How to Be Brave

by E. Katherine Kottaras

  “He’ll be happy to have you there.”

  “Yeah, so, look…” Daniel shifts in his chair. “I’m sorry about that day at Ellie’s. Did that guy give you my message?”

  “He did.”

  “Good. I was waiting when I got the text from my aunt about my dad. I was on a plane that night and I didn’t know your number.”

  “I figured as much.”

  “Here’s the thing. I think you guys should make up. Like I wrote in that note, she misses you. She talks about you all the time. We’ll be at the movies or whatever, and she’ll say something like ‘Georgia would love this.’”

  I do that, too.

  “She doesn’t even hear herself sometimes.” He smiles. “She’s stubborn. You know that.”

  “Well, I messed up pretty bad. I never even wanted to do that with Gregg.” I can feel my face redden.

  I wanted to do that with you.

  “You couldn’t help it. Whatever that girl Evelyn gave us was some fucked-up shit. I’m glad she’s out of this school. And honestly, I don’t really get why Liss is holding this over your head so much. I get it. It was a crazy night.”

  You get it. You actually understand.

  “Anyway, I didn’t mean to wait this long to tell you, but I just wanted to let you know. And I think you should talk to her.”

  “I gave her the card about my show. She texted back. We had about the shortest conversation ever. And then that was it.”

  “You were texting?” He shakes his head. “That’s not a conversation. Texting is about as effective as delivering the mail via pigeons. There’s only so much you can communicate. You guys need to talk in person.”

  “Yeah, you’re right.” I shrug. “I’m willing to, but I don’t think she is.”

  “Let me talk to her. I can be pretty convincing when I want to be.” And he winks.

  And he’s so damn cute.

  He’s with Liss now. Let it go, Georgia.

  “Okay,” I say. “Well, thanks.”

  “Have a great show tonight.” He stands up. “Mr. Marquez, I was never here.”

  Marquez looks at the ceiling and then under the desk. “Who said that?”

  Daniel throws his bag over his shoulder.

  “Hope your dad’s feeling better,” Marquez calls out as Daniel heads toward the door.

  Daniel nods and says, “Thanks.” Then he turns and waves. And he’s gone.

  Marquez looks at me. “You want to go, too?”

  I think about it for a second and then decide to stay. I have the big show tonight, a glimmer of promise that I’ll talk to my best friend, and a near-empty, quiet classroom with nothing to do but draw. For once, I’m comfortable right where I am.

  * * *

  The Shikaakwa Art Gallery and Coffee House is so übercool, I can hardly stand it. It’s small and the air is thick with the heavy scent of espresso and more espresso. Right when I walk in, someone dressed like a superhip penguin offers me some miniature empanadas, but my stomach is in too many knots to eat anything. If my dad’s arm weren’t wound around mine holding me up, I might have already collapsed on the floor, my knees are so shaky from this crazy night.

  My dad accepts an empanada in his free hand and takes a bite. “Mmmm. These are very good. I should suggest something like this to Vassilis when I get there.”

  “Dad, I think they have empanadas in California.”

  “But these have kalamata olives inside.” He holds it up for me to see. “It is very fancy.”

  The room is packed full with all these artsy people, and while I know they’re all here to support Marquez’s sister and the other artists (there’s a lot of squealing and hugging and pointing at artwork that is not my own), I don’t care. Because there they are, my seven paintings, hanging on the walls right next to theirs. I’m an artist.

  My dad seems just as nervous as me, he’s holding on so tight. “I called Maria. She wanted to come, but the kids are all sick. She was so very proud to hear your news.”

  Marquez isn’t here yet, but I recognize his sister immediately. She’s short like him and has the same feisty eyes. She comes running up to me and gives me a big hug. “You must be Georgia! So happy to meet you. I am Carissa.” She rolls her r’s like Dad. “Did you see all of your beautiful work?”

  “I did,” I say mid-hug. “This is amazing. Thank you so much.”

