Empress of the World (5 page)

“I would never have guessed,” I say.

She smiles. “Do you have a dog?” she asks.

I shake my head. “I had a goldfish once, but it died. And I guess you could say I have partial custody of my friends’ cat, Frank.”

Battle’s room is terrifyingly clean. There are no clothes on the floor, the bed is made, there are no empty pop cans or candy bar wrappers. Even her books are in a neat pile on her desk, not scattered throughout the room on every available surface in Katrina’s and my preferred method of organization. Her parents must love her.

“Which is which?” I ask, looking at the dog pictures.

“Dante is the sweet one. Beatrice is more troubled, she’s a little worrier.” Apparently Dante is just slightly taller, and has darker markings around his face. I still can’t tell them apart when she’s done explaining.

“Sit down,” she says, gesturing at the bed.

“I like the floor,” I say, and then regret saying it, because in order to lower myself to the floor without hurting my ankle, I have to stick my bad leg out in front of me in what looks like a bizarre martial arts move. “Um, so the reason I came over is that I’m really confused about this article, and I thought maybe you remembered it from last year.”

Battle sits down next to me and flips through the photocopied pages. “It doesn’t look familiar,” she says. “I don’t think we read it. But what was confusing? Maybe we read something like it.”

I explain my problem with the whole concept of typology.

“I remember now,” Battle says. “It bugged me too. The way they divided things into categories was so arbitrary—like the book would say that such-and-such design was a fertility motif, and how do they know?”

“Exactly! That’s my exact problem with it. It makes me think—this is going to sound stupid—but do you ever have the feeling that everybody’s making everything up, all the time? Like when a teacher tells you something is the absolute truth, and then later you learn it was just completely his opinion?”

Battle nods vigorously. “It’s not just school. People ask my dad for advice, because he’s a minister. I know he just says whatever comes into his head. But they think he’s this grand authority.”

“It’s like there are all these people who want to be told what to do, and then there are people who want to tell them what to do—” I say, and Battle continues, “—and then there are people like us. We want to know why they’re telling us to do it!”

Her green eyes are shining. People like us, I think, and I feel myself heat up, not in an embarrassed way, but in the way you feel when you walk into a warm room when you’ve been out in the cold for hours.

Battle pulls the pencils out of her hair and it falls in waves. She looks like a painting in one of Dad’s art books. I realize I haven’t said anything for a minute, and my mouth feels suddenly dry, and I start coughing. Then I feel like I have to say something, so I blurt out the first thing that comes into my head: “Has your dad always been a minister?”

“Did I sound like I was preaching?”

“No! I was—I was just curious.”

Battle sighs and twists a lock of hair around her finger. “He used to be an actor. But he was always telling us that a pulpit was the best stage.”

“Us?” I ask. Battle gets up and walks over to her desk. She opens the middle drawer, takes out a small wooden box, and removes something from it, which she conceals in her hand. Then she hands me the box.

“Should I open it?” I ask. She nods. Inside is a picture of a boy. Oh no. This must be her boyfriend.

“Have you been together for a long time?” I ask.

“We grew up together,” Battle says in a strange high squeaky voice, “but I haven’t seen him in a long time.”

I tear my eyes away from the picture to look at her. On her right hand is a grinning boy puppet, wearing a bright red robe and a small gold crown. “A long time,” she repeats in her real voice.

“You see,” she says, again in the puppet voice, “once upon a time there was a little girl,” she makes the puppet point to her face, “a little boy,” the puppet points at the box, “and their mother and father. They were very happy.” The puppet claps its hands. “They sang songs! They read stories! And they put on plays, on their special little stage.” The puppet bows.

“Things changed when the father found God. He liked it more if the stories and songs and plays were from the Bible. And then the little boy didn’t want to play anymore. He would say,” she lowers the puppet voice to a growl, “‘Don’t expect me to take your shit forever,’ and, ‘You know nothing about who I am,’ and ‘When I’m seventeen, I’m gone.’”

She takes the puppet off and hands it to me. “And he was. I mean, he left. When he turned seventeen.”

