3

"You'll find things here different than what you're accustomed to, Charles," Mr. Brooks tells me. "More structured."

He smiles patiently. Acting laid-back in jeans and a baggy sweater (despite the sticky heat outside, his office is a deep-freeze), he's the perfect image of the wise and kindly older mentor who will guide young talent to success.

"Your audition paintings were most impressive, but you still have an undisciplined approach. Very undisciplined. This often happens with artists who are self-taught—the talent and inspiration are there, but adequate training in the fundamentals is lacking. As you're a junior"—he shakes his balding head regretfully—"you'll be taking some advanced classes, of course. But I really think you'd benefit from some basics." When I don't say anything, he elaborates. "I'd like you to take Still Life, to give you precision, and Anatomy and Modeling, to give your human figures greater accuracy and better proportion."

He glances at me across his sleek black desk slab, but I keep my mouth shut. He can put me down for any classes he likes, even introductory finger painting, if he'll just tell me where my studio is. Despite what I wrote in my application, I didn't come to Whitman expecting to be taught anything about painting. I thought Graeme Brandt was the only instructor I needed, but I expected him to teach me how to show my art, not how to do it better.

"Your composition is sound," he allows. "For the advanced classes, I'd suggest Portraiture, and Landscape. How does that sound?"

I resist the shrug that's itching to burst out, and nod. "Fine." If the landscapes hanging on his paneled walls are any example of what the advanced class teaches, I'll learn what not to do.

"You'll also be taking Junior English, Government, French—I don't see any math or science on your preference sheet—"

"I've done calculus and chemistry," I tell him. "That's more math and science than I'll probably ever need. It's on my transcript."

"Oh." He flips the page, and his eyes light up. "I see you wanted some computer programming?"

This time I do shrug. Thanks for coming up with that idea, Dad. Learn to paint on a computer and see the world... "I was thinking about doing some sort of computer graphics," I explain reluctantly. "Sort of a way to make a living, maybe."

"Good thinking," he says, pushing up the loose sleeves on his sweater. "But you can't really fly before you can swim." He chuckles, I guess at his hopelessly mixed metaphors. "I'll put you down for Introductory Programming. Then you'll be ready to program graphics next year."

I take the schedule he hands me and note that Gym is a bare thirty minutes twice a week. The computer class is an hour three days, which seems like a lot of wasted time. Maybe I can learn to write a program that will give me a passing grade in the course without having to actually attend it The mornings are full of academic courses, but the afternoons are all art classes and studio time.

"Now," Mr. Brooks says in a portentous tone, "for your studio."

I slide the schedule into my jeans pocket and wait He opens a soundless drawer in his desk and pulls out a brass key and a sheet of paper. "Usually upperclassmen get to choose their studios in the spring, but as you're a transfer we selected one for you from what was left."

The sheet of paper is a floor plan of the studio building, and I watch as his finger hovers over it "This one is all the way at the for end, I'm afraid, but it does have the advantage of being near the elevators, which made it easier to get your materials inside."

I ignore his disapproving tone. I crated my paintings myself so no one could see them, but it all weighed a ton in the end. I had to send them by slow truck, and it still ate up most of my savings account.

The studio he's pointing to looks perfect Squashed in a corner between a stairwell and the bank of elevators, it's odd-shaped—narrower at the door, with a dog- leg corner jutting into the floor space. That's probably why no one else wanted it. But it's isolated, which suits me fine.

"Even though it's a little smaller than the others, you've got a good north light," Mr. Brooks is saying. "And you'll have the opportunity to choose a different studio for your senior year, of course."

"This one's okay." I just want to get out of his office and into my studio.

He hands me the key. "This will get you into the building and into your studio itself. But Fm afraid these keys aren't impossible to copy. To keep your materials safe, you should probably get an additional lock."

Already done. The weight of the hasp lock dragged awkwardly in my pack on the way here. I take the floor plan and key and start to stand up.

"We're very pleased to have you as part of the Whitman family, Charles," Mr. Brooks intones, and I sink back into my chair. Family? Who's he kidding? One reason most kids are here is wanting to get away from family—parents who start out proud because Junior plays the violin and then think he's weird when he finds out he's really good and starts to get obsessed. Simon says ... get out and play, be like the other kids—what's wrong with you? Here, there's nothing wrong with us.

