9

Bolts of cadmium red banging on my studio door. It doesn't matter—the hasp lock is in place. Nothing can get inside. Nothing except color and noise.

"Charles! Open the door!"

Brown tones, streaked with yellow pain. Who would cry out to me like that? Time disappeared—did I miss a class? Has Adrian come to hunt me down? Is that part of being the experienced roommate? Adrian says ... go to class. No, not anymore, not just the experienced roommate, the thwarted—what? Why did I sketch him? Charles says ... stay alone.

"Open up, damn it! It's Graeme."

Graeme says ... open up and let me get closer, let me get inside you, let me—

"Charles!"

If I never open the door he'll have to go away, won't he? I don't want Graeme. I don't want any of them.

"Charles—I've got to talk to you!"

His voice is urgent, almost angry. I want to keep the door locked, but I can't turn him away. I hurt him last night, and now I owe him. I owe Adrian. I owe—I drop my brushes into turpentine to keep them soft and just leave my palette. Graeme looked so shocked last night ... Why did I agree to sketch him in the first place?

"Please, Charles—"

I open the door, and we stare at each other. His brows are drawn together and his eyes are ice crystals, but then his face changes. Not a mirror, maybe—should I have chosen putty, instead?

"Are you okay?" Now his voice is gentle, caring. Why should he care? If he's so angry with me, why can't the anger be a wall between us?

I step into the hallway and shut my door, sliding the hasp lock into place. I can build the wall again, if I don't look at him. "You come here," I tell him, "you beat on my door in a rage, and the instant you see me you change character. You drop all your own anger in your rush to become what I want you to be." My voice cracks as I confess that much, at least "Don't you ever get tired of reflecting other people? How can you stand yourself? What are you in ah empty room?"

My voice has risen, and I hear a smothered laugh from down the hall as the anger floods back into Graeme's face. I glance at the corridor, then to the stairwell. More strangers mired in their wrong assumptions.

"There's got to be somewhere we can talk," he says in a low voice.

He looks at my locked door, but I'd rather have the whole school hear the argument than take him inside my studio. Wordlessly I lead the way up the polished stone stairs to the roof, and step out into a soft, clear morning. Perhaps the monsoons are over at last.

"Well?" I keep my voice hard. I can do that much. "What did you want to say?"

Gravel crunches as he strides across the roof to the parapet where I'm standing. I turn and he raises a clenched fist I almost wish he would hit me—smashing whatever lies between us and proving to me finally that we're nothing alike. Then his fist opens and a crumpled piece of paper drifts down to the gravel at my feet It's my sketch.

Weary beyond fighting, I slide down the parapet siding to sit on the sharp edges of gravel I reach out to smooth the wrinkled paper. Graeme eases himself down to sit cross-legged, and we stare at the drawing, neither of us ready to look up.

"How could you draw me like that?" Graeme says finally. He points at the kaleidoscope of mirrors glaring up from the paper. "How could you see that?"

I see him sitting beside me, close enough to touch. I see the Graeme Brandt who swept into the writers' party, the Graeme Brandt who turned one face to the storm, another to the jealous student after the concert, and still another to me later that same night die Graeme Brandt who wrote a book that captured me with its honesty about how people live the expectations of others. He's one person beside me, vulnerable now (wanting to get close to me), but he's a kaleidoscope of all those Graemes at the same time. I don't know whether to shout at him or cry. I wanted him to be such a different person.

"How can you be so surprised? You see everybody around you—can't you see yourself?" Now that I've started I rush headlong, saying all the things I'd only half dared to think since I stood in his studio. "You're nothing but a lifeless mirror that reflects everyone's expectations! Your book reflects that empty mirror—your characters are just reflecting all the other blank lives around them. I thought you were warning people about not living like that—not just showing them how to do it because that's all you know!"

