The Astonishing Adventures of Fan Boy and Goth Girl (13 page)

Turns out to be a nonissue. She heads off to a pizza place on her own and comes back with a slice of mushroom pizza.

I take a deep breath. I can't believe I'm going to tell her about
Schemata.

We sit down at a table in the middle of the food court. Part of me is terrified by the openness and sheer
public-ness
(is that a word?) of it all. But no one can hear me over the noise. Kyra chomps on her pizza. "Well? Come on! Tell me!" She's practically vibrating.

"OK, so..." I pause. I need a second. I eat some General Tso's and sip my soda.

"Come on, come on!" she says.

"All right already!" I'm going to do it. I really am.

Just then, a girl—a woman—comes into my field of view on my left side, walking past our table. I just catch a glimpse at first, but it's enough to tell me that she's gorgeous. (It's my guy-dar at work, sensing beautiful women in 360 degrees.) Out of the corner of my eye, I make my first assessment: thigh, leg, breast (it's like a chicken—how weird), all in profile.

I'm at a table with Kyra, so I have to be subtle. I pretend to be looking at something else, but I track the woman with my eyes as she passes the table, goes behind Kyra, and walks off. God! She's gorgeous! She has to be in her twenties at least. College girl. Reddish blond hair, capri pants that are so tight that she has to be wearing a thong or maybe nothing at all ... God, I love and hate this world all at once.

I sip at my soda. Kyra chuckles. "What's so funny?" I ask.

She purses her lips, then swivels in her chair to watch the college girl walking off. Oh. Busted.

"Hey, not bad," she says, nodding as if appraising a used car. "Not bad at all." She turns back to me and leans over, conspiring. "You like that? Hmm?"

So, do I apologize here? It's not like I'm
dating
Kyra. It's not like she's my girlfriend or anything. Right? I mean, how can she be pissed at me? She has no right.

"Do you like that? I think you do."

"Stop it," I mumble, looking down at my food. She's pissed.

Or not. "Go ahead," she says, and I realize she's not pissed at all. She's
amused.
"Go ahead—try to get it. Go for it. I won't stop you." She leans back in her chair, hands laced behind her head. "I'll wait here for you. You go give it your best shot."

Big sigh on my end. Yeah, this is working out
really
well. "No, that's OK. Thanks anyway."

Her eyes dance. "Why? Because I'm here?"

Nah, because I don't have a shot. Let's be real. But I'll be polite: "Yeah, I guess so."

She sits up straight again and goes for the pizza. "That's very nice of you." I shrug, which I figure is the safest thing to do right now. "Hey, wait."

"What?"

She leans forward, scrutinizing me. "Are you falling in love with me?"

I almost spit out a chunk of spicy chicken. "Don't be ridiculous!"

"Are you sure?"

"Well, yeah! I think I'd know!" Jeez! When did this get so out of hand?

"Because you better not. I'm warning you."

No chance of
that
happening, Goth Girl. "Trust me, I won't."

She eyes me warily, like I'm a wounded ferret that can't be trusted not to make one last lunge. "Good."

That goes double for me. I change the subject: "You want to hear about this or not?" Can't believe I'm
eager
to talk about
Schemata
now! Better than further embarrassing myself.

She smiles at me in a way that says that she knows I'm doing this to change the subject ... and that she's decided to let me get away with it. Bites into her pizza. "Yeah. Go."

It's a word for systems used to define and organize information and experiences.

I don't even know how to explain it. Not entirely. Which I guess is why I had to make it into a graphic novel. If I could sum it up in a couple of sentences, I wouldn't need to spend so much time writing and drawing it.

Yes, writing
and
drawing it. Like Bendis used to. He was an artist and a writer when he started out, before he got so popular for his writing that he stopped drawing.

I wanted to do something big and important. Something enduring and meaningful, like the stuff they make us read in school. People don't always
like
that stuff, but they read it because it's deep and it
matters.
All my life I've read comic books, and they break down into two categories: the ones people take seriously as literature, and the ones that are about superheroes. And you can count the ones that cross into both groups on the fingers of both hands.

But Bendis, you see, Bendis makes even his superhero comics important. He makes Spider-Man seem like a real person with real problems. And he makes the cops in
Powers
so interesting and so authentic that you forget that they live in a world where superheroes exist. It's like these stories
matter,
but no one takes them as seriously as they should because they have people who can fly or shoot lasers out of their eyes or whatever.

I want to bridge that gap. Yeah, for a long time I wanted to draw comics and I'm a decent artist, I guess, but then I started to think about how to do something big. Like I said, something enduring.

So there's
Schemata.
I don't know how long it'll be when it's finished. Craig Thompson's
Blankets
(Kyra read it and loved it) was 600 pages when it was published.
From Hell
was even longer. Jeff Smith did 1,300 pages of
Bone
and Dave Sim spent 30 years of his life on
Cerebus,
but my dad says that Sim lost his mind halfway through, so it wasn't worth it.

I don't know if
Schemata
will get into any of that territory. It's more than a hundred pages right now, and I'm still going. I'll keep going until it's done.

It's not about a superhero. It's about a woman who has a super-power, but she doesn't wear a costume or fight crime or anything like that. Because this is a serious story and I want people to take it seriously.

