Drawing Amanda (3 page)

Amanda’s father pressed a button and the shades covering the two floor-to-ceiling glass windows of the dining room lowered, making a whirring sound that startled Amanda. As the room darkened, the housekeeper came in with a tray of espresso and pastries. He clicked on a slide show he’d prepared. His greatest hits of disasters, Kevin would have said.

Amanda nabbed a couple of enticing Italian pastries, careful not to block the image of her father and his staff building a hut as part of the tsunami relief effort.

She’d loved Indonesia, going to the beach every day, wearing a swath of batik fabric wrapped over her bathing suit. She hadn’t loved Nairobi, especially not the armed guards stationed outside their compound toward the end, and the feeling that no one could be trusted as allegiances changed around them. She felt the tears well up anyway when her father switched to a slide of a new road in Nairobi. At least in Africa she hadn’t been so alone. Amanda asked to be excused.

She went to her room and turned on her computer. Kevin wasn’t on Facebook or Skype, so she sent him a message:
Big dad slide show at dinner. Mucky-mucks. Made me miss u.

She’d forgotten about the time zones. It made her sad to think that they weren’t even waking and sleeping at the same time anymore. Amanda took out her notebook to make a chart of the times she’d likely find Kevin in his room.

There was something already on the first page, some kind of writing. It must have leaked through when those rude boys in the cafeteria grabbed her notebook. She hadn’t heard what they were talking about, but the tall, spiky-haired one sure seemed excited.

Merde
. Nothing was right. Even the first page of her new notebook was spoiled.

Chapter 4

Inky Gets a Warning

P
RINCIPAL
H
AROONI GESTURED
for Inky to sit down in her guest chair—a wicker chair with a long, thin back. It looked like something that might be comfortable if you were Ms. Harooni’s diminutive size. The chair was one more example of why the MDA students called her “the looney.” By reputation she was tough and efficient and she always dressed up as some wacky character in the annual faculty show. Inky fixed his eyes on the intricate pattern of the rug that hung over her head, a gift, no doubt, from her Iranian husband.

“Welcome to Upper School. I suppose you know why I wanted to meet you and talk to you, Michael.”

No small talk here, Inky thought. It was hardly a surprise that he was seated in the principal’s office. Last year his attendance was bad and his grades were worse. When he did show up, he spent most of his time in the office of the guidance counselor hearing pep talks and helping himself to the tissues and pick-me-up chocolates, neither of which made him feel better, or feel anything at all.

Principal Harooni moved her blood red glasses down her nose and turned the pages in the fat file folder opened on her desk. Inky sunk into himself, as if his lowered head could protect his heart.

“What shall we do with you, what shall we do?” she asked. “We have remedial programs when language fluency is the root of poor performance. But in your case, in your case . . .”

It was not a question she meant for him to answer, not that he could anyway. She dove into her sermonette; clearly she’d read his file. “No doubt what you’ve been through is a tragedy, but you must rise above. You owe it to yourself. It says that you plan to be an artist.” She pointed to the file with a poppy red fingernail. “You’ve had ample leeway, but it has been a year and half since . . .”

She let her voice trail off meaningfully. Inky shifted in his seat. A stick of wicker poked into his butt.

What did she know of being an artist or of the “tragedy?” A sour taste filled his mouth. How was this decided, this limit to grieving? Where was this fence around before and after that even his mother was beginning to see?

His mother had sent him for “help”—group grief therapy, which didn’t really help at all. The grief wasn’t something Inky wanted to get over or move on from. Plus, most of the other kids in the group had lost family members to cancer after long periods of suffering. Their stories made him feel guilty in a new way. Particularly Hawk, who’d lost her mother and whose father still traveled a lot. She was quick to tease him to his face about his descent inward: the black clothes, his ever longer hair. “Get over it, Artboy,” she’d say with a scowl.

He did not want to get over it, did not want to move on. That would be saying it was all right.

He’d chosen to stay in the shadows.

