Smoke Break

Iris managed to get us tickets to Don Giovanni.

“All the doors magically open to you when your dad’s an alumnus with deep pockets,” she winked at me, explaining. We were going to a show at the beginning of October, 7:30 PM, black tie event. Apparently this was the gala night with a big after-party. “Dad was a little weirded when I told him a couple of teenage girls wanted to go see opera. He asked me why.”

“What’d ya tell him?” I took a drag on her cigarette, then handed it back to her. Iris had been trying to convince me to start smoking. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but there was some kind of stress relief associated with the action.

“I couldn’t think of anything,” she giggled, “so I told ‘im what you said at 13, about the murderous statue.”

I groaned. “Your parents are never gonna let me come over now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she patted my arm. “If they’ve managed to stand some of Ian’s friends for this long, I’m due for you.”

“If your parents can stand Ian,” I started, but the bell saved Iris from having to hear me rail on her brother more. We slid away from the warm wall of the kiln room and hurried back inside the sculpture studio.

Our trip to 13 had marked the last warm day. The Saturday after had been frigid, and every day since had been the same. We’d taken to having Iris’ smoke breaks outside the sculpture studio, where the heat from the kilns seeped through the brick walls. I’d stopped hanging out in the library and computer labs during my ‘study periods.’ Instead, I’d become a nearly permanent fixture in the sculpture studio. When I wasn’t working on my homework or helping the underclassmen with their projects, I was reclaiming clay or checking the kilns to make sure nothing was in for too long. It was all repetitive and easy, and very Zen.

It was also possibly keeping me from killing my other teachers. Mr. A had developed an annoying habit of standing directly behind me and watching me draw. My classmates had noticed it. Liam had already started making jokes about him trying to get a better look down my shirt this past week. Ms. O’Neil had asked us what we wanted to do with our painting skills. I’d made the mistake of telling the truth; set design. Oh no, that wasn’t real art. Not that I could get a job in set design anyway. Entirely too much blue in my work. The theater is about passion and everyone knows that red is the color of passion. My calculus teacher couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. No, seriously. He couldn’t. We saw him try to in class one day. It was squiggly.

School was monotonous on good days, and degrading the rest of them. And home wasn’t much better. Dad had the presence of mind not to bring his many girlfriends home while I was living there, but still. I heard the messages on the home answering machines and saw the new boxes of condoms on the grocery receipts. If I’d had anywhere else to stay, I would’ve gone. All I could do was keep to my own room as much as possible and pray that brain bleach would be invented for localized application. Hopefully Don Giovanni would be a temporary respite from the stupid.

13

Friday was bright and shiny and hot as hell. Iris and Ian rode my bus with me downtown. Ian and I got into one of our usual fights; he’d started pontificating about absurdist lit, but I nailed him about never having read anything by Camus, bitch, whine, piss, moan, rinse and repeat. We convinced the driver to let us off before the official stop, and we started our march up to Mt. Vernon.

Mt. Vernon was one of those cultural hubs a lot of big cities have. Peabody, a big music school, was there, along with the Walters Art Gallery. The Baltimore Book Festival was held there every fall, and Iris told me there was the best indie bookshop in the world a few streets down from the Walters.

The store was in a half-exposed basement level of a massive corner townhome. The first floor had elegant, tasteful signs next to the door, advertising offices related to Johns Hopkins University. But the basement had a big, garish sign at street level that said in black, white, and midnight blue:

13: For All Your Alternative Book and Beverage Needs

There was a short but wide window with book displays, oversized coffee cups, and manikin torsos with tutu’s and biker jackets. There were a couple of candles and a witch’s hat on top of a stack of books. A Cesar Chavez sticker was plastered against the glass. I had no clue what sort of bookstore I was entering, if it was indie, Wiccan, anarchist or what. I don’t think the store knew what it was either.

I followed Iris down a short flight of stairs to a narrow door, covered with flyers. People were advertising bands, concerts, roommates, used textbooks, study groups, anarchist study groups, tarot card lessons, fortune telling sessions, lost pets, pets for sale, gallery shows, you name it and it was there.

“Um, Iris?” I tapped her shoulder as she opened the door. I’d just seen a sign, hidden amongst all the flyers and posters, saying: All persons under the age of 18 must be accompanied by an adult. No book bags or school bags are allowed with the premises.

She just winked at me. “Don’t worry about it. I got someone on the inside.” She pushed open the door. There was a little jingle and a rush of cool air. “Hey Renata!”

“Sup hon?” came from the far wall. “I’ll be with ya in a sec. Just taking care of some customers.”

The lighting was low. It took a minute for my eyes to adjust from the bright sun outside to this…cave. The ceiling was low, the furniture and shelves were dark wood, and lighting was minimal. The door opened into an open area with tables and more poster boards for flyers. The rest of the store stretched to the right, with mismatched shelves and even less lighting. What I guessed was a counter stretched across the far wall. I could only assume it was a counter since there was a cash register, but the whole thing was covered with books, posters, and an espresso machine that’d seen better days.