  “It’s what I do. Give a place to new artists so they can share their voice. It’s my service to the world. Now, go, see your work—” And she scampers away to give someone else a hug.

  My dad and I wander around the studio, spending time looking at all of the art. I love the other artists’ work. All three of them are students at the local college, and I just can’t believe I’m here with them. This is so much better than prom.

  After making our rounds, we find a corner table. My dad orders a double shot of espresso and sips it slowly. “This is like being in Athena at the kafeneion,” he says. “Except that no one is smoking.”

  Marquez arrives and shakes my dad’s hand, and my dad beams with pride. Carissa periodically sends a few people our way. They tell me how much they like my work. It’s really crazy, all of this. Toward the end of the night, Carissa skips over to whisper that a few people actually want to buy my stuff. They want it for their homes. They want to put my art on their walls.

  Unbelievable.

  And then something even more unbelievable happens.

  Liss and Daniel walk through the door.

  And behind them, Avery and Chloe, of all people, with their arms around their dates.

  They’re dressed up for prom, Liss in a nonsequined lime-green eyelet dress with her hair redder and wilder and wispier than ever, and Daniel in a gray suit and vest. Avery and Chloe look a little more traditional, in black sequins and pumps, but it’s the weirdest thing. They’re not at prom. They’re here instead.

  They’re here. For me.

  I run to the door. Liss sees me and opens her arms.

  And we hug.

  It’s just that easy.

  “What are you doing here?” I ask. “Shouldn’t you be at prom?”

  “We were. It was lame,” Liss says. Daniel and Avery and Chloe nod. “Terrible music. Awful food. And the ever-predictable dry humping and such. I thought Q-tip was going to have to turn on the ceiling sprinklers just to get them to separate.”

  God, I missed her.

  “I’m so sorry, Liss,” I whisper. “I fucked up so bad.”

  She looks at Daniel, and then Avery and Chloe, who give me a wave and then wander off into the crowd to leave us alone.

  “Yeah,” she says. “You did.” I look at her, my closest friend. No, it’s more than that—she’s the only other human being on earth who understands me to the core, the one who sees me for me, the one who knows me well enough to say she’s had enough of my shit. “But it wasn’t entirely your fault. Gregg’s the real fuckup. And Evelyn with that shit she gave you.” She takes me by the shoulders, right near my neck, and says, “But don’t you ever do anything like that again.”

  She forgives me. Hallelujah, holy shit, she forgives me.

  “Cross my heart and stick a needle in my eye.”

  “Don’t do that! You need your eyes for your artwork,” Liss says. “Now, give me the grand tour. I want to see it all.”

  I show her the paintings: the one of my father, his face etched with the topography of the Peloponnesus, his skin lines revealing the mountains of the Demeter and Artemis; the one of my mother, her face a simple labyrinth where the beginning meets the end; and the one of Liss, her face as a map of the bus and train routes, the 22 and the 36, the Red Line and Brown Line, of everywhere we’ve been. There are others, too, of imagined maps, with empty faces inside. These are for sale. The first three are not.

  “Georgia, these are simply … extraordinary—”

  And then she squeezes me and whispers into my ear, “Number six was the most important one.”

  “You’re th
e one who convinced me to do it,” I whisper back. “Thank you.”

  “How many more do you have left?”

  “Oh. I’m not doing it anymore.”

  “What? Why?”

  “No reason.” Just that numbers 13 through 15 became completely irrelevant the minute I kissed Gregg and you kissed Daniel. “Just … it was pointless to do it alone.”

  “Oh. I’m so sorry, Georgia.” Why are you apologizing? “Well, where is it?”

  “I ripped it up … and threw it away.”

  Liss looks like she’s about to smack me, but before she can say or do anything, Daniel and Avery and Chloe come back around. Of all the people to be here tonight, I did not expect the cheerleading squad to show up.

  “Aren’t they amazing?” Liss says.

  Daniel nods. “I can totally see Lee Mullican in your work, but like, they’re yours, you know?”

