Starry Night (2 page)

“Yes, love.” She looked down at May and me. Her glasses were back on the top of her head.

“Mom,” I said. She sighed like she only half wanted to hear what I would say next.

I didn't move. I just looked up into her impatient but listening face.

“Mom, what if I look inside to draw myself, and I don't like what I see?”

She took a deep breath in and let it out slowly.

“I think you will find that your insides are very beautiful, Wren. But you have to look. You have to try.” She leaned back so I couldn't see her anymore. “You have to get off the floor.”

May shifted like my head had gotten too heavy for her to be comfortable. I thought I should probably text everyone to see if they were doing their homework.

“And why don't you leave your phone with us, yes?” My father looked up at me over his reading glasses and stuck out his hand. I swear Dad is some kind of mind-reading wizard. They both are.

 

3

I am going to introduce my friends
by going back in time. Then we'll get back to the present. The future will be in some other book.

Farah, Vati, Reagan, and I all started at Hatcher together in kindergarten. In seventh-grade, there is a school fair that everyone in the class organizes, hosts, and cleans up after. You vote on a charity to donate the money to: the Michael J. Fox Foundation, breast cancer, the Natural Resources Defense Council—something like that. You decide what games to have: face painting, apple dunking, guess the teacher's weight. You sell tickets, you make posters, and then one Friday afternoon it all happens in the Hatcher gym on the tenth floor.

Farah, Vati, Reagan, and I got Charlie and about six of his friends to come to our seventh-grade fair. We were the only girls in the grade who brought boys that weren't their little brothers. It was pretty awesome because having boys there made the fair feel cool and happening. Instead of helping with the cleanup, we bailed and went to Nino's Pizza on Lexington and Eighty-Sixth Street and played video games with Charlie and his friends. We didn't think a thing of it again all weekend; maybe we thought there was a cleanup committee that somehow none of us were on? Anyway, Monday morning when we got to school we got in a mother lode of trouble.

“You don't give a
SHIT
about people with diabetes!” Tyler Morgenstern yelled from the top of her desk where she was standing at the grade-wide emergency homeroom meeting that was called to discuss what we had done. Mrs. Garrison, our homeroom teacher, blanched when Tyler said “shit,” but as the meeting was supposed to be an opportunity for everyone to talk about how they were feeling, she didn't say anything. “All you guys care about is St. Tim's boys!” continued Tyler.

“Are you
KIDDING ME
?” Farah stood up. “I will have you know, my
aunt
has diabetes. She has to walk around all day long with a machine attached to her with an
alarm
in case her insulin drops! It was my damn idea to give the money to the American Diabetes Association.”

“Damn” made both Mrs. Garrison and Mr. Tropple half stand up.

“Girls, calm down, we are trying to work this through now,” Mr. Tropple, our bald Marxist history teacher / other homeroom teacher urged.

“Oh
YEAH
—then why did you guys leave it all up to us to clean up? You just left with your little
boyfriends
without looking back,” said Katie Boyer, who stood up on her chair to make that point. She wasn't the most agile of girls, so she just put one leg up on her desk. “If you
gave a shit
…”

“Oh, hey there!” pleaded Mr. T. “Let's watch our language, girls.”

“Sorry, but honestly, Mr. T, they think they are so cool just because they know guys from St. Tim's,” Katie said, in a much calmer voice.

“I don't think we think we're cool—I think we, well, I
know
we are sorry.” I offered this but it was thirty-something against four, and the thirty looked like they wanted to destroy us. It felt medieval, like they were villagers and we were the outcast dragon that had eaten and spat out all of their sheep.

“Wren, give me a break, they are all just
jealous
that we brought boys to the fair and had
fun
and all they could offer up were their little brothers!” Farah said, not under her breath at all.

Tyler started to cry, which made me feel really bad. Vati started to cry too. With seventh graders, crying is contagious; in minutes you could have at least thirty hysterical tween girls on your hands.