I think about putting the puppet on my own hand, but I don’t feel I have the right. It’s beautifully made, with a lot of detail in the features, and the red robe is a heavy velvet. “And you were close,” I say, touching one of the points of the puppet’s crown.

“Obviously not that close, since he hasn’t bothered to write me, or call, or send up smoke signals,” Battle says, looking at her dog pictures. I think she’s wishing they were here.

“Do you know where he is?”

She shakes her head. “He would talk about big cities all the time. San Francisco, New York, Los Angeles—he hated where we live. But I don’t know which of them he picked. Or if he stayed wherever he went first. Basically, I don’t know a damn thing.”

Her smile is tight with pain. I want to say something to make it go away, but my brain is trying to do too many things at once, and all I can think of is “I’m sorry.”

She shrugs. “It’s not your fault. I’m sorry I brought it up, it’s too intense for people to deal with.”

“I’m not people,” I say, hearing people like us in my head again. “I’m me, and I’m glad you told me about—what’s his name?”

She smiles, and it’s not quite so sad this time. “That’s the funny part. His name is Nick.”

“So that’s why you looked at me so funny that first day when I said my name!” I say.

Battle blushes. “Was it that obvious?”

I nod.

“I’m sorry. It was just—well, he drew, too. He used to do all the backdrops for our stage. So, there you were, and you drew like him, and you had his name. . . .”

Her face changes.

“Don’t tell anyone about this. Any of it. The last thing I need is for people to think I’m some poor little . . .just don’t.”

“All right, I won’t.”

“I have a lot of reading to get done,” says Battle, quickly picking up a book from her desk.

“I’ll go,” I say. My ankle twinges when I stand up, and I wince.

“Will you be okay? I mean with your ankle? I sprained mine last year before our dance recital, I remember how much it hurt. . . .” Battle looks worried, which makes me feel somehow better.

“Yeah, don’t worry about it.”

Will you be okay without your brother?

“Maybe Mom and Dad will have sent me another cool postcard,” I say. The last one was from a town in Ohio where they have the world’s largest picnic basket.

“Yeah, and maybe my mom and dad will have sent me money!” says Isaac, rubbing his hands together in anticipatory greed.

“Like you can really buy anything around here,” says Kevin in his deliberate way, bouncing his Hacky Sack off the wall near Battle’s head. She glares at him, and he giggles.

I remember that Mozart was supposed to have been really annoying. I wonder if this means that Kevin is truly a genius composer. I hope not.

Only Isaac and I turn out to have mail. My postcard reads:

“Dear Nic—

“I’m trying to sell out, but nobody’s buying. I’m considering setting up as a mall caricaturist.”

Then there’s a hideously grinning sketch of Dad’s idea of a typical mall crawler—a woman with big hair, big teeth, and dangly earrings.

“On the bright side, the bleak artistic outlook means I can spare some time to see my only daughter for that parent weekend. Love, Dad.”

Then there’s a P.S. in Mom’s handwriting.

“He’s lying—it’s going very well. But we are still going to be able to visit you. Hope you’re well and not working too hard. Love you, Mom.”

“Wow, my parents are coming for Parents’ Weekend after all,” I say, trying to figure out what I think about this idea. Battle looks at me questioningly, and I shrug.

“So are mine,” says Isaac. His voice is flat and strange. I look over and see that his hands are clutching his letter so tightly that the paper looks like it’s about to rip in half.

“What’s up?” I ask. Isaac shakes his head.

“It’s not even worth mentioning.” He crumples the letter, aims it at the wastebasket next to the desk and misses. Then he turns away from us and starts walking outside.

Battle, Katrina, and I all look at each other, and then at Kevin, who as the only other guy should be able to interpret this behavior. Kevin says, “Better leave him alone. Hey, I need to work out some chord progressions. See you guys later.” Without waiting for us to answer, Kevin starts walking away, too.

The three of us look at each other again.

“Wow,” says Katrina. She lifts up her right arm and sniffs experimentally under it a couple of times. “Did I forget my deodorant?”