I follow the words, not even knowing where they're leading me, only knowing they're true, as true as the drawing I made. "That kind of existence isn't really life—not unless all you want to be is a reflection of the mediocrity all around you. And if you wrote that book, you can't be mediocre." But if he's not, then—

Of course he couldn't show me how to be myself, how to escape the people who want to play Simon Says. Graeme was always the master player, himself. I just hadn't wanted to admit it He wasn't writing any sort of warning of how terrible the world could become if you pushed the idea of living up to someone else's expectations too far. He was just writing what he thought everyone was, because that's what he was himself. I look up at him, putting my heartsick realization into words. "You're dead, Graeme. You're nothing but the reflection of all the empty expectations around you. How could you write that book and not see that Alan was you?"

He stares at me in horrified silence, and I realize he didn't understand what he had done. Above us, a bird darts past, toward the trees, screaming a hoarse cry. "You're dead, inside, where you should be most alive," I say softly, "and you didn't know."

I thought he did it on purpose. I thought he'd killed his inner self, knowing what he was doing the way I know when I hide my inner self, disguising my art as sketches so I can deal with people without suffering the pain of their rejection. But for once his expression doesn't seem to be a reflection of anything except his own inner emptiness. His eyes deaden, and his face goes slack and hollow. He sits motionless, only the breeze ruffling his thick black hair. I should have known better. It's his life—It's not his fault I wanted him to be someone different. That was only my expectation, after all. I lean forward and reach across to him.

"Graeme?"

Color comes back into his face so slowly that it takes me a while to realize he'd gone deadly white. As he comes back to himself, Graeme focuses on me. He squeezes his eyes shut and flinches, just for a moment, before he gets control of himself. Then he sits motionless, every muscle taut, with my hand lying there on his arm.

"Graeme?"

His eyes open, flicker to mine, then drop to the sketch. He takes a sudden gasping breath, and then looks at me again.

"Yes. I'm fine now." He nods jerkily. "Yes. It's okay."

I grip his arm, and he shudders convulsively.

"I—" His voice chokes off and he shuts his eyes tightly. "Charles ... what about all the others?" I have to strain to hear him. "Aren't they mirrors in their own way? Who isn't a reflection of what the world around him expects, in the end? There's nothing ... unnatural about it"

The wolf pack is made up of mirrors, wanting everyone else to be nothing but a mirror, too. But an artist (and aren't we all artists?) should be something more. I grope for words to explain. "Where does a reflection start? Who begins it? There has to be a source that doesn't live up to any expectation from anyone else, just itself."

Graeme opens his eyes. "Maybe there aren't any sources anymore. Maybe we're just living up to what's been done and seen and believed for so long that it's all there is."

I don't say anything, and he smiles a little. "No. You don't think so, do you?" He glances at the crumpled sketch. "Okay then—what about you, Charles? Don't you do the same thing?" His stumbling words gain strength. "You see yourself as an artist right? But you keep your paintings locked up so no one can look at them. You made up your own mind what people would say about them, and then you just accepted that judgment without even testing it"

No, I want to say. I got that judgment all right—from my mother, the kids, the teachers, my father, Steve, Cindy ... even Mr. Wallace and that stupid lemon.

But he doesn't pause to let me answer. "And when you're out there with those people, don't expect me to believe you show them yourself. I've seen you, remember? I know better. You put on a show for them, based on what they expect of you." His voice loses its harshness. "Why me? Why did you draw that for me, and not for anyone else? What's the big deal about my reflecting other people, wanting to please them, giving them what they want? Everybody does it! You give them what they want in unimportant things so you can do what you want in the things that matter."

I remember telling my parents I'd make good grades, even promising I'd go to college, if they'd just send me to Whitman (just let me meet Graeme). He's right, isn't he? That was the same thing. I was satisfying their expectations in order to do what mattered to me.

"What matters to you, then?" I ask him.

He stares at me and opens his mouth to answer, then closes it again. Finally he whispers, "My writing—writing things that mean something to my readers—writing..." And his voice trails off.

I shake my head, thinking of the second novel he's not writing and suspecting that's what he's thinking, also. I try to explain, "Everybody doesn't do it—at least not to the same extent you do." Coming here was so important I was willing to lie to my parents in order to let them think they were getting the son they expected. But I never intended to actually be that person. I was always determined to stay myself.

