Boy Proof

by Cecil Castellucci

  “Yeah,” Rue says. “And we all know that there is a superhighway chase in Tachon City. Martin downloaded the pictures from the Internet two days ago.”

  Martin raises his finger in the air to present himself as if I don’t know that it’s him.

  “Okay, but do you know that Uno has a sister, who he finds in the abandoned city of Tachon?” I say.

  I could have heard a pin drop in the room.

  “And do you know that Egg’s child was buried at the beach at Konkar and that she can never have a child again because she was one of the only people that survived the white plague in its first incubation?

  “And did you know that Uno is going to save his unborn child with a new female character named Trillia, but not without a great personal sacrifice?”

  “Where did you hear all of this?” Rue asks in disbelief.

  “I can’t say. My sources are confidential.”

  “We need to verify it, Egg. You know the rules.”

  “You can’t verify this,” I say. “You won’t find it anywhere, and I could get into big trouble. It’s not going to hurt anyone, but it could spoil some people’s fun, so let’s keep it between ourselves.”

  Everyone in the room looks at each other. They know everything I say makes complete sense, but rules are rules.

  “Well,” Mr. Padilla says. “What should we do?”

  He’s really asking the club, not me, but I answer for everyone because I belong here, with my friends.

  “You should trust me,” I say.

  Rue smiles at me and begins to clap her hands. Hasan and Martin join in and then the rest of the club members do, too.

  “Welcome back, Egg,” Martin says.

  “You know, my real name is Victoria,” I say, and it feels good. My name is Victoria. It’s a comfortable fit.

  My mother has never ever had to come to school to meet with anybody about my grades, but now that it is certain that I am failing trigonometry, Dr. Gellar needs my mother to come in.

  “What an honor it is to meet you, Ms. Denton. My husband has been a longtime fan of yours. As a boy, he had your poster up in his room.”

  I make a small, quiet gagging noise. My mother shoots me a look.

  Dr. Gellar, now reduced in my eyes to yet another starstruck dork, hands my mom a Sharpie pen and her husband’s childhood poster of her in a swimsuit. My mom, with whom flattery goes everywhere, makes a big production of signing her name all big and flowery.

  “Um, we’re here to discuss me,” I remind everyone.

  Ms. Weber, my math teacher, with the too much blue smeared over her eyes, opens up her grading book.

  “Victoria has been on a steady decline in mathematics this whole semester. I believe that she is heading toward a failing grade in my class for this term. I have seen no marked improvement.”

  “Well, I’m sure something can be done,” Mom says.

  “I don’t like to be in a position to fail such a fine student,” Ms. Weber says. “If Victoria can manage a fifty-five percent on her statewide test, I would be willing to pass her with a sixty-five percent in the class.”

  “But that will ruin my average,” I say.

  “Your average is already ruined,” Dr. Gellar reminds me most unpleasantly.

  I have to just face up to the fact that I’m never going to be valedictorian. I just have to let it go.

  I breathe in and out, concentrating on a relaxation technique that I learned watching kung fu movies.

  What’s important? What’s important? I say over and over to myself. This is not a thing to get upset about. It’s only math.

  I make a list of things to actually get upset about:

  1. drilling for oil in the national reserves

  2. war

  3. the lack of water conservation

  4. genetically modified foods

  5. the environment

  6. the melting of the polar ice caps

  7. tyranny around the world

  8. monoculture

  “Victoria, do you have anything to say about this?”

  They’ve been talking and talking and I haven’t been listening.

  “I can still go to college if I pass trig, right?”

  Dr. Gellar nods yes.

  “I mean, I only have to graduate, right?”

  Dr. Gellar and Ms. Weber nod in agreement.

  I stand up and stick out my hand to strike the fifty-five-percent deal with Ms. Weber.

  “Okay, I’ll take the fifty-five percent. But if I do better, then I want it weighted accordingly.”

  “Fair enough,” Ms. Weber says. “And get a tutor.”

  “I’m on it,” I say.

  I leave the room. I push out the door and break into the sunlight and skip across the school courtyard. Today is a beautiful day. The sky is blue, because the rain has washed away all the haze. Los Angeles is most beautiful the day after it rains. I see some litter on the ground and I pick it up and throw it in the trash. I’m already making the world a better place. I head for the library and find Rue sitting there, her nose in a book.

  “Rue, I know I’ve been just an awful person. I’ve been really mean and unlikable. But I need to pass math. I thought maybe we could strike a deal,” I say.

  Rue looks me up and down. She knows I wouldn’t have come here crawling and begging unless I had something really good to offer her. I want her to see that I am a changed person.

  “Okay, Victoria. I’m all ears,” she says.

  And I begin to reveal to her a plan for payment that I think she’ll really like.

  I am alone at the end of the table at the Lion meeting. There are two empty chairs on either side of me. I try to ignore the fact that no one will sit next to me. Although I am making big steps with everyone else, I still can’t get Max to talk to me. I just don’t know how to be his friend again.

