Bad Apple (16 page)

“Huh,” says Mr. Doctor.

“Let me guess,” says my mom. “You weren’t at June’s. And you didn’t go to any college seminars over the weekend.”

“Mrs. Riley,” the principal says. “Can I talk to you for a second?”

A few minutes later, my dad and Hannalore make their way down the hallway, glancing at the crowd of us in confusion.
My dad has a new haircut that makes him look like some over-gelled reality show host. Hannalore has lost some weight on her black rice and fish diet, but not in a good way. It’s made her pale and hunched and raw-boned, like an underfed polar bear.

“Dick,”
says my mom. (To be fair, it is his name.)

“Anita,” says my dad.

Mom turns to Hannalore. “Hello, Hanna.”

“Hanna
lore
,” says Hannalore.

“Right,” says Mom.

“Hi, honey.” Dad hugs me with his free arm. Hannalore puts her large head near my face, massages the air with pinched red lips, and then smoothes her white-blond updo as if the effort to be affectionate was too much for her hairpins.

“We’re here for the meeting,” my dad says.

“What meeting?” sings Madge. “There is no meeting.”

“There’s no meeting?” Dad says.

Hannalore points at the painting on the wall, sighing in annoyance. “But I think there’s a showing.”

On the wall, I’d painted a mural in a bunch of different panels:

1. Rapunzel Gets a Cat
   
2. Prince Charming Is a Brown Dude
   
3. The Evil Queen Weeps
   
4. Beauty Sleeps
   
5. The Robber Bride Butchers the Devil
   
6. The False Princess and the Barrel Full of Nails
   (or,
   Chelsea P. Answers Her Own Question
   )
   

A cat dashes between each panel. The border is a chain of clasped hands.

I painted it way too fast. The proportions are off. The colors are off. Not everyone will get it. Most people won’t. And that’s okay. The most important story you can tell is the one you tell yourself.

June and Seven come a few minutes later. So do Pete Santorini, Ben Grossman, and Alex Nobody-Can-Pronounce-His-Last-Name.

“Tola!” June shouts, and runs over to me. Her cheeks are round circles of red, her pupils black and dilated.

“Why are you shouting?”

“I’m not shouting!”

Behind her, Seven jerks his head toward Alex Nobody-Can-Pronounce-His-Last-Name. I don’t understand. He jerks his head again, raising his eyebrows.

And then I get it. June and Alex Nobody-Can-Pronounce-His-Last-Name? Is this even possible?

“What is going on with you?” I whisper.

“What do you mean?”

I lean in and whisper, “
Alex Nobody-Can-Pronounce-His-Last-Name?
”

June gets even redder and drops her head. “My phone kept calling his phone. That’s got to be fate, don’t you think?”

I take the NASA phone and toss it in the water fountain.

Me, my mother, and my father confer with the principal and the psychologist.

“You broke into the school,” says the principal, Mr. Zwieback.

“No, I didn’t,” I say. “There was a game. The door was open. I walked right in.”

“We can’t leave this mural up,” he says.

“I know,” I say.

“But we can leave it up for the day, can’t we?” says the psychologist. She’s wearing yet another flammable suit. She must have a whole closet of them. “I think this is very important for Tola’s healing journey.”

“We can’t have the school hallways used for students’ healing journeys,” says the principal. “And some of this material is not appropriate.”

A voice pipes up behind us: “Are you saying that you’re going to censor this student’s artwork?”

We turn. A woman points a huge camera at us.

“Who are you?” Mr. Zwieback wants to know.

“I’m Dana Hudson. Reporter for the
North Jersey Ledger
.”

“We don’t allow reporters on the school premises, Ms. Hudson. You’ll have to leave.”

“I have a responsibility to report the news,” the reporter says.

“I have a responsibility to protect my students,” says Mr. Zwieback.

“That’s okay,” I say. “She can stay.”

“Good Lord,” says Mr. Zwieback as more and more students wander to the mural just to see what’s going on.

For the record:

• 1. “Hey,” says Pete Santorini. “Why does Rapunzel get a cat?”
  

Ben Grossman sneers. “She’s trapped in a tower, stupid. It’s not like she can get a dog.”

“Yeah,” says Alex Nobody-Can-Pronounce-His-Last-Name. “Where would she walk it?”

