Starry Night (14 page)

When you have made so many wrong turns, something happens to your brain, or to my brain at least, and they start to feel like perfectly good turns, so you keep making them.

“He is an amazing person!”

My mother laughed at me. My father put his head down and Oliver stayed quiet for two unending seconds until he too cackled with laughter.

“Go to bed, Wren,” my father said, sizzling me and my stupid declarations about Nolan's amazingness into oblivion. “Your mother and I will tell you your punishment tomorrow, but for now, and for the foreseeable future, this phone is no longer yours, and the Internet will be deactivated upstairs.”

I turned around and headed for the staircase.

“Take off my dress and leave it in front of our door,” my mother said icily. “And you better get yourself up and ready for school tomorrow and be on time. I don't want to see you until you are walking out the door.”

*   *   *

In the morning, I thought I heard the front door close from the top of the stairs. It's a rattling, slamming sound that has a finality to it. My mother leaves the house at 7:25 a.m. with Dinah and walks her to the Hatcher school bus on Columbus, a half block east of our house. (I used to take that same bus, but at the start of seventh grade I was allowed to take the public bus with Reagan and Vati. Farah has always been driven to school by her mother's driver.) Mom then goes downtown to a yoga class before she goes to her pottery studio. I thought they were gone, but I was wrong. The door closing was Mom coming back from walking May. Dinah was waiting at the bottom of the stairs with her hat, parka, and backpack on.

“Your ass is grass,” said Dinah.

“Dinah, you stay out of this,” Mom said, unhooking May and rising up to look at me like an evil queen (in yoga clothes) might look at the waif girl.

“Wren, this afternoon you come right home. Do you understand me?”

I nodded.

“You are grounded from now until we are not quite sure when. You will do nothing but be at school or at home. Absolutely no phone. If you need to use the Internet for your schoolwork you will do it at the kitchen table … none of your friends are welcome to come over.” She paused as if she might be finished, but she wasn't. “And don't even think about seeing that boy.”

 

24

When I got to school,
Farah careened around the corner as I walked out of the stairwell and onto the fifth floor of Hatcher, where the ninth and tenth grade homerooms are located. Girls were standing in front of their lockers and sitting in groups on the floor, cracking open binders and snapping the rings back together. The stairwell door repeatedly opened and more girls filed into the hallway, screaming hello or quietly making their way to their lockers to prepare for class. In the upper grades students still have to wear a navy-blue pleated uniform skirt, but we are free to choose any top we want as long as it has a collar and is reasonably conservative. Farah and I had both chosen gray turtleneck sweaters. The fierce wind the day before had brought winter to November.

“I really have to talk to you.” She grabbed my hand and took me over to her locker, which was at the end of the hall where fewer girls were milling around. She turned around and looked right at me. “I
know
you have something to tell me too.”

“Yeah, I do, Far. It's all kind of awful but wonderful.”

“I have to go first,” she interrupted. She was doing the Farah thing of leading the discussion. “You didn't respond to any of my texts.”

“My phone was taken away, but—”

“Just listen. First, have you seen Padmavati?”

“No, I just got here.” I pulled my parka sleeve off with my teeth.

“She's a wreck.”

“About Oliver?” I spat the parka sleeve out.

“Yes. How do you know that?”

“I live with Oliver, but that is not how I know. Nolan—”

“Shh shh shh, we will get there, but I have to get through this first.”

“Okay, but mine is really good! And bad.” I dumped my parka and backpack on the floor.

“Okay, first, Vati looks like Wednesday Addams. She's gutted, and Reagan is
such a bitch.
” She said that in a whisper.

“What happened?”

“I will get to all of it, but I have to get to this other thing first.”

“What?”

“I went home with—” Oh god, I knew what she was going to say before she said it. My stomach turned into a garlic knot.

“Cy.”

“Farah!”

“Do you think that's really bad?”

“Oh
god.
He's
Cy Dowd.
Farah—he's old! Like really old, and famous and, oh my god.”

