Starry Night (29 page)

“Yeah.”

I waited for a second to see if I could use any of my tools to not be impulsive and to not ask a risky question, but I couldn't stop myself, because as intrusive as it might have been it also felt right to ask.

“Why do you go to so many Nosh events? Are they really so interesting to you?”

“Um, why are you asking me this now?” he said, like I'd started to talk about global warming or something.

“Because I'm thinking a lot about love, and sometimes I wonder why you don't ever have crushes on anyone.”

“I do have crushes on people,” he said simply.

“Are they all those cute Nosh waiters?”

Charlie looked at the lit-up windows of the buildings on Central Park West and squinted as if he were trying to see the people inside. “Yeah,” he said, still looking up. I took his hand with my hand not holding May's leash.

“Does that mean, well…” I don't know why, but it felt natural to ask him. Like we had had the conversation before. “Do you think you're gay?”

“Maybe,” he said calmly. “I think so.” He was still looking at the windows of the building across the street. His hair was sticking up, but he looked handsome. He looked grownup.

“Why wouldn't you tell me?” I said.

“I don't know, I guess I thought, of all people, you would know.” He looked at me and kind of shrugged his shoulders.

“Well, I did,” I said.

He squeezed my hand and I squeezed his back. We turned around and looked straight ahead into the park. The trees were black against the dark gray sky. The night sky in New York never gets truly black because of all the lights in the city. But that night, even the New York sky looked as close as it comes to total darkness, so we kept holding hands.

 

50

“Ridiculous! What are you speaking
to me about?” Mrs. Rousseau had been out with acute bronchitis the entire week before my deadline, so I didn't have to face her wrath until my application deadline had passed.

Mrs. Rousseau has a desk in the corner of the art studio behind some palm trees and easels. It looks like you might imagine—lots of different-colored folders, Buddhas, piles of
The New York Times
, a fancy ebony pen with a gold-plated clip, Sharpies, rubber bands, a box of Kleenex, and a computer.

“I think I am going to look for another art program in New York for next year,” I said, and held my breath.

She put her hand to her chest like she was having a heart attack.

“You didn't complete or hand in your application.” She blinked hard four or five times. “I think I might faint, Wren.”

I didn't think she was kidding.

“I'm sorry, I thought about this a lot.”
Had I?
I wondered. Was I impulsive? Had I been thoughtless?

“When you say ‘a lot,' how does that amount of time compare with the amount of time we have been thinking and preparing for you to apply to Saint-Rémy?”

“Well, it doesn't. But I did think about it.”

She looked crestfallen. “And you think there might be something in New York?”

“Maybe?”

“There is not.”

“How do you know?” I did
not
mean to sound like I was giving her lip there, but I think she thought I was.

“Because I know with full certainty that there isn't.” She looked down at a paper on her desk like she was done with me, and then she changed her mind and wasn't done with me.

“I am so
disappointed
, Wren.” And then she literally howled. I knew not to speak, but I did peer through the leaves of the palm to see if the girls who were in the studio finishing up their projects noticed that Mrs. Rousseau was freaking out. They did, but they looked down as soon as our eyes met. “I am so
distraught.
” She threw her hands in the air and set them down on her desk as if she might get up. “And confused.” She waited to collect herself. “Do you know I went to study at that
very
program, oh, forty-some years ago?”

“No—you never told me that,” I said, and picked up her nice pen to fiddle the anxiety out of my body.

“I did. I did and I loved it. I learned everything I know about light in that school, and not because someone
told
me about it, no. Because I could see it and feel it and study it,
because I was there
! The light
moves
differently there. It is unexpected, it tricks you, there is an ethereal quality to it, and it mesmerizes you. It's challenging. It will teach you and you won't find it in your bedroom at home or in the
goddamned
studio at the Art Students League!” Her voice had lowered to a shame-inducing whisper.

“I'm sorry.” I
was
sorry.