By the cash register were three people, two of them standing. Those two caught my attention first. They were very tall and very beautiful. The woman had impossibly red hair, almost blood red, and it waved down to her butt. She was dressed in a flowing skirt and a peasant blouse, with a bright orange scarf wrapped around her shoulders. Her hair was falling across her face, but I caught a glimpse of high, arched eyebrows and what romantic authors called alabaster skin. The man was 6’3” easy and looked like he’d just walked off the set of a GQ photo shoot. But I really couldn’t say for sure what he looked like. They were both leaning over the counter, talking to the girl Iris had yelled to. When they saw the three of us - Iris, Ian, and myself - they both moved away and headed to the door. The man called back to Renata, ‘farewell, my sweet,’ or something stupid like that, and left.

Iris had licked her lips when he walked past, and behind me, I could tell Ian had gone stiff as a board when the woman looked at us. When the door jingled shut behind those two, my friends relaxed. Iris grabbed my hand and dragged me over to the counter space the pretty people had just left. I finally got a look at the third person seated behind the register.

She was wearing an oversized Otakon 2005 t-shirt that draped on her. Rubber bands, hair ties, and Dollar Store charity bracelets covered both wrists. Long brown hair was braided tightly and hung over her shoulder, while straight even bangs nearly covered her freakishly dark eyes. She had a beautiful but cartoonish face, round and wide but symmetrical. Overall, she was pretty and slender and graceful, and looked like a girl from an 18^th century cameo. But something about the set of her shoulders and the tilt of her chin gave me the distinct impression that she could snap me like a twig. And there was a look in her eyes that made me uncomfortable, even though she was smiling.

“Renata, this is Fin. She goes to Copy Cat with me.” Iris shoved me front and center. I felt like a dead bird the family cat was dropping at the foot of its owner.

“Um, hi?” I waved a little.

“Fin?” she shook my hand. She had an eyebrow quirked in a quizzical expression, but she held out a hand to shake. I took it and tried to look appropriately embarrassed over my unusual nickname.

“Short for Seraphim, Seraphim Constantine.”

“Cool name.” It really was kind of boss. Occasionally I wished I just went by Seraphim. But people were always shortening it, and they were always shortening it to Sarah, and I hated being called Sarah.

“Yeah, well, I’m pretty fond of it.”

“Renata Dunn. Nothing interesting about being named after an opera singer no one’s heard of anymore,” she laughed. “Well, welcome to 13. Chuck your bags on the counter so Hal doesn’t have a conniption fit and feel free to browse. We have coffee and soup and whatnot over at that counter if you can stand the heat. Honestly, if it’s too hot for me to drink coffee, it’s too hot for anyone.” She took a pull on slurpee that’d been stashed under the counter.

I dumped my backpack on the counter. My shoulders nearly screamed in relief. “Thanks,” I rolled my shoulders, trying to work the kinks out. “So, who’s Hal and why’d he be having a fit?”

“Hal is the manager of this fine establishment…for the moment.” Renata moved my bags behind the counter, then did the same for Iris and Ian.

“That sounds ominous.”

“13’s got a pretty high turnover rate for managers,” Iris laughed, “it’s like the Venus fly trap of jobs. Looks really cool, real easy, very pretty on the resume, but once you’re here, it mangles you.”

I raised a brow and looked to Renata. She shrugged and smiled good-naturedly. “Pretty much. I’ve been here part-time for a little over a year, and I’ve seen four managers come in and get wheeled out in a straight jacket. Hal’s pretty close to the edge, and I don’t want him snapping when he gets back in.”

“Hal’s not in yet?” Ian asked, wandering over to a section labeled Poetry.

“Nah, he’s still at his anger management session.”

“They put someone with anger issues in charge of a store? Are the owners on crack? I mean, geez, why don’t they give you the job? You seem pretty chill.” I was slightly flabbergasted.

“Thank you! And to answer your questions in reverse order,” she stopped, took a pull on her slurpee, met ice, and started stabbing it with her straw, “I don’t think they’re interested in giving a 16 year old keys to the stock room. And rightly so. I would walk out of here with soooo much stolen merc, you have no idea. I mean, way more than I already do.” Sluuuurrp. “Second, the correct drug is heroin. Mr. McGee’s drug of choice this year is heroin. He’s got a dealer in Arbutus who mules it in state with computer parts. Way crazy. And Hal didn’t have any anger issues till he started working as manager. Before that, I learned much of my chill ways from him.”

Okay, I was more than slightly flabbergasted. “This is a fucked up store.”

“But we have some absolutely fab merchandise.” Renata chewed on some ice chunks and motioned to the shelves. “Go check it out.”

Their selection of books was pretty amazing. There were lots of books on psychology and gender identity. There were two walls dedicated to anarchist and atheist literature, with tons of Nietzsche. I picked up a copy of the Anarchists Hand Guide. That would piss off dad if he ever saw it. I spent at least half an hour reading titles and flipping through pages, while Iris and Renata talked in low voices at the counter and Ian stood unmoving in the poetry aisle.

The lighting was abysmally low. I had to lean close to the shelves to see book titles. Consequently, I didn’t see the man dozing in the corner until I tripped over his outstretched feet.

I gasped loudly as I fell to my knees. A quick assessment told me that I was fine. I turned to guy I’d just tripped over.

“Hey mister, are you okay?”

