“I’m not sure,” Carmen said slowly, honestly. “I couldn’t really tell.”
“Did Judy say anything?” Julia looked impatient, unsatisfied.
“She said ‘Thanks, Carmen.’ ”
“That was it?”
“That was it.”
So cool was the air between them, Carmen figured they’d spend the rest of the meal in punishing silence. But a few minutes later two girls from their hall came up. “Hey, Carmen, I heard you had a great audition,” Alexandra said.
Carmen didn’t try to hide her surprise. “Really?”
“That’s what Benjamin Bolter said. He said that your energy was very fresh.”
Carmen wasn’t sure exactly what that meant. “Thanks. I was nervous.”
“Nervous can be good,” the other girl, Rachel, said.
“Anyway, I really hope you get it. How cool would that be?”
Carmen watched them go, suddenly wishing she were eating dinner with Alexandra and Rachel and not with Julia.
When they were leaving the canteen, Carmen realized that a bunch of kids at the front table were watching her. One of the ones she’d met, Jack something or other, waved at her. “All right, Carmen!” he called out.
She felt herself blushing as she went out the door. She wished she were wearing earrings and some makeup. She felt the drumming of excitement in her chest. It was kind of a responsibility, being visible.
From: [email protected]
Subject: call me call me call me
* * *
Hey, you girl of urban mystery. Will you call me? I have something cool to tell you and I’m not writing it here. You have to call me. Ha.
And don’t do that thing you do of leaving a message when you know I won’t be there.
By eleven o’clock that night, Lena was relaxed and happy. Her stomach was full. She knew she was in love. If not with Leo, then certainly with his mother.
“So I asked Nora about posing, even though we’re not supposed to hire her,” Leo said as they picked at the last of the raspberries and the shortbread cookies.
“What did she say?” Lena asked, her elbows on the table.
“She said she’d think about it. I’m not too optimistic.”
“The truth,” Lena said, “is I really want to do it, but I probably can’t afford to. Unless I steal my mom’s jewelry. Which I have considered.”
Leo laughed. “It’s only eight bucks an hour if we split it.”
Lena put her hand to her temple. “I know. But I have no money. I’m kind of on my own with school, and it’s…”
“Ludicrously expensive,” Jaclyn filled in. “Did you try for financial aid?”
“I didn’t qualify,” Lena explained. “My parents have the money, but my dad doesn’t really…support the idea of my being an artist.” Lena usually kept this to herself, feeling ashamed of them. But tonight she said it with a note of pride.
“You should apply for a scholarship,” Leo said. “That’s what I did.”
“Did you get full tuition?” she asked.
“Tuition, stipends, everything. It helps being black,” he said. “I qualify for almost every scholarship they’ve got.”
It helps being the best painter in the school, she thought. “I have a partial one,” she explained. “I’m applying for the big one for next year. I’ll find out in August.”
“I’m sure you’ll get it,” Leo said. “But I’ll help you with your portfolio if you want.”
Lena flushed with pleasure. “Thanks,” she said. She wasn’t sure she could let him see all those drawings she used to think were good. “I just need a few finished paintings, you know?”
Jaclyn got up to clear the teacups. “You should do what we used to do when I was in art school.”
“What’s that?” Leo asked, his feet, in faded blue socks, propped on the corner of the table.
“We used to trade poses with each other. We’d do portraits, figures, whatever. It’s free, it’s fair. Most of my drawings and paintings from my art school years are of my friends.”
“I don’t really know that many people in the summer program,” Lena admitted.
Jaclyn gestured to Leo. “You know each other. You two can do it.”
While Leo was getting on board, Lena was realizing what this meant. She stopped being quite as relaxed. “You mean, like, I pose for Leo and he poses for me?” The way they looked at her, she felt both childish and dumb.
Leo was starting to look eager. “We could split it up however we want. Maybe I could pose for you on Saturday and you could pose for me on Sunday. We could work like that for the next bunch of weekends.”
