Boy Proof (5 page)

Dr. Gellar, our dean of students, is annoyed with me because I am not getting to the point.

“Victoria, I have papers to grade.”

“Okay, Max Carter has a higher GPA than me. But he transferred over from a school in England. So does that weigh in? I mean, he’s been here just over a week. And they have a whole different system over there.”

Dr. Gellar looks at me over her glasses.

“Max Carter hasn’t even taken the SATs,” I say. That’s something that Dr. Gellar will understand for sure.

“Victoria, I don’t know what you’re getting at. If you’re asking me if you’re still in the running to be valedictorian, I suppose the answer is yes. You’re a gifted student with an excellent academic record. You’ve had near-perfect attendance and are an exemplary student.”

“You
suppose
the answer is yes?” I say.

“Victoria, these things aren’t decided until all the grades are in, and there are many gifted seniors who are very close together in merit.”

“But he just got here. It doesn’t seem fair that someone can sneak in and steal away my place.”

“Victoria, please stop wasting my time. I’m not going to guarantee anything until all the grades are in.”

This answer will have to satisfy me. I push myself out of the metal chair, which unfortunately makes a horrible noise, and head out of Dr. Gellar’s office. I am just about to close the door when I remember I should say thank you. No use in making her all mad at me. She might let my standing slip.

I poke my head back in.

“Dr. Gellar?” I say.

“What?” she snaps.

“Thank you,” I say.

I close the door, pull an apple from my bag, and take a big bite out of it. It is delicious.

“You’re late, Egg,” Martin says.

“So what?” I say. “I’m sure I didn’t miss anything.”

It is unfortunate that the Science Fiction and Fantasy Club is filled with geeks. But they are the only people that I can talk to ad nauseam about the kind of stuff I actually like. The truth is, socially, most of them are even worse off than me.

“Okay,” says Hasan. “Who’s in favor of taking a field trip to the Museum of Television and Radio and watching their screening of
Pilots of Science Fiction Television
on the thirty-first?”

We all raise our hands.

I agree to go only because I was planning on going anyway. No use in running into everyone there and making it be all weird. Might as well join the group.

“Don’t forget that we have tickets to the midnight screening of
New Mars
tonight,” Hasan says.

“
New Mars
is going to SUCK,” I say.

“Egg, you say that about everything,” Rue says.

“Not everything.” Hasan comes to my defense, just to sound as though he has his own opinion. “And she’s mostly right.”

“I have high standards,” I say. “I don’t settle for flashy special effects and an overly dramatic soundtrack.”

Martin winces. Those are his weaknesses. Martin only likes Hollywood science fiction. He’s never read the books. He’s never seen a foreign science fiction film or an indie science fiction film. No one here has. I like to see everything. So I always have the broader net to draw from.

“But I’m still coming to the screening,” I say. “I’m always curious about a new space film. I hear they used a new technique on the animatronics for the Martians. I’m interested in seeing it in action.”

We finish up some more club business and then the meeting is over.

Martin and Rue, the only people I can stand talking to, come up to me outside after the club meeting.

“We’re going to the New Bev to see
Raiders of the Lost Ark
beforehand. Want to join us?”

“No can do,” I say. “I’ve got my internship at the American Cinematheque.”

I flick Rue’s fedora with my fingers.

“Get rid of the hat, Rue.”

“Get rid of the cloak, Egg.”

She smiles at me. I want to smile back, but it might break me.

Egg is a woman who can’t afford to get too close to anyone.

“So I need you to label and stuff all these envelopes for the gala party,” Wanda says.

There are about a million invitations.

“I’d like to go to the special screening of
A Dream for the Moon,
” I say.

“I think Lark Austin has totally sold out,” Wanda says. “This doesn’t compare to her earlier, low-budget films. I can’t believe she spent millions of dollars to make a film only to take all the color out of it in post-production. Why not just make it a black-and-white movie?”

“Saba Greer will be there with the director for a Q & A,” I say. “And the movie’s not coming out in theaters for another two months.”

Wanda likes obscure independent films. She programs all the cult films. She’s a big purist. Unlike me she doesn’t also like the big splashy Hollywood films.

“She plays Egg in
Terminal Earth,
” I say.

“I know who she is, Egg. How could I not?” Wanda points at my cloak and smiles. She’s not laughing at me, like other people do, and I like that most about her.