He was a short black man, wirey-thin with his hair cut close. His white button-down was loose and worn, while his tan slacks were held up with suspenders. It was hard to tell if his skin was really that dark or if it were just the poor lighting. The look of him kind of freaked me out. Something about his clothes made him look like he’d just stepped out of a 30’s movie. And what was he doing sleeping in a corner of a book store?

He hadn’t answered my question, I asked him if he were okay again. He just looked at me, eyes wide, as though he couldn’t believe I was talking to him, that I could see him. Everything about this guy was freaking me out, so I quickly ducked into the nearest aisle that took me out of his line of sight. Tragically, unfairly, it was the poetry aisle. Ian looked down at me with his usual contempt, and I sneered back at him, trying to cover up my suddenly pounding heart. I was still crouched low to the floor. Trying to make it look like this was on purpose, I reached out to the books on the lowest shelf. Ella Wheeler Wilcox. I opened it to somewhere in the middle and started reading Ad Finem over and over again.

I felt I was being watched. Looking up, I saw Ian leering at me. When I met his gaze, he licked his lips and then looked back at the book he was holding. Pig. There was an iron poker next to a bricked up fireplace behind us. I wondered how long it would take me to grab it and swing it at Ian’s knees, which were right at my eye level. I could probably reach it faster than he could effectively dodge. Most likely. It was worth the risk. My left hand inched towards the poker.

“Hey Fin! Wanna go to a party?” Iris yelled out over the stacks.

“Um…sure?” I agreed hesitantly. I abandoned my knee-cap shattering plans and went to join her and Renata over at the counter. Ella Wheeler Wilcox got dropped on top of some other books and I skirted past Ian, making sure to kick him in the ankle –hard- as I passed. He grunted in pain and I smiled. It wasn’t a trip to the hospital but it was something.

Iris was bouncing with happiness and Renata was still smiling. “Okay, so there’s this park over by Ellicott city and it’s awesome and abandoned and they’ve been clearing some of the rides and buildings out but there’s still a ton of stuff left over and it’s in the woods and Renata and some other people know how to get in and they wanna hold a Halloween party there and it’ll be awesome do you wanna go?” It was amazing that her skin hadn’t started to match the purple of her hair. She took a gasping breath as soon as she finished, but then held it while awaiting my response.

“Sounds like fun,” I agreed again. “We’re going to do this on Halloween?” I posed the question to Renata while Iris squealed in pleasure. It seemed to be her shindig so she’d probably know the time better than Iris.

“Weekend before. I’ve already got plans for Halloween and so do a couple of other peeps who’re coming. But we all want to do this, so it’s happening. That weekend free for you?” There was something about her eyes that made me so uncomfortable. But if Iris was there, and other people were there, maybe I wouldn’t have to deal with her much.

“As far as I know, I’m free.” Dad wasn’t a ‘making-plans’ sort of parent so I highly doubted anything would interfere from that area of my life. And the Mom’s were both so busy. So unless the Twins came,… nah, they’d want to come with me if they knew. “Yeah, I’ll be free.”

“YES! Time for a victory smoke.” Iris started rifling through her many pockets, looking for her cigarettes and lighter.

“Outside!” Renata declared, pointing a finger imperiously towards the door.

“Aw, but-“

“ASTHMA!” she yelled louder, pointing to her chest.

“Oh. Right,” Iris looked a little awkward, then perked up, saying “be right back,” before she dashed out the door into the sunshine. We heard a quick scream of “the sunlight! It burns,” before the door tinkled closed behind her.

“You’re asthmatic?” I asked Renata.

“Not since I was twelve, but there’s no need for her to know that.” She noticed the anarchy book I was holding. “You wanna buy that?”

Renata rang me up quickly and shoved the book in my backpack for me. Then she was distracted. There was a loud beep, and I realized she had a laptop stored under the counter. An IM conversation left over from last night was starting up again, she said. She was talking to a guy who called himself rain maker Tobai in Savannah.

The door tinkled again and Iris stepped back inside, picking the conversation back up where she’d left it. “Renata, you gotta tell us about some other stuff going on in tow. We have to indoctrinate Fin into Baltimore culture.” Iris wrapped an arm around me.

“That was a quick smoke,” I said. Normally she took twice that long.

She snorted. “I want the cigarette to burn, not me.” Then she turned back to Renata, whining “Renaaaaaaaa.”

“Take her down to Market Street and leave her there for a few hours. That should do it,” she said, never looking up from the laptop screen. The ferocity of her typing and the frequency of the beeps notifying replies made it seem like a very heated discussion.

Iris pouted.

“Baltimore Book fest is going to be here in the next week or two,” Ian called from a few shelves away. “And after that, we head into October and Free Fall. There should be something going on there to entertain you two.” Free Fall was this touristy thing Baltimore did where tons of otherwise expensive cultural events were suddenly open to the public and free of charge. I’d gone to one of those events once, a jazz concert at Eubie Blake, before Nonna and Poppy had died. It had been kind of fun.

“The Peabody’s doing a show. It’s scheduled to be up and running by the end of the month,” Renata chimed in from behind her laptop.

“What show?”

“Don Giovanni. There’s a poster for it on the wall near the door,” she nodded her head in that direction. “It’s a student production. It’s the first time they’ve done this show in nearly twenty years. If you’ve got nothing else to do today, you could run back to Mt. Vernon proper and pick up some tickets at the school.”

