Simon Says (4 page)

By seventh grade I was working in oils, combining modern symbols with classical references for different effects. I also contributed cartoons to the school newspaper.

In middle school, art was an elective. I took it more to get out of wood or metal shop than to learn anything about art At home I was painting in oils, using their richness to capture unicorns hunted by men with barking dogs, and stags bounding away from wolves. But I was getting more interested in modern symbols: city buildings and streetlights—architecture that defied gravity, and light that defied nature. I was saying—shouting!—in my paintings:
Look what we have done! Look what you can do! Reach for what you can be!
But reaching meant standing alone, balancing unsteadily, straining for a star high above you—and I guess to most people that meant falling.

Ms. D'Abati, my seventh-grade art teacher, must have thought so—she gave me a C for a painting of a figure balanced on a shuddering branch, one arm extended toward a light that silhouetted the figure's outstretched hand like a radiant halo crowning the future. Ms. D'Abati told me the figure was out of proportion—the hand was too large and the head was too small. The balance of figure on branch was improbable. The contrast between light and dark was too great She probably would never have believed angels could dance on the head of a pin, either. It hurt I hated myself for letting it hurt, but it did. It always surprised me when I showed someone a painting and they tore it apart—literally, or with a grade. It was as if they were saying, "Don't tell me I have to aim so high. I don't want to hear it" And they'd want to shred the message bearer (
or the artist
) as well as the message.

In eighth grade I thought things were changing when
I started hanging out with Steve. He didn't paint, but he was into videos—he'd film them, then edit them on his computer. We both had Mrs. Sayers for art class, and she actually seemed to like art. She let Steve show one of his videos for a special project, and I could see he really loved playing with the camera. I told him it was great, and he seemed pleased. I thought he'd understand my art (
I thought he was like me
). But Steve was always busy—he played soccer, he sat around the pizza place with the other kids, he hung out in video arcades, and he said he spent more time playing games on his computer than video-editing. He'd tell me to come on with the rest of the gang, even though the others didn't like me. I thought it was a waste of time, frankly. Why not be painting, instead? Why didn't Steve want to spend the time on his videos?

I finally showed Steve some of my paintings, things no one in school had seen. He was blown away—I could see that. And I thought,
Well, at last!
He told me, "Man—these are good!" Then he got quiet, and seemed kind of uncomfortable. I asked him why, but he just shrugged and said again how good they were. Which would have been okay, except that he kind of avoided me after that I told myself to just forget about him, but I couldn't I'd really thought we could be friends. So I finally cornered him after school one day and just asked:
Why?
Of course he knew what I meant He told me, "They're really good ... but ... it's like they ask too much. I can't really explain it, but looking at your pictures, I feel like I ought to be different than I am, somehow—trying to do the impossible. Is that what you want
people to think?" When I told him not really (I hardly knew how to answer), he said, "I mean, they make me feel like what I do is a waste of time, and I don't like that feeling. I like who I am. I don't like feeling like I'm not measuring up." Then he asked, "So, you want to come hang out or what?" I shook my head. And that was the end of being friends with Steve.

My grades remained respectable during this period, but it was clear that public school could not provide adequate art instruction, such as what I would hope to receive at Whitman.

My biographical sketch: pompous, entirely truthful, and utterly unrevealing. But Whitman's audition committee must have bought it—they took me. I drop the file folder and turn away from the desk. I sit on my unmade bed and pull out the sketch pad I used for Tyler, then uncap my pen and let it wander. I expect to see the bird-filled trees emerge, but instead the lines take on the contour of Graeme Brandt's head. I stare at the shape. How would I draw him for Rachel? I could give her a photographic image without ever cracking the maze, but that's not what I do. If I draw him, I have to expose him, the way I get inside everybody else. I thought I'd find treasure inside Graeme Brandt I mean, he's another teen, like me. He's had to have had other kids and teachers tear him down. And he's had to have seen them living Simon Says, in order to write about it.

But he got his book published and he put it out there for everyone to read—so he must not care if they tear
him down. He must be confident enough to show himself in his art and not care, or at least not be hurt by the way people react.
Admit it, you thought you'd find someone who knew the secret, who could show you how to get beyond the game, someone who could show you how to have it both ways—how to be who you are, and how to paint what you have inside you and be able to show everyone, the way he did with that book Surely it made people uncomfortable when they saw themselves in it And yet they read it. I hide my paintings away to keep them from bang shredded, and yet they're crying to be seen. I thought he could show me how to do it—I thought he could show me how to keep from locking myself away inside a studio forever. That can't be the way life is supposed to be lived.

I thought he could be a friend. Stupid, stupid.

But whatever he is inside, why can't I find the way in? He's public property—his soul should be an open book, the way Tyler's is. It's as if the Graeme Brandt I saw tonight was a different person than the Graeme Brandt who wrote that book. The image of Janus, two-faced, springs to mind. I see two faces, one turned to his computer keyboard and one turned to his readers. But I shake off the idea. It's too much like my own defense mechanism, and that's what I want an escape from. Graeme's got to be more than that.

I slam the sketch pad shut and shove it back inside my pack. Now that I've met him, I want to forget him. I want it to be tomorrow already—I want to get through the meeting with Mr. Brooks, my mentor, find my studio, and unpack my supplies. This dorm room is just for
show—the studio will be for
me,
where no one will laugh at my paintings or, worse, look from them to me and then edge away from me, wishing they hadn't seen the paintings, wishing they hadn't seen inside of me, wishing they didn't know me.
Someday, I'll have an apartment all my own, a short hallway between studio and home, a cave to hide out in that I never have to leave.
It's a familiar wish—more than a wish, maybe a plan (
even though I know it's a plan for a half life and I still dream of finding a way to live a full life
). For now, though, I pick up the lock and sling its comforting weight around my forefinger. Locking the studio had better not be a problem.