“Wren. Listen to me right now. You can't tell anyone.”

“Have you?”

“No. And you can't—at all. Ever.” She pointed her finger at me, the nail still smooth and pearly from the manicure she got for the party.

I started laughing.

“Oh my god, stop.”

I couldn't. I got the giggles.

“Wren, what is happening to you?” she said, like an annoyed mother of a seven-year-old boy.

I leaned against the locker, laughing my ass off.

“Stop it!”

I slid down my back against the metal, bumping along the vents and the locks until I hit the cold linoleum floor. I slumped on my backpack and gave into fits of halting laughter. Farah stood above me with her hands on her hips.

“I chose you to tell, Wren. And you are acting like a chimp.”

“Okay, okay, I'm sorry.” It took me a minute to calm down and then I felt sick; suddenly I felt my empty tummy. I definitely hadn't bothered to stop in the kitchen for a yogurt on my way out the door, which was stupid because I had taken one of my pills, and I definitely should eat something with it.

“That was a weird response.”

“Well, what you told me is off the charts, Farah.”

“I know.” She bent to scratch at a nonexistent stain on her Uggs, anxiously looking down at me. I noticed that her mascara, which is usually impeccable, was smudgy on the corner of her left eye.

“How did it happen?” I whispered. Girls around us were making moves like classes were about to begin. The last thing I needed was to be late, and I was still in my hat.

Farah's eyes filled with tears. She had a moment of looking troubled, like she regretted what she was about to tell me.

“Well, he smiled at me before dinner, when your dad was talking.” She breathed in and the tears receded.

“I saw that.”

“You did?” She smiled, and her eyes got big and perky.

“Yup.”

“Well, and then—” She really whispered here. Mrs. Garrison, our homeroom teacher, was in the classroom ten feet away from us with the door open, and she was writing something on the board.

“I could kind of feel him knowing where I was in the room all night—even after we went to our tables.”

“He was sitting with
my parents
!”

“I know. That did not seem to matter to him.”

The first bell rang loudly, startling us.

“Jesus,”
Farah said. We had five minutes to be in our first class. I visualized the schedule in my binder.
What did I have first?
Studio. My whole body relaxed. I had a double period of studio art with Mrs. Rousseau. All I had to do was get my stuff into my locker and go up to the seventh floor.

“I have calculus,” Farah said. “I totally have to go, I think we are going to have a pop quiz. I didn't even look at my books yesterday.
Jesus.
”

Farah shot up, opened her locker door, and pulled a fifty-pound math textbook out of an impeccably organized library. Farah is in Math A, I am in Math C. Math C is full of kids the school has given up on mathematically. Reagan is in C with me. We mostly learn how to balance checkbooks and read the stock tables in
The New York Times.

“When is your lunch?” she said.

“Fifth period. Farah, how did your mom not know?”

“She's away, remember? Marta just came in this morning, but I came home before that, at like six. I have lunch in fifth, too.”

“Oh man. I'll meet you in the cafeteria,” I said. “I can't believe Marta wouldn't pick up on something,” I added, sort of to myself. “She knows you better than your mother.” Marta has been Farah's nanny-now-housekeeper since she was born.

“Wrenny.” The tears came back into Farah's eyes. “I slept with him.”

 

25

The art department takes up
half of the seventh floor. It's made up of three rooms filled with light, chalky dust, big shiny-leafed jungle plants, stacks of newsprint for drawing, paintbrushes of every shape and size, oversize jugs of blue, yellow, and red paint, and Mrs. Rousseau, our blousy art teacher, whose personality pervades the entire space. There is also the very shy and slight ceramics teacher named, funnily enough, Mr. Size. He is balding and wears wire-rimmed glasses, all tan clothing, and an apron that he never takes off. I don't think I've ever seen him in the rest of the school. It's like he lives in the art room, sorting glazes with one hand resting on his tiny hip, like an art hobbit. As a third grader, the moment I smelled the oily wax of the Cray-Pas, my body opened up and all the anxiety of Mrs. Paynter's rigid, impossible, and
infuriating
math class oozed out. But today I wasn't sure if any art supplies in the oasis had the power to make the insanity in my head stop.