I rushed over to the board with poster and sought it out. “That definitely sounds like something I’d be interested in.”

“Fin, you like opera?” Iris sounded stunned.

“I like this opera,” I clarified. “A statue comes to life at the end of it and drags the title character off to hell. Homicidal sculpture. What’s not to like?”

Iris and I decided to go to the Peabody soon after that. We’d been in 13 for nearly two hours and the air conditioning was getting to me. We left Ian hidden among the stacks. He hadn’t shifted his position at all. Iris told him where we were going; I didn’t hear what he said in response. All I heard was Renata call after, very softly, “see you soon, Seraphim.”

I was standing on the corner outside 13, still talking to Iris, when my dad drove past us. He hadn’t said anything about where I could or couldn’t hang out. But from the look on his face, I could tell I’d done something wrong by being here. His car circled the block, then came back to pull up to the curb where we were standing. The passenger window rolled down, and dad leaned over the seat and stuck his head out.

“Hey Fin, who’s you friend?” He was smiling a little, but his eyes were cold and distrustful, the way they always were around new people.

“This is Iris. She’s in my class. Iris, this is my dad, Mike,” I tried to make the conversation as quick as I could - Dad wasn’t the parent you introduced to people you liked – that distrust of Iris, and his obvious anger at me got my back up. What the fuck was his problem? I said bye to Iris and got in the car, ready for a fight.

We drove for a few blocks without saying a word. I wasn’t going to speak first and set myself up for more trouble. Finally,

“I don’t want you walking around here. It’s not safe for you. Not for anyone, but you even more. You don’t know what to expect.”

“I told you I was hanging out with a friend today. And what’s with this ‘not safe’ business? I’m not a noob, dad. New Orleans ain’t winning any prizes for safety and I used to stomp around the city all the time there.” It was hard to talk to my dad without being defensive or antagonistic.

“Yeah, yeah, yeah, you’re a tough girl. Now don’t gimme that look!” He’d caught my sneer, and probably knew it meant I’d be bitching to mom about him later that night. “I know New Orleans is bad. A lot of places are. But none of them are Baltimore. Baltimore, now she’s a beast unto herself. She’s a mean old bitch of a place.”

We were driving through one of the dingier parts of the city. He was back roading through residential streets instead of the main ones that were jammed this time of day. We passed a street corner where there was a Charm City bench falling apart. Most of them had been removed a couple of years ago

“Charm City my ass,” he muttered. “Sure, she’ll charm you alright. And once you’re charmed stupid, she’ll fuck you up, leave you broke, broken, and dying behind one of those big churches on Saint Paul Street, reeking of piss – half of which ain’t even your own!”

“Thanks dad. I needed that mental image.”

“Shut that smart mouth before I shut it for you.” Dad had never beaten me or my sisters, but that didn’t mean his threat was idle. I shut my ‘smart mouth.’ He went on, “see all these houses? See them all boarded up and empty?”

I nodded.

“It’s bull. There’re people in all of them. Some live there, squatters. Some people run businesses out of them. We found a whole row not far from Market Street where they were running beauty parlors.”

“Do you have a point, or are you just trying to talk me to death?” I snapped.

Dad paused, took a breath and said, “nothing that looks empty here ever is. Not really. And it’s hardly ever that it’s something as harmless as a beauty shop.”

I heaved an exaggerated sigh, “sure dad. Right. Don’t go near the boarded up houses. Well, that marks about half the city ‘off-limits.’ I’ll keep this all in mind, dad. Thanks.”

“And on the flip side of that” he raised his voice to speak over me, “places that look occupied, places that appearance and common sense tell you should be full of people who’ll give a shit if something happens to a pretty young thing like you – those’ll be the places where no one will hear you call for help.”

I thought about this for a minute, looking at the dark, derelict houses that passed by our window. “So what you’re telling me is that I was fucked the minute you and mom agreed to move me up here.”

He actually laughed at that. My dad, expressing concern for my welfare and then laughing at something I said, all in the same night. Would wonders never cease.

“I’m giving you a warning. Some people spend live their whole lives in this city, never going to DC or even stepping over county lines, and don’t figure out the obvious. Then they bitch about how hard their lives are, not making any connection. This city is a vindictive bitch who’s out for blood. She’s not too picky about whose. I’m giving you a heads up to watch you’re your back. Be grateful and don’t go walking here on your own.”

Who's Afraid of the Big Bad Wolf

I’d rehearsed my lines about the attack well enough that I could explain what happened without freezing up, getting defensive, or, God forbid, crying. I’d gone into the desert to do something stupid, a wolf attacked me, I nearly died. By the time I’d gotten out of the hospital, we’d moved to New Orleans, and I’d never been near a desert or a dog since. There it was, the whole stupid string of events. But beyond the basic info, it was hard to dish.

The first half of my life was spent in New Mexico, in a church at the edge of the desert. It was one of those old Spanish, adobe missions, perched on a hillside. It had been abandoned by the priests more than a century ago, and had sat alone and untouched in the wastelands until Val found it and fixed it up 18 years ago. It was an unconventional home, a fitting setting for an unconventional childhood. I had loved it, and the desert it ruled over, desperately, passionately, and unconditionally. That love, and the trust that went with it, had ultimately been my undoing.