Lena knew she was gaping. She tried to cover a little more of her wide eyes with her eyelids.
“It’s good for an artist to pose, too. I’ve heard that,” Leo was saying, though his voice sounded distant to her. “It’s good to see the process from the other side. It makes you better at working with models.”
Lena felt her head nodding.
“And you know we could each have a finished figure painting by the end of the summer.”
Lena was alone, trapped in her head with her loud, slow-moving thoughts. He was going to pose for her for a figure painting? The dryness of the shortbread was caked and rough in her throat. She was going to pose for him? “Or a portrait,” she choked out nervously.
“You can do a portrait,” he said, not seeming to register what this meant. “If you want.”
Lena simply could not swallow the cookie. It sat there, choking her. She knew that prudishness had no place in the training and career of a figure painter, but still.
She tried once again to swallow. Maybe her father was right after all.
The next morning Carmen unearthed a pair of red flared pants she hadn’t worn since the end of last summer. She’d worn them to Target, where she’d gone shopping for college supplies with Win. She’d also worn a bandana, do-rag style, and he’d kissed her massively in the parking lot.
God, that felt far away.
She put on a sexy black tank top and big silver hoops. She wore a shade of red lipstick that she knew looked good on her. She let her long, unruly hair out of its ordinary clip. She felt like a completely different person as she walked out of the dorm and into the sun. But like a familiar person.
She wanted to make her way slowly to the theater lobby. She wanted to keep the motor running low, to keep her expectations in check. The chances of seeing her name on the cast list were small, she knew. One out of seven under the best of circumstances, and she knew she wasn’t as prepared or as capable as the other six.
Two days ago, she was in Judy’s office trying to get out of it. Now…what?
Now she wanted it. She had stayed up all night working and thinking and studying, and it had culminated in her wanting it.
As she walked into the theater, she felt the mad walloping of her heart in her chest, so strong it seemed to shake her entire body. In some ways it had been easier not wanting it.
But the wanting felt good. Even if she didn’t get it. Wanting was what made you a person, and she was glad to feel like a person again.
The scene in the theater lobby was dreamlike. It seemed that all seventy-five of the apprentices were standing in there. But instead of noise and chaos, Carmen had the strange impression that they were waiting for her.
So strange it was, she thought her imagination must be firing in step with her perceptions, but this was how it seemed to her: It seemed like the crowd parted for her and made a path to the spot on the board where the cast list was posted. And it seemed like they were all urging her forward to look at it. And when she stood in front of it, it seemed that one character and one name were bigger and bolder than all the rest.
Perdita, it read. And next to that it said Carmen Lowell.
She hadn’t said yes, Lena said to herself as she got out of the shower the morning after her dinner at Leo’s loft. Maybe she had indicat
ed assent, but she hadn’t said the word yes.
He would be so disappointed if she backed out.
She looked at her naked self in the steamy mirror. The mirror was too small to see all of herself, which was just as well.
She was a prude. She had to admit it. She was modest. Overly modest. She was Greek. Her parents were traditional. She couldn’t even look at herself without feeling embarrassed.
She tried to imagine Leo seeing her like this. Just the thought flooded and fizzled her circuits. How could she actually do it?
She was uptight. She wished she weren’t so uptight. What was the problem, anyway? Her body was fine. She wasn’t overweight or awkwardly built. There were no major patches of cellulite, as far as she knew. She didn’t have hair in unexpected places. Her nipples went in the right direction. What was the big problem?
She wished she were more like Bee. Bee showered in the staff locker room at soccer camp next to guys she barely even knew. When Lena gawped and stuttered in disbelief at this revelation, Bee just ignored her. “It’s not that big a deal,” she said.
She thought back to Kostos and the swimming episode in Greece the summer they’d met. For a girl who liked to keep covered, fate had played a couple of pretty mean jokes on Lena.