“Don't say you're sorry unless you are, Wren. You have
everything
at your fingertips and you chose to turn your back on it, for what? Fear? Laziness? I don't comprehend it.”

“I am
not turning my back on art
!
Gosh.
” Tears came to my eyes.

“What happened, Wren?”

“I just want to stay here. I want to make art here. I want to make art in New York.” She looked at me funny, like she knew I wasn't telling her the truth, and I wasn't. I wanted to stay because Nolan had asked me to. It had nothing to do with art at all.

 

51

That afternoon when I got
home
from school, I felt like I was getting a rash from shame about Saint-Rémy. I was also getting texts from Nolan saying he couldn't wait to see me at Cy's party. My confusion felt tangible, like a Rubik's Cube I couldn't solve. I bet Romeo and Juliet felt like they were doing the wrong thing too when they ran away into the woods to get married by the friar, but they did it. Okay, they died in the end, and it's a fictional story, but the point is, they still left the safety of what they knew and charged into the woods—for love.

The other thing that was bugging me like crazy was Reagan. Was Charlie right? Was she going to Nolan's shows and not telling me? But maybe that's not such a big deal? I was looking at my phone every two seconds, and just as I was planning on texting Vati to see what she thought about it, my phone rang. The picture of me and Reagan we had taken in my room that day when she said I looked pretty filled up the screen and suddenly she was on the phone.

“Hi!” she said, her voice friendly, friendly, friendly.

“Hi,” I said warily. I went and sat on the top of the stairs on my floor. It was getting dark out already even though it was only four o'clock.

“Oh my god, I have been wanting to talk to you desperately,” she said. “Nolan told me the
whole plan
for tonight.”

“Wait—what do you mean?” I said, reaching up and peeling off some blue tape that was holding one of my owl drawings onto the wall.

“I mean the other night when I saw him at his gig, we talked about ambushing Farah.”

“Do you go to all his gigs?” I said, trying to restick the blue tape on the wall because the drawing was starting to fall down.

“Yeah,” she said point-blank.

“Oh,” I said. The drawing fell.

“What? That's weird?”

“Well, I'm never allowed to go out that late, so I don't even think to ask my parents. And you didn't even tell me you were going, so that is a little weird, right?” Even though I think I'm nonconfrontational, impulsivity sometimes feels confrontational. Having ADD can feel like having a truth serum constantly coursing through your veins.

“Oh, you know, my mom doesn't care what I do,” she said in a nondefensive tone. “And I am
so
into the bass player of Shoppe Boys—this guy Aaron. Did Vati tell you?”

“No,” I said, now looking at the owl I must have drawn two years before and thinking it needed improvements.

“Didn't Nolan tell you?” she asked.

“No, nobody told me that you are into the bass player.
Charlie
said you are always there at the gigs, and honestly it made me feel weird because, well, it's weird that you see Nolan more than I do.” I stood up holding the drawing, went into my room, and got a purple colored pencil. I sat on the floor and started working on the shape of the owl's eyes.

“What is weird is Charlie telling you anything, because he's never there.”

“His guitar teacher sees you,” I said and stopped coloring.

“Well, I don't even see Nolan, not really, he's playing and singing and doing his whole band thing.”
Gosh,
I thought,
I don't really know what that is.

“I don't even talk to
Aaron
, I just
watch
him!” I had seen pictures of Aaron on the Shoppe Boys website. He looked like Jaden Smith.

“Well, I'm going to go to a gig during break,” I said, putting the phone on speaker and setting it next to the drawing.

“Yeah totally, we'll go together! My mom's not taking me anywhere this Christmas.” Her voice echoed out of the tiny phone speaker.

“Okay,” I said, feeling a little better about Reagan, and about the owl.

“Word,” she said, and sounded like she was going to get off, but she didn't.

“So, have you and Nolan slept together again?”

I looked down at the phone. The selfie of us was still lit up. “Oh, no—we haven't,” I said, taking the phone off speaker and putting to my ear.

