Ready or Not

10

David got to the studio before I did. When I walked in, he was already straddling his drawing bench, arranging his pencils on the seat in front of him.

The minute I saw him, my heart did that flippy thing it does whenever David walks into the room. That thing Rebecca calls frisson. It got even worse when David looked up and saw me standing there, and our gazes met, and he smiled.

“Hey, Sharona,” he said. “Long time no see.”

And it was like there was this invisible bungee cord between us. Because I suddenly found myself being propelled toward him, until I was standing with my arms wrapped around his head, holding his face to my stomach, since I hadn’t even given him time to stand up and hug me back properly.

“Well,” David said in a strangled voice into the front of my shirt, “nice to see you too.”

“Sorry,” I said, letting go of his head—reluctantly—and lowering myself onto the bench beside his. “I just…I really missed you. I didn’t realize how much until just now, when I saw you.”

“Well, that’s flattering,” David said. “I guess.” Then he leaned over and said, “I missed you, too,” and kissed me.

For a long time.

So long that we didn’t even notice the room was filling up with other people until Susan Boone herself cleared her throat, kind of noisily. Then we pulled guiltily apart, and saw that Terry was making himself comfortable, this time in more of a lounging pose, on the satin comforter Susan had laid across the raised platform.

Terry winked at me—I guess because of the intimate conversation he and I had had the last time I’d seen him—as Susan was fussing around with the comforter beneath him.

And I winked back, because, well, what else are you supposed to do when a naked guy winks at you?

Besides, it wasn’t like I was freaked out anymore. About seeing a naked guy, I mean.

At least, I didn’t think I was. I mean, I didn’t feel freaked out.

But I guess I must have seemed freaked out, since about an hour and a half into our lesson, Susan Boone came over and asked me, quietly, if everything was all right.

I looked up at her, feeling kind of dazed, the way I always do when I’m concentrating on a drawing and someone interrupts me.

“Everything’s fine,” I said. “Why?”

Which was when it hit me. Oh my God! What if Susan wasn’t talking about what had happened during our last lesson, with me freaking out over Terry and all? What if she was talking about something else—like how I was thinking about having sex with David? I mean, she’s an artist and all, and way more perceptive than, say, my mom and dad, so she might actually have figured it out. Was that what she meant when she asked if everything was all right?

And if so, what was I going to say?

“Well, I’m just concerned,” Susan said, looking at my drawing pad. “You seem to be concentrating so hard on getting the figure in, that you’re completely neglecting everything else.”

Blinking, I looked where she was pointing. I’d rendered a highly realistic portrait, it was true, of Terry, in all his naked glory.

But it was also kind of true that he was just hanging there, basically in outer space.

“A drawing is like building a house, Sam. You can’t start by hanging curtains. You have to build a foundation first.”

Taking my pencil from me, Susan sketched in a background behind the figure I’d drawn.

“Then lay floors,” she said, sketching the bench beneath Terry. Suddenly, he was no longer floating in space.

“You have to build your house from the ground up, starting with all of the boring bits…the plumbing and the wiring. Do you see what I’m getting at here? By going in and drawing all of this detail here”—she indicated the portrait of Terry—“you’re decorating before you even have a house to stand in. You’ve got to stop concentrating so much on the parts,” she added, “and instead, start seeing the image as a whole.”

Susan, I realized, was right. I had been working so hard on getting Terry’s face exactly right, I had neglected the other three quarters of the page. So now it was this huge piece of paper with a tiny head on it.

“I get it,” I said. “Sorry. I guess I just got…you know, carried away.”

Susan sighed. “I hope I didn’t make a mistake,” she said softly. “Letting you and David take this class, I mean. I thought you were ready.”

I glanced at her kind of sharply.

“We are ready,” I said hastily. “I mean, I am. And David is, too. We both are.”

“I hope so,” Susan said with a faintly worried air. She laid a hand on my shoulder as she straightened and then walked away. “I really do.”

Not ready? Not ready for life drawing? As if! I worked furiously through the last fifteen minutes of class, anchoring Terry to a background, concentrating on showing the whole, and not the parts. I’d show Susan Boone who wasn’t ready. See if I didn’t!