“How about I put you on duty for the special prefilm reception? You can help Eduardo set up the tables and then mingle at the party,” she says.

“That would be great,” I say, and then I stuff the envelopes with much more gusto.

In a little over a month, I will meet Egg herself!

Making a life cast involves slathering someone’s face with alginate. I know how to do it, but I don’t have anyone to make a life cast of. So today, since Dad isn’t so busy, he takes the time to make a new life cast of my face. I sit extremely still so I don’t distort the mask. I am completely enclosed, ears plugged, senses shut off. The only thing I can hear inside my head is my own steady breathing and the strong sound of my heartbeat. Some people freak out during the process, but I like it.

When the alginate hardens, Dad pulls off the mother mold. I love seeing the inside of my own face.

I pour the plaster in to make a positive cast. I pull it out after about an hour and then I leave it to dry. Next week I’ll have my own face to sculpt my creations on instead of a stock one that Dad has on the shelf.

I go over to the area where my positive from last week is waiting for me. I get the modeling clay and begin creating.

I like the way the clay softens in my fingers and how the monsters and aliens spring to life under my capable and sturdy hands.

I take the tools and make the pores in the face. I crease the line where a growl or a snarl is frozen in place. I determine the age of the character by the lines I press into the clay.

I am not doing this for anyone but myself.

I work and work and work silently next to Dad as he tinkers with an eyeball or an alien or ears that he needs to make for this project or that project. He is always tinkering.

After I spend two hours working and molding and pressing and poking the clay, Dad comes over to observe my work.

He turns the positive around. He circles it. He nods. He scrunches his face. He picks up a tool and adds something, an obvious wrinkle that I forgot.

“You’re getting better, Egg,” he says.

I make a two-piece mold over the entire head, then I open the mold and clean the clay out. I’m ready to make the foam latex. Soon, I will have a new mask for my collection.

“Document, document, document,” Dad says.

I take out my camera and photograph the mask I finished painting last week.

“You have some great ideas for monsters,” Dad says.

“My mind is a scary place,” I say.

I sit in the most out-of-the-way corner with my math book open. The numbers in the problems I am trying to solve morph into monsters. I abandon the math and begin drawing monster ideas in my notebook.

The light in the café is yellow, and I notice that everyone here is with someone else. They are with friends. I am the only one alone. I throw my Egg cloak over the empty chair at my table so it looks like someone is coming right back to sit with me. So that the chair looks occupied.

It’s 7:37
P.M.
, by the big antique clock on the wall. The café starts to fill up.

A girl comes over to me. She is wearing nerdy cat eyeglasses with rhinestones in them. One of the rhinestones is missing. It looks like a gap tooth. She doesn’t seem to mind the moth holes in her green sweater, or her greasy, faded pink hair, or the obvious paint crusted onto her jeans. I notice she wears her piercings with much more ease than I do.

Bitch,
I think.

“I noticed you sketching,” she says.

“I’m doing my homework.”

“We’re doing a
bande dessinée en directe
here tonight. I could give you a board to draw on.”

“I don’t have any money.”

“You don’t need money. I give you a board and then you draw on it and then give your drawing to someone else to ink and then we collect them and make a mini-comic out of it. See?”

She slips me a mini-comic.

“This is from the last event,” she says.

“I’m not really a joiner,” I say.

Unfazed, she moves on to bother the people at the next table. They eagerly take a board from her.

I put my notebook down and look around at the other people in the room. I look at the person at the next table. He’s drawing stupid stick figures. I draw way better than that.

Maybe I
could
draw something. I get up to find pinky nerdy girl with the blank boards.

“Oh, great!” she says as she hands me my board.

I can always leave,
I say to myself.
I don’t have to have anyone ink my pencil picture.
I start to walk back to my table and run right into Max Carter. My blank board falls to the ground. Max picks it up.

It takes me a long time to find a place that I can call my own. Somewhere I won’t run into anyone I know. Somewhere I can be alone. And yet here is Max, invading my territory,
again.

“Hey. Wow. I didn’t know you did stuff like this,” he says.

“I don’t,” I say.

He laughs. “Yeah, obviously not.”

“No, really, it’s an accident that I’m here. I didn’t know they were doing this tonight.”

“Do you have an inker yet?”

“No. I’m probably not going to even do it.”