“And now you’re in Upper School. We hold our students here to a higher standard. The degree granted from MDA is renowned all over the world. Do you know how many students we turned down for admission last year?”

It was a big speech, and Ms. Harooni’s tiny frame shook with the effort of it. Her thin arms twitched, birdlike, as she gestured. Inky transformed her in his mind into a tall, thin creature with a magnificent feather hat.

His fingers itched for a pencil. He looked down to the floor to mentally place the lines on a plane. She could be his best character yet, and the thought made him smile. Drawing was the one sure thing, the only thing that mattered. Ms. Harooni waited, respectfully. He may have messed up on getting into Art & Design for high school, but he wasn’t going to mess up his chance to study art in college by getting kicked out of school, as much as he wanted to tell her what he really thought of her higher standards. Inky looked up from the floor.

“Well, I seem to have made you think at least. Do you think artists are exempt from the need for a broad education? The mother lode of creativity is discipline, history and human experience. You’ll find those lessons here at MDA.”

He wondered if she took a special course to talk like a textbook as he looked at her cheekbones and the little jut of her chin. Ms. Harooni responded to his gaze by softening her voice. “We want you to succeed here, and expect that you’ll get your grades up to par. We’ll be monitoring your progress. It’s time.”

Inky practically raced for the cafeteria, but not to buy lunch; he hadn’t adjusted to eating lunch at 11:10, and he was too angry to eat. He wanted to open his sketchbook and get right to work on his caricature of Harooni.

He longed to add a regal splash of color and thought about the oil pencils in the art room, stashed in the bin under the window that overlooked the river. The same window where his old friends had once congregated. The thought of them together in Art & Design made his stomach turn over.

“ADIP, my friend. Another day in paradise.” Rungs sat down with Inky. He banged his tray so the coffee in his cup spilled over the rim. “A place of respect, that’s what it says in the school charter. Lorenza should read that.”

“Trouble with Lorenza? He looks cool,” Inky said.

“Too cool, with his jacket and blue jeans and dreads, telling us about the core project. Social anthropology. Rules and rituals. Social structure. How people live. Says all this sitting at his desk, leaning back, and with his feet propped up. I have to hear about an assembly on learning about other cultures while looking at the bottom of his feet.”

“Maybe he doesn’t know it’s offensive,” Inky said, recalling he’d made the same mistake last year.

“Like I’m the first Buddhist he’s ever had in his class.” Rungs stabbed at his food, then glanced at Inky’s drawing. “Hey, that’s good. It’s the principal, right?”

Inky was surprised that Rungs knew who the principal was. He had a way of not getting into trouble for his pranks. Last year, in middle school, he’d hacked the energy-efficient lights so that instead of turning on when students entered classrooms, they’d turn off. The prank, and the fact that no one ratted him out, gave Rungs a unique perch on the MDA social ladder. Not that he cared.

“Loony Harooni. It’s a loony bird,” Inky said.

“Get a warning?”

Inky nodded.

“What’s the WCS?” Rungs said. “You gotta know your worst case scenario.”

Rungs had a point. The worst case scenario was that he’d get kicked out of school, essentially shutting a ton of doors on his future.

He thought of Megaland and the chubby, too-bright typeface on the welcome screen. It was the entryway to his best chance, maybe his only chance, to go somewhere with his art.

Chapter 5

Amanda Signs On

S
WEAT TRICKLED DOWN AMANDA’S FACE
and stung the chapped edge of her lip as she ran. Finally the week was over. She loved how her muscles started to ache as her feet pounded on the pavement, so different than the packed dirt road in Nairobi. The city buildings blurred as she picked up the pace of her run. The avenues changed from names to letters of the alphabet and the big glass towers yielded to low brick buildings. She slowed to watch a group of girls jumping rope, and caught her breath before turning around and heading home. She missed running with the African kids whose marathon dreams pushed her and Derek to run ever faster. Too bad her new school didn’t have a track team.

When she got home, her parents were on their way out to dinner. She could see her mother’s reflection on the window, her thick orange pashmina wrapped around her shoulders. Her father stood at the door ready to go.