I think of Adrian's charm and Rachel's coolness, and pick my way deeper into understanding. "There's something behind the reflection, some part of them that makes them unique—if they try to please other people by giving them what they want, they're trying to protect what makes them special. They're scared other people will try to change it, or take it away. They're scared of letting anyone get close enough to do that" I'm scared of letting anyone get close enough to do that. "You do it because it's the only thing you know. Maybe they're all worth far less than you are"— I can admit that much— "but they've got an inner self they'll do anything to keep safe. They're alive in some way you've never even imagined."

"I'm alive." His voice is almost a whisper. "I've got an inner self that makes me unique. Why didn't you draw what's inside the reflection?"

Did I get it wrong? "What is inside, Graeme?" That's what I draw—that's what I see in people. If it was too well hidden, then I failed. I hope I did fail

"How can I answer that?" he asks, his voice almost angry again.

You can't, because there is no answer. I didn't fail—it wasn't there to see.

I try asking, "Why do you think we're here?"

He stares at me as if I've lost my mind. Maybe I have. "To make art," he says.

I nod. So he's sure of that much, at least "That's why we're here at Whitman. I think"—I hesitate—I've never said this to anyone before—"that's why people are here on earth at all. I mean—lizards and cats and trout don't make art Why do we do it?"

"Why?" he repeats, shrugging. "To show people what they're like—what society is like."

"No!" I shake my head, hard. "That's just the start That's what I do with those sketches." I gesture loosely to the crumpled sketch on the gravel, but neither of us looks at it "But that's not what art is really about."

He studies me, frowning. "What do you think it's about, then?"

"Art's about showing people what's possible," I say. I've never tried to put it into words, but that's what I do.

He considers this. "But—is showing somebody what's possible the only way to reach them?"

I shake my head, confused. "What do you mean?"

"In my books, I show people what they're doing and who they are so they'll stop and think about themselves."

"But do any of them think about that?" I demand. "Do they see what they could do to change themselves, or just what's gone wrong?"

He jerks back slightly, as though I slapped him. "I can't tell them what they ought to do."

No, you can't. I feel the dull ache of regret replacing the anger and betrayal I'd felt before. I so wanted you to be able to tell me. "But that's what art should do—offer some hope. Show how things could be."

Graeme looks at me steadily. "Is that what your paintings are about?"

I start to say yes—But then I stop. My paintings don't always show how things could be. I haven't really escaped the wolf pack yet, have I? I'm still running from them, hiding from them. And he can't show me how to stop because he doesn't know.

"Well, is it?" he prods.

"I try to make my paintings show what could be." I force myself to be honest "But sometimes the best I can manage is showing how hard it is to strive, let alone achieve."

"Showing who?"

I blink at him, uncomprehending. "What do you mean?"

"Who do you show? What good does it do to protect something no one ever sees?"

I stare at him.

"What do your paintings matter if no one sees a single canvas, Charles?" His voice is stronger now. "Are you going to slash them all to pieces before you die? Or torch them? What good is pouring all this effort into protecting your paintings if they die with you, unseen?"

The fragments of colored glass in the kaleidoscope have shattered their case, silver-tipped shards of mirror flying at me.

"You talk about being alive or dead inside—you might just as well never have lived at all if everything you've created dies when you die. At least my book will survive, and people have read it, and maybe the book made some of them stop and think." Graeme pauses. "It reached you."

"It did," I whisper. "I only came to Whitman because I wanted to meet you—meet the person who was brave enough to expose the game."

The silence grows as I stare, unseeing, at the jagged gravel.

"Charles."

Has he beaten me at last? Or have I won? What was there to win, and when did we declare war?

"Let me see your paintings."

No more than that I know I can refuse. But no one has come right out and just asked to see them. And I hurt him with my drawing (with the truth). I owe it to him to And a way to undo the hurt.

I stand up stiffly, brushing loose gravel from my jeans, and he rises smoothly without uncrossing his legs, with that dancer's grace again. I have no words to say as I lead the way down the stone stairs to the fourth floor, unlock the door, and stand aside to let him enter.

