Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything

by E. Lockhart

  Brat shrugs. “I'm guessing not. We had to get ice from a guy with a hot dog cart to put on Titus's eye. Shane took off.”

  “Hell,” I say. “One week and everything changes.”

  We are quiet for a minute. I can see Malachy down at the corner, heading our way. “Wanna see something my dad brought me from Hong Kong?” I ask.

  Brat nods.

  I pull out two Bean Curd Babies from my bag. “You know what these are?”

  “Oh, wow. Is that the new generation?” says Brat, his voice excited. “I read on the Web they have pets, too. Did he bring you the pets?”

  And we talk Bean Curd Babies as people arrive and light up around us—until I remember that I have to see the principal before class.

  i head into Valenti's office with a note from my dad. It says I had a nasty bout of the flu, my parents were out of town, he's so sorry he didn't notify the school about it earlier, and of course I am planning to make up all the work.

  “Hm,” says Valenti when I hand her the note. “I trust you're feeling better now, Miss Yee?”

  “Yes.”

  “I've got your transcript here,” the principal says, pulling a file from her drawer. “Your academic record isn't in great shape.”

  “I know,” I say. “I have to get myself together.”

  “Attendance at the Manhattan High School for the Arts is a privilege,” Valenti continues, “and I want to see my students striving to reach the high bar we set. This spotty record doesn't speak well for your commitment to the visual arts or to your academic studies….”

  She goes on, a speech I'm sure she delivers a hundred times a year to degenerate students of various kinds.

  “Um, excuse me?” I venture, when the lecture seems to be winding down. “There is something I want to talk to you about. Since I'm here.”

  “Yes? I'm listening.” Valenti puts on a sympathetic face, like she's all set to listen to a story about me doing drugs or being pregnant.

  I take a deep breath. “Can you tell me the ratio of students at this school? Like how many girls there are, compared to how many boys?”

  “Certainly,” she answers, looking a bit surprised.

  “The student body is fifty-two percent female, fortyeight percent male.”

  “It is?” I say. “Because it has, ah, come to my attention—I mean, not that I've ever been in there, but I was talking to some people, and it seems like the girls' locker room is only like half the size of the boys'. They've got twice as many showerheads as we do, more bins for dirty towels, more toilet stalls and urinals on top of that.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I hear they've got a full-length mirror in there, and some minilockers to keep their shoes in overnight, or shampoo, or whatever, and also fullheight lockers so they can hang their coats up.”

  Valenti leans back in her chair and crosses her arms. “I see.”

  “I was talking to my dad about it,” I go on, “and he said Title Nine makes it illegal to have sex discrimination in sports programs at a school that gets government funding. Which we must be getting, right? Because this is a public school.”

  “Title Nine,” says Valenti.

  I look down at the Post-it note in my hand. “Yeah. Title Nine of the Education Amendments of 1972.”

  “I know what Title Nine is, Miss Yee.”

  “Oh.” Because she really had sounded like she didn't. “So, it's more than thirty years since it became illegal to give girls only half the space that boys get in the locker rooms, plus worse facilities like smaller lockers and no minilockers.”

  She's silent.

  “I'm right, aren't I? Because equal treatment means supplies and practice times and scholarships, but also locker rooms. I looked it up on the Web. And, um, like I said, it's been more than thirty years and we still have these tiny-ass locker rooms and it's just wrong. I'd like to make a complaint.”

  Hell. I can't believe I said “tiny-ass” right in front of the principal.

  Is she gonna throw me out for disrespect?

  Valenti sighs heavily and leans forward. “You know, Miss Yee, it's a good point. This building was built in the 1950s, before Title Nine existed, when it was commonplace to have unequal facilities. Girls participated very little in athletics and team sports back then. In my day”— and here, Valenti actually cracks a smile—“the only sports girls did were volleyball and cheerleading.”

  “But now,” I blurt out, “you're making us do gym five days a week and we have to play a sport starting junior year. And it is just too stupid crowded in there.”

  “I'd like to be in compliance with Title Nine,” says Valenti, “but where is the money going to come from?

  Even should we apply for additional government money or raise funds from the PTA to remodel, we'd have to cut into the sculpture studio in order to make space for the expanded locker room—and the studio is too small as it is. Believe me, Miss Yee, I'm aware of the inequality; I just don't see what there is to do about it. Take space from the arts program that is the premise of our school, or leave things as they are. And that's not even considering where the money is to come from, and whether a big remodeling project is the best possible allocation of funds, considering the fact that we're undersupplied with basics like textbooks.”

  “Oh.”

  “Yes,” says Valenti. “Now you can see why things stand as they do. Thank you for bringing it to my attention, but unless something major happens in terms of funding, I'm afraid it's impossible.”

  “It's so unfair!”

  “Look. I'm pleased to see you engaging in community activism, Miss Yee. And of course we want our students' voices to be heard. How about holding a bake sale to raise money for art supplies? Or running for student council?”

  Whatever. I don't like baking, and student council elections aren't until next September.

  This can't be an unsolvable problem.

