Suzie, and so I did.
It was after school and I was waiting for Joe. The day before, he’d sent me a text while I was in English:
superhero powwow 2mrw? no villains allowd.
I’d laughed, then texted back:
k, jst tel me whr d scret headquarters r.
Now the door, which I’d closed so nobody would see me sitting alone in the art classroom, started rattling. Joe’s face appeared in the door’s little window, his eyes confused.
“It’s not locked!” I called.
Joe rattled a little more, pushed a bit harder, and suddenly fell into the room.
“I guess that’s why Mr. Ramirez never closes this door,” he said. His sketch pad was tucked under one arm and his bag slung diagonally across his chest. “Thanks for meeting me today.”
“No problem.” I shrugged, thinking, Don’t you know I’ve been looking forward to this?
And: You’d better not be doing this out of some obligation, to make up for prom night.
Joe grabbed a stool and pulled it next to mine, then slapped his sketch pad on the table in front of us. “So, how do we do this?”
It felt like a bigger question, one that you could only answer with action. So I opened his sketch pad to the first drawing, a preteen-aged girl in oversize red boots and a perky minidress, her hands on her hips. She was sticking out her tongue.
“Who’s this?” I asked him.
“My little sister. SuperBrat. I’ve been drawing her in various forms for years.”
“She’s that bad?”
“You have no idea,” said Joe, shaking his head. “When I was younger, I used to keep a list of ways she might die.” He sucked in his breath and his face turned instantly white. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have said that. . . . You . . .”
“It’s okay,” I said. But he looked so angry with himself. At that moment I realized how hard he must have been trying not to say anything to upset me. “You should definitely use this one,” I added, coming to his rescue. “I could draw a room where everything is gigantic in relation to her. Tables and chairs and stuff. Like, she thinks she’s a big shot but really, she’s tiny in her world.”
“I like that!” said Joe, nodding. Our heads were bent close to each other, and when I smelled his hair, it brought me back to prom night and almost overwhelmed me.
Joe, and this back-and-forth conversation. Not one-way postcards I couldn’t answer, postcards that might as well have been messages dropped out of the sky and all I could do was try to catch them.
I grabbed my notebook and wrote something down about SuperBrat. “Okay, show me the next one.”
A half hour later, we’d gone through all his sketches and picked out eight that should be in the show, and for which I could draw some backgrounds. Ideas came speeding through me, fully formed. It was as if they were traveling a highway that had been clogged with traffic but was now unexpectedly clear.
When we reached the end of Joe’s sketch pad, we sat there for a moment. I didn’t want to leave yet.
Then he said, “I hear you and a whole bunch of other girls have something fantastic planned for the Halloween dance.”
I’d been wanting to find out whether or not he was going, but was afraid that if I asked, he’d think I wanted to go with him. Which I was sure would have been a terrifying prospect, given our history. Some things are just too scary even for Halloween.
“Yeah, it’s a secret,” I told him. “You’ll have to see for yourself.”
Joe looked down. “Unfortunately, I have to work that night.”
I swallowed my disappointment. “I’m sure there will be pictures after the fact,” I said casually, then started busying myself with my book bag in preparation to leave.
“I’m trying to get out of it.” He still didn’t look at me.
“Okay,” I said, not looking back.
“Are you parked in the senior lot?” he asked, and when I turned to him and nodded, he made an After you gesture with his arm toward the door.
The hallways were mostly deserted, and only a few people saw us walking out together. I knew it would be enough to start the rumor mill chugging again.
“Thanks again for agreeing to do this,” said Joe as we approached my car.
“It’s going to be fun,” I said. “Plus, I can put it on my applications, if I don’t get in early to Yale.”
“I’ll take photographs of the finished pieces so you can send them in.”
“That