Excerpts from
Graeme Brandt's Journal

October 10 (Senior Year)

I didn't really expect Charles to let me into his studio. We'd hurt each other, brutally, even without wanting to, and I couldn't begin to guess at what he was thinking any longer. But I had to ask-and he let me in.

Nothing special about the room, except the little dogleg jut in the wall that crippled the neat rectangular shape. It was a studio, like all the others at Whitman, but I didn't see the room itself at first All I could see was his work.

The room was filled with canvases. They were leaning against the walls, propped up on easels, hanging clear to the ceiling, none of them in any particular order I could see. I felt like I'd left the real world behind and entered a Star Trek holodeck. This was a magical universe overflowing with color and structure and emotion. Some of the paintings were so real I felt I could step into them and become-l don't know, more real than I was now. It wasn't always an inviting world they showed, but I could feel the truth. He had one he must have painted since he came here-the trees filled with birds that haunt the shortcut to the dorms. A figure strode through the trees, unfrightened, and for a moment it was me there, knowing where I meant to go, not caring about the screaming birds overhead. Then I knew it wasn't me at all. But it might have been.

Others were abstract, like a starry night van Gogh never dreamed of, with devouring skyscrapers closing in on the sky. The abstracts teemed with dizzying feelings, which Charles keeps bottled up and only releases in his paintings. There weren't any cute greeting card pictures, or adolescent explosions. He's a year younger than me, but his painting is all grown up. It's not some profound intellectual thing that doesn't make sense to anybody other than the creator, either. That was the strangest thing. It so clearly had a purpose: to communicate. Here, with only him to see them-it's as if they're incomplete, diminished without their intended audience.

What must it do to him to keep all of this locked away? Charles put all of himself into them, and then left them hanging on hold without anyone to see them and understand them. He's left himself hanging on hold, too. Why? Ifs got to hurt worse than having nothing to write, to have all this to paint, and not allow it to be seen.

I looked at the paintings for a long time. Charles never spoke, never stopped me from moving one painting to see what hid behind it And there were paintings that showed me more than he might have wanted. Some were hopeless, or tried to be-a wolf pack closing in on a lone figure. A landscape of gray tree trunks like; prison bars, a single wing straining outward between them, choking darkness behind the trees, and a loose scattering of white feathers on the shadowy ground below. A phoenix torn to pieces by lions, yet rising, reborn, above them. Like the phoenix, Charles kept on painting instead of giving up. He must have had the faith that someday someone would see them, and would understand.

Some were a dizzying blend of the real world and an abstract imagination-l suspect these are his masterpieces. In these he took reality and made it into possibilities that only he could imagine. That kind of dramatic transformation was what artists used to do, like Michelangelo sculpting a David who was at once vulnerable and beautiful and supremely powerful-a transformation of man into what he should be and could become. But today sculptors transform scrap metal into junk piles and call it art Artists use computers to generate graphics that are supposed to be true to the real world. I write a book that shows us what we are, not what we could be.... And Charles Weston's paintings hang locked in his studio, protected from the world that needs to see them. Why did he come to Whitman to meet me? What did he think I could show him that he doesn't already know?

I turned from the blaze of color and feeling to the artist Charles stood watching me, leaning against the empty wall of the narrow entranceway the jutting dogleg formed. In some ways, I saw him as I'd always seen him-attractive, with beautiful eyes that glitter and flicker and say things he won't put into words. But the protective mask that distorted his appearance in public was gone now. He'd left all his guarded uncertainty outside his studio. He was just waiting, at peace with himself. Right then he seemed more real to me than he ever had before, and I suddenly understood-this was what he had expected to see when he looked at me, because he'd thought my work was the same sort of warning as his wolf pack, or his single wing straining to escape the imprisoning trees.

That was when I saw just how great the difference between us was, and what he had been trying to explain to me on the roof. I'm not like Charles. I can't equal his creative integrity. I can't see the possibilities that he sees, and offer them to my readers as hope for the future. I can't even find a way to reflect it back to him. I can only write what is, and I've done that I felt ashamed, because I knew I'd let him down, because I couldn't measure up to him.

