It’s Monday and I ponder on what to do with my pretty brown eyes. Many people compliment me on my long lashes, but I believe that glasses hide my eyes. I try to put in my contact lenses, but they feel itchy on my irises. I quickly take them out and look at my cases of glasses. I normally wear my wire-rimmed ones, since they’re the thinnest, but today I settle on a pair with thick, black frames. They make me look artsy. I’m hoping to make Peter, an artist, feel like he’s with a kindred spirit.

I wear black leggings and a black tunic to enhance my artist appearance. If I could carry around a palette of paint and an easel, I would. I even wear a beret, but I know I’ll have to take it off once I’m inside school since we can’t wear hats of any kind.

“You look like you’re going to a funeral,” Dad says.

“Black is very slimming,” Mom says.

“You’re not turning into one of those Goths, are you?”

“Dad, no, stop it,” I say.

A brand-new sketchpad that I bought at the drugstore last night rests in my bookbag. Maybe I can try to become better at drawing to impress Peter. This makes me nervous, because art has been the most challenging subject in my whole school career. In elementary school the art teacher who visited the classroom once a week always gave my drawings back to me and made me redo them. “That’s not a drawing. You did that too quickly. The crayon marks are all over the place.” Those comments affected my artistic self-esteem. Maybe under Peter’s eye I’ll blossom as an artist. I’ve practiced doodling in my notebooks over the past few days when I was bored in class. I began with geometric shapes and flowers. Soon I’ll start on the human figure.

In English class I sit down and feel something hard underneath me. I get up expecting to see a pencil, and I find a Hershey’s Kiss instead. I don’t know where it came from, so I throw it out. I hear some lame remark behind me by some anonymous boy: “Ooh, Almira has a secret admirer who wants to give her a kiss.” I wish. I hope it’s my future boyfriend sending me messages through chocolate morsels. I picture someone tall, suave, dashing. He’ll leave a trail of chocolate toward my locker. I’ll open my locker and there will be a dozen roses. The dozen roses will have a note saying to meet him at a French bistro. At the French bistro we’ll have dinner to break my fast, and there will be roasted lamb and chocolate mousse and other stuff I like to eat. Then afterwards … 

“Almira, start your assignment!”

I jolt in my seat when I hear the teacher call my name. Ms. Odige just asked us to write in our journals, about something that’s on our minds at the moment. I write the following:

I don’t know why mean people suck so much. If I’m minding my own business and not doing something to someone, then I don’t understand why anyone would say or do something to hurt me. It doesn’t make sense and I don’t operate that way myself. It really sucks. I don’t like it when someone tries to hurt me or acts like I have no feelings. How would that person feel if I said or did the same thing to them? This person has really poor manners. This I know. She really needs to act nicer since she’s new and nobody really knows her. Nobody will want to know her.

Ms. Odige reads some poetry with us and then gives us an assignment to do while she grades our journals. At the end of class I get my pink composition book back.

You need to write more cohesively. You begin generally and then focus on the mystery person at the end. There’s no middle. Work on that. FCAT writing is just around the corner. Please don’t use the word “suck.” It’s vulgar.

These are the comments Ms. Odige has written in red pen at the bottom of my entry. What does she expect? It’s just a mindless journal entry. Well, not really since I mean every word of it. I dislike Shakira. I don’t care who knows it. And I hate tests and the FCAT, a statewide test, is in the spring. And there are certain things, situations, and people that really suck. I also think that I write pretty decent if I concentrate hard enough.

I wonder if my breath is okay. Fasting means that there’s no food or liquid passing my lips all day, so I worry about my breath. I blow into my hand, trying to figure out if the pigeons in the courtyard will drop dead if I walk past them. That doesn’t work, because all I smell is the soap on my hands. I can’t even have a Tic Tac, because that would be considered cheating.

During lunch I observe—stalking is too drastic a word, even though that’s what I’m doing—Peter walking outside along the main building. I quickly walk over to the gazebo, which is a large, covered, wooden circle with benches. I plant myself on a bench and take out my new sketchpad. What to draw? I see a patch of violets to the side of the gazebo and decide to draw it.

I goof up instantaneously. The violet I’m drawing has one huge petal compared to its other much smaller petals, and the shading is messy and unrealistic. I have to learn about lighting, coordination, and everything else artistic. How am I going to impress Peter? I look up and he’s watching me. I lift my knee higher, balancing my sketchpad so he can see I’m hard at work.