I never suspected how dangerous it really was. Back then, I was invincible. I was a child. I was immortal. The desert was my closest friend and confidant in my childish, overly romantic mind. And even if there was danger, the saints would protect me.

I did not grow up in a religious house. Granted, we lived in a church, but to the Mom’s thinking, that was the beginning and end of spirituality in our lives. But still, it was a church. There were tiny alcoves and cabinets all around the house, with the statues of saints still inside. The Spanish monks had left them behind when they fled, and they added a sense of mysticism to the homestead. When I was bored, I’d run all over the house and try to find new statues and hidden cubbyholes. Before going out into the desert, I would leave offerings of cactus flowers and pretty rocks I’d found. In New Mexico, those ancient icons and childish superstitions formed my faith.

What did I do in the desert? Good question. I never really did anything. I’d kick off my shoes and walk barefoot across the parched earth. Sometimes I’d pretend I was a lost princess or an evil witch, banished to the waste. Sometimes I was a desert thief, and lost traders and merchants would have to kowtow to me so that I’d guide them back to civilization. But most of the time, I didn’t think of anything. I just walked, mind and feet bare to whatever the hot sun brought me.

The hot sun brought me to carcasses and vulture feathers, which I’d collect and make jewelry from. It brought me to monolithic rock formations, jutting out of a flat terrain like a knife or a broken bone. It brought me to the mouths of caves, which I’d wander into without a flashlight and wander back out of with only a few scraps and scratches on my knees. It brought me back home, mostly unharmed, and I’d thank the saints for keeping the Mom’s from knowing.

Somewhere along the line, I’d heard that snake venom, when mixed with nail polish, made the colors even brighter. Like an idiotic little sister, I told the Twins about this factoid. They wanted to try it. So I was sent out into the desert with gardening gloves and pickle jars to hunt up snakes and scorpions and whatever else might be poisonous. Meanwhile, they kept the Mom’s occupied and distracted from the fact that little 7 year old me was on the lookout for neurotoxins.

Needless to say, I succeeded. I won’t bore you with too many details. The Twins stole some chemistry equipment from their middle school, and hand copied notes about venom and the practical application to make-up from library books. After a year of trial and error and hiding snake skins from the Mom’s, we had a product. The Twins ran the business aspect. They found buyers, set prices, and kept school officials in the dark about the cottage industry doing business in girls’ bathrooms and locker rooms. And I made the product, mostly nail polishes with very vibrant, unique colors.

I was happy to do it too. Sure, the Twins never gave me a fair share of the profit – back then, I still hadn’t learned the valuable tool of blackmail – but I got paid in other ways. The other girls stopped teasing me. The middle school and high school girls who had boyfriends made sure I wasn’t bullied and got an escort when walking to the bus stop. If only I’d had that sort of protection in the desert.

I was nine, and the landscape was as familiar to me as my own face. I knew the boroughs of the different animals. I knew by tracks when the coyotes were passing through. I knew by the number of vultures how big a carcass was. So in theory, I should’ve known there was a wolf wandering around. That’s what I kept telling myself. But I didn’t know about the wolf. I just knew that my heart stopped when I saw the shadow of a rock I’d passed a thousand times before rise up into a black, living mass.

This happened in the morning. No one found me until it was nearly sunset. I spent 12 hours under a May sun, and while May sounds nice in the Northeast, in New Mexico, it may as well be summer. I was alone, bleeding from under my right armpit to my hip, with organs ready to fall out if I moved. I couldn’t move. I didn’t move. I lay there, watching the vultures circle me, feeling the sun bake me. Fillet Fignon.

I’ve read a lot of survivor stories, where the injured would fade in and out of consciousness from dehydration and pain. I wasn’t one of those. I was awake and aware of the pain at all times. The only respite came sometime in the afternoon. An old man had seen me while he was out looking for his terrier that had wandered off. He went home, called the authorities to let them know there was the body of a little girl in the desert, and then came back to get a better look and make sure the police came. When he saw I was still alive, he sat with me. He talked and kept me company while we waited for rescue. The pain didn’t lessen any, and he didn’t have any water - not would I let him get some; that would mean he’d leave for a moment and I’d be by myself again - but it was nice knowing that I wouldn’t die alone.

He told me about his dog and his wife who’d died of consumption years and years ago. He told me about following fallen stars way out in the valleys and canyons. All sorts of things were said, secrets of the land shared, which I forgot over the months of pain meds and psych evaluations. I never saw the old kook again, didn’t even catch his name. I’d asked the Mom’s and the doctors about him once or twice, but never got any answers. After a few weeks, I forgot to ask. Morphine fueled my youthful self-centeredness and it was easy to overlook the debt I owed to the old geezer. Meanwhile, the Twins had started Bitter Irony, the Mom’s were moving us to New Orleans, life moved on, and by the time I was healthy enough to go look for him myself, I was in a whole new time zone.

Reminiscing had left me a little jittery. I couldn’t keep my hands from spasming and jerking around in sculpture. My distraction was obvious. Mr. J knew better than to call on me during class, and when everyone else was occupied, he pulled me aside to ask if I wanted to go to the nurse or a guidance counselor. I didn’t want any of that. I just wanted to finish the day out and go home where I could sulk in peace and quiet.