I turned away-and then I saw it If I'd seen it in a museum, in a textbook, I'd have figured the artist was a genius who'd outlive all the rest of us, not a teenage classmate I'd hoped to seduce. He had captured me, instead, and rather than offering me his body, he was offering me his hope.

I saw a canvas that showed a city under a sunset of swirling, electric, manmade fluorescent colors-vibrant pinks and shimmering reds-the lights from the sky intensified by the neon spots of city streets. The weight of dark clouds, heavy with night, pressed the charged brilliance down to earth. But up out of the neon haze rose a bell tower, sharply etched against the lights. As the clouds pressed down, din% ming the fluorescent gleam, the manmade tower stood forth with increasing power, not giving in to the forces of darkness and nature. This is the human will that Charles believes in and can express more powerfully with his vision than anything I can express with my words.

As I looked at it, the cityscape worked its magic on me. I began to believe I could be something more, after all. If I couldn't remake the world the way Charles could, perhaps it wasn't beyond my gift for words and reflection to transform my image of that world.

And then I realized what I was going to write, the idea I'd been straining to find inside myself but couldn't bring into focus. Now that I've shown the world as it really is, and made Alan a reflection of the people around him, I needed to find a way to transform him-or, if not him, his brother, Kyle. I wasn't sure how yet, but Kyle was going to find a way to rise up, like that bell tower, to break away from the mirror he'd seen Alan become-the same mirror I'd let grow within me and around me. If I could write that, even if I couldn't change my real world, I could at least see some hope for myself, and maybe show my reader what he could become.

I looked back at Charles and smiled with the pride he'd always expected to find in me. I'd never truly felt it in myself until that moment We stood, balanced, two creators, and finally I saw myself as he had always seen me.

And then I saw the caricature of himself that he had once told me about, with the hidden face. It showed him masked and disguised, a desperate, serious, fantastic Harlequin. He was armed with his pen and shielded with his sketch pad, and he stood guard in front of an easel that would betray his vision if he ever relaxed and let the canvas it held be seen. The drawing was right by his studio door, a constant reminder of the role he'd chosen to play in the world.

I reached into my pocket and felt the sharp edges of the crumpled sketch he'd made of me, the sketch I was going to remake as I remade myself. My mind was already shaping the book-the novel that Charles had pushed me toward and that Mr. Adler had been waiting for, and, most important, that I'd been aching for while empty thoughts chased themselves across the computer screen. Now he'd given me the purpose I'd lacked.

Holding myself erect, still gripping the pride and hope he'd given me to fill the emptiness I'd struggled with for so long, I faced Charles as an equal. "Thank you."

He said nothing, but the shadow of a smile flickered across his face.

"I understand that this"—I gestured to the painted world around me-"is your business. I won't say anything about it to anyone."

He didn't react, and I knew he didn't want to talk about it How could I ever do anything for him that would measure up to what he had given me?

I started for the door and he moved aside to let me pass, but I stopped in that little entranceway. I had to put it into words, to be sure he understood. "Charles-I love you, for what you showed me here. Thank you."

We were close enough to touch, and he didn't draw back from me, but he didn't lean forward, either. If he had- But I didn't press him. Instead, I reached for the door and let myself out, leaving him in his sanctuary. By the time the door closed, my mind was fully on the book, on Kyle-becoming Kyle. He was to be myself, and he would fight my battle to break away from the roles and mirrors his family had accepted-had welcomed.

I didn't see the Whitman stairwell—I saw a crowded middle school hallway in Los Angeles. I didn't smell the paint and turpentine in the air-1 smelled vinyl book bags and heard the slam of steel lockers that I remembered from my old public school. I felt the jostling of bodies in between classes, heard the principal's announcements, heard the kids talking back to the intercom. I could see the first chapter as if it had already come off my printer.

I hadn't felt like this since I was a kid making up stories in third grade. I felt I was truly an author. Somehow I'd finally become a creator, for real.

And then I knew how to thank Charles. I'd dedicate this book to him, and he'd see how he had changed me.