But back in the real world, where I’m not having fond memories of practicing kissing on a poster of Milo Ritter (not that I did that…but I totally did), I blink at the real-life Milo Ritter. I think he’s asking me where hair and makeup is, but what comes out of my mouth is “Oh my God you’re Milo Ritter.”
Smooth, Dee. Real smooth.
As soon as I hear those words, all strung together and loud, I reach up and cover my mouth with both hands, my eyes going wide and, I’m sure, my cheeks turning crimson.
“Left down the hall, third door on your right,” Ruth says, running in behind him. Other than answering his question, she barely takes notice. She couldn’t care less that she’s just brushed past one of the most famous pop stars in the known universe, even bumping his shoulder as she goes. She just hustles over to where I’m standing, takes the stack of inventory papers out of my hand, and shuffles through until she’s found whatever she’s looking for. She plucks that page from the stack, crumples it up, and tosses it toward a trash can in the corner. Then, just as quickly as she arrived, she’s gone.
The silence returns to the room, but Milo is still there. He’s looking at me like I’ve got something on my face, and it’s only then that I realize what it is. It’s an embarrassing expression of shock and awe, my mouth hanging open, my eyes wide. I blink at him. Now would be a good time to pull myself together. To not look like a complete and total fangirl/stalker/psycho. But it’s not happening, and his nose is wrinkling now, taking on a look of faint disgust.
“I, um, sorry?” I say. My tongue trips over the words, not even able to get out one half sentence correctly. My God, I am such a goober. Stop staring, Dee. Stop staring. Right now. Look. Away. And finally—finally—I tear my eyes away from him and look down at my inventory sheets.
I hear a sigh and the sound of a long, slow stride retreating. Then the door opens and slams shut, echoing in the room, now empty except for me and an army’s worth of glassware.
As soon as he’s gone, all the blood that I didn’t realize had left my brain floods back. I feel sort of like I might fall over into my tower of pint glasses. I throw a hand out to steady myself while my mind immediately begins to punish me, running me back through the last minute and a half of pure embarrassment, over and over again on a loop. Any hope I had of being cool—hell, of being normal—has completely disappeared. Milo probably thinks I’m a small-town loser, and right now it feels like he might be right.
The door swings open, and my blood runs cold. I’m worried it might be Milo again, back to hear me mangle the English language some more, but it’s Ruth. She takes the inventory sheets out of my hand, the whole stack this time, and tosses them onto the work table. Then she thrusts a spiral-bound black notebook at me. I recognize it immediately. It’s the exact same sketchbook I have in my bag in the back of the room, the same kind I’ve been using since Mrs. Fisher, my art teacher, first gave me one freshman year. This one is brand-new and covered in plastic, the hard black cover free of scuffs, the black spiral binding lacking any bends or chips. The white pages between the covers are crisp and bright, and I know if I held it to my face I could inhale the earthy smell of new paper.
“Go beat this up,” Ruth says, as if that’s the normal instruction that accompanies a brand-new sketchbook.
I blink at her. “Excuse me?”
“Beat it up. Make it look worn.” Her tone is clipped. That’s one question, one answer. I can maybe get one more out of her before she either dies of exasperation or simply walks away.
But I have so many questions. “How…I mean, are there tools? Or should I—”
Ruth shakes her head, a quick, tiny movement, like she can’t believe she’s having to explain this to me. “Go outside, throw it in the parking lot, drop it in some dirt, walk over it a bit, whatever. Run it over with your car if you have to. Just make it look like it’s been carried around for the last couple years. It belongs to our main character. He’s never without it, and it needs to look like it.”
They’re the most words she’s said to me all in a row since I got here, and I mentally grab hold of them and hang on for dear life. I rewind them and run them back while she disappears out the door.
Outside it’s blazing hot, and the gnats are almost as thick as the pollen. I sneeze and swat in front of my face before I remind myself that the trick with gnats is to blow them away. This is why I could never be a camp counselor. The outdoors and I do not agree on a whole lot.
With the sun beating down, the black covers of the sketchbook heat up in my hand. It won’t be long before the spiral binding is collecting enough heat to leave a temporary brand on your leg, a lesson I’ve learned sketching through many Georgia summers.
A brand-new sketchbook like this one is something that usually fills me with excitement and a sense of possibility. Will I fill it with variations on a theme? Will it be a catchall for whatever flies through my mind? Will anything inside it turn into a bigger project? Leap from the thick white pages onto a canvas, or carve its shape into some clay? I never buy a new sketchbook until I have only one page left in the old one. It’s a rule I made for myself long ago, partially to save money, and partially so I wouldn’t wear out the feeling that comes with handing over $19.99 and bringing it home, of writing my name, email address, and “Reward If Found” on the inside front cover.
It all started when I was little, and my mom was on deadline for her first book, the kind of bodice-ripping romance novel she’d soon become famous for. I wanted to write books “like Mommy,” but I was too young to know many words, much less spell them, so Mom gave me a coloring book and a brand-new box of crayons. When I’d filled every page, she started handing me blank pages from her printer, and when I started going through those too fast, she gave me old marked-up drafts so I could draw on the back of the pages. She says my art obsession grew out of her need to distract me without turning to the television. Whatever the reason, “making pictures,” as I called it back then, soon became my favorite pastime.
