Ready or Not

by Meg Cabot

  “Well, let’s get started then.” Susan called to someone who’d been hanging around the back of the room, “Terry? We’re ready for you, I think.”

  Terry, a tall, thin guy in his twenties, came ambling over to the platform, wearing, for some reason, nothing but a bathrobe. I thought maybe this was on account of how we were supposed to be doing some kind of classical drawing.

  Which was cool, because, hey, I didn’t know we got to draw the models in costume.

  This was going to be a lot more challenging, I knew, than drawing a piece of fruit, or cow horns. Terry’s robe had a paisley pattern in it that was going to be hard to replicate. Especially in the places where the material folded.

  I couldn’t help giving a little squirm in eager anticipation. I know only a geek would be excited about drawing paisleys. But I am a geek. Or so I am informed on an almost daily basis by my peers, nearly every time I open my mouth in school, even if only to utter something innocuous, like that Gwen Stefani wrote the song “Simple Kind of Life” the night before No Doubt recorded it.

  Then Terry climbed up onto the raised platform and I saw that it wasn’t going to be hard to draw the paisleys on his robe at all. Because no sooner had I picked up my pencil than Terry tugged on the sash to his robe, and it fell into a puddle at his feet.

  And underneath it, he was…well, completely naked.

  Top ten things that have really and truly shocked me during my lifetime:

  10. Gwen Stefani coming out with a solo album. I mean, I think it’s great, don’t get me wrong. But what about the rest of the band? I worry about them, is all. Except Tony, of course, since he’s the one who broke her heart.

  9. J. Lo and Ben’s wedding getting called off. Seriously. I thought those two were made for each other. And what’s with the Marc Anthony thing? I mean, he’s shorter than she is, right? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s like she picked the one guy who P Diddy could beat up. And that’s just wrong.

  8. Lindsay Lohan starring in that Herbie the Love Bug movie. Seriously. Why would they remake those movies? How could that ever have sounded like a good idea?

  7. Passing German I–II.

  6. Theresa’s son Tito enrolling in technical college. And passing his first semester with flying colors.

  5. The sight of my sister Lucy doing her own laundry.

  4. Britney Spears marrying that back-up dancer of hers. Did she learn nothing from J. Lo?

  3. Kristen Parks inviting me to her sixteenth birthday party at Six Flags Great Adventure (not that I went).

  2. My boyfriend fixating on my chest so much that he wouldn’t even notice my new hairstyle-slash-color.

  And the number-one thing that really, truly shocked me:

  1. That the first naked guy I ever saw was a total stranger.

  2

  Okay, I’ve seen them before. Naked guys, I mean. On TV. In New York, when I go there for UN stuff, there’s a whole public access channel devoted to naked guys.

  And of course I’ve seen pictures of Michelangelo’s statue of David. Not to mention all the classical art at the National Gallery, which is, you know. Mostly nudes.

  And of course I’ve seen my dad naked. But only by accident, on the various occasions he’s had to hop around, swearing, after getting out of the shower to find that Lucy has used up all the towels to dry her cashmere sweaters on, or whatever.

  But the first naked guy not related to me that I ever saw live and up close? I totally didn’t expect it to be someone I hadn’t even known five minutes before.

  To tell you the truth, I thought the first naked guy I’d ever see up close and personal like that would be my boyfriend, David.

  Or so I’d been hoping. Boy, had that not worked out according to plan.

  I looked around to see if anybody else was as surprised as I was to see Terry in the raw.

  But everyone else was busily drawing away. Even David. Even Rob.

  Excuse me, but what was up with that? Was I the only sane person in the room? Why was I the only one going, “Um, hello? Does anybody else notice the naked guy here? Or is it just me?”

  Um, apparently so. No one else so much as blinked an eye. Just picked up their pencils and started sketching.

  Okay, clearly I missed something somewhere.