  “You looked him up?”

  “Yeah … I was curious,” he says. “Great stuff, for sure.”

  Avery cuts in. “Yeah, they’re, um…” She fumbles for her words. I don’t know why, but I can’t wait to hear what she thinks of them. “They’re really colorful.…”

  That’s the nicest thing she could come up with?

  Chloe steps in. “I think they’re all so beautiful. I really love the one of Liss. I knew it was her the minute I saw it.”

  I have to give Chloe credit. She actually is a nice person.

  “Wow,” I say. “Thanks. That really means a lot.”

  I’m about to ask them more about prom, but then Carissa comes up to introduce me to a couple who is interested in one of my paintings. I can’t not talk to them.

  “Tomorrow,” Liss whispers before I can get away. “Can we talk?”

  I nod. “Tomorrow.”

  And I’m swept away to talk business with an actual art buyer.

  It’s all just unbelievable.

  * * *

  Liss and the rest of them leave for an after-party (“You should join us later!”). Around 10:45, the crowd starts to thin a bit. I wander over to my paintings, where three of them have SOLD signs attached to their corners.

  Eighty dollars each. Times three. I just made $240.

  I am a working artist.

  But then I hear that little voice. It’s my mom’s voice.

  This is what she’s saying:

  There’s no money in art.

  There’s little appreciation.

  Even Lee Mullican. He died mostly forgotten.

  Even me.

  They’ll forget me when I’m gone.

  Was it all worth it?

  That was at her worst. And that wasn’t even really her. That was the infection, the sugar, her slowly dying mind.

  I shake that image of her out of my head and force myself to remember her at her best. This is what she would have said:

  I’m proud of who you are, Georgia. I’m proud of who you’ve become.

  This is what she did say to me.

  Her letter is there in my pocket.

  * * *

  The night has been magical and wondrous. Yet all things magical and wondrous must come to an end sometime, so after the last few stragglers head out the door, my dad and I say our good-byes to Carissa and Marquez and head home. I could join Liss and Daniel at the after-party, but I’m just not in the mood. Or, I should say, I’m in too good of a mood. All I want right now is to be at home with Dad, to go to bed happy, and to wake up to a new morning where everything is pretty much okay.

  But when we get to the car, Dad asks me if I want to get some ice cream. He’s wide awake (all those tiny shots of espresso, I think), but even more than that, he’s happy, too.

  “Sure,” I say. “But where? I can’t imagine any ice-cream places open at 11:30 on a Friday.”

  “I know of a great little spot that serves ice cream where we will have the whole place to ourselves,” Dad says.

  He drives us over to the restaurant. He unlocks the door and tells me to sit in the front booth. He turns on the lights just so he can see enough to make us a sundae, then turns them all off so that the only light coming in is from the outside street lamps. As people walk by, they give us funny looks, surprised looks, envious looks.

  * * *

  And this is what it’s like:

  I’m eating ice cream in the dark front booth with my dad

  with all of Chicago outside our window,

  horns and taxis and sirens.

  The night is alive around us.

  And I can see us sitting here

  just like they can see us sitting here.

  I see it, and I know that this moment is good,

  that this is one of the most perfect moments

  of my life.

  This is all I need,

  right now,

  to be here with him.

  This is all I want.

  14

  It’s 3:23 A.M. when I’m woken up by the annoying ding-a-ling-ding, ding-a-ling-ding of a text. Damn it. I forgot to turn it off. I blink my eyes and try to focus on the soft slants of light coming through the blinds. Wait a minute. It might have been Liss. That’s not annoying. That’s nothing short of awesome.

  I jump out of bed and dig my phone out of my bag.

  It’s Evelyn.

  Huh.

  I haven’t heard from her in months. She’s the last person I would expect to hear from, especially at this time of night.

  I hit the button to read the text.