When I started school, art class was my favorite. I loved everything I tried, from drawing to painting to collage. Even forming shapes out of gray lumps of clay. By middle school I was painting sets for the school plays and helping my teachers with their bulletin boards. I doodled in the margins of my notebooks and on every chalkboard I came across.
I didn’t really care about being good at it. In fact, the thought barely occurred to me. It was just something I enjoyed doing, and my chief priority was doing it as much as possible. Sort of like my dad and running. I don’t think he’s ever entered a race, but he still loves his daily three-milers. Being the fastest, or even just fast, doesn’t seem to matter to him at all. It’s about going out every morning, lacing up his running shoes, and putting one foot in front of the other. For me, it’s about pencil to paper, brush to canvas, hand to clay.
But then high school started, and everybody sorted into their groups: athletes, drama kids, school nerds. Everybody had a thing, and so art became mine. I was the girl who took every art class, and when she ran out, she started taking them again. Soon it wasn’t just an identity, but a path. A future. Shows and competitions and the possibility of art school, maybe even a good one like RISD or Pratt. And one of the steps on that path was the Governor’s School. It was an achievement, and also a necessity. It would look great on my applications, after all.
It was supposed to be a foregone conclusion, all of it. Dee is the art girl. She’s going to art school. That’s that. It was never even a decision I remember making. It just was.
And then it wasn’t.
Getting that rejection letter didn’t just knock me off the path, it drop-kicked me into the next county, and I’m still trying to figure out how to get back. Or if I even want to. Because staring down at this brand-new sketchbook, I don’t feel anything. Not excitement. Not possibility. I feel as blank as the pages inside.
I tell myself that it’s because this book isn’t mine. I’m not supposed to draw in it at all
. In fact, I’m supposed to treat this one exactly the opposite of how I normally treat my sketchbooks, which I guard from liquids and dirt and carefully close the covers with the elastic band to avoid bending the pages. This one needs to be exposed to the elements in a way that would normally make my skin crawl.
I wander around the parking lot until I find a patch of Georgia red clay, dusty and dry on the pavement. I glance around to make sure no one is watching this ridiculous exercise, and then I drop the journal into the dirt. A pink dust cloud rises up around it, but when I pick it up, all the dust mostly brushes off. Other than a bit of discoloration on the edges of the pages, the thing still looks brand new. So much for all that time I spent protecting my own books. Looks like this assignment is going to be a little harder than I thought. I’m going to have to get a little more rough with it, apparently.
I try again. This time I raise the journal over my head with both hands, then fling it down into the dirt. The dust cloud rises high enough to send me into a sneezing fit. Still, it hardly looks well worn, or even worn at all. So I pick it up and whip it like a Frisbee across the parking lot. It bounces and skids across the blacktop, landing with a spin. I run over and give it a decent kick with the toe of my boot, sending it farther across the ground. Then I chase after it, picking up speed and leaping at the last second so I stomp down on the cover hard with both feet.
When I look down at the sketchbook, now wedged beneath my feet, I don’t feel blank. I feel great.
I don’t know what comes over me, but suddenly I’m all about destroying it. I kick it and stomp it with such force that my hair starts to come loose from the messy bun I’d tied it up in. I can feel pricks of sweat forming on the back of my neck as I dance around on the cover, leaving footprints and scuffs.
“What did that thing ever do to you?”
He’s made a joke, but the look on Milo’s face is completely devoid of mirth. In fact, it’s completely devoid of anything, like he’s working overtime not to betray a single emotion. He’s doing a damn good job, too. I have no idea how to respond. Despite his dour appearance, he’s still totally smoking hot, with the blue in his T-shirt perfectly picking out the blue flecks from his otherwise stormy eyes. My cheeks go red and I feel twisty and nervous, like I should be cool and flirty but not flirt with him so he won’t think I’m uncool. My mind is going in a thousand directions, and unfortunately it’s just causing me to shift uncomfortably in my boots and toss my hair, which doesn’t move because it’s still mostly tied up in a bun.
In short, I look like a lunatic.
“I’m, uh—my job?” I say finally. So much for acting cool, or speaking in complete sentences.
“Mmmm,” he says, nodding, and suddenly his appearance matters less to me than the fact that he’s being sort of annoying. He’s not giving me anything here. If he doesn’t want a conversation, why did he walk over here? If he’s going to stand there staring at me, he could at least participate. Be civil. He’s acting as if someone is charging him by the word, and the price is steep.
I’m at a loss. “You want to try?” I hold out the book, which now has several scuffs and dirt-stained edges but still isn’t nearly worn enough.
“No,” he says, just like that. Just no, short and snappish in a way that makes me want to snarl at him, or at least roll my eyes. But I stop myself and drop the journal back into the dust. He stands there, staring first at me, then at the journal wedged under my foot. “Yeah, okay.”
I blink at him, surprised. I take my foot off the journal, and he stoops down to pick it up. Without a word, he starts walking away with my assignment, over which Ruth may or may not kill me.