“We must start, girls!” bellowed Mrs. Rousseau, waving her arm over us. “One believes that a double period is an endless reservoir, but it ends all too soon. We must get to work.”

Mrs. Rousseau sounds like that old movie actress Lauren Bacall, and looks like a round version of the Wicked Witch of the West. You know how that witch was sort of beautiful? Mrs. Rousseau is too. Every day, she wears a black gypsy dress and the same well-worn neutral-colored smock that tucks under her ample bosom and wraps around her middle, tied in the exact same way, year after year after year. Her emotional outbursts are mimicked all over school. There are even
Saturday Night Live
-esque skits about her at talent shows. But she is all real. She can be brought to tears by a student's work. I've seen it. And I'll tell you something—her reaction makes
you
cry too, because it's authentic. If someone truly feels something, everyone does.

“We don't have much time.”
Mrs. Rousseau slowly circled the room, her plump hands together as if in prayer resting on her huge chest. She wears silver and turquoise rings on every finger except for her ring finger, where the gold wedding band Mr. Rousseau had given her years ago is embedded.

“Now before you start, please take a moment to lie on the floor. It's colder today, I know, but give yourself space to lie down and let the
ten-sion
and
tur-bulence
of your morning rush drain down, down into the floor until it seeps into Mr. Matheson's social science class.” She laughed at her own idea, as if she had some beef with Mr. Matheson. “Take this time to find
the truth of who you are
,” she said, delivering her most important and repeated message in a chocolaty baritone voice while slowly walking around the tables.

I didn't want to get on the floor.

I was too anxious about what Farah had vomited on me, and I was worried about poor Vati and starting to get infuriated with Reagan
,
and maybe even Oliver? And I didn't have my phone, which gave me that horrible feeling like I had forgotten something, or like I was naked. I hadn't not had a phone in my backpack since I was twelve. I was feeling terribly guilty about Charlie and Bennet and even Rachel-the-hair-lady. What would happen when I got home from school? “Mrs. Rousseau, I think I should just start working, I can't get on the fl—”

“Douwn, Wren,”
she commanded with the Irish-sounding accent she uses when she is being especially dramatic.

The floor was cold and hard but it had a mellowing effect. It felt like when someone puts a soaking washcloth over your fevered forehead. I sucked in air through my nose.

I could smell Nolan. I swear, I could smell him. I almost shrieked. I was bombarded with flashes and images of him kissing me in the cab. I let out an audible sigh/moan.

“That is right, Wren, let it all out, let out whatever you are holding on to so you are
free
to work from an
open
and
available
place. One more minute, girls.”

I lay there, shut my eyes, and thought about Nolan looking at that luminous Vermeer. He really studied it, like he wa trying to figure it out. What boy does that? I breathed in deeply, hoping I would be able to smell him again. A beam of sun burst through a cloud outside and shone in through the window onto me. If I had opened my eyes it would have been too bright, so I kept them closed and felt the warmth on my face.

“Oooookaaayy. Find your places and let's begin,” said Mrs. Rousseau.

We were all drawing the same still life that was set up in the middle of the room. Wooden bowls, fruit, glass jugs, spoons, books. It was an exercise in shape and we had been working on it for ten days. Although I drew the light and dark, found the negative space, and worked with my chalk to define edges, mine had morphed into a medieval village. I added buildings jammed together and rivers, some bridges, and I even stuck a dragon in there, snaking through the cobblestone alleys. My picture also had an inordinate number of owls tucked into windows and perching on spoons.

“
This
has become a wild mastah-piece, Miss Noorlander. Wow, wow, wow,” Mrs. Rousseau said, reaching into the pocket of her smock and taking out her tortoiseshell reading glasses to get a better look.

“The detail, Wren. I looove it. What is it with you and these delicious owls? Look at this one with all his plooommage.”