of the Wynn before. It’s an up-and-coming gallery that mostly features artists early in their careers, but I’m not sure I’m good enough. I sketch and paint constantly, but I don’t like showing my work to people. I come up with these concepts in my mind, but I can never seem to execute them exactly the right way. Sometimes I feel as if my skill will never match up with my vision.
“It’s a ways off—the show won’t be until near the end of the school year—but you have to submit a portfolio to be considered. They’re going to take only two or three artists total.”
How can I pull off a full show in eight months?
I’m a perfectionist. I take forever to put together a painting.
“That sounds pretty intense,” I say. “I don’t know what I would paint.”
Ms. Day puts down the flyer and looks at me. “Olivia. You need to start believing in your work. Really. It’s time for you to push yourself. Find your voice. You’ve been experimenting with figure drawing lately. Why don’t you try painting live models?”
I want to ask Ms. Day what she means by finding my voice, and exactly how I should go about doing that, when the fire alarm goes off.
“Really?” Ms. Day shakes her head. “We’ve had three of these damn things this week already. Wish I could catch whatever little delinquent is responsible for this.”
Lights flash on and off as the alarm buzzes. The school installed these alarms with strobe lights that practically blind you. It’s most likely a false alarm, but they’re so annoying they make you want to leave the room.
She heads for the door. “You don’t have to decide now,” she says, holding the flyer out to me. “You’re the only student I am recommending for this, so please promise to think about it.”
“Yeah,” I say, taking the flyer, my stomach tightening with nerves. “I promise.”
“You live but once; you might as well be amusing.”
—Coco Chanel
I’m sitting with Mom and Dad at a table at Musso & Frank Grill on Hollywood Boulevard, dining under the chandeliers in the ambience of mahogany decor and literary ghosts. Faulkner. Hemingway. Fitzgerald. Steinbeck. Parker. You name the writer—they ate here. The restaurant is old Hollywood classy. Waiters wear red jackets and black ties. Mom and Dad love this kind of stuff. A sense of history appeals to them.
I had to go home after school to change just so I could go out to dinner with my parents, even though I have absolutely no interest in eating.
It’s Thursday. Today was supposed to be a fast day.
I’m trying to break a plateau. My goal is to get down to 100 pounds, and I’m not going to get there by eating ham steak or a rack of lamb or whatever.
When the waiter delivers my salad, Dad starts doing this thing he always does at these dinners, as if his life suddenly revolves around my eating habits.
“A house salad?” Dad asks. “That’s it?”
I get irritated with them at dinners because they’re always commenting on what and how much I put on my plate, making me feel guilty for whatever I do or don’t eat.
Believe me. I already judge myself enough for my own eating habits. Like those two Rice Krispies treats Mom made that I binged on yesterday? They made me feel terrible.
Words slip out before I have a chance to process. “Why do you care?”
Sometimes I want to stand on the table and inform the congressman: Sir, my life isn’t about shoving millions of calories of dead cow into my body.
They were the ones who encouraged me to lose weight in the first place. When I came home crying about how fat I was after Ollie dumped me freshman year, Mom was the first to help me go on a diet. She bought me weight loss guidebooks, exercise tapes and a food scale. I would give her a special list of what to pick up at the grocery store.
I counted every calorie. Weighed every ounce. Recorded every mile. It was healthy at first. I started to lose weight. Fast. I really did need to ditch some of the weight, but I couldn’t stop even after I lost all the weight I had gained.
And everyone, I mean everyone, was nicer to me. Even my parents. But I don’t want their attention anymore. They’re more controlling with me than they were with either Mason or Royce. Dad claims I’m more prone to extremes. Mom says I’m too hard on myself. I fail to see either. I’m pretty average.
Devastatingly average.
“Give me the benefit of the doubt,” he says. “I’m just saying that you don’t have to order the salad. Eat whatever you want. You used to like the Manhattan steak.”
I refuse to react. I take a small bite of lettuce, the smallest leaf I can find.
I chew thirty times, counting each one like a bead on a rosary.
30...29...28...27...
It’s way harder to come up with excuses for not eating at a restaurant, and I can’t go to the bathroom after dinner either. Too obvious. So I order light and chew my food for so long that when they’re ready to go, I end up leaving half my food on the plate.
I may be a fairly average teenage girl, but I’m strong-willed. Probably more so than any of those girls who hang around with Zach. I can put up a good fight.
I smile at Mom as if to say, Please keep the congressman behind the imaginary fence. She looks at me and shrugs. I guess I’ll have to fight this battle on my own.
So I feign deafness, take a sip of water and stare at the wood paneled walls, thinking about my conversation with Ms. Day right before lunch. Having my work shown at a real gallery would be an amazing experience. It would mean that I actually have the talent to be a professional artist someday. Just being good at art in your high school classes isn’t enough. I have to test myself outside of school too.
I want to put together a portfolio, but I don’t know where to begin. My mind goes blank every time I try to think of a concept or theme for the show. I need to find my inspiration. If only I could talk to LeFeber...
“You might consider returning to Earth once in a while, Ms. Space Cadet,” Dad says. His mouth is moving, but his words are white noise. “Ground control to Olivia.”
I’m a disappointment to him. Not only am I not interested in his job, I don’t get as high grades as Royce and I’ll never be as popular as Mason was in high school.
He taps his fork on my plate, clanging the tines against the glass to get my attention. I stare at him, hoping my smoldering irises are enough to laser some more gray streaks into his hair. “I hope the rabbits across America aren’t starving...”
I scrunch up my forehead. What the hell is he talking about?
“You eat so much lettuce you must have tanked their food economy,” he says.
“Congressman Blakely,” I say, stabbing my fork into a leaf covered in sesame seeds, “I like salads, the rabbits will be just fine and, besides, I’m just not super hungry, okay?”
I started calling him Congressman Blakely about a year ago. I don’t know why, other than I thought it was funny. Maybe I was being a little mean. It’s a way for me to passively fight back in my own house. My own private revolution, for no reason other than that I’m a teenager. It’s practically my duty to get under my parents’ skin.
“Can you not be like this? I’d love to have a peaceful dinner.” Mom wipes a touch of water from her lips, then folds up her napkin into a perfect rectangle. She’s perfect. Intelligent. Tactful. Nothing—not one stray hair or wrinkled shirt—ever out of place.
I reach for my own napkin and realize