I survived until dismissal. Iris had noticed that I was out of it. She grabbed me before I got on my bus. We stood there for a minute. She didn’t seem to know what to say or do, like she’d only planned up to getting my attention but not past that. Personally, I had nothing left to say. Sulking was my top priority for the afternoon.

“We should go out Friday.” The words seemed to surprise her as she said them, but she seemed to catch on to herself pretty quickly. “I’m betting you haven’t seen too much of the city yet, right? I mean, you’re still pretty fresh and all….” Iris trailed off not quite sure what she was saying. My bus driver was yelling at me to hurry up.

“Friday!” she suddenly yelled. “Friday after school, Ian and I will ride down with you to the Inner Harbor and we’ll show you around. There’re some places I know you’ll love.”

The driver yelled again, and I stepped towards the door. “Sure, sounds like fun. I’ll talk to you about it later, ‘kay?” I waved and stepped on the bus. Iris stood outside the closed doors for a minute, looking unsure. I saw Ian come drag her to their bus as mine pulled away from the curb.

Callway

School started up again in September. My senior year of high school would be finished at the Callway Conservatory. It was a magnet school nestled to the left of Towson’s cold, robotic heart. It sported music, theater, visual arts, and writing majors. At the end of my first week, I learned that students called it the Copy Cat School for the Arts, since the programs borrowed heavily from the Baltimore School for the Arts. I couldn’t argue. Everything I’d seen from the art departments was so … generic. It all screamed “I’m a young artiste! I draw/paint/photoshop deep, meaningful stuff! Take me seriously!”

The art major was broken up into four departments: multi-media, painting, photography, and sculpture. All art students had to take drawing with the head of the art department, Mr. Anders, and painting with Ms. O’Neil, regardless of what their area of focus was. I’d ended up choosing sculpture for two reasons; first, it was the only focus area whose works on display showed any originality, and second, the studio was fantastic.

The sculpture studio was this big warehouse that had obviously been attached to the school as an afterthought. Metal shelves were filled with unused slabs of clay and plasticine, and student sculptures in various states of completion. There were two or three reclaiming stations, where dried clay was broken to bits and immersed in garbage cans of water until they were pliable again. Kilns were through a door at the far end of the room. In another corner was a blowtorch. Hooks and chains hung from the ceiling in abundance, holding up installation pieces.

There was a giant model volcano made from melted crayons on a shelf. From the ceiling hung a pterodactyl made from welded silverware. In the back of the teachers office was a life-sized human figure…made from the exoskeletons of seventeen-year cicadas. And everything was coated in a fine layer of clay dust.

Since I’d managed to fulfill most of my non-focus related credits down in New Orleans, my schedule was pretty light; three art classes and one Calculus class. I foresaw a lot of potential free time this semester which I’d probably waste reading manga on the library computers. I’d already prepared my excuse; ‘I’m studying the use of different drawing and inking techniques in storytelling. See how so-and-so is drawing from traditional insert-obscure-cultures’-art-history-here?’ First period was drawing with Mr. Anders in the AP studio at 7:15 AM. Because your hand-eye coordination is so sharp at fuck-o’clock in the morning.

Mr. Anders was of average height and average build. His one concession to artistic oddity was a stubby ponytail he'd pulled his average brown hair back into. When he spoke, he had a musical voice, which resonated in the melodious tones of the pompous and ass-holy. He handed out our syllabus for the year, explaining the sketchbook policy (two entries a week, all sketches must be taken from life, no photos, no fantasy, no cartoons, any sign of originality or individualism are punishable by death, etc), then moved on to roll call.

“Constantine, Seraphim.”

“Yo,” I flipped my left hand up to catch his attention, then let it flop back to my lap. I was scrutinizing the syllabus, trying to find the rule or loophole that would be taken advantage of to spell my doom this year.

“Cool name. Can we call you Sarah?”

“I prefer Fin.” Seriously, what was the point of having a weird name if you shortened it to something normal?

“Fim?” It wasn't really a question, the way he said it. It was more of an “I've-decided-I-don't-like-you-and-want-the-rest-of-this-class-to-dislike-and-isolate-you-too-because-it’s-within-my-power-to-do-so sneer. I immediately understood this type of teacher wouldn't waste time using a loophole in the syllabus to fail me. My assignments would just conveniently disappear and he'd be forced to fail me, counting on parents to take the word of a teacher over the word of their kid. He was right. Fuck.

“Nope," I sighed, biting back my tempter and bracing myself for the coming semester. "Just Fin.”

“Fin. Not Seraphim? Or Sarah?” I looked at him, making sure to give him my biggest, bitchiest smile.

“Nooo, Fin. As in finished, finicky, or Finland. Think the ending of French noir films. Fin.” A few brave souls laughed. I held Mr. Anders gaze, smiling, showing off my incisors.

“Oookay, Fin it is.” I gave him another too-bright, bullshit grin, then dropped it completely and turned back to the syllabus. Roll call rolled along and the girl next to me kept laughing. I ignored her.