“I’ll just microwave something,” she said, seemingly to herself. Since coming to the States, Amanda had a new-found guilty pleasure. She loved frozen dinners—the ice crystals like a first snow on the vegetables and gooey cheese sauce over the chicken. Maybe the American glop would help her through the weekend’s homework.

Her brain hurt from all the English—American really, not like the British English her father spoke. She struggled to understand her teachers; her last two schools were taught in French. But compared to the slang her classmates used, the writing in her textbooks was easier to understand. She looked over the handouts for her core class. They were starting with anthropology:
Social Order
.
Presentation of Self in Everyday Lif
e.
The Caste and Outcasts in Modern India
. Lucky her. An hour of reading about the doomed and the damned. At least she could relate.

When she was done, Amanda turned on her laptop. There was nothing fun on the Wacky World News site, and Facebook didn’t appeal, either. She opened her notebook and typed in the site info that had leaked through when that Thai boy grabbed it. This would be like fieldwork, she thought.

She figured it would be a sports site, although she hadn’t seen them with the soccer players. Maybe the American one was into baseball.

She was not expecting bubble type and neon colors. The “Welcome to Megaland” screen felt as homespun as baskets in a central market. Even more unexpected was the chat box that opened up.

Megaland:
Hello. Welcome. What brings you to Megaland today?

Unexpected, but she liked that it was interactive. Amanda typed in “a friend.”

Megaland:
Good, good. Pick a screen name that reflects who you are. Are you a rocker? Like sports? Goth? Avid reader?

Amanda thought a second, looking for a word like she would among the scrabble tiles. Then she had an idea and typed,

Justagirl

Megaland:
Very clever. That’s a great screen name. What are your interests, Justagirl? What do you do with your friends?

The screen went blank for a moment then refreshed with the cursor positioned by her screen name in the corner. Justagirl. She liked that identity.

Justagirl
: I’m new here so I don’t know anyone.

Megaland
: OK. What activities do you like to do with your brothers and sisters?

Justagirl
: My brothers are away at school.

Megaland:
OK. We can 86 that portion.

She wondered if 86 was a grade and if that was good. Or maybe there was math involved.

Justagirl:
86?

Megaland:
Drop it. There are other questions in the survey.

Normally she hated the surveys that popped up on websites, but tonight she was happy to fill out a questionnaire. She was glad that someone somewhere cared what she thought. She answered the questions about her game choices; she had to think about why she liked Scrabble and avoided sites with celebrity gossip. She liked the “hot or not?” and “cool or fool?” questions. Then she faced one that stumped her.

Megaland:
Anyone you’re a dead ringer for?

Justagirl
: what? I don’t play an instrument.

Megaland:
It doesn’t have to be a musician, just someone you resemble.

So that was what dead ringer meant. That was another reason she hated being here. She couldn’t understand what people were talking about sometimes.

The cursor blinked. She did not respond to the question.

Megaland:
Is English your native language?

Justagirl
: trick question. We try to speak the language of the place where we live.

Megaland:
Wow. What languages do you speak?

Justagirl
: French, Spanish and a little Mandarin, and English – but not New York English apparently.

Megaland:
LOL. You’ll pick it up, Justagirl. You sound super smart. Where are you from?

Justagirl
: Another trick question. We move around a lot.

Megaland:
Well, it doesn’t matter. It’s a small world after all and all that. You’ll see that you fit in here in Megaland in ways you can’t even imagine. Come back tomorrow and I’ll show you how.

Chapter 6

Small Places, Big Issues

T
HERE WAS NO EASING
into the school year with the core curriculum approach. A series of projects each trimester incorporated multiple subjects, each kicked off with both sections gathering in the auditorium. Inky plopped into his seat and took in the faded blue fabric of the curtain spanning the back of the stage. Rungs slid into the seat next to him just as Mrs. Patel began. Inky stared at Mrs. Patel’s lavender dress and stoplight-red blazer, colors he thought would only be paired as the walls and trim of a room on one of those second-rate home design shows.