I think of my father looking flushed and hurt when I didn't care who was winning the stupid football game—all I wanted to do was paint the receiver, hanging in midair, his fingertips brushing the rough, pebbly texture of the ball. He knows that three guys, each one twice his size, are about to crash into him, but he makes himself tune them out, straining to clasp that ball to his chest and bring it to earth with him. Except for the colors of the uniforms on canvas, the teams' identities don't matter. I intended to paint red and gold for the receiver, to echo the autumn crispness, but I wanted to give Dad the painting. Stupid idea—but part of me liked being with him in the stadium that afternoon. I don't even know why. He was cheering for the team in blue and gray, so I used their colors to reflect a stormy sky. Dad actually hung the painting in his office. I couldn't believe it I felt ashamed at not using the colors I wanted but proud that he hung it at the same time. When I actually go into his office (not very often), I try not to look at it But I'm glad it's there.

"The mentorship program here is unique, but it's a special feature that I believe, enhances the success of our graduates," Mr. Brooks continues, not having a due what I'm thinking. That's like family, for sure. His words have the feel of a memorized speech. Does every student have to listen to this? I have an image of kids in air-conditioned offices all over the campus, listening to pompous mentors reciting in unison.

"Your roommate will be able to help you find your way around the campus, but I know questions and concerns will arise. Feel free to come to me with anything you need to discuss. My office is always open to you, and if you have a problem you should have no hesitation about calling me at home. I know you'll be an asset to our student body, Charles, and my job is to help you in any way I can."

At least it's short I thank him, grab my pack, and get out of the freezer. Kids are sweating in the Houston humidity outside the building, but I don't mind the weather. The sky is hazy, with a feel of rain hanging in the air, but it could be a blazing blue sky dotted with fluffy cloud shapes for all I care. I'm on the way to my studio, and grassy lawns, hedge-lined walks, and humidity are just obstacles to get past as quickly as possible.

The studio building is brick, long and narrow, so that every artist has a window on one wall—much nicer than my basement hideout at home. My parents call it a den. I know it's something of a sanctuary from eyes that slide away in discomfort (even Steve's), from names that hurt, from anonymous hands that tear up pictures they don't like and can't match. I'm hoping to find sanctuary in this studio, too. I crane my neck to look at the roof—seven stories up, with an intricately carved parapet at the top. I'm on the fourth floor, not too far to climb if the elevators are busy. The key turns smoothly in the outer lock, and I swing the heavy door open, dreading a rush of frigid air. But the air-conditioning here isn't so bad. If it were the same temperature as Mr. Brooks's office, the paints would harden on the palette.

Kids stumble down sleek, tiled hallways that already smell of fresh oils and turpentine, and pound up and down the polished stone stairs, trying to find their studios and get set up. Some of them look at me, wide-eyed. I'm obviously too old to be a freshman, so they wonder who I could be. I'll have to find another way into the building, where I won't have to run this gauntlet every time I come in. Maybe there's an entrance by the far stairwell.

I find my studio. There are loops for my hasp lock, above the knob. I slide the brass key into the door and swing it open, then ease inside and flip on the light. I see my crates of supplies and canvases, and I push the door shut behind me, punching the lock button. There's even a place to clasp my lock when I'm inside—the ultimate "Do Not Disturb" barrier. I slide my pack off my shoulder and pull out the heavy lock. It slips through the metal hoops and dicks solidly, locking out the world. The pack slides to the tile floor, and I lean back against the smooth wood of the door. For the first time since arriving at Whitman (in how long really?), I let my guard relax.

The gray light from the cloudy day washes over the plywood crates. I left some paintings locked up at home, but the ones that matter came with me. After a moment I get up and fumble with the locked clasps to open the first crate. It contains finished canvases that the audition committee most certainly did not see—canvases that might reveal too much, even to committee members who probably just want to be sure the applicant is somewhere beyond stick figures. I pull out a cityscape, a swirl of neon sunset crushed under the night, with a single bell tower glaring back at the darkness, refusing to go out What had Mr. Brooks said about lack of discipline and perspective? He'd probably think this canvas proved his point But it proves a different point to me.

Almost no one has seen these paintings since I showed some of them to Steve. My father might accept it if I'd stick to painting football scenes as a hobby, but pictures of phoenixes torn by lions would probably freak him out. "How are you ever going to make a living painting pictures?" he demanded before I left for Whitman. He owns a real estate business, and his idea of a good picture is a photograph that sells a house. He keeps trying to reconcile my painting with his world. "If you like to draw so much, you could be an architect," he told me once. "Or an engineer." Those are jobs he can understand.

