams. “What happened?!”

  “He almost fell out the window!”

  “What? No way!” Evelyn and Gregg and Liss and Daniel and Chloe and everyone are all laughing and drinking.

  I continue. “There I am, his black Converse teetering on the edge of the metal base of the desk. He tumbled down, his ponytail swinging, his arms flailing, toward me. I ducked because I thought he was going to land on me. And he almost did, except that somehow, at the very last moment, I moved—my body and desk together as one entity—away from his trajectory. Maybe I’d learned something of value in that class, after all. Anyway, he landed flat on the ground, right on his back. It’s a wonder he didn’t die.”

  “Oh, and the best part,” Avery screams, her drink sloshing around in her glass, nearly splashing out. “Where did the desk go?”

  Everyone except for Evelyn and me chimes in: “Out the window!”

  Avery cheers: “Yes! A fucking desk flew out the fucking third-story window—and no one noticed!”

  And there it is. Avery and I are best buds, drinking and laughing and telling grand old stories about our old high school days together. This Jungle Juice is awesome stuff.

  “Wait—so how did Linberg not notice this?” Daniel asks. “I never heard this part of the story.”

  I finish the story. “So Linberg comes back, and Kevin’s flat on the ground, and a desk is missing, and we’re all laughing and screaming—and so, what does Linberg do? She turns on her overhead projector, picks up her pen, and continues her lecture about SOACAHTOA. That’s it. She doesn’t ask, doesn’t notice. Just goes back to inverse functions or whatever shit she’s trying to teach us.”

  “You’re hilarious, Georgia,” Avery says to me. “The way you tell a story. I never knew how funny you are.”

  “Yeah, well…” I don’t even know what
to say.

  “So, Georgia…” Avery leans in. “Tell us about the list—your bucket list or whatever. What’s on it?”

  “Wait, what?” I freeze. “How do you know about that?”

  “Evelyn and Liss told us about it before you got here. It sounds really awesome.”

  I look at Liss and then Evelyn. “You guys told her?”

  “They told all of us!” Avery says. “Tell us more, though. They wouldn’t tell us what’s on it.”

  Liss takes a sheepish sip from her drink.

  I want to kill them both. They told Avery and Chloe and all these other strangers about my list. They told Daniel about my list.

  “I always wanted to make a bucket list,” Chloe says. “Like stay up all night and kiss in front of a sunrise. It’s so romantic.”

  “Is that on there, Georgia?” Avery says. “Who do you want to kiss?”

  And she laughs when she says this. It’s a cold laugh, and right after, she gives Daniel a pointed look. We’re not best buds anymore. It’s like we’re twelve again, and she’s teasing me. I can feel it.

  “I don’t want to talk about it,” I say. “It’s personal.”

  Daniel bumps his elbow into my arm. “You don’t have to. I just think it’s cool that you’re doing something like that.”

  “Whatever.” Avery shrugs. “I was just curious, is all.”

  And then, that’s it. End of story. End of my short-lived glory as life of the party. They turn the focus to their upcoming trip to Belize. Daniel and Liss are leaving in one week. Daniel fills the awkward space between Liss and me with facts about Belize. The horrid humidity. The lush, tropical rain forests. The amazing barrier reefs. Their efforts in marine conservation.

  I wish I were the one going instead of Liss.

  Snorkeling. The Mayans. Limestone caves. Daniel.

  And then something changes.

  Liss and Daniel smile at each other.

  It’s a weird smile. A knowing smile. An intimate smile.

  What the fuck?

  Am I so drunk I’m imagining things?

  First she tells everyone about my list, and now she’s flirting with Daniel?