  This is what it says:

  georgia im sorry for this and for everything and u need to know that u were the nicest person i ever knew and thank u for including me. tell liss too okay? my mom is making us move again and i just cant do it anymore. i cant be stuck like this forever. but its going to be ok i know it. it’ll be fine now that it’ll be over.

  I call her and throw on the lights, but she’s not answering and I’m freaking out I’m freaking out I’m freaking out.

  Shit shit shit. What does this mean? What is she doing? Why—fuck—why is she doing this?

  I call her again and again, but there’s no answer. I don’t know her mom’s number. I don’t know anything else about her except where she lives. Where she lives. I know where she lives. I have to call 911.

  I tell the operator about the message and about the drugs, and luckily I remember her address and her apartment number, and the operator, her voice so firm but so human, asks me where I live and for my number and she thanks me for calling and tells me to wake up my father.

  I do, and he’s confused because it’s 3:30 in the morning and I tell him we have to go we have to go, but he doesn’t understand so I have to explain it all to him—what Evelyn did—what we did, all of us together—and I’m worried, I’m just so worried that she’s done something worse—pills or something, I don’t know, it just doesn’t sound good. And he’s simmering mad—his fists tighten—his jaw tightens—he’s disappointed again, the deepest kind of disappointment I’ve ever seen. As he pulls on his socks and his shoes, he mutters: “This is who your friends are?”

  There’s no time, there’s no time, let’s go already—we have to go.

  We head out into the dark, chilly night. My dad drives quickly down the near-empty streets, and it’s too much of a familiar feeling, this middle-of-the-night feeling, this heading out into the unknown like so many times she woke up with chest pains or she was crashing or she was already in the hospital and they’d call us to come, it doesn’t look good, it doesn’t look good, this might be it, this might be the last night. And then it was. But that very last night we weren’t really rushing. That night we knew it was coming.

  And now this again. The same unknowns. What was she thinking? What was she doing? Why didn’t she choose to do something else? Anything else?

  Why am I always the one they go to?

  I see the flashing lights of the ambulance and fire engine from a block away. They’re there already, thank God, maybe they saved her, maybe she hadn’t done it y
et, whatever she was going to do, maybe it was a false alarm.

  But when we pull into an empty space, when we jump out of the car, when we run to the front door, when we see the doorman’s face, that same old man who caught us naked so many months ago, when we see the stretcher and the strength of four men pushing her unconscious body forward, when we see them hoist her into the back of the ambulance, we know it was too late. Again. This time. We were too late.

  * * *

  I don’t know how they found Evelyn’s mother, but she’s here with us, rubbing her frail hands together, pacing up and down the waiting room floors. It took her four hours to show up, and my dad had to say something nasty. “Who are these people who leave their children alone by themselves?” I didn’t respond.

  But somehow she made it. Maybe she was in Omaha or Raleigh or Washington, D.C. She’s rarely at home, and I’ve never met her. She’s older than I thought she’d be. She has big brown eyes, like Evelyn, and when she looks at me, they soften.

  When she first arrived, she grabbed me and hugged me. “You’re her friend Georgia, right?”

  I didn’t know how to hug her back, how hard to squeeze.

  She held on. “I don’t know what I’ve done to make Evelyn try so hard to hurt me like she has. Did she give you any clue as to why she would do something like this?”

  I didn’t know how to answer. I didn’t know how to say that she did, that she talked about it all the time. I didn’t know how to say, You move too much. You’re gone too much. You just need to be there for her.

  And then I thought, I needed to be there for her. But I wasn’t.

  At that moment, I felt sick, like I wanted to collapse and let Evelyn’s mom be the one to catch me.

  We sat down, finally, and talked for a while about Evelyn, trying to piece together the time line between when her mom left and when she took the pills. I guess Evelyn is failing every class and her mom thought it would be a good idea to move again, this time to Nevada, where her sister lives. Her mom said that Evelyn was angry, of course. But she said that this was nothing new, and she even said, rather coldly, if you ask me, “She just brings all this upon herself.”