  Valenti wasn't the one who spent a week watching all those boys showering in comfort and hanging up their clothes in big lockers. Valenti doesn't have to lug her running shoes and shampoo in her backpack every day, when all the supposedly stronger sex have minilockers.

  “Can't we switch?” It comes out of my mouth before I even think about saying it.

  “What?”

  “Can't you put the girls in the boys' locker room, starting next fall? We could switch back again halfway through the year.”

  “Oh.” She wrinkles her brow. “Um. Well, there's the matter of the bathroom facilities.”

  “Oh, please. They don't need urinals. They can do fine in the regular ones.”

  Crap,

  that came out so sarcastic,

  I bet I ruined everything just now—

  Principal Valenti laughs. “You know, Miss Yee, I'm sure they can.” She chuckles again. “Do fine in the regular ones. It's a good idea, actually. I'm surprised no one thought of it before. How about I run it by Mr. Sanchez and put it forward at the board meeting this Wednesday?” she asks.

  She said yes,

  she said yes,

  she said yes!

  I stand up and collect my bag from the floor. “Okay. I mean, great. I should get to class now.”

  “Keep up on your studies, Miss Yee,” says Valenti, suddenly strict again. “There's still time to get those grades in shape by the end of the school year. And now that we've met, I'll have my eye on you.”

  “All right. And thanks.”

  I walk down the hall in a glow.

  Spidey's got nothing on me today.

  I'm Gretchen Yee, advocate for equal opportunity and proud wearer of a red vinyl miniskirt.

  Housefly no more.

  i'm ten minutes late for first-period drawing, and when I get there the whole class has moved the benches so they face one another. Everyone is propping their sketchbooks on their laps and looking carefully at the person across the way. Katya is drawing Brat. Shane is with Malachy. Adrian is with Cammie. Taffy is with that mousy girl Margaret.
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br />   Titus is getting ready to draw Kensington, which is what happens when there's not an even number of people in class. You have to use the teacher as your model. But as soon as Kensington sees me, she stands up and silently gestures that I should get my pad from the storage closet and take her place.

  I show her the note from my dad, which now has Principal Valenti's initials on it, and she nods and tells me to sit down. I know the drill. We've done this exercise more than once during the portraiture unit, usually with some variation: the medium we use, or the way we're supposed to look at the subject. I sit down with my pencil box next to me, and peek at what Katya's working with. Vine charcoal.

  “Facial portrait,” she whispers to me. “Draw the background, too. You're not supposed to take your charcoal off the paper 'cause you're aiming to get a flow going. Start with the inside corner of the eye.”

  “Got it.” I reach over and squeeze her knee.

  I get my charcoal out of the box, and flip the sketchbook to a clean page. And now I have to draw Titus.

  Titus I've seen without clothes.

  Titus I've seen looking in the mirror like he hates himself.

  Titus whose dad is gay.

  Titus I'm more crazy about than even before I knew this stuff.

  And he is going to draw me.

  We've never been partners for this exercise before.

  I've drawn Katya and Taffy and Malachy, but never Titus, and never Shane. I always avoided it, since I didn't think I'd be able to stand having either one of them look at me for half an hour. It would make me too self-conscious.

  And for the first few minutes, I am.

  Are my bangs sticking funny to my forehead?

  And is my lip gloss still on,

  and do I have a pimple on my chin,

  or anything on my teeth?

  When Katya drew me, I looked round and very Chinese and soft. Her portraits always look warm. When Taffy drew me I looked hard and remote, all sharp edges. Like a shell of a person. And Malachy's was chaotic and precise at the same time—he's good— but he made me look old and worldly, which I'm not.

  How will Titus draw me?

  I draw the eyes without looking directly at him, the way I draw from the inside of my head when I'm doing comic book stuff. But then I look up, and he's Titus. Still so beautiful, and his right eye is green and purple from the bruise Shane gave him. He's looking down at his paper partly like he's shy and partly like he's thinking hard about what he's doing. And suddenly, I want to see if I can draw him. The way I see him.

  Because I know he doesn't see himself as I do.

  Charcoal is one of my favorite things to draw with. It's soft, and you can smudge it with your finger to blend, or press hard and get this thick dark line that's very dramatic. I move from his eyes up to his eyebrows, which are narrow and black, and then I do his hair, which I make inky dark and soft-looking. I forget about the background part of the assignment and concentrate on the dark area under his eyes, on his long thin nose, his soft lips with the bottom one jutting out as he concentrates, the shadows across his neck and the details of the silver key chain he wears around it. His lovely bony collarbone jutting out of his worn T-shirt. And I just think

  edge of the T-shirt

  shadow at the collarbone

  neck, neck, shadow under the jaw

  he's wonderful

  he's wonderful

  ear, ear

  cheekbone

  eyebrows

  eyelashes

  Titus,

  Titus,

  Titus.

  I put all my love into the picture, I really do. There are soft gray lines crisscrossing his face, since we're not supposed to lift up the charcoal, and they make him look a little sad, a little trapped. I'm surprised when Kensington says our half hour is over, and we should all stand and walk around the room to see what other people have been doing.

  I look up, and there is Titus, looking at me. Looking right at me, like he sees me. Like he's been looking into my soul, stupid as that sounds.