The class was seated in a semi circle around a small stage, draped with sheets and covered with boxes, jars, vases, flowers, shoes, dolls, - and that was just what I could see from my side. Across from me, on the other side of the still-life set, two boys were whispering about a naked Barbie peeking out of a purse. My classmates were mostly sophomores. Because I hadn’t started from the ground up with the program, I couldn’t be in the same art classes as the rest of the seniors. Boo fucking hoo. It didn’t matter too much to me. I was short and hardly anyone ever realized I was 17. It would probably take them until next semester to figure out that I wasn't a sophomore if I didn't tell them.

Roll call finished and we pulled out our sketchbooks. A slight hush fell over the room as we all began drawing sections of the still-life. There were whispered conversations going on continuously; I eavesdropped when I could. Gossip was a hell of a lot more interesting than the Charlie Brown soundtrack Mr. Anders had put on.

Gossip is pretty much the same in all schools, but every now and then, you hear some real gems. This sharing session was particularly juicy. Sure, I heard more snarky comments about Copy Cat school and how half the freshman class had been rejected from Baltimore School for the Arts, but I also heard that the Latin teacher had tried to commit suicide over the summer and was at Shepherd Pratt, and the chorus teacher had been fired last year for sleeping with his student and his replacement had been fired from his last job for sexually blackmailing college students. Oh my god, I was either going to love this school or burn it to the ground and salt its’ smoldering ashes.

After a while, I noticed the two boys across from were pointing, not to the Barbie anymore, but to me. Paranoia set in briefly, then I saw that their gazes kept flickering back to my chest, which was exposed by the low cut of my tank top. Ah ha. I was being checked out. Not too surprising. God had graciously gifted me with a blessing of bounteous boobage (what? Your teachers never gave extra points for alliteration?), and my hair – almost black, straight, long and feathered – was pulled back, giving them a pretty clear view. I liked my tits. They were my bodies one concession to maturity on an otherwise stunted torso. And their size balanced out my fat Italian ass, giving me what might almost be considered an hourglass figure. Drew, the Twins step-brother, had said before that I was “kinda hot.”

But in New Orleans, my attractiveness had been an afterthought in the wake of the twins. Artemis, through some perverse quirk of genetics, had overcome generations of stocky brunettes and grown up to be a 5'10", leggy, natural blond with green eyes. And Holly was one of those perfect women, the kind God makes just to prove that He can. She was tall like Artemis, with perfect legs, a perfect figure, high C-cup breasts, and the most amazing hair; rich, curly brown with natural blond highlights. And her whole body was toned from years of dance. I'd seen both my sisters stop traffic. I was the Betty Boop to their Jessica Rabbits; nothing to sneeze at, but no one would notice me with my sisters in the room.

It occurred to me now that there was no legacy of the Constantine Twins to haunt me. I was the hot new girl. I was going to enjoy this.

My internal gloating was cut short as class ended. I didn’t have Calc until 3^rd period, so while the class filed out the door and rushed off to whatever they had next, I loitered in the hallway. The only person who wasn’t rushing was the girl who’d sat next to me and laughed at my snap at Mr. Anders. She hung outside with me and waited for the rush and jam of bodies to ebb.

Five minutes later, the hall was almost empty. Mr. Anders had a new class to drone to on the other side of the door. It was just me and weird laughing girl. All alone in an empty hallway. While she kept staring at me. Yup.

“Hi,” she smiled, “I’m Iris.” Iris, aside from laughing at my bitchiness and engaging in mildly stalker-y behavior, had the nicest purple dread locks I’d ever seen on a white girl. No joke. They were tight and beaded and all that cool shit. “You’re Fin, right?”

“Yeah.” Iris was also had a functioning short term memory. Good to know.

“I liked your jab at Mr. A. Fucker deserved it,” she chuckled a little.

“I take he’s always an ass?”

“We don’t call ‘im Mr. A for our health,” her smile widened. “What’s your next class? I don’t got anything til 4^th and I need a smoke.”

And so began my friendship with Iris Moore. Iris was 16, a junior, and had switched from the theater program to photography last year. Like me, she was starting from the bottom up. She had a twin brother named Ian who was in the literary program. She was only at Callway because School for the Arts didn’t accept her and there were no tuition fees here.

We were sitting on benches outside, in clear view of the office. When Iris lit up, I was expecting teachers to come to the windows or rush outside demanding we put it out and come back inside to speak to the vice. But none of that happened. People from the office looked out at us, Iris waved, and they went away and left us alone. At my raised eyebrow, Iris explained.

“Welcome to ‘mandatory socialization’ at a half-assed art school. As long as they know you’re a student and you’re with another student, they really don’t care what you’re doing,” she paused and took a drag. “Unless you cross the parking lot to the Taco Bell. Then they freak the hell out.” She rolled her eyes and took a looooong drag. “So. Whaddya think of our happy little high school home?”

“Well, let’s see. What do I think. After one period. On my first day...” I cast a look back at the office window and broke up laughing then and there.” I think this place is fucking retarded.”

“Amen to that,” she cackled, “but it’s better than any of the alternatives. I mean, at least we get to wear hats here and shit.”

“At least.”

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Calculus was calculus and the less said about it the better. Painting was 4^th period, and I sat with Iris again. Ms. O’Neil was a head trip through and through. She didn’t like cooler shades and felt that you could only express true emotion through the color red. I made a mental note to infuse all my compositions with copious amounts of blue and green. We didn’t get to do any actual painting, and probably wouldn’t for the first week, she said. Instead, she gave us a list of art supply stores and told us to write an essay about a painting that ‘moved’ us. I was going to write about something in Picasso’s blue phase.