My mother's a lawyer, and a good picture to her is one of the pretty pictures in the calendars she mails out to clients every Christmas. When I was little, she liked the pictures I made. She'd hang them on the bulletin board in her office. Charlie's so talented... Then she hung them on the refrigerator at home but didn't take them to her office anymore. She acted like they troubled her. Can't you paint nice houses, and happy children playing, and pretty trees? She wanted stick figures with big smiles on fake faces, and green lollipop trees under a blue stripe of sky. That's what other kids were painting in preschool—the kids who looked at me like I was alien because my trees actually looked like trees, and because I couldn't be bothered to waste time admiring their paint-splattered lollipops during sharing time. I was too busy trying to figure out how to do trees properly, so that the bark was textured and individual leaves rustled in the breeze. I was still trying to stripe the tree trunks and branches with black and gray and brown to give then some depth and texture, and the result wasn't as convincing as I knew I should be able to make it What was the point, anyway, of telling some kid who'd rather be playing dodgeball that his picture was really neat, straining to sound like I meant it? I could have told him his game was great, I suppose—if I'd cared about dodgeball, beyond trying to work out how to avoid it But what I cared about was making my painting as good, and as true, as it could possibly be.

Mother didn't care whether my trees (or wolves) were convincing or not She didn't like them because they weren't like the trees other kids made. Why don't you draw a doggy, Charlie? A dog playing with some children? She didn't mention the pretty tree, but I knew she wanted that too, so I made her a picture like that—a silly picture—even the stupid doggy under the lollipop tree was smiling a big fake smile. She put that one up on her bulletin board at work. That's what people want to see, Charlie. (That's what you want to see, Mother.) You don't want to make them nervous, do you? You should make pictures like the other children do, and not make them fed sad because they can't paint the same sort of pictures. I tried to tell her that I didn't really want to make anyone nervous—that I painted trees and wolves because I saw those pictures inside of me (but not that I was the outcast being chased by wolf children who had banded together into a vicious pack, not because they were "sad" but because they were "ordinary" and I was different), and I had to let them out But she'd caught me crying from the way the other kids had hounded me. She knew the truth, even if she didn't want to think about it Maybe you should keep those pictures to yourself, Charlie. Simon says ... keep your art separate, keep it safe from the people who laugh at you or sneer at you, who resent your drawings.

So I kept the real pictures to myself and gave her the fake happy pictures that I was apparently supposed to be drawing—nobody sneered at those. As I got older, though, she didn't even like that sort of picture anymore. You're too old for that foolishness, Charlie. Boys your age don't paint ail the time. You should get out and play with the other boys—take up a sport, be part of a team. And you should start thinking about what you want to do with your life. I don't understand... So I showed her the real pictures I'd been painting, with the mythological symbols. I thought she'd understand if she actually saw them. After all, it wasn't wolves in stormy forests. But she only glanced at them, and then looked away. They're very ... nice, Charlie, but you can't spend your whole life making ... pictures. She sort of gestured at them, as if she couldn't even stand to look at them. At that time I still wondered why they made her so uncomfortable. Didn't she understand? Or wasn't it her? Was it me? Had I Med to get my message across? Were my pictures so bad?

If they were, the thing was to get better at them, not stop. But that wasn't what she wanted. You're not a little boy anymore, Charlie. Painting pictures is fine for a hobby—A hobby? Like her rosebushes, when she remembers to prune them? Or the old Mustang Dad has out in the garage, the one he's fixing up when he has an hour or two in the evening, every other week, or month, or never? A hobby? I didn't have the words then to tell her I couldn't paint just in my spare time any more than I could breathe in my spare time. But she wouldn't have listened, even if I'd had the words. You have to make some serious choices about your career, Charlie. What about computers? You could write game programs, with beautiful graphics. Or medicine—you could be a doctor. Or finances—you could be a stockbroker. Or, if you don't want to work at a desk, you could do something outdoors—you could be an archaeologist. Or... Anything from astrophysicist to zoologist, as long as I didn't choose painter. Paint as a hobby, Charlie, but you need to do something more with your life—something (conventional) to make us proud of you (something to justify all the effort we went through to raise you when we could have been doing other useful things like making money and being more successful like our friends. Now you owe us so we can brag about you to the other parents we know. Pay up).