  Not knowing what else to do, I pretended to drop my eraser, then, when I was bending over to grab it, stole a quick peek at their drawing pads. David’s and Rob’s, I mean. I just wanted to see if they were…you know. Going to draw all of Terry. Or if maybe they were going to leave a polite blank space around his you-know-what. Because maybe that’s what you were supposed to do. I didn’t know. I mean, I couldn’t even say it. How was I supposed to draw it?

  I saw, however, that while they weren’t making Terry’s you-know-what the focal point of their drawings, both David and Rob had definitely roughed it in.

  So, obviously, they didn’t have a problem with drawing some naked dude.

  Still, I have to admit, I was pretty weirded out by the whole thing. How come no one else was? Maybe it’s easier to draw it if you actually own it. You know. The equipment.

  And how did Terry even qualify to be the resident naked guy, anyway? He wasn’t even good-looking. He was sort of skinny and had no muscle tone to speak of. He even had a tattoo of a heart with an arrow through it on his left bicep. He looked a lot like Jesus, actually, with his long blond hair and scruffy beard.

  Only I haven’t seen too many pictures of Jesus naked.

  “Sam?”

  Susan was speaking really softly—she tries to keep conversation to a murmur during class, making her voice lower than the radio, which was tuned to a soothing classical music station.

  Still, softly as Susan had spoken, I jumped. Because classical music wasn’t enough to soothe me, in my current state of hyper–naked guy awareness.

  “WHAT?” I asked. For no reason at all, I started turning red. This is, of course, part of the curse of being redheaded. The tendency to blush for, like, no reason at all. I could feel my cheeks getting hotter and hotter. I wondered if, with my new black hair, my blush would be as noticeable as it used to be, back when my cheeks turned the same color as my bangs. I figured probably it was even more noticeable. The contrast, you know, of the black against the pink. Plus, you know, my eyebrows were still red. Although I had put black mascara on my eyelashes.

  “Is there a problem? You’re not drawing,” was what Susan said softly, as she squatted next to my drawing bench.

  “No problem,” I said quickly. Maybe too quickly, since I spoke a little too loud, and David glanced my way, smiled briefly, then turned back to his drawing.

  “Are you sure?” Susan glanced at Terry. “You’ve got a wonderful angle here.” She picked up a piece of charcoal from the Baggie in front of me and sketched out a rough outline of Terry on my drawing pad. “You can really make out his inguinal ligament from here. That’s the line from his hipbone to his groin. Terry’s is quite defined….”

  “Um,” I whispered uncomfortably. I had to say something. I had to. “Yeah. That’s just it. I wasn’t really expecting to see his inguinal ligament.”

  Susan looked away from her drawing and up toward me. She must have noticed something about my expression, since her eyes widened, and she said, “Oh. OH.”

  She got it. About Terry, I mean.

  “But…what did you think I meant, Sam,” she whispered, “when I asked if you’d be interested in joining my life drawing class?”

  “That I’d be drawing from life,” I whispered back. “Not a naked guy.”

  “But that’s what life drawing means,” Susan said, looking as if she were trying not to smile. “It’s important for all artists to be able to draw the human form, and you can’t do that if you can’t see the muscle and skeletal structure beneath the skin because it’s hidden under clothes. Life drawing has always meant nude models.”

  “Well, I realize that now,” I whispered.

  “Oh, dea
r,” Susan said, not looking as if she wanted to smile anymore. “I just assumed…I mean, I really thought you knew.”

  I noticed that David was glancing our way. I didn’t want him thinking there was anything wrong. I mean, the last thing I need is for my boyfriend to think I am freaked out by the sight of a naked guy.

  “It’s cool,” I said, picking up my pencil and willing Susan to go away and leave me to blush in peace. “I get it now. It’s all good.”

  Susan Boone didn’t look as if she believed me, though.

  “Are you sure?” she wanted to know. “You’re all right?”

  “I’m peachy,” I said.

  Oh my God. I can’t believe I said peachy. I don’t know what possessed me. The sight of a naked guy, and all I can think of to say is “I’m peachy”?