I want to paint the birds in the trees, waiting for a victim—but a victim who will surprise them.

Excerpts from
Graeme Brandt's Journal

August 29 (Senior Year)

I can't think how else to start this year's journal. Senior year, and one real,
published
book already. I should be flying high. Whitman never had a writer who's actually published a book before graduation-not until me. Mr. Adler's bursting with pride that I'm his protégé. Which is kind of interesting, since he's never published anything himself. But the school named him my mentor when I started, so he gets credit for guiding me in the right direction. The only question now is: What direction is that?

I should be laying out plans for the book I'm going to write this year. It used to be so easy to start writing. I've never been at a loss for an idea before: short stories, my first book. But looking back at them, they all seem to tell the same story-or at least express the same idea. I want to write something new-but I don't seem to have any new ideas in my head.

I could coast I could sit back and say I'm working, or I'm thinking. I could accept everybody's praise, and I'd still graduate a hit I've earned it But ... I
care
about my writing. And I don't want to accept that the one book is all I see, all I believe, all I can write. When I started it, I knew instinctively what I wanted to say. Did I say it all? Have I been here three years since writing the first page of it and not learned anything else to write along the way?

I was taught that a writer expresses for his readers the world as he sees it He should write what he knows, from his experience of the world, and show his readers what they can't understand for themselves. Well, I wrote what I knew, and my book
is
true. I only have to look in the eyes of the teachers who read it I only have to test it with my own friends, and I see that I showed my world honestly. But I keep having the sense that there's something else out there-some mystery I don't understand yet And if's not just a matter of growing up—it's something I can see in the rapt faces of other students here at Whitman as they lose themselves in the act of creating something-even Karl, when he's lost in his sculpture. He hasn't actually read my book, just heard about it, and he's certainly no tower of intellect, but he seems to know something I don't know. I see him focus on his sculpture, and I feel left out, as if I'm not there at all, as if I don't exist.

Or is that all in my imagination? Maybe so-but that doesn't explain the empty space I feel growing inside myself every year that I work harder and harder at my writing, instead of just being an ordinary teenager, my parents' son, or my teachers' student I feel as if I'm reaching for words to express something I should understand intuitively. But I strain and grasp, and my hand, my heart, my soul closes on emptiness, on wisps of truth, on nothing.

What if I'm not really cut out to be a writer at all?

I can't imagine myself working in a factory production line, or an office, or a store-or doing anything except writing. Everybody's always expected me to be a writer-that's what I'm supposed to be. I'm sure I could imagine myself into some other job, like I imagine my characters into roles,
but everyone would be so disappointed in me. Yet, all summer, and even now, I find myself lying awake nights, thinking, and trying to think, but nothing comes. I sit down at my computer, and too soon my neck burns from hunching my shoulders and my fingers feel stiff. Ifs ninety degrees out, and probably 90 percent humidity, and I'm cold all the time. Sometimes my eyes blur and things fade to the point I can barely read, and my head pounds and I feel like screaming. I don't know whafs happening to me.

I look at my book, at my life. What do I do now? If only I could see what the other students see, the mystery that would fill the empty space inside of me, what they instinctively know that I can't understand. That's what I have to uncover-for my readers and for myself. Then I'll know what to write.

So I'm going to do something different with this journal. I'm going to keep it on CD for a start, so no one can ever read it on my hard drive. And ifs not the one I'll be handing in to Mrs. Roberts. Usually I start a story with a theme and character descriptions and a plot outline, and I'll conjure up that stuff for her later on. But here I'm going to start with me. I've got diaries from when I was a kid. I've got files-stories I started to write that just ran out of steam, journal entries, and notes on scraps of paper mixed in with pages from other manuscripts. I'm going to sift through all this, put the ones that seem most significant on this disc, and try to find a pattern that goes beyond the first book. There's got to be something.

What will come from this, I can't guess. But it scares me-the kind of scary you feel when you're six and you see
Frankenstein
for the first time, and you're horrified and sorry for the monster and sick with dread all at once. That wears
off gradually as you grow up, until you can watch the ax-wielding undead come after the hero in part twenty-six of a never-ending series and barely feel a shiver.

Well, rolling back the years was what I wanted to do, after all. I'm that kid again, scared and thrilled and feeling a little sick inside, but not wanting anybody to know. There aren't any easy answers waiting in happy memories. There isn't any surface stuff I can get away with writing about I've got to look within, until I find something that I, and only I, can see and express-something that I haven't said before. Maybe something that no one has said before.

MEMORY LANE

November 10 (Third Grade)

Mom gave me this notebook. It says "Graeme's Book" on the cover. She wrote it for me in cool letters-
calligraphy,
she calls it My letters are messy, even if they say good stuff. At least my teacher, Mrs. Ferris, says I write good. So Mom said I was going to be a writer, and she got me this book. She says to write down all my thoughts and everything I do. I'm supposed to write in it every day.

I wonder what being a writer is like. I wrote a story about a black dog who finds a kid who needs a dog, and Mrs. Ferris said it's the best story any of her third graders ever wrote. That was fun. Maybe ifs fun making up stories and getting paid for it.

Not all the other kids thought it was fun when they heard Mrs. Ferris say that, though. Ali and Ryan were mad she didn't think their stories were the best But I told them I
didn't care. I said I didn't think writing mattered. Playing kickball was more fun. I said that because Ryan's really good at kickball. Then they weren't so mad at me anymore. But I really think both writing and kickball are fun.

It's hard to think what to write in here. I know-l was playing kickball with Mike and he missed and I called him fumble foot and he hit me. My nose hurt.

Maybe I shouldn't write that in here, in case Mom's going to read it.