I don't know how I'm going to make a living with my art, and I don't care. I could dig ditches or work in a factory—any sort of boring day job in order to pay the bills, so long as it leaves my head clear for painting.

So I cleaned out a storage room in the basement—Charlie's den for his little hobby, like Dad has the garage. I saved my allowance and birthday money for supplies, and I kept painting—in the afternoons, at least, when they were both at their jobs. Then, when they came home, I'd have dinner with them like a nice, ordinary son, and do my homework, as if I cared about the grades that were supposed to get me into college. Sometimes I'd paint again after they went to bed, or I'd get up early and paint I'd hear the pipes when Mom took her shower and know it was time to stop. If they didn't want to see my paintings, they didn't have to see them. And neither did anybody else. Simon says ... keep your art separate... So I made sketches in school and hid my paintings in the basement. Those sketches of the elementary school teachers who didn't like my pictures finally paid off—in middle school I started doing cartoons for the school paper. The other kids seemed to like my caricatures. So did the teachers, as long as I didn't draw them. I was pretty sure everybody liked the cartoons more than they'd like the real paintings. What a joke—caricatures in print, and all this for real.

One canvas freezes me as I crouch, flipping through the pile. Why did I bring this one? I see a portrait of a girl, beautiful, lush—not my style at all—with long silken black hair and wide, trusting blue-black eyes that pull me, drowning, into the past.

Mr. Brooks is right. I could use a class in portraiture. The canvas isn't much like the subject. When I painted it, I couldn't understand why Cindy refused to recognize herself. Now it's pretty clear. I painted love, not the girl herself. An adult would laugh at it, I guess. But it was true for me then. Looking at it now, I have to admit that Cindy was never like that. I just thought she was.

But she could have been.

It was spring of ninth grade (after all those school art teachers, after giving up on Steve, after I should have known better), and I had two tickets to the touring production of Phantom of the Opera and no date for the show. Cindy was gorgeous; I have to admit my painting doesn't lie about that And she'd never been obnoxious to me, like the jocks and most of the other girls who went out with them. She'd even say something nice about my caricatures once in a while. Everybody was talking about the show and how hard it was to get tickets. The matinee seats were a birthday present from my mother—she wanted me to get out more and do things with other kids. I would never have expected Cindy to go out with me normally, but I thought maybe the show would be a big enough incentive to interest her. Even though I didn't really think she'd say yes, I asked her—and she did. I didn't expect to enjoy the matinee (the show was pretty glitzy), but the performance seemed to have a kind of glow about it And so did Cindy.

She asked questions about my drawings, and she wanted to know why I didn't do more than just the cartoons in the paper and messing around in art class at school. She said she'd heard I painted some great stuff in eighth grade. I couldn't believe she'd actually been talking to the other kids about me. But Mrs. Sayers was terrific in eighth grade. I didn't show her any of my real paintings, but I did more in class than I'd done in a long time, and it was as if she could guess at the paintings she couldn't see. She was always encouraging me to try something new. In ninth grade we had a by-the-book right-and-wrong teacher who was probably afraid her students might be more creative than she was. And after what Steve had told me—well, I didn't feel like exposing much in class anymore.

Cindy and I talked all through the intermission, and then we went for pizza after the show, and I told her a little about my painting, and she seemed to listen, really listen. She didn't make fun of the idea of being an artist Maybe she thought it was romantic. I don't know what she thought I just looked into her blue-black eyes and talked, and she smiled up at me like what I was saying was special.

We went out a few more times and ate lunch together every day in front of all the other kids in the cafeteria. She really seemed to want them to see her with me. The kids smiled at us, secretive, unfriendly smiles, but I ignored them. I just loved being with her. Then I painted her from memory, and I knew I had to show her the portrait and my other paintings also. Cindy would understand—unlike my mother. She wouldn't tell me it was a phase I was supposed to outgrow. Cindy wouldn't act as if there was something wrong with painting pictures that showed people there was hope beyond the wolves and the heart-crushing expectations that tried to cut you down to something petty and mediocre. I knew Cindy would see what I was trying to do with my paintings. And her reaction would be a taste of what I'd see on everyone's face when I had my first show. I was still young enough to think the day would come when I could show my paintings to the world.

