Empress of the World (2 page)

Katrina says, “I do.” She reaches over and takes the cigarette out of Isaac’s mouth. “He doesn’t. You want the end with the filter on it closer to your mouth.” She sticks the cigarette behind her ear.

“I just did that to see if you’d notice,” mumbles Isaac. He’s blushing a little. “I don’t feel like a cigarette right now, anyway.”

“How long have you been smoking?” I ask Katrina.

“Too long,” she says. “I’m going to quit soon. I promised myself. It’s just that things are so stressful right now.” She inhales deeply. She sounds very Eastern. I wonder if she’s from New York.

“Smoking is foul. I’m going to get dinner,” says Battle, holding her nose. She starts walking towards the cafeteria, and after a moment, the rest of us follow her.

 

“Come on, you all should ask for kosher,” says Isaac as we’re standing in line for some as yet unidentifiable but reddish and vaguely pasta-like substance.

“Why?” asks Katrina.

“Well, I was here last year, and the deal is that if you want kosher, they have to make it for you specially, and that means it has a fighting chance of being decent. Plus it pisses them off, but they can’t say anything ’cause it would be anti-Semitism.”

It sounds good to me, but Katrina shakes her head. “I think it’s far more important to continue my campaign to have ranch dressing recognized as a food group.”

“Ranch dressing is grotesque,” I say.

“Ranch dressing is a food group,” Katrina counters.

“I’m with her. Ranch dressing rocks,” an unfamiliar voice says from behind Katrina. It belongs to a gangly Asian guy with long hair pulled back in a ponytail, an army jacket, baggy jeans shorts, white socks, and what I can only think of as concert shoes—black patent leather, formal looking, like what we have to wear for orchestra concerts at school.

“Thank you, citizen, for that unsolicited testimonial. I’m Katrina, and you are?”

“Kevin.”

We all tell him our names, and he smiles in a slow sleepy way. I wonder whether he’s on drugs or just chronically mellow.

“What are you in for?” Battle asks him.

Kevin looks confused.

“I think she means what class are you taking,” I translate.

“Oh—right, like jail. That’s funny,” he says, without laughing. Then, after a few moments of silence, he adds, “Uh, music. Theory.”

I say, “My viola teacher wanted me to go to some of those classes because I can’t take lessons this summer, but I don’t actually know what music theory even is. What is it?”

Kevin blinks a couple of times. It’s like we’re in a chat room and he’s got a really slow connection. Finally he says, “It’s the underlying structures that make composition possible.” After a few more seconds, he adds, vaguely, “Modes.”

I have studied viola for over five years and I have no idea what he’s talking about. Maybe he’s making it up.

“So music theory is something you want to do,” says Battle. “As opposed to what your parents want.”

Kevin nods, and moves next to me and Battle in line.

“You, too?” asks Isaac.

Battle nods. “World History, joy oh rapture.”

“I took that last year; it was okay,” says Isaac. “Taking what your parents want is such a waste. But when it’s either that or having to spend the summer with them—” Isaac starts, and Katrina finishes, “You take what you can get.”

I laugh along with everyone else, but it makes me feel a little strange. Am I the only person here who likes her parents?

Isaac asks for a kosher meal, and then looks horrified when he’s handed an unidentifiable khaki mass that looks even less appetizing than the red mass the rest of us are waiting for. “Stuffed cabbage,” says the guy behind the counter. “We had so much demand last year they decided to have some kosher stuff premade for each meal.”

“Shit,” says Isaac.

“No, cabbage!” says Katrina cheerily. Then she asks the guy, “Can I get a salad and, like, seven extra things of ranch dressing?” He lets her.

“That is so unbelievably gross,” I say. Katrina just laughs, and arranges the dressing packets on her tray into the shape of a K.

“So what are you, a vegetarian?” the guy asks me.

“What do I get if I am?” I ask.

“Grilled cheese sandwich. Green beans,” he answers.

“Yeah!” I say. That’s my all-time favorite lunch, except for the green beans. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes,” he says. The magic words.

“Fine,” I say, grinning. Kevin decides to be a vegetarian, too.

Katrina, Battle, and I sit together in a row on one side of the table, which makes both Isaac and Kevin look slightly disappointed. Isaac obviously wanted to sit with Katrina—but did Kevin want to sit with me, or Battle?

They sit across from us and spread out in a boylike way, taking up the maximum possible amount of space.

“You were here last year, too,” Isaac says suddenly to Battle. She nods.

“What’s it like?” I ask.

“Well, I’m back,” says Battle.

Isaac shrugs. “It’s better than staying home.”

“You got that right.” Battle takes a contemplative sip of iced tea, makes a face, and dumps several packets of sugar into her glass. Then she says, “But I think this year will be different.”

“Different how?” asks Isaac.

Battle shakes her head. “I don’t know. Just different.”

I wonder if Battle made friends here last year. And if they came back. But if they had, wouldn’t she be sitting with them instead?