He climbs the short steps to the gazebo’s platform. “Hey, what are you drawing?” he asks.

“Flowers,” I say.

“Oh.”

That oh says so much. He thinks I suck. I know I suck.

“I’ve been really interested in art lately,” I say.

“Do you need any tips? I can help you if you want.”

“Would you?”

He sits down next to me and grabs my sketchpad. “First off, you started drawing to the far left and off center. There’s going to be a lot of white space to the right. You also have a very heavy hand shading … ”

He rattles on about all of my shortcomings. He isn’t mean about it, so I calmly look at his wavy hair and arched eyebrows. He’s wearing a dark green shirt that’s the same color as his eyes. His hands look strong, yet he holds my sketchpad with a light touch. He’s amazing.

“What’s that?” asks someone behind me.

I turn around and Shakira is standing next to me. Why is she ruining this moment with Peter? Does she have no heart at all? I look at her and I see no flaws, except for the sneer on her face.

“Violets,” I say.

“You need to take art class with us,” Shakira says.

Everything that comes out of her mouth is in a harsh tone of voice. There’s nothing soft and nice about her. She’s all about being rough and nasty. Yet Peter is looking up at her with admiration.

“You should take art,” Peter says to me. “Shakira’s becoming a pretty good artist, and she took art at her last school. It helped her a lot.”

“Yeah, like, you have to learn to draw.”

She’s pointing out the obvious, with a voice dripping in sarcasm. I don’t want to hear her anymore. I take my sketchpad from Peter and tell them that I have to go to the restroom. I really do need to go, but I also want to get away from Shakira’s sharp tongue. I’ll be mortified if she embarrasses me in front of Peter. Is she going to call me fat again? Also, the way Peter looks up at her with worshipful eyes is unbearable.

• • •

Before biology, I catch Lisa opening her new tube of Fierce Pout and spreading it on her lips. Within minutes I notice that her lips are considerably larger. She doesn’t have Angelina Jolie pillow lips, but they are poutier.

“Wow,” I say.

“Do you want to try some?” she asks.

“Maybe later,” I say.

We both sit next to Peter in class. He closes his pad when we plop our butts down on adjacent stools. I wonder who he’s drawing. I only saw dark swirls of hair and the sweep of a cheekbone. It’s definitely a girl he’s drawing. Maybe someone is posing for him in art class.

“What are you drawing?” Lisa asks.

“Nothing,” he says.

“Will you draw me someday?” I ask.

“Sure.”

I smile. I want him to see my brilliant smile before I have dreadful braces placed in my mouth.

“Your glasses are cool.”

He notices! Mom and Dad thought I was crazy dressing like an artist this morning, but I know what I’m doing.

“I think I saw those same glasses in Revenge of the Nerds,” Lisa says.

I know she meant to say that in an innocuous way, but I shoot her a look of fiery anger. DO NOT RUIN THIS FOR ME. I’m hungry and boyfriendless. I need the simple pleasure of a boy’s compliment. Lisa is pouting to make her artificially enhanced lips even fuller. She’s getting trout pout and it looks ridiculous.

“There’s something different about you,” Peter says, shifting closer to Lisa. “I don’t know. It’s like you’re glowing.”

“I moisturize,” Lisa says. She rubs her lips together and pouts some more.

“Peter,” Shakira calls out. Boy, she pops up unexpectedly.

“Hi, Shakira.” Peter becomes googly-eyed, getting lost in her olive skin and long lashes. She swishes her hair above one of her shoulders. She tugs at the waist of her dress and her boobs pop out an extra inch from her V-neck. Slut. Lisa must share my feelings, because her nostrils flare and the corners of her lips dip into a snarl.

“This is the picture you asked for,” Shakira says. She slides a picture across the table. It’s one of those studio shots where the lighting gives her a halo effect, and she’s heavily made up. She’s wearing an off-the-shoulder dress, giving a come-hither look to the camera. Why is she giving this picture to him? I want to shout out. But I can’t play the jealous girlfriend when I have no boyfriend.

“Thanks,” Peter says, tucking the picture into his binder.

Shakira walks away and sits next to Luis, a football