  I smile a lot. I heard someone say once that it takes fewer muscles to smile than to frown, so I’m trying it out. Also, I don’t want Max to know that I’m miserable. I don’t want Max to know how much I realize I have to say to him. I don’t want him to know that I am sorry.

  “We have a winner,” Ms. Dicostanzo announces to the Lion staff. She’s in a new faux-1940s phase. Her bangs are short.

  She holds up the letter from the statewide contest that Max, Nelly, and I have won.

  Blah, blah, blah. Ms. Dicostanzo is talking. I can’t hear her. I am a winner. It is such good news to hear, since I’ve felt like a loser for so long.

  “So, the four of us will go to the awards ceremony together,” Ms. Dicostanzo says. I am sure she already knows what dress she will wear to the ceremony.

  I look over at Max and Nelly, who I can see share my pride.

  “If I ever decide to go to college, this is going to look great on my application,” I hear Nelly say.

  Everyone on the Lion staff is clapping, and they are congratulating Max and Nelly. Everyone clamors around them.

  I am still smiling at my end of the table, alone. Nobody comes over to congratulate me. I am still smiling, though, because I don’t want anyone to know that my heart is breaking.

  After what seems like an eternity, or at least a day on Jupiter, Max shoots me a look. His lips barely curl at the ends into the tiniest of smiles, and his head nods so slightly in approval I am afraid that I am imagining it. Before I can respond in kind, he looks away.

  “I’m so glad that you’re back in town, Dad,” I say. “I really missed you.”

  “I’m sorry I can’t be your date to that awards dinner,” Dad says. “I’m meeting with the director to go over my character sketches.”

  “I just don’t want to go alone,” I say. “Mom can’t go with me either, because she’s got a film premiere to go to.”

  “I know how important this award is to you,” he says.

  I realize it feels like my parents are growing up. Moving on. Getting their careers on track. Now that I’m supposed to be a young woman, they’re leaving me in the dust.
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br />   “Sometimes, Victoria, the joy is in knowing how much you want to share something and learning how to enjoy it alone. Alone is different from lonely,” Dad says.

  “I understand,” I say. But I want to tell him that I am lonely. That I am too good at being alone. I’m friendless and awful.

  “What’s this?” he asks, looking over my shoulder at my open notebook.

  “What?” I say.

  “These sketches?” he asks.

  “Just doodles,” I say.

  In the margins of my class notes are my monster ideas, the doodles I do when I’m listening to the teacher but also restless with my hands. Lately I’ve been drawing vampires and bats, since Dad has been working on them himself. Dad starts flipping through the pages.

  “Can I photocopy this page?” he asks.

  He is pointing at a page where I have been drawing multiple bat wings. The wings have human arm elements in them.

  “It’s just a doodle, Dad,” I say.

  “Victoria, these are previsualization character sketches for the transformation of a vampire into a bat,” he says. “It’s a completely unique way of solving the transformation problem.”

  Dad squeezes me in a bear hug.

  “Good job,” he says.

  I smile. I did something good.

  It cost me $24.13 to copy the entire Greek Mythology trilogy script. I have it in a brown manuscript box, because it’s too thick to staple or bind. If my mother ever finds out that I stole her script and then replaced it next to her bed, she will disown me.

  She had to sign a confidentiality agreement when she signed her contract. I don’t know why. Everybody can find out what happened to all the Greek gods. They just have to read the myths for themselves.

  “Do you have it?” Rue asks.

  “Yeah,” I say. “Here it is.” I push the box over to her.

  She opens the box and peers inside. She cracks a smile and pushes a latte toward me.

  “I bought you a latte,” she says. “Half-caf with nonfat milk. Chocolate sprinkles.”

  It’s my favorite.

  “Thanks,” I say. I don’t know what Rue’s favorite coffee drink is, but I’m going to. That’s what friends do.

  She opens up the math textbook, which of course I’ve forgotten, and we get to work. Rue really knows what she’s doing.

  I bet she’ll be valedictorian. Actually, I think I’m kind of rooting for her.

  On my way to see a double feature at the two-dollar theater, I notice a group of people. They’re marching in a circle on the sidewalk just next to the school. I can’t get past them; they’ve covered the whole sidewalk.

  “What’s going on?” I ask someone with a sign.

  “School janitors’ strike.”

  “Why?”

  “We want a living wage.”

  “Why aren’t you in front of the school?” I say.

  “Because the district won’t let us speak there. So we’re speaking here so we don’t get arrested.”

  All of a sudden, I don’t think going to the movies is very important. I get my camera out of my bag and start to take pictures. I start to chant along.

  Why shouldn’t the school janitors get what they deserve? I sign the student petition that a hippie kid is passing around.

  All these people on the sidewalk, jammed together for a real cause. Something real.

  Max and Nelly are deep in conversation. Ms. Dicostanzo floats into the room. Her lipstick today is a dramatic deep-black orchid. She’s just had her eyebrows done. She kicks some of the papers from the wastepaper basket that have spilled over onto the floor.

  “Ugh. God, this school is just a mess. And it’s beginning to smell. Has anybody else noticed that?”

  “That’s ’cause the janitors are on strike, Ms. Dicostanzo,” I say.