The main character's name is Courteney Abbott Pierce DelVecchio. She's a teacher in an inner-city school. I did all kinds of research. I even called the city school board and emailed the guy who does the education reporting on the Channel 5 news. I asked my dad to drive me downtown once and I took pictures of everything for reference.

So Courteney has a husband and a daughter and a class of really messed-up kids. She also has a super-power: She can take people's fears, dreams, thoughts, and desires, and turn them into three-dimensional images that she can see. So she can literally grab your nightmares and walk through them. She can walk in your shoes. Feel your fears. Live your dreams.

But like I said, she doesn't put on a costume and become Dream Lass or anything. The story is titled
Schemata,
right? And if
you
could do what Courteney can, you wouldn't go out and beat up muggers, would you?

But how
would
it affect your life? What
would
you do?

So Courteney starts using her powers to look into the minds of her students. To try to help them. It's a nightmarish quest, in a way, a journey through the very worst of a child's terrors.

And it only gets worse when she starts to turn her powers on her husband. Because what is
he
thinking?

And it...

It...

It just gets bigger. And deeper. It's about spirit and fear and emotion and love and
everything.
Everything that matters.

On Saturday, I'm going to show Bendis what I've got so far. I'm going to tell him the story and how he inspired it. And he'll put me in touch with the right people at Marvel. They might want me to publish it as a series of comics first, but I want to do it all at once, as a graphic novel. So I might have to convince them, but that's OK. I'm willing to do that. I'm willing to fight for it.

Promethea387:
Can you get one of your stepfather's guns?

Xian Walker76:
Why?

Promethea387:
Just wondering.

Xian Walker76:
You planning on shooting someone?:)

Promethea387:
I didn't ask for bullets, fanboy.

Xian Walker76:
Bullets are easy to get.

Promethea387:
I would only need one anyway.

Xian Walker76:
What?

Promethea387:
I've been thinking about your comic book, the one you told me about at lunch. It sounds pretty heavy.

Xian Walker76:
You said you wouldn't make fun of me.

Promethea387:
I'm not making fun of you. I mean it. It's deep. I wouldn't still be online with you if I thought it was a joke.

Xian Walker76:
You didn't say anything this afternoon. You just took me home.

Promethea387:
I was thinking. You gave me a lot to think about. And besides, I figured you'd appreciate the time to relive that skanky college chick who walked past us.

Xian Walker76:
Will you let that go?

Promethea387:
Just explaining things for you, that's all. Can I see it?

Xian Walker76:
See what?

Promethea387:
The comic book, you dope!

Xian Walker76:
I don't know. I haven't shown it to anyone. And it's a graphic novel, not a comic book.

Promethea387:
Yeah, I know. You also hadn't told anyone about it until me. Let me see it. You're going to show it to Bendis this weekend, right?

Xian Walker76:
Yes.

Promethea387:
So, don't you want someone else to look at it first?

Xian Walker76:
I guess that's a good idea.

Promethea387:
So bring it to school tomorrow. I'll look at it.

Xian Walker76:
I don't want anyone else to see it.

Promethea387:
Don't be so paranoid. We can look at it in the car after school and I'll drive you home again.

Xian Walker76:
But I need to live to Saturday.:)

Promethea387:
I hope this thing isn't a comedy.

M
ONDAY MORNING AT THE BUS STOP
, I wait, standing a little bit aside, wondering if maybe Dina will end up on the bus again today, wondering about the comics in my backpack, wondering about the scene on page 10 of
Schemata,
wondering a bunch of things, because I do that, I think of them all at once.

You'd think after so many years at the same bus stop with the same kids that I would have made some friends in the neighborhood. But you'd be wrong. When your mother won't let you invite anyone over to the house, it's tough to make friends. And when people rarely visit your house, when your mother never gets involved with anyone else in the neighborhood, your house—and, by extension, everyone in it—starts to pick up that almost odiferous air of weirdness and
otherness
that marks you for isolation on good days, terrorizing on bad days.

Today's a good day. They leave me alone.

Dina's not on the bus (of course not—long shot, but it happened once, so it could happen again). I keep my backpack clutched tight to me. It has pages from
Schemata
in it, and I don't want anyone to see them.

At school, I shuffle things in my backpack, concealing the
Schemata
pages between two folders for classes that I don't have on Monday. They'll be hidden there until later. I almost jump out of my skin when someone taps me on the shoulder from behind.

I spin around, my backpack held up like a shield. But it's Cal, watching me with concern in his eyes.

"Were you at your dad's this weekend?"

"No."

"Because I tried to e-mail you and IM you, but you never got back to me. I figured you must have been out of town."

Safe assumption. In the history of our friendship, I can't imagine a single time when I would have let a communication from Cal go unanswered. Let's face it—it's not like I typically have anything else to do.

But I was out all weekend, and even when I was in I didn't want to interrupt my e-mails and IMs with Kyra. Cal's windows kept popping up, threatening to crash my ancient system. Just the appearance of the windows themselves slowed my IM program down. That one session of dueling IMs on Friday was enough for me. I need that new computer. I need that PowerMac. I really do.

It's not until right now, with Cal standing in front of me, that I realize how extraordinary it was, what I did this weekend. Ignoring his messages. I've never done that, but I didn't even give it a second thought until now.

"I'm sorry. I was having computer problems."

"You need to download a Windows patch. I'll e-mail the link to you."

"Nah, I don't—"

"It's no big deal. Don't worry about it."