So she came over one Thursday afternoon while my parents were at work. We sat on the couch for a while—she wanted to make out, but I couldn't get into it No matter what I dreamed in the dark, I wanted to give her something more than just hot skin and sweaty hands in the light I wanted to give her myself. Stupid—I was so stupid. I led her down to the half-finished basement where I had my studio, and flicked on the banks of work lights. My paintings were set along the walls so she could see them. Only the best ones were out I had others stored in cases, ones I wasn't as satisfied with but that weren't bad enough to scrape off and paint over.

Cindy saw the portrait first, and looked puzzled. Then she looked at the canvases, one by one, and said nice things, but she acted confused, almost frightened. I thought maybe she was overwhelmed—it was a lot to take in. She didn't say very much, in the end, and she didn't stay as long as I'd hoped. But I sat in my studio after she'd left, not feeling so alone there, because someone had seen my work—had really looked, and had really seen. It was the best evening I ever spent I only went upstairs for supper, then hurried back to sit there, seeing my paintings through Cindy's eyes. I couldn't wait to see her at school the next day.

But Cindy was in a rush at her locker the next morning, and when I practically beat the bell getting out of biology to meet her for lunch, there was another guy at her locker with her—Rob Gorey, one of the basketball players. I figured she was just giving him an assignment or something, but then—She saw me, and her eyes slid away. She looked up at Rob and smiled in that special way I'd thought was just for me. My stomach clenched, and I tried to breathe but my lungs felt like balloons with the tops twisted, pressing against my rib cage. I remembered the secretive smiles. The other kids had known, all along. She'd wanted Rob from the start She just wanted to make him jealous by going out with someone else—someone expendable. She used me. And I let her see my paintings.

Cindy laughed. She leaned against Rob and she laughed, a high splintering sound. There was a roaring in my ears, but I heard the words she spoke—something about boys who think a bunch of oily, ugly paintings is a big deal. Even though it was hard for me to hear her, I'm sure she called them ugly.

The two of them seemed spotlighted under the fluorescent lights, as if they were the only ones lit up in the crowded hallway. Cindy's black eyes flashed, and her hair wrapped around her like a shroud. Beside her, Rob stood in his black T-shirt, stiff as a poker. I stared, seeing ugly oils on canvas, and the two blacks fused, rimmed by bright lights, and my world turned black.

I skipped lunch. I skipped the afternoon. I went back to school the next day, but I skipped the rest of the year for all that. My left hand scrawled pop quizzes and then finals, but my mind was in my studio, keeping it locked, keeping my paintings safe. I promised my paintings that I had let them (myself) down for the last time. Mother was right: Keep your art separate—keep those pictures to yourself Then I was out of middle school and away from the kids who'd known Cindy and seen her that day—the kids who'd smirked—the kids who'd known what she really thought of me. Tenth grade, starting high school, was a blank slate, and that was easier. I could play a part in the classroom (I had learned to stumble through the motions of Simon Says at last), and I could come home and hide in the basement, painting behind a locked door. I certainly never took another art class, though. I just drew cartoons for the school paper.

And I never let anyone else, not even my parents, see my paintings again, until the auditions for Whitman. If I wanted to get accepted, if I wanted to meet Graeme Brandt ( if I still dreamed of someday learning how to find the courage to show my art for real), I had no choice except to show four of them to the committee.

I stand up slowly in my new studio, my knees stiff. I slide Cindy's portrait behind another canvas—a scene of birch trees, their trunks lined up like prison bars. I want to forget I ever let her into my studio. I can still hear her brittle laugh, shattering me. What I do here belongs to no one but myself.

The tree-trunk-prison painting reminds me of the rustling birds in the trees. I open another case and pull out one of the canvases I'd stretched and prepared before coming here. I prop it up on my easel and lay out my palette. I sketch in the shape of looming trees in a few strokes of a yellow ocher wash, then mark off the section for the birds overhead. In the foreground, just left of center, I rough in the shape of a person. I study the proportions. Does Mr. Brooks think I need work on perspective, too? Well see what I can take away from the class. The perspective looks right to me.

I begin mixing brown umber tones, and tree bark laced with shadows grows on the canvas. Around me, time stops. This is what I should be doing, not reliving the past but painting in the present I flow into the paint, remembering the lowering threat of the birds half hidden in the lacework of night-dark tree branches, and pouring that feeling into the work. There's only color and texture. If I heard music right now, it would be colors exploding inside my brain. Footfalls on the stairs are muddy gray, the voices in the hall are orange flashes, seared with yellow. If I could see the students out there, they'd be moving shapes and patterns on a canvas, not threats or disappointments.