  I don’t know how I got through the rest of the class. I tried to concentrate on drawing what I saw, not what I knew, the way Susan had taught me to during our first lessons together. I still knew I was drawing a naked guy, but it helped when all I saw was a line going this way, and another line going that, and a shadow here, and another one there, and so on. By breaking Terry down into so many planes and valleys, I was able to render a fairly realistic and even kind of good (if I do say so myself) drawing of him.

  When, at the end of the class, Susan asked us to put our drawing pads on the windowsill so we could critique each other’s work, I saw that mine wasn’t any better or worse than anybody else’s. You couldn’t, for instance, tell from mine that it was my first drawing of a naked guy.

  Susan did say, though, that I hadn’t done a very good job of fixing the subject of my drawing to the page. Which basically meant that my drawing was just of Terry, floating around, with no background to support him.

  “What you’ve drawn here, Sam,” Susan said, “is a fine representation of the parts. But you need to think of the drawing as a whole.”

  But I didn’t take Susan’s criticism about the parts versus the whole to heart, because I knew that it was a miracle I’d been able to draw anything at all, given my great naked guy–induced shock.

  To make matters worse, later, as we were getting ready to go, Terry came up to me and was all, “Hey, I liked your drawing. Aren’t you that chick who saved the president?”

  Fortunately, he had put his jeans back on by then, so I was able to look him in the eye and go, “Yeah.”

  He nodded and said, “Cool. Thought so. That was, you know, brave. But, uh…what’d you do to your hair?”

  “Just wanted a change,” I said brightly.

  “Oh,” Terry said, appearing to think about that. “Okay. Well, that’s cool.”

  Which isn’t all that reassuring, if you think about it. I mean, seeing as how it was coming from someone who makes a living standing around without any clothes on.

  Still, I guess I wasn’t as cool in the studio as I thought I’d been, since on the way down to the car—David had offered to give me a lift home—he asked, barely able to contain the laughter in his voice, “So, what’d you think of Terry’s…inguinal ligament?”

  I nearly choked on the Certs I’d slipped into my mouth.

  “Um,” I said. “I’ve seen bigger.”

  “Really?” The laughter disappeared from David’s voice. “His was pretty, um, pronounced.”

  “Not as big as some of the ones I’ve seen,” I said, meaning the guys on Manhattan public access.

  Then, seeing the stunned expression on David’s face, I wondered if he knew that’s what I meant—the guys I’d seen on TV, I mean.

  Also, whether we were really talking about inguinal ligaments.

  “I just hope it’s a female model next time,” Rob, the Secret Service agent, said, looking sadly down at his drawing pad. “Otherwise, I’m going to have a lot of explaining to do to the guys back at the office.”

  David and I laughed—nervously, in my case. I mean, I was still kind of shocked. I know that, as an artist, and all, I should see a naked body as just that—a naked body, the subject of the piece I was creating.

  It was just that I couldn’t help thinking about David’s you-know-what and wondering if it was as big as Terry’s (probably not, judging by his reaction to my inguinal ligament comment).

  Which of course led me to wonder if I even wanted to see David’s you-know-what. Up until today, I’d been pretty certain I did. You know. Someday.

  Now, I wasn’t so sure.

  Of course, it wasn’t like there’d been all that many opportunities for this kind of thing between us. Trying to find a private moment with the son of the leader of the free world is challenging, to say the least. Especially when there’s always some guy with an earpiece lurking around.

  Still, we did our best. There was my house, of course. My parents have a rule about boys in the bedrooms—i.e., they aren’t allowed in them.

  But my parents aren’t always home. And Theresa’s not usually around on weekends. When everyone else is gone—at one of Lucy’s games, or Rebecca’s qigong demonstrations, or whatever—David and I occasionally get a chance to engage in a little tonsil hockey, and sometimes more than that. Last Sunday, as a matter of fact, things between us got so, well, heated that we didn’t even hear the front door slam. It was only because Manet, my dog, scrambled up from my bedroom floor to go greet whoever it was who’d come home early—Rebecca, dropped off from a friend’s slumber party at the Smithsonian—that we didn’t get caught in an extremely compromising position.