• 2. Seven stands back from the exhibit, admiring, grinning. “I already have my favorite picked out.”
  

“I bet you do,” I say. I painted Seven as I saw him in my jock-punched dreams, bronze skin, silver eyes, crown winking with jewels.

• 3. Dressed in her finery, a queen fills a porcelain tub with her tears. “Well,” my mom says dryly. “The evil queen seems to bear a remarkable resemblance to the artist’s mother. Everybody, be sure to get a shot of that one.”
  

Hannalore laughs.

My mother says, “You laugh now. Just wait until you have a couple princesses of your own.”

• 4. Grandma Emmy stares at
  Beauty Sleeps
  for a long time. In it, an old grandpa dozes peacefully on a bed of rose petals. We stand together, her hand resting light as a kiss on the back of my neck.
  
• 5. Madge is transfixed by
  The Robber Bride Butchers
  the Devil
  . It’s Madge, in the middle of a dark wood, with an ax slung casually over her shoulder. In front of her, a horned man in a vaguely German military uniform kneels with his head on a stump, waiting for the bite of the blade.
  
• 6. “What is that supposed to be?” says Chelsea Patrick, stabbing a finger at
  The False Princess and the Barrel Full of Nails
  (or,
  Chelsea P. Answers Her Own Question
  ).
  

I could tell her the story, but I don’t feel like it. Art should stand on its own without any explanation, right? And I think the message is clear.

I’ve painted a barrel lying on its side. Chelsea’s body spills from it, bloodied from the nails visible on the inside of the barrel.

“It’s just a little project I’ve been working on,” I say. “It’s based on a fairy tale. I hope you don’t mind.”

“What the hell does it mean?”

I give her a hint: “It means you are your own punishment.”

I could have tried it her way. I could have made up a website, pretending to be her, saying the most terrible things I could think of. I could have followed her around, filming her, and then doctored the footage any way I wanted. I could have spent a lot of time learning computer programs and technology to hide what I was doing.

But that’s not me.

I watch as she stares at the image, unconsciously wrapping her arms around herself. I wonder how it feels to be this exposed. I wonder if it feels different to be painted rather than to be videotaped, if there’s something worse about someone drawing your bloody naked body stroke by stroke—every bump, every curve, every mark—and then nailing you in the heart.

“They’ll just paint over it,” she says. “It won’t last.”

“True,” I say. “But it’s here now.”

“You bitch.”

Maybe to her, she’s the hero and I’m the villain. And maybe in someone else’s tale, I’m nothing but the village idiot. I don’t care. Let them paint their own murals.

“You can always call the school board and complain. I think you have their number. And you know what? I gave them yours.”

The reporter taps Chelsea on the arm. “Excuse me. Can I get a picture of you with your portrait?”

“Well,” my dad says. “This is really something, isn’t it?” He searches for something positive to say, which he finds difficult to do when he’s not talking about his fabulous new life with Hannalore. “Your technique has improved,” he says finally. “And I see you’re still obsessed with
Grimm’s
.”

“Fits my worldview,” I say.

“You’re too young to have a worldview,” says Hannalore.

“We’re both very proud,” my dad says, wrapping his arm around her waist and squeezing her a little too tightly to be comfortable. “And we’re
thrilled
to be here, aren’t we?”

“Sure we are,” says Hannalore.

The reporter puts me next to Mr. Zwieback and snaps some pictures. I lose interest as Mr. Zwieback is giving a statement, something about my strength in the face of such daunting adversity, how the school is behind me one hundred percent, etc. etc. etc.

Seven says, “The school is behind you one hundred percent.”

“Yeah. Behind me. All the better to kick me,” I say.

Speaking of kicking, I’m afraid to ask, but I can’t help myself. Starving polar bear or not, wicked stepmother or not, Hannalore does own a gallery.

“What do you think?” I say.

She makes a so-so motion with her large, bony hand. “Melodramatic, but that’s what you’d expect from a teenager,” she says. “Autobiographical, another thing you’d expect.” She scans the mural. “None of the panels have your father in them.”

“Caught that, huh?”

She smirks. “The words are distracting.”

Seven says, “I think the words are the best part.”

Hannalore ignores him. “At best, it’s juvenilia. At worst, crap.”

“Juve-what?” June says.