“Okay, okay. Let's calm down,” Mrs. Garrison said in her buttery monotone. “How are we going to make this right?”

Reagan's hand shot up.

“Reagan,” said Mrs. Garrison.

“Okay.” She got up on her desk. I guess the desks were like our podiums, but every time one of us got up there the teachers sort of put their hands in the air like they were there to save us if we fell. “It sounds like they feel taken advantage of. That is what I am hearing.” All the townspeople nodded.

“If we say we're sorry, and maybe write a paper during recess about how we would feel if we got taken advantage of, maybe we can move on and let this water move under the bridge.”

Reagan is so sophisticated. Her mom has spoken to her like she was a thirty-year-old since she was three. My parents practically still sing me lullabies.

I raised my hand.

“Wren?” Mrs. Garrison said.

“Um, if we are going to do that—and I totally think we should because we feel bad and everything—can I use my computer? I fully intend to write more than two pages, and I really can't write that much longhand.” I get special computer privileges because I'm dyslexic and have dysgraphia. Although I can draw an owl so it feels like it's sitting right next to you, I have the handwriting of a four-year-old.

“That's fine, Wren,” Mr. T said.

“I have one more thing to say.” Farah didn't need to stand on her desk; when she spoke everyone in the class listened.

“I will write this paper, but I'm telling you something … if someone took advantage of me, I wouldn't whine about it in a shitty meeting like this. I would use my six years of tae kwon do and kick their ass.”

 

4

Hanging out with Charlie,
age twelve:

“This, you noodles, is called DUMBO!” Winston Fudge, Charlie's dad, called out from the front of the Nosh van. Reagan, Farah, Vati, Charlie, and I all went to the same preschool. But once we got into elementary school, we didn't see Charlie except on the weekends for playdates or soccer, or sometimes when Charlie invited me to ride in the Nosh van with him and his dad delivering catered meals to people. Nosh is now a huge catering company, but when Charlie's parents started it, they cooked out of their kitchen on the Upper West Side and had an online menu; then people would order dishes to have in their fridges to
nosh
on, get it? Nosh?

“Down Under the Manhattan Bridge Overpass. When I was twelve, like you guys, growing up on Long Island, this place used to be a
dump.
Nowheresville. But it got cleaned up. Big real estate honchos built swanky condos, and now”—he slowed down, looking at street signs—“some of my best customers are here.” We stopped in front of a big redbrick building with lots and lots of gigantic arched windows. I would guess it used to be a factory. Now there was a doorman in a cap and a long coat standing guard out front.

“Okay, Wrenny and Charlie, do your thing!” He shoved the gearshift into park. Charlie has a baby face, with freckles around his nose and cheeks and a thick shock of hair that sticks straight up (even though he combs it carefully down anytime he glances in a mirror) and looks like a mowed wheat field, which I think is cool but drives him bananas. His teeth, before he got braces, sort of stuck out and they were rounded on the bottom. I
never
would tell him this, but his teeth used to make him look a little bit like that
Mad
magazine guy. But he has always had sophisticated clothes and even at age twelve—even at four—he looked like an adult.

Before getting out of the van, Charlie buttoned his navy-blue peacoat, making sure all the buttons were right, and checked the cuffs at the bottom of his not-scruffy blue jeans. When we were little my mother called him “our little clotheshorse,” sort of teasing him, but she stopped when we passed fourth grade and she realized his tidy, stylish appearance wasn't some cute affectation of a child. It was his nature.

“Can I carry the bags this time, Charlie, and you get the list?” I asked, making my way around to the back of the van.

“Sure, but it's more gentlemanly if I carry the bags,” he said, joining me.

“Okay, why don't you give me the list? I'll read the names and what each person is getting. You check that I didn't mess up, and then we'll both carry the bags. I just don't want to make a mistake with the checking,” I said, in my most serious “work” voice.

“
Don't drop these, guys! This is a soup order!
” Winston yelled back to us.

“Oh gosh, yeah,” Charlie said, looking at the order form and then up at the building. “This is an important building for Nosh, there are
five
families that do business with us from here. All of them order a lot of soup. They are soup eaters, I guess.”

“Soup is good food,” I said, losing my work mojo for a second and laughing at my own joke. Charlie didn't really get it because it's from an old commercial that was on TV when my mother was young. She always says it when she serves soup, but Charlie laughed anyway.

“Especially if it's Moroccan turkey lentil.” He smiled but then got back to business. “I better double-check this one, Wrenny,” he said.

“Okay, I'll be really careful about reading the names correctly,” I said. Charlie looked at me from where he had climbed into the back of the van, hovering over the many brown shopping bags full of meals for the week.

“Wren, you hardly ever make mistakes reading anymore.” Charlie purposefully took a moment to look at me while he said that.

“Thanks, Charlie. I'm trying.”

“Well, you're doing a good job.” He went back to looking at the names on the labels stapled to the handles of the bags. “I wouldn't want to do this job with anyone else but you.”

I smiled. He smiled. Charlie is a really good student. He wins spelling bees at St. Tim's and reads like a champ, but he had some kind of speech thing when he was little, he couldn't say his R's, so he is empathetic to all my learning difficulties.

“Meister is the first name. The order is for three quarts of white bean and escarole soup and a lasagna.” I read slowly and proudly.

“Check!” Charlie carefully lifted two brown bags out of the back of the van. Then he paused, put one bag down, and looked in the other.

“Wait, Wrenny, Meister is the first name?”

I looked at the list again and realized I was wrong; Hermann was the first name, not Meister.

“Sorry, you are right. Hermann is the first name.” I took a deep, wobbly breath. It's the same breath I take in math class when I am about to get an answer wrong.

“Could I please see the list, Wrenny—just to check, I'm sure you are right, I'm probably confused.” I handed him the list and he started reading it over and looking at the bags.

“Whoops. Yeah, I think actually the last name is Hermann—it's a different family altogether. The Hermanns get the white bean soup and lasagna. The Meisters also get white bean soup, but they get crostini with theirs.” He smiled sweetly at me, turned around back into the van, and exchanged a bag. “It's small type, don't worry, Wrenny.” I felt tears well up—if I couldn't get the stupid names correct on a catering list, what future did I have at all? And I almost messed up the whole important-building order.

“Wren, we are a team, that's how we get it right in the end. Okay?”

I nodded. Charlie was the first person, other than my parents, to stick with me.

 

5

Now we go back
even further in time, from seventh grade to fourth.

Just being Turtles—and having this long history together—did not leave us unsusceptible to the evils of fourth grade, where all of a sudden it could be true that a girl you spent most of third grade with playing Little House on the Prairie during roof time, the next year that same girl wouldn't stand next to you in line. Reagan was in my class, which I thought was a good thing, but because of a few lucky reading-partner groupings, she ended up at the epicenter of the clique of intimidating good-at-making-friendship-bracelet cool girls headed by Melissa Ryan. Melissa ruled our class like Henry VIII from kindergarten through fifth grade, until she moved to Scarsdale. I was not in the good-readers clique. I was in the needs-to-go-to-special-English clique, which wasn't really a clique, more like a one-man band. To blame my marginalization on my learning disabilities might sound delusional and paranoid because it has been drilled into our heads since we were in first grade that everyone “learns differently,” but if you ask me, kids who “learn easily” feel good about themselves, and confident in a way that I know for a fact I never have.

Lunchroom at Hatcher: supervised insanity—lower-school girls looking like Eloise in navy-blue uniforms and puffy-sleeved white button-down blouses, sitting at long white linoleum fold-out tables. Pitchers of ice water and heavy plastic plates of “rabbit food” (cut-up carrots and celery, but the ladies in the lunchroom called it “rabbit food” even though I don't think a real rabbit has ever seen a piece of celery in the wild) grace every table to accompany the main course of pale roasted chicken and boiled rice. I was at the end of the table, wishing I were closer to where Melissa and Reagan were sitting.