I can sense how good the painting is, how true it is.

I can't risk this feeling by letting anyone see the final picture. But it's not a risk, because the kid who dreamed of showing his paintings (even as recently as last night, as recently as meeting Graeme Brandt, before seeing that he didn't have any magic answers) is a different person now. He crippled his dreams to keep his paintings alive, fragments of color and texture barricaded within four walls and guarded by a hasp lock.

By the time I stop, the gray light outside has faded to a rainy twilight, and I've painted more than I thought I stretch sore shoulders and look at the figure striding between the murky trees, unafraid of hidden demons, knowing they're above him, but not caring. I scrape my palette and pry open the turpentine to clean my brushes. Then I look around the studio. There's something I haven't yet unpacked.

I find it in the crate with the supplies I intend to use for art classes here. It's the only sketch I ever made of myself, before the back view on my application. This is the only one that shows my face—sort of, anyway. I drew it when I started high school. It shows me as a masked Harlequin, like one of Mother's Comedia del Arte figures, armed with my pen poised in my left hand, holding my sketch pad as a shield, standing so that I hide a draped canvas on an easel behind me. I hammer a tack into the back of the door with the body of the hasp lock and hang the sketch there. That way I can see it every time I leave the studio. It will remind me of my selves—the self that paints what could ( should) be, and the self that caricatures what actually is—of the distinctions I don't dare forget If only there were a way I could forget them.

I thought I could learn how to bring those selves together here. After reading The Eye of the Storm, I thought Graeme Brandt understood the dangers of being driven by other people's expectations and judgments. I thought he knew the secret of how to be himself, out where everybody could see, and not be hurt by them. I wanted him to show me how I could give up the locks and masks. But I guess I picked the wrong person to believe in (again). He doesn't know the secret either.

So how did he write that book?

Excerpts from
Graeme Brandt's Journal

LETTER TO MYSELF

September 10 (Freshman Year)

Dear Graeme,

No. It might as well be Gray. As long as everybody else calls you by that nickname, you can just get used to it Remember, you have to live up to their expectations in the little stuff-keep them happy so they'll let you have your own way in the things that matter. Always remember that.

Remember that you have to take the right courses at school. Mr. Adler told you which ones he thought you should take, and you like them because he said you would. It doesn't matter that you'd rather have taken Shakespeare than the Modern Novel; it doesn't matter that you had to write about Kazuo Ishiguro when you wanted to write about Thomas Pynchon. You learned some interesting stuff, anyway. And what really matters is that Mr. Adler is pleased that you're following his advice. He likes your work and he's excited about your writing, so do what he says.

Remember you have to hang out with the right people. This year you're rooming with Jeff Langley, and the dorm parents think he's a great guy, never a problem. Your parents like him, too, and their opinion is what matters. They think Whitman might be too big a step for you-they're scared you might meet weirdos who do drugs, or creative types who wear strange clothes and do embarrassing things in public. But Jeff has short hair and calls Dad "sir," so your folks approve of him. They don't know he's probably going to flunk out his sophomore year unless you write his papers for him or his own parents can buy him passing grades. Jeffs not stupid, but he's already an alcoholic Well ... at least it's not drugs. So you don't bug him about it, and you take a drink when he offers, even if you sip it very slowly. Jeff likes you to look up to him as someone who knows his way around, who can show you the ropes at Whitman. And your parents like to think he's keeping you out of trouble. Let them think that, if it makes them happy-they're going to think it anyway.

Remember that, Gray: People think what they want to. You'll please them all the more by making whatever they think seem real for them. It's so easy. It takes so little effort to please people. You don't have to lie to any of them, either. Just show them whatever part of yourself you know they'll like.

Remember that you have to date the right girls. Your parents like to hear about your dates because they don't want you to work all the time, they want you to have some fun. Your friends expect you to date because they do, and seeing other people doing the same thing makes us all feel we're doing the right thing, doesn't it?

When you date, take the girls where they want to go: Please them. Ifs so easy-the other guys take their dates to hard-core action movies and football games and things that they like. You can make the girls happy by taking them to romantic movies, or to plays or concerts. It doesn't make any difference to you, anyway. Ifs all the same.