“You’re very kind,” I say.

“You asked,” she says, unconcerned. I suppose she thinks it serves me right for dragging her out here to this godforsaken suburb when she could be dining on black rice with important people in Manhattan.

I say, “Well, if you can’t please everyone with your deeds and your art, please a few. To please many is bad.”

Hannalore frowns. A note hits her in the forehead and drops to the floor. She bends at the knees to retrieve it, the perfect lady. The writing is large enough for me to read:

SHOW US YOUR BOOBS!

She holds up the note. “Which of you appalling children threw this at me?”

Pete Santorini, Ben Grossman, and Alex Nobody-Can-Pronounce-His-Last-Name laugh so hard that Alex chokes on his gum and Ben has to pound his back.

Seven pulls me over to the front door, away from the crowds of people. He’s brought more cupcakes for me, vanilla cupcakes with mocha icing and chocolate cupcakes with cream cheese icing.

“We don’t have much time,” I say. “If I’m gone too long, my parents will look for me.”

“Then we better make the most of it,” he says. He takes a cupcake with mocha icing and smears it across my face. “Uh-oh. Now you’re brown.”

I take a cupcake with cream cheese icing and slather it on his lips and cheeks. “And now you’re white.”

He licks his lips. “Tastes good.”

“Same here.”

“You’re just saying that,” he tells me. “It’s only the second time I’ve tried the recipe. I changed up the proportions.”

“No, it’s really good. I’ve never tasted anything like it. But if you don’t believe me, you can check yourself.”

He takes a step toward me—all six foot plus of cream-cheese-icing-slathered goodness—and kisses me. It’s a sweet kiss, not just because of the icing, but because it’s so light, so gentle, like he’s kissing me but asking my permission at the same time,
is this okay, do you like this, do you like me? Yes,
I think,
yes
. We kiss some more, not as nice, not as sweetly, until the icing on our faces mixes into the most delicious shade of topaz.

I’ve got a huge crowd now—teachers, students, even Ms. Esme. They pace back and forth in front of the mural, whispering to one another. Sometimes they glance at me and whisper some more.

They’re trying to decide if I’m crazy.

They’re trying to decide if my art is any good.

They’re trying to decide if seeing Chelsea Patrick naked is too horrible a punishment for the public.

They’re trying to decide if they believe in fairy tales.

And I want to say, listen, there’s no living happily ever
after, just living happily, with the happily part relative, defined by what’s possible in the moment. And there’s a story here, one familiar and not, where a girl is freed from a tower, a sister is freed from herself, and they go to visit their grandpa. But instead of packing bread and wine, they bring him some ginger ale and maybe applesauce. And the wolves they meet along the way are soft and playful as puppies, the wicked women sing lullabies to their own reflections in their mirrors, and the huntsmen all put down their axes to chase the squirrels through the woods.

Grandma Emmy is peering up at Hannalore exactly the way you’d peer up at an underfed polar bear. Warily.

“How’s Joe?” my dad asks Grandma Emmy.

“We moved him to rehab,” Madge says. “He ate a piece of turkey and some peaches for lunch. And he walked from the bed to the bathroom by himself.”

“That’s not enough.” Grandma Emmy is still focused on Dad. “You should visit him in the hospital. He likes visitors. People make him feel like eating. Take your girlfriend, too.”

“We were married in October.”

“Whatever,” says Grandma. “Let’s go.”

“Where?”

“To visit Joe, what do you think?”

“All of us?” my dad squeaks.

“Yeah,” says Grandma.

“Now?”

“No time like the present.” Grandma points to Mr. Doctor. “But he’s driving.”

And that’s how we all ended up piled in Grandpa Joe’s room in the rehab center on a Monday morning, watching a very nice nurse ply him with strawberry Jell-O and crackers. Grandpa Joe is thrilled to see us. Madge is delighted. My dad and my mom look like their underwear is too tight. Hannalore appears to be contemplating gnawing off her own limbs. Mr. Doctor offers to get everyone ginger ale from the soda machine. The nurse tells us all that they hope to get Grandpa back on his feet in a few weeks.

“That’s good news,” says my mom. She clutches her heart as she speaks, and Grandma Emmy pats her arm.

“Grandpa,” I say, moving to the side of the bed. “I have something for you.”