  He looks down at his pencil case, getting very busy putting the charcoal away.

  Kensington won't be happy with what I did. It still has the bold black comic-book line I like to use, and the stylized shading.

  I just like it.

  It feels like me.

  It's how I draw.

  No doubt she will lay into me as usual, will say something loud and humiliating that everyone can hear, because she only seems to like it when I'm fake and obedient and I draw the way she thinks is good, the way I did when I did that horrible self-portrait, week before last.

  But news flash:

  I no longer care if Kensington likes it.

  I no longer care if she says something mean and tells the whole class I'm derivative and I don't make art like what hangs in museums.

  I am good at this, at comic book drawing.

  I'm good at it and I love it.

  It is the way I want to draw.

  Which is enough.

  Besides, this is New York City. Somewhere, in the offices of DC and Marvel, behind the counters of Forbidden Planet on Thirteenth Street, somewhere—lots of places, even—are other people who love it as much as I do. I just need to find them and not be existing in my tiny world anymore.

  We walk around the room, looking at what other people have done. Kensington is giving quiet critiques to people, one at a time. Surprisingly, she doesn't say anything to me at all.

  I'm dying to race around the benches to see what Titus drew, but I force myself to move slowly.

  I can hear Kensington talking to Adrian about negative space and not projecting preconceived ideas onto the subject but just drawing what you see.

  When I finally get to Titus's picture of me, I can't quite believe it.

  It's beautiful.

  It's me, with my bangs hanging crooked and my collar awry,

  but the girl in the drawing is lovely.

  Titus never draws people so they look lovely. He's a warts-and-all kind of artist, like he's trying to capture the core of someone's individuality.

  But me, he made me lovely. He did the mole on my left cheek and my thin upper lip and the shadows under my eyes. But if I were to look at that picture and not know it was me, I would say that the girl was gorgeous.

  And that the artist thought she was too.

  in English, Titus sits next to me and it's like he's made out of magnets. I used to think all the time about him touching me, brushing my arm with his by accident. But this time, all I can think about is me touching him.

  It's like everything is different, since I saw all those naked bodies and the picture he drew.

  Like now, I don't just know what I want; I also know I have to go after it.

  I should be taking notes on what Glazer is saying. Especially since I've missed a week of “Metamorphosis” discussions and I'm sure there's a test coming up. There's a pen in my bag, but I leave it where it is. Instead, I reach across Titus's notebook and snag his extra Rollerball.

  “Can I use this?” I whisper, putting my hand on his shoulder even though it's unnecessary.

  “Go ahead,” he whispers back.

  Then in my notebook I doodle a picture of Gregor Samsa as a giant cockroach—antennae waving in distress as he sits on his human bed. I shove it over toward Titus.

  When Glazer isn't looking, he writes on my paper: “That's how I look, first thing in the morning.”

  “Me too,” I write.

  Thinking about what he must look like—wearing pajamas, eyes heavy with sleep, hair even messier than usual—makes me start to sweat. And then I whisper what I actually think. “I'm sure you look delicious.”

  He blushes, and smiles,

  and looks down at his notes like he's concentrating.

  When class is over, I catch up with him in the hall.

  Hell, maybe he doesn't like me back.

  Maybe he doesn't think I'm beautiful and the picture was just a fluke. Maybe he was trying s
omething new with the way he draws.

  But if I never ask for what I want, I may never get it— because I know something about Titus now that I never knew before: he is insecure. He thinks he's skinny and bad at sports (which he is), but he thinks it makes him unattractive. That girls won't like him because he's not built, like Shane, or athletic, like Adrian.

  So he may never ask me, even if he likes me.

  I have to do something myself.

  “Wait up,” I say, my hands shaking like I've had too much coffee. He's with Adrian, laughing about some nothing, and he turns to look at me. “What? Sure. Ip, I'll catch you later. I have to talk to Gretchen about something.”

  Adrian, being who he is, socks Titus on the shoulder and waggles his eyebrows. Which is embarrassing, since he's absolutely right about what's going on—at least from my end. But then he disappears down the hall.

  People are swarming around us, rushing to get to class before the next bell, but all of a sudden it's like we're the only two people there.

  Me and Titus.

  Titus and me.

  There isn't much time. I better get it out and get it over with.

  “You want to go see a movie with me on Friday?” I ask. “We could get dumplings at this place I know, they're like five for a dollar on the street in Chinatown, and then go to the Angelika?”

  I can't read his face. He looks surprised, certainly, but I can't tell what else. Whether he wants to go or not. “What's playing?” he asks.

  Hell. I don't know what's playing!

  I had it all figured out about the dumplings

  and where the theater was

  and everything,

  but I never checked what's playing.

  I take a deep breath. “I don't care,” I say. “I just want to see it with you.”

  Because it's the truth.

  I want to go somewhere, anywhere, with him.

  And then he's grabbing my hand, and pulling me into a storage room they use for art supplies. And he puts his finger to his lips, and the walls are filled with pads of paper and boxes of colored pencils and jars of paint,

  and I'm laughing

  and he shuts the door behind us

  and leans up against it to stop anyone coming in