And ifs easy, after all, to find friends you really do like to be with. Jeff introduced you to Ben Carter, so your parents approve of him. And the teachers see Ben as one of their promising seniors: He's already had a one-act considered by the Humana Festival—ifs not Broadway, but it's national theater, not just school. So Mr. Adler thinks it's great that Ben's taken you under his wing. Well, Ben opened up a whole new world for you. Ben's gay, and he showed you things you only dreamed of—things you thought no one else imagined except you. Girls are easy enough to date, but if they get serious it gets harder and harder to please them. Guys are so much easier to keep happy, and perhaps you like them better. Ben does, and you like Ben.

Boys-girls-just satisfy whoever you're with, Gray. It's easy to please all of them, after all. Spend your time with Ben and his friends, and take out girls to please your parents and your other friends. Everybody knows they're just living up to everybody else's expectations, and everybody pleases themselves by believing whatever they like to believe about themselves and about everyone else, and ignoring things that might upset them, right?

You've found the real secret, Gray. This is what people are, here and now. This is what they all do, and you're going to write about these people. In that class on the modem novel, Mrs. Wilson said that a novelist's task is to define people within the novelist's time. Well, this is your time, and this is what people are like, so this is what you'll write.

Ben likes what you write. Your mother likes the fact that you write, without caring exactly what it is you're writing. Mr. Adler loves your style and your insight Your father thinks ifs a strange career, but he's proud of your good grades. Everyone's pleased with you-your friends, the teachers, everyone you meet-you're living up to their expectations, and they're all pleased to see what they want.

It's so easy, Gray.

August 31 (Senior Year)

[Note to myself now-if it was all so easy then, what's changed now? If I knew the answers, were the answers wrong? Or are there simply more answers because the questions have gotten harder? Sometimes I think I can't find anything to fill the empty hole because there's nothing to find, but that doesn't make the emptiness hurt less. There has to be a better answer, somewhere. When I write, I want to feel like Karl feels when he sculpts. I want someone to look at me and see me lost in my creation. I want to create something worth getting lost in.]

September 21 (Freshman Year)

Ifs all coming into place. Now that I know what to write, the words are spilling out onto the page. It's churning inside me like a storm, and that's what I'm going to call it The Eye of the Storm. Jeff thinks ifs weird I'm in my studio writing so much, but I know he's actually scared about his own classes rather than worried about me, so I've been helping him with an English paper when I'm in our room. And Ben really understands-he knows I'm writing.

Was there ever such a high? Everything seems brighter around me, the colors of the changing leaves, the tangy autumn scent on the breeze, the damp grass underfoot And everywhere I go, there's my main character, Alan Travis, turn ing to talk to me, or talking through me to one of the other characters in the book. He's growing, and he's going to make it because he knows the secret.

Sometimes I wonder what it would be like to have somebody actually read this book. This isn't like the short stories I've written, or the papers I write for class. There's so much of me in Alan's story that I don't really know what an outside reader would make of it I know what I want them to make of it—I want them to nod and see themselves in it, and I want them to think about themselves differently than they had before. A writer shows his reader things he hadn't known before, not just so the reader can say, "Sure, that's how it is," but so the reader can think about those things from a new perspective. That's what I'm showing them: a new perspective on playing the game.

February 16 (Freshman Year)

When Mr. Adler said he wanted to speak to me first thing this morning, he sounded so serious I wondered if Jeffs English teacher could have told him I'd written Jeffs paper on Tom Stoppard's plays. But it was about The Eye of the Storm. He'd already finished reading it, and he was blown away (couldn't resist!). Totally. He wants to give it to this agent he knows, and he thinks it's going to be published I'm stunned. I mean-that's what I wanted. But still-it's a long way from dreaming something to seeing it really happen.

But Mr. Adler is thrilled, because the teachers all give each other credit when one of them mentors a student who succeeds. And they usually have to wait until a kid's a senior, or at least a junior, to start bragging. So he's going to get credit for mentoring me and maybe getting me published as a freshman! Fine with me. And he likes me all the more for thanking him and letting him think I believe he had something important to do with it Maybe he did.

At lunchtime I called my mom to tell her the good news, and she was satisfied-not shrieking and everything, just satisfied, like it was the very least of what she's been expecting all along. "I knew everything I sacrificed for you was worth it," she told me, and her voice sounded more peaceful than triumphant But that's fine with me. This is just going to be the start.

