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I am eating alone in the lunchroom.
Again. Ever since Katya started smoking cigarettes, she's hanging out
back by the garbage cans, lighting up with the Art Rats. She bags
her lunch, so she takes it out there and eats potato chips in a
haze of nicotine.
Knee. Calf muscle. Dull point; must sharpen pencil. Hell! Pencil dust in fries. Whatever. They still taste okay. Calf muscle. Ankle. Foot. KA-POW! Spider-Man smacks Doctor Octopus off the edge of the building
with a swift kick to the jaw. Ock's face contorts as he falls backward,
his metal tentacles flailing with hysterical fear. He has an eighty-story
fall beneath him, and-- I think I made his butt too small. Do-over. I wish I had my pink eraser, I don't like this white one. Butt. Butt. Connecting to: leg . . . and . . . quadriceps. There. A finished Spidey outline. I have to add the suit. And some shadowing. And the details of the building. Then fill in the rest of Doc Ock as he hurtles off the edge. Mmmm. French fries. Hell again! Ketchup on Spidey. Lick it off.
"Nothing." "Then. Stop. Staring," I say, sharpening my pencil again, though it doesn't need it. This Cammie is all biscuits. She's stacked like a character in a comic book. Cantaloupes are strapped to her chest. Her only redeeming quality. "Why are you licking your Superman drawing?" Cammie tips her nose up. "That's so kinky. I mean, I've heard of licking a centerfold, but licking Superman?" "Spider." "What?" "Spider-Man." "Whatever. Get a life, Gretchen." She's gone. From across the lunchroom comes her nasal voice: "Taffy, get this: I just caught Gretchen Yee giving oral to some Superman drawing she made."
I haven't given anybody oral, anyway.
Taffy is doing splits in the middle of the lunchroom floor, which is just gross. Who wants to see her crotch like that? Though of course everybody does, and even if they didn't, she wouldn't care because she's such a unique spirit or whatever. I hate those girls, and I hate this place: the Manhattan High School for the Arts. Also known as Ma-Ha. Supposedly, it's a magnet high school for students talented in drawing, painting, sculpture or photography. You have to submit a portfolio to get in, and when I did mine (which was all filled with inks of comic-book characters I taught myself to draw in junior high) and when I finally got my acceptance letter, my parents were really excited. But once you're here, it's nothing but an old, ugly New York public school building, with angry teachers and crap facilities like any other city public school--except I've got drawing class every day, painting once a week and art history twice. I'm in the drawing program. Socially, Ma-Ha is like the terrible opposite of the schools you
see on television, where everyone wants to be the same as everyone
else. On TV, if you don't conform and wear what the popular kids
are wearing, and talk like they talk, and act like they do--then
you're a pariah. People have mohawks and dreadlocks and outrageous thrift-store clothes; no one would be caught dead in ordinary jeans and a T-shirt, because they're all so into expressing their individuality. A girl from the sculpture program wears a sari every day, even though her family's Scandinavian. There's that kid who's always got that Pink Panther doll sticking out of her jacket pocket; the boy who smokes using a cigarette holder like they did in forties movies; a girl who's shaved her head and pierced her cheeks; Taffy, who does Martha Graham-technique modern dance and wears her leotard and sweats all day; and Cammie, who squeezes herself into tight goth outfits and paints her lips vampire red. They all fit in here, or take pride in not fitting in, if that
makes any sense--and if you're an ordinary person you've got to
do something at least, like dye your hair a strange color, because
nothing is scorned so much as normalcy. Everyone's a budding genius
of the art scene; everyone's on the verge of a breakthrough. If
you're a regular-looking person with regular likes and dislikes
and regular clothes, Nothing. That's me. Gretchen Kaufman Yee. Ordinary girl. Two months ago I capitulated to nonconformity-conformity and had my hair bleached white and then dyed stop-sign red. It cost sixty dollars and it pissed off my mother, but it didn't work. I'm still ordinary.
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