  Max Carter looks up at me.

  I push an envelope of photographs that I took at the picket line Friday after school.

  “That’s mine and Max’s story,” Nelly says.

  “I didn’t write a story. I took some pictures.”

  Ms. Dicostanzo flips through the proof sheet and the three photos I blew up to eight by ten. She nods and clucks with approval.

  “This one,” she holds up one of my photos. “This one goes on the cover.”

  She passes them over to Nelly, who doesn’t pick them up.

  Nelly protests. “Max is doing the cover.”

  Max picks up the picture that Ms. Dicostanzo likes and examines it.

  “Not this time,” Max says. “This should be our cover.”

  “No,” Nelly says.

  “Let’s vote,” Max says. “Hands up for Egg’s pic being the cover.”

  To my surprise, every hand in the room goes up except for Nelly’s.

  “Fine,” Nelly says. “Let’s move on to other business.”

  I’m walking slowly down the street. I have some time to kill before I go to the Egyptian for the Sixties Science Fiction Festival.

  “Hey.” Max pulls on my shoulder.

  I turn and face him. There is a silence between us.

  “That’s a great photograph,” he says. “I didn’t know that you were at the picket line.”

  “I’m full of surprises,” I say. “I’m living in the real world now.”

  “I can see that,” Max says.

  I look straight into Max Carter’s eyes.

  “Friends?” I say.

  “Friends,” he says.

  It’s the best word there is, really. Friends.

  “I gotta go. I’m late to meet my dad at the editing room. See you tomorrow, okay?”

  “Of course,” I say, and then watch Max Carter’s retreating figure.

  I think I will float to the Egyptian today. I am too happy to just walk.

  I see it while crossing the street. It is taped perilously to the Walk/Don’t Walk sign.

  Protest Against GMOs

  (Genetically Modified Organisms)

  Demonstration — March — Costumes

  Pershing Square, Downtown

  Saturday, May 2nd, 12 Noon

  Come Dressed as Frankenfood!!

  I tear down the sign and shove it into my bag.

  I am hungry, I’m sick of takeout, and I know that the chances of there being anything good in the fridge at home are slim. So I head into the Good Stuff natural supermarket and I spend twenty bucks on some soba noodles and vegetables.

  In the kitchen there’s a wok that my mother got from some game show she did. It has never been used. I take it out from under the sink, oil it up, and begin preparing dinner. I hear the front door squeak open and the sound of Mom kicking off the very high heels that she always wears to meetings with her agent.

  “They make my legs look like they’re still twenty,” she always says.

  She pads over to the kitchen and peers over my shoulder as I’m stirring up the veggies with some tofu and ginger soy sauce.

  “I didn’t know you could cook,” Mom says.

  “I figure if I can whip up a batch of realistic fake eyeballs, I can cook anything,” I say.

  Mom laughs so hard spit flies out. So I begin to laugh along with her. It feels good to laugh together.

  “I never thought of it that way,” she says. “I could have used that line when I was with your father. Maybe he would have cooked dinner for me once.”

  “There’s enough for two,” I say.

  Mom doesn’t miss a beat as she sets the table.

  For once we are not going to order in and eat from the Styrofoam boxes that separate us into pad Thai and chicken piccata. For once we are not going to eat in different rooms or in front of the television because we don’t have anything to say. For once we are going to eat like a family.

  I dole out the portions into the seldom-used bowls, and Mom doesn’t make a big deal out of it or try to force a conversation. She is just Mom. I am just Victoria.

  I’m being quiet until Dad is finished working on the delicate veins in the fake ba
t he’s making. He has used some of the elements that I came up with in the design.

  I know that this silent time with Dad, when we are both working side by side, is when I have some of my happiest moments. I want to have this feeling of joy inside of me more than just on Tuesdays. I have a plan.

  I open my mouth and ask for something I’ve never asked for before from my dad. I ask him for a real big favor. I don’t know how he’ll react.

  Maybe he’ll be mad.

  “All my worldly plans are changing,” I say.

  “Really? How so?” he asks.

  “I don’t think I want to go to college right away.”

  “That’s not a big deal. What would you do?”

  “I could go to Poland with you and work on Dracula. You could use me as an intern. I do real good work. I learned from the best.”

  I can’t read my dad’s face. It’s neutral, like one of his masks in a resting position. I can’t tell if he’s pleased or pissed that I want to come hang out and do grunt work for him.

  “I learned from the best,” I say again, trying to plead my case. “I want to make it my career.”

  “You’re serious about this?” he asks.

  “Yes.”

  “You’d have to start at the bottom. No special treatment just because you’re my daughter.”

  “I’m ready,” I say.

  “It’s more complicated than just saying yes,” he says. But I see the wheels turning in his brain, like when he’s trying to solve a problem. I know then that he’s going to try to make it work.

  My mom’s Town Car drops me off.

  “I’m really sorry I can’t make it,” she says. “I know you’re bummed.”

  “You gotta do what you gotta do,” I say.

  “I hope this isn’t going to be something that you’ll hold against me in therapy when you’re forty, like I do with my mom.”