After a moment, she walks over next to the wastebasket and picks up the crumpled ball of Isaac’s letter.

“You know you want to,” she says by way of justification. She uncrumples it and smooths it out.

Battle and I read over her shoulder:

“Dear Son:

“While you’ve been away at camp, your mother and I have been doing a lot of thinking. We have something to tell you. It won’t be easy on any of us, but in the long run, you’ll see that it’s the best thing for everybody.

“Your mother and I are getting a divorce.”

That part is all typed. Then there’s a part that’s handwritten.

“Sweetie, we don’t know any of the details yet. Of course, we’ll see you at Parents’ Weekend and we can talk ’bout all this. You need to start thinking about where you and your sister want to live, with your father or with me. You should have that choice. Love, your mother.”

We are quiet for several minutes.

“His dad didn’t even bother to sign it,” I say softly.

“We’ve got to go talk to him. He must be going completely bugfuck, don’t you think? Where do you think he is?” Katrina looks around as though Isaac might be lurking in a corner somewhere.

I shake my head. “But he said it wasn’t even worth mentioning. I don’t think he’s going to want to talk anytime soon.”

Battle says, “If he doesn’t talk about it, it will drive him nuts. I know what I’m talking about.” Her voice is quiet but insistent.

“What we need,” says Katrina, “is a way to somehow allow him to talk without feeling like he’s a loser just because his parents are screwing him over.”

“But isn’t he going to be furious that we read the note in the first place?” I ask.

Katrina shakes her head. “Why do you think he missed the wastebasket?” she asks.

“Um, maybe because he was really upset?” I offer.

Katrina shakes her head again. “It was because he wanted us to read the note. He wouldn’t tell us about it directly, but he made sure we could find it,” she says with absolute assurance.

“What do you think we should do, Nic?” asks Battle, looking at me seriously. I’m blushing. Again. Damn it. Whatever you think.

“Well,” I fumble, “I guess what I think is that we should give him some time just to be upset by himself. I think we should talk to him, you’re totally right, but after he’s had some time to, you know, cool off.”

“Point one,” says Katrina, holding up her index finger, “the problem with Isaac , just like I was saying, is not that he needs to cool off. The problem is that without some intervention, he will freeze over completely.” She has already started walking toward the door. “Point two,” she holds up another finger, “is that regardless, he’ll have some time to do that, because we don’t know where the hell he is.”

Why does Katrina think she knows Isaac so well? “I know where he is,” I say. “Or at least I think I do. He likes walking by the river.”

Katrina spins around to look at me for a minute, as though I’ve said something far more surprising than I think I have. Then I kick myself. I probably sounded like I had some kind of inside track to Isaac, which, if she’s interested in him, which I think she is, would make her think that maybe I had a prior claim, or something.

“He said that when we were in the nurse’s office waiting for her to look at my ankle,” I explain.

I don’t tell them what the nurse said. I guess we must have looked like we were really enjoying our conversation, because when she was done with the person before us, the first thing she asked was, “Are you here for birth control?” We burst into embarrassed laughter, and Isaac said, “No, pain control,” and pointed to my ankle.

“So how are we going to do this?” asks Katrina. “Just waltz on up to him and say ‘Hey, big guy, share your pain’?”

I say, “Maybe if we had some other excuse to be at the river. A picnic? We could get a bunch of candy and stuff from the machines.”

“You can’t go to the river,” says Battle, suddenly sounding almost angry. “What about your ankle?”

“The nurse said it was only a mild sprain,” I say. “It’s a lot better.”

“Fine, just reinjure it, then.” It unnerves me to see Battle toss her hair back in a manner I can only describe as Imperious Cheerleader.

“It’s Nic’s ankle. I think she’s the one who knows whether or not it’s okay,” Katrina says. Battle glares, but says nothing.

We acquire a variety of items from the vending machines. The four basic food groups are represented: caffeine, sugar, salt, and fat. “It’d be better if we had alcohol,” Katrina says as she stows cans of soda in her army knapsack. “In wine is truth!”