Lunch was followed by two periods of abso-friggin-lutely nothing. Iris had classes, so I lounged around in the library, looking up which free manga sites could get past the security firewalls. The high-traffic sites with fairly tame manga was blocked. The largely unknown sites, the ones with all the hentai, were invariably accepted as “safe” by the school network. Weird. The last class of the day got me into the sculpture studio. Sculpture was taught by Jasper Zimmer, who everyone called Mr. J. He rode a Vespa to school, spoke 5 foreign languages fluently, and he looked like Jesus.

After roll call, he talked to all the students he’d known from last year a little, talked about the summer vacation. I was the only new face in the group, so we had the usual get up and tell us about yourself routine that plagues all grade levels. But it wasn’t as bad as I’d feared it would be. When he heard I was from New Orleans, he talked to me in Creole French for a while. I spoke French, Italian, and Spanish, none of it fluently, but enough to hold a conversation and, more importantly, insult people. We traded a few favored curses and then he told the class about the time he lived in Mississippi as part of a resident artist program. It was hilarious and I’m not even going to try retell it. I’d just ruin it.

Class was over way too soon. We all milled around the buses, checking and rechecking numbers to make sure no one got on a bus headed to Catonsville when they really wanted Owings Mills or Essex. I saw Iris and a guy I guessed was her brother board the number that went to Hampdon. I wondered if I could persuade Iris to pick me up a Hon Café sticker. I’d had one from my last visit to the city, but it had worn off the folder I’d stuck it on.

I managed to find the right bus, in spite of my continued fears about public transportation. The ride was about two hours with rush hour traffic. I started the calc homework (because there’s always calc homework) and tried to think happy thoughts about reorganizing my book shelves while the other kids were screaming and jumping around in back. This was pretty much the pattern for the rest of the week. The only thing that changed were my conversations with Iris and Ian.

I met Ian on Wednesday and immediately started cultivating a verbally abusive relationship. He started pontificating about how To Kill A Mockingbird was the perfect book, I said I got its importance but the format and style really weren’t my thing, and the conversation tail-spinned from there. Lunches turned into verbal sparring matches about books and authors on the benches outside. Iris played referee while she smoked and munched on Taco Bell take-out. Friday, she gave me one of his poems to rip into at lunch. He actually winced. I enjoyed his suffering even more since he looked like an indie rocker; scrawny with shaggy black hair and vintage tees. Indie boys always deserve whatever pain is sent their way. The only way I’d only enjoy it more would if he were emo. Win some, lose some.

The second week of school, more of my classmates started talking to me as they got used to the look of me. It probably wasn’t a coincidence that a lot of them were guys I’d caught looking down my shirt at various times last week. Not that it was hard; I was short, the weather was still hot, and tank tops are friends to all tall boys. I think they realized I wasn’t going hit them just for looking.

The inquisition went as follows: where did you come from? Why did you move here? Are you Mexican? Where’s your accent from (I had a very slight southern accent that only came out when I was getting pissed about something, something like being asked if I was Mexican)? Do you have a boyfriend? Are you a lez? How’d you get into art?

As if I needed more proof that my boobs were a main attraction, I got a couple of questions about my pendant. I had a wolves tooth on a silver chain that I wore all the time. I was so used to it that I usually forgot it was even there.

“Seriously? You were attacked by a wolf?”

“Bullshit.”

“Bullshit yourself,” I snarked back. “I was out in the desert when I was nine and I got attacked by a wolf. Fucker tore open my whole right side. I was out there bleeding for a couple of hours before anyone found me. They pulled this sucker out of a rib,” I said, fingering the tooth proudly. We were sprawled out across steps in one of the stairwells, me, Iris, some guys from our painting class, and one or two girls who’d passed by while we were talking and stayed to listen.

“I was in the hospital for nearly a year. Mom was freaked right on out.”

Everyone was quite for a minute, before one of the guys - Liam, I think his name was – said, “I still think it’s bullshit.”

Obviously the boy wanted proof. I could give him proof. I pulled up the end of my shirt on the right side, exposing a mass of shiny scar tissue, several shades darker than the rest of my skin.

“Holy shit!” Iris squeaked. Some of the guys looked squicked out. I shrugged. I’d never been too self conscious about my scars from the accident. There’s that bumper sticker that says “Scars are tattoos with better stories.” A classmate had visited me when I was in the hospital and stuck that sticker on my bandages. The nurse had had a fit, but I’d taken the words to heart.

“What the fuck were you doing in a desert? I didn’t know there were deserts in New Orleans.”

“There aren’t. This happened when I was living in New Mexico. It’s hard to avoid desert out there,” I smiled, totally chill about everything. “I was hunting for snakes. Snake venom can be mixed with some cosmetics to enhance them. I had a little elementary school, cottage industry, mixing rattle snake venom with nail polish. It was cool.” I was so chill about this conversation, the temperature had dropped. If my hands were clenching or my smile twitching, it was just in response to how cool everything was.

“Don’t you guys have classes?” There was suddenly a teacher at the top of the stairs. A few people got up to leave. I went with them. I didn’t have class but I was through with this conversation.