Now I've got this idea for an essay on writing that I want to submit to the student journal, Ventures. I think they'll take it Maybe the next step would be to get on staff there. I'm really doing it!

Spring Break, April 17 (Freshman Year)

This is better than all the chocolate rabbits and foil-wrapped marshmallow eggs piled high in a fantasy Easter basket! Mr. Adler called me at home. The agent he got placed The Eye of the Storm! No joke! Fifteen (just), and I'm going to have a major publishing house publish my novel! My parents are delighted. This time Mom did start shrieking. I'm going to dedicate the book to Mom and Dad-they should really like that.

Everybody wants to celebrate. My parents were planning this Easter picnic-now they're turning it into a party announcing the book, and Mr. Adler is planning a big party for the writing arts department as soon as we all get back to Whitman. I called Ben, and we're planning our own celebra tion of the contract Suddenly I'm a celebrity, and the book isn't even out yetl But Mr. Adler said something about fast-tracking publication so it'll come out early next spring, right after everybody gets back to school from Christmas break.

THE NEW YORK TIMES

FEBRUARY 6

by Alvin Pierce

The Eye of the Storm
by Graeme Brandt. 223 pages.

In these confusing times it is astounding to discover an author who dares to offer explanations for modern Americans, and their mental peccadilloes, without embarrassment or apologies. It is more astounding still when the author is a boy. Newcomer Graeme Brandt is just that fifteen, and he has presented young readers with an imperfect but nevertheless impressive first novel.

It is as if a surgeon took his scalpel and carved out the very core of our youth, then exposed with painful clarity exactly what keeps today's kids going. There is no gentleness in Brandt's language or theme; everything is diamond sharp and uncompromising in the terrifying voice of matter-of-fact high school student Alan Travis.

The Eye of the Storm is a character study that traces Alan's rise from street life in San Francisco with his homeless father and younger brother to a private high school in Los Angeles. Brandt sees America as an environment tailored to yes-men, and has Alan drag his family to the top by striving to please everyone around him and by teaching his out-of-luck father and his admiring brother to do the same. It's a precarious road to success, threatening to veer off into disaster at any turn.

As the Travis family climbs," we don't know whether to cheer Alan on or to deplore his tactics, but he so resembles that part of ourselves that we hate to acknowledge that we cannot ignore him. Brandt flings Travis at us with an analytical accuracy that will shake the reader and keep him in knots long after he turns the final page.

Although this novel is marred by youthful overexuberance, Graeme Brandt is more than a precocious teenager. He is well on his way to shouldering the responsibility of the novelist's art to define us for ourselves. Few authors have effectively confronted this monumental task since William Faulkner captured the Southern mind so clearly—and fewer still have ever done it deliberately for young people.

That's not to say that adults won't be mesmerized by this novel Read it to discuss with your teenagers, because they'll be talking about Alan Travis—and about Graeme Brandt Whether your reaction is fury or resentment at helpless recognition, remember that this is the America you live in. Watch Brandt to see what he writes next; perhaps he can tell us where we're going.

February 7 (Sophomore Year)

Mr. Adler said that the Times doesn't review many books for kids and teens, so it's a big deal that they gave the book such a great review. I guess it's great, even though Mr. Pierce doesn't seem to like what I had to say much-he likes the book more than Tyler Murdoch did here at Whitman, though! The review in Ventures was pretty bad-a prophet in his own land, I guess. But the book got good reviews in Publishers Weekly and School Library Journal, and a bunch of other magazines I've never heard of. And it's in the book fair, which means they'll take it right into the schools so kids can buy it easier.

The agent has taken a collection of my short stories to see if he can sell it to the same publisher, or maybe to a different one. And Ventures did take the essay. It's like I can't put a wrong word on paper, even if I try.

My parents are thrilled about the book's success, though my dad had to warn me it might not last I don't know about that Even though I'm not working on a new novel yet, I'm full of ideas for stories, and maybe something will grow to book size. I'm not sure I knew this was going to be a book when I started it, though I was hoping, certainly.

But right now I'm just enjoying the fuss. Even seniors at Whitman recognize me and talk to me around the campus! Not that most of them have read the book, of course. But some of them have, and others have read the reviews, and nearly everyone has heard about it They all have their own impressions of me-and all the impressions are different I think that's interesting.