But there wasn’t enough time to really do what I’d wanted, and at the end, when it came time to critique everyone’s drawings, Susan just shook her head at mine as it sat on the windowsill.

“You’ve rendered a highly realistic portrait of Terry,” she said, in a kind but firm voice, “but he’s still hanging in midair.”

I had no idea what she was talking about. What did she mean, I wasn’t ready? Who even cared about the stupid background? Wasn’t the subject of the drawing the most important thing?

Terry sure seemed to think so. He strolled over and was like, “Hey, are you gonna keep that?” and pointed at my drawing of him.

“Um,” I said. I wasn’t sure how to reply. The truth was, I had been about to wad the drawing up and throw it away. But I hesitated to admit it, because that would have been like saying I didn’t think a portrait of Terry was worth framing and hanging over my fireplace—like he wasn’t attractive enough, or something. And even though I thought he had a really weird job, I didn’t want to insult him.

“Why?” I asked. Always a nice, safe answer for just about any occasion.

“’Cause if you don’t want it, I’ll take it,” Terry said.

I was touched. More than touched. I was flattered. He liked my portrait of him! Despite the fact that it wasn’t integrated into any sort of background.

“Oh, sure,” I said, handing it over. “There you go.”

“Cool,” Terry said. Then, noticing that it lacked the artist’s signature, he went, “Could you sign it for me?”

“Of course,” I said, and did so, then handed it back.

“Cool,” Terry said, again, looking at my signature. “Now I have a drawing by the girl who saved the president.”

I realized then that that’s what he wanted—my autograph on a portrait of him, naked. Not that he’d especially liked my portrait.

But hey, I guess it was better than nothing.

“So,” David said, coming up behind me at the slop sink, where I was washing charcoal off my hands. “You ready?”

I have to admit, I kind of jumped. Not because he’d snuck up on me, but because of the question.

“I still haven’t had a chance to ask them,” I blurted out, spinning around to face him. “I’m really sorry, David. Things have just been so crazy at home with Lucy and this tutoring thing—”

David looked down at me as if I had grown horns from my forehead, like Hellboy.

“I meant about the town hall meeting at your school,” he said. “My dad said we’re giving you a lift.”

“Oh!” I laughed nervously. “That! Right! No, why should I be nervous?”

“No reason,” David said, a twinkle in his mossy green eyes. “I mean, it’s just MTV. Millions of people will be watching it. That’s all.”

The thing was, I’d had so much else to worry about, I hadn’t really had time to think about it. What I was going to say at the town hall meeting, and all. I mean, I’d read the stuff the press secretary had given me, and even done a tiny bit of independent reading on my own, but…

The truth was, I was way more nervous about what I was going to do about the whole Camp David situation than I was about going on TV.

“Aw,” I said. “It’ll be fine. It always is.”

Which is true. Going on TV with David’s dad always had been fine, in the past. Not that we’ve done it that many times—I mean, it’s not like we’ve ever paired up for Crossfire, or whatever. But I mean, like, at UN addresses, or the occasional fund-raiser that ended up being on C-Span.

And it had always worked out fine. I didn’t see how tonight would be any different.

Until David and I pulled up to Adams Prep, and I saw the protesters. `

That’s when I knew the town hall meeting was going to be very, very different than talking to a bunch of rich oil tycoons in a hotel ballroom. Because rich oil tycoons don’t generally have to be held back by dozens of police officers as they attempt to storm the car you and your boyfriend show up in.

Or wave big signs in your face that say KEEP YOUR NOSE OUT OF MY PANTYHOSE.

Or accuse you of betraying your generation when you try to get out of the car, shielded by Secret Service agents and police officers in riot gear.

Or try to hit you with an old turkey sandwich as you’re rushing into your school, which, for the evening, has been turned into a battle zone—them versus you.

But since that’s how it’s always been at Adams Prep—them versus me—I wasn’t all that fazed.

Except for the fact that I’m pretty sure that within that horde of screaming protesters I spotted a girl with Midnight Ebony and Pink Flamingo hair.