“Well, of course it will be different! You obviously didn’t fall into such fabulous company last year. I personally guarantee that everything will be at least fifty percent more interesting this year,” says Katrina, flourishing her fork like a magician, narrowly missing knocking over Kevin’s soda. “And it will be even better if you all drop your classes and take Computer Science with me. It’ll be great, you’ll see!”

“It’s better not to be in classes with friends,” Battle says.

Are we that already?

My heart actually starts to beat a little bit faster.

It’s not like I have no friends back home, but they are all associated with activities: theater friends, orchestra friends. I’m pretty short on just plain friend friends.

“Just because then you pay more attention,” she continues. “I mean it’s lame, but it helps.” She takes a bite of lasagna, which is apparently what the red mass is supposed to be.

“Geek!” accuses Isaac.

“This is goddamn geek HQ, in case you hadn’t noticed,” Battle says. With an elegant hand gesture, she indicates the other tables full of kids, most of whom look like they always sit by themselves at their regular school.

“I have to see if I really want to be an archaeologist. That’s sort of the whole point of this summer,” I explain to Katrina.

“Why do you think you want to be one?” Katrina asks.

Spotlight on Nic. I blush and mumble, “I guess . . . I just like the idea of fitting pieces together. Figuring out how people lived. Mapping it all out.”

“You don’t want to find treasure?” Battle asks, sounding slightly disappointed.

I shake my head. “Just plain people from the past, how they worked, what they were like,” I say.

“Then the teacher will love you,” says Battle. “At least if it’s the same one as last year. If it’s a different one—”

“You’ll decide to do something totally different with your life, and it’ll all be because of this summer,” Isaac says in a deep scary horror movie preview voice.

“My mom said she became a software developer because the coolest guys were in those classes in college,” Katrina says.

“Your mom must have some weirdass taste in guys,” says Kevin in the draggy way he seems to say everything.

“Don’t even get me started,” says Katrina, holding up her hands to discourage us further from getting her started. “I mean, at least my dad has, like, some personal hygiene standards! Not that he has any other kind, mind you. But Mom’s last couple of boyfriends—ugh, not even.”

So Katrina’s parents are divorced.

“Who else’s parents are divorced?” I ask. There’s silence. After a little while, Katrina says to me,

“So we’re the only products of broken homes, huh, Nic? We’ll have to stick together.”

I say quickly, “Oh, my parents aren’t divorced. I mean, they almost got divorced a while ago, but they’re better now. They’re actually traveling this summer, which is one of the reasons I’m here. My dad’s an artist and he’s traveling to different summer art fairs and stuff. And Mom’s coming with him even though she’s a scientist.” God, Nic, shut up, who cares?

“What kind of artist?” asks Isaac.

I shrug. “He draws. Teaches. He’s kind of goofy.”

“Aha! DNA rules all!” says Katrina. “Nic, show Kevin your notebook!”

I don’t want to show Kevin my notebook. I want to go back to my room and write in it.

But again, I don’t know how to say no, so I hand it over.

“See, she’s an artist, too, just like her dad! Isn’t that cool?” says my personal redheaded cheering section.

Kevin looks at the sketches. He looks at the one of Battle longer than the other two. I must have really screwed that one up. “Awesome,” he says finally, and gives me the notebook back.

“Oh, man, you guys, don’t make her all conceited—you know they were weak,” says Isaac. Then he grins.

I say, “Thanks for telling the truth, Isaac.” I smile at him.

“Yeah, well, someone has to.” He takes a bite of his stuffed cabbage and grimaces. “It’s not bad once you get used to the texture.”

“What was that about telling the truth, again?” asks Katrina.

I can barely lift my hand to hit the snooze button on my new alarm clock, but as soon as I do, I jerk fully awake, suddenly paranoid that I didn’t set it right last night and I’m already late to class. You’d think that at nearly sixteen, I would know how to operate a simple device like an alarm clock, but you’d be wrong.

But it really is seven-thirty A .M ., not P .M . So I launch myself out of bed, walk over to the wall by the door, and look into the mirror. My hair is fine—that’s the advantage of long, straight, boring hair. But then again, it is also long, straight, and boring. And not red, despite the fact that just a few weeks ago, I spent two hours with henna, tinfoil, and towels wrapped around my head. It apparently wants to be brown, and whatever I do to convince it otherwise fails to signify.

I wonder what Battle and Katrina are going to wear today.

I put on a black T-shirt and, after a minute, the same black shorts as yesterday. I feel like they’re not the right shape—not long enough, or loose enough—but the T-shirt is huge—it’s one of Dad’s that I stole—so the shorts don’t matter so much. It’s not quite hot enough for sandals yet, so I put on green socks and green high-tops. I can hear my semi-friend Margaret: “Nic, you’re such a techie, do you even own a skirt?”

Tech people always wear black, because you spend the show backstage, and you don’t want the audience to be able to see you. And you’re not about to wear a skirt when you have to climb the ladder up to the catwalk to hang lights.