“Uh, hey, so—” I say, walking after him. I have to double my steps to keep up with his long stride. I follow him over to the grass off the side of the parking lot. As soon as he steps on it, he drops into a squat and grinds the edge of the journal into the ground until the edges of the pages are stained green, a few streaks of brown soil mixed in. He plants one foot on the edge for leverage and grabs hold of the other and yanks. The cover bends, forming a deep crease. Then he stands, strides over to a tree, a puny little newly planted one that’s still being held up by stakes, and starts beating the journal into the narrow trunk. The branches of the tree tremble, and green leaves start raining down.
“Um, I think you’re doing more damage to the tree than to the sketchbook,” I say, and with his stony, sour mood I half expect him to whirl around and whap me upside the head out of sheer momentum.
He stops and glances down at the book. It definitely looks used, and very abused. His face a mask, he blinks at the cover, then thrusts it into my hand.
“Thanks?” I say, but I’m talking to his back. He’s already halfway across the parking lot, headed back to the studio door.
The camera focuses on DEE as she squats in front of the fireplace in her house and ceremonially burns all remaining evidence of her Milo Ritter fandom.
It’s only a mile and a half from the studio downtown to Naz’s house up on College Hill, but between the heat and my fury, I manage to work up a serious sweat. My shirt is practically glued to my back, and my bra feels like I wore it in the shower. The whole way there my mind is going over my run-in with Milo and coming up with awesome retorts to his totally jerkish behavior. If only I’d had the thought—and the wherewithal—to actually say them back then. Instead I stood there drowning in my awe of him while he treated me like something he stepped in. I feel embarrassed and pissed, a combination that’s giving me a case of rage nausea.
When I arrive, I lean my bike against the whitewashed lattice of the Parad family front porch and climb the steps to the heavy stained-glass front door. I let myself into their sprawling Victorian, slip off my boots, and head straight up the curved staircase to Naz’s room. She’s got the bedroom in the turret, which, if I didn’t already like her, would make me want to be friends with her immediately. I walk in and take a moment, as I usually do, to appreciate the vaulted ceiling leading up to the point of the turret. The round room, windows taking up almost 75 percent of the wall space, is small, but what it lacks in size it more than makes up for in character. We’ve played many games of pretend over the years where we took turns being badass princesses rescuing each other and fighting dragons (otherwise known as Luther and Watson, the Parads’ ancient basset hounds).
Naz has all the windows open, as she usually does from the time the temperature breaks seventy in the early spring until the moment in the late fall when it drops again. The gauzy white curtains that frame every window are fluttering in the breeze, the leaves on the old oak tree outside rustling like a symphony.
Naz is at her desk, a hulking wooden thing that her mom saved from the Dumpster at the college. Her laptop is open, and she’s tap-tap-tapping away at breakneck pace. But one look at me and my angry red cheeks, my sweat-drenched shirt, and my shoulders heaving as I huff and puff from my bike ride over here has her clamping her mouth shut before opening it again to ask, “What in the hell happened to you?”
“He’s a jerk! An ass waffle! A complete and total douche canoe!” I collapse back onto her fluffy bed as I spout my Mad Libs–worthy insults.
Roughing up the sketchbook was my last task for the day, and I spent another hour with it after Milo left, channeling all my annoyance and frustration from his rotten behavior into the abuse of the poor thing. When I returned it to Ruth in the prop room just before I left, I earned a wide-eyed nod of approval. And I was too pissed to even appreciate it.
Naz stares for a moment, then cocks her head to the side. “I’m sorry, what now?”
Naz’s parents are both Indian, from a small town just outside Delhi, but she was born squarely in the middle of Georgia, which gives her a slight Southern twang. It’s a bit incongruous with her dark skin, almond-shaped eyes, and the long dark hair she keeps perpetually braided down her right shoulder, but it works for her. Naz is nothing if not incongruous. She’s also incredibly hard to ruffle, and walks around like a
tiny adult. I guess that’s what happens when you’re the youngest of six by a good four years. Naz’s oldest sister, Divya, is in her late twenties and already has two kids of her own, four-year-old twin terrors who are as a cute as they are loud.
“Milo Ritter. I met him today, twice, and both times he treated me like, God, I don’t even know what, but it sucked.”
Before Naz can respond, Dr. Parad pops her head into the bedroom. She’s got Naz’s long dark hair, only hers is streaked with gray in a way that looks like it must have been professionally done. She’s the most beautiful chemist I’ve ever seen. She teaches at Wilder, along with my dad and the other Dr. Parad, who both teach in the history department.
“Dee, are you staying for dinner? I’m making samosas.” Dr. Parad’s veggie samosas are so good I have dreams about them. She uses English peas Naz’s dad grows in their backyard garden. They’re sweet like candy and so fresh they burst on your tongue.
“If that’s okay,” I reply.
“Always, you know that,” she says, and disappears back out the door. As soon as it closes, I fall back onto Naz’s bed and sink into the ruffles of her down comforter. I let out a sigh that’s equal parts relaxed and annoyed.
“What do you care?” Naz says. “I mean, it’s not like you’re really going to be spending a lot of time with him, right?”
My Unscripted Life Page 3