  Not that I imagine Rebecca would have cared. When we came down the stairs, acting like we’d been doing nothing more exciting than homework, she just went, “Did you guys know that trans fats, like the ones found in Oreos, account for only about point five percent of daily calories for Europeans, as opposed to an estimated two point six percent for Americans, and that that’s one reason why Europeans are so much skinnier than Americans, despite all the Brie they eat?”

  Walking me to the door after dropping me off from wherever we’d been was really the only time David and I could count on the two of us being left alone for a few minutes…at least until Theresa or one of my parents realized we were out there and started flicking the porch light on and off.

  I’m telling you, it’s hard when your boyfriend is the president’s son.

  Anyway, as he walked me to my front door the evening of our first life drawing class, David pulled me into the shadows beneath the big weeping willow tree in the front yard—as was his custom—and pressed me up against the trunk as he kissed me.

  This was also his custom. I must say, both these customs delighted me very much.

  Although that night, I was still sort of weirded out by the whole naked Terry thing and couldn’t quite, you know. Get into it.

  I think David could tell, since at one point he lifted his head and went, conversationally, “Did you really think that guy’s inguinal ligament was small?”

  “No,” I said, to tease him. “Do you really like my hair?”

  “Yes,” he said to tease me back. “But I really, really like this shirt you have on. Do you want to go to Camp David with me for Thanksgiving? You can come if you promise to wear this shirt.”

  “Okay,” I said—then slammed my head against the trunk of the tree as I whipped it back to look up at him. “Wait. WHAT did you just say?”

  “Thanksgiving,” he said, his lips moving up the side of my neck, toward my right ear lobe. “You’ve heard of it, surely. It’s a national holiday, traditionally celebrated by ingesting large amounts of turkey and watching football—”

  “I know what Thanksgiving is, David,” I said. “What I mean is—Camp David?”

  “Camp David is the official presidential retreat away from the White House, located in Maryland—”

  “Stop goofing around,” I said. “I know what Camp David is. How did you talk your parents into letting you invite me there?”

  “I didn’t have to,” David said with a shrug. “I just asked them if I could bring you, and they said sure. I’
ll admit that was before.”

  “Before what?”

  “Before they saw what you did to your hair. But I’m sure they’ll still let you come. So…want to?”

  “Are you SERIOUS?” I couldn’t believe he was being so jokey about it. Because this was big. I mean, huge. My boyfriend was asking me to go away with him. Overnight.

  And okay, his parents were going to be there, and all. But even so, it could only mean one thing.

  Couldn’t it?

  “Of course I’m serious,” David said. “Come on, Sharona. It’ll be fun. There’s all sorts of stuff to do there. Horseback riding. Movies. Parcheesi.”

  Parcheesi? Was that some kind of weird boy code name for sex? Because that had to be what he was thinking we were going to do, right? I mean, have sex? Isn’t that what couples who go away for the weekend together do?

  “Don’t even tell me you don’t want to, Sharona,” David was saying. “I know you do.”

  But how? How could he know I wanted to? Had I been giving off some I-want-to-have-sex vibe without even knowing it? Because I’m not sure I want to. Okay, sometimes I’m sure I want to, but not most of the time. And especially not now, having been forced to sit there and look at a naked guy for three hours….

  “You said you guys always go to your grandma’s in Baltimore for Thanksgiving,” David went on. “And that it’s totally boring there. Right? So get out of it. And come to Camp David with me.”

  What should I say? I didn’t know what to say!

  “My parents will NEVER let me go away with you.”

  Seriously. That’s what came blurting out of my mouth. Not “I’m not sure I’m ready yet, David,” or “Are you talking about what I think you’re talking about, David, or do you really mean Parcheesi as in…Parcheesi?”