“Really?”

I had an overwhelming urge to throw my phone out the window. “No,” I said. “But I don't know, isn't that something you do like once a month?”

“Once a month? Did you just say once a month?” I swear I heard her laugh. Then she said, “I don't think you put a number on it—usually it just happens naturally—but more than once a month, I'm pretty sure.”

I had been treasuring the one and only time Nolan and I had had sex and wondering when it would happen again, but I wasn't worried about it. In fact if it took more than a month for us to do it again that would have been all right with me. I would be happy with just kissing.

“It's all right,” she said.

“Reag—I didn't send in my application to that program in France because Nolan asked me not to.”

“So?” she said.

“So? I don't know, everyone is pretty shocked by it and I'm a little freaked. I mean, I feel so happy about Nolan, but it was kind of a big deal of him to ask me, don't you think?”

“Yeah—sure it is. But, Wrenny, do you think one program in France is going to change your life if you do it or not?”

“My parents are hardly speaking to me, Oliver thinks I'm whack, and Mrs. Rousseau thinks I'm an idiot,” I said, and pushed the drawing away from me.

“Mrs. Rousseau is an old bat. I know you love her, but please. She's like a hundred years old.”

“I think she's in her sixties.”

“Whatever. Follow your heart, Wren.”

Yeah—
yeah
, I thought. Follow your heart. That is a
tried and true
solid theory about how to go along in life. Grownups are always telling you to follow your heart. My mother must have said it to me a million times. Follow your heart; it will lead you to the right place.

 

52

“So when we get there,
just stay with me. Okay, Charlie? Vats? Reagan? You?” Nolan squeezed my hips with his hands and tugged me more up on his lap. We were all shoved into the number 2 subway train careening downtown to Brooklyn. (Sitting on Nolan's lap was giving me a feeling that maybe I wanted to have sex more than once a month, but we were on a mission, so I ignored it as much as I could.) “Oliver and I will deal with whoever is at the door. Just look like you know where you are going and like you are supposed to be there.” He held my hand. “Obviously there will be underage people around, he doesn't seem to have a problem with that.”

“Wrenny, I think you and Vati and Reagan should find Farah right away, and I don't know, just see what you vibe,” Nolan said. We pulled into the Fourteenth Street station. This is a stop near New York University and it's in the middle of the West Village. Seeing people way cooler than me in their granny boots and ironic eyewear ease onto the train as it headed even deeper into the land of coolness forced a rush of adrenaline up my spine. I did regret that I hadn't piled on more bracelets, like the girl who stood in front of me had, and I thought that maybe it was time to purchase a fedora, but I did have on a very wrappy gray scarf that put me in the game. Nolan was wearing a similar scarf in a dark army green. Truth be told, I had copied him. If I could have worn all his clothes, I would have. Rattling along on that train, I had a small fantasy that maybe the next fall, since I was going to be in New York, we would wear the same clothes—all the time. He would leave a sweater at my house and I would wear it to school—maybe he would wear the very scarf I was wearing! Maybe he would wear it to gigs. Sadly, I think we could even wear the same jeans. Anyway, soon we would look like those couples, like Jennifer Aniston and Justin Theroux, or Gwen Stefani and Gavin What's-his-name, couples who dress out of the same closet, or look like they do. We would grow more and more alike and people would say, “Wren and Nolan are two peas in a pod, it's so cute.” Maybe one day my art would be used on his album covers and websites. We could work on movies together; he could direct and I could do the art direction. We could move to California!

“What if we are blowing this up and it's nothing and she's just hanging out with him? Are we going a little Homeland Security on her?” said Reagan.

“Reagan, what? No, no. Farah usually knows what she is doing, but I absolutely think this time she is in the weeds.” That is a restaurant term for being in trouble. Charlie tosses in things that waiters and line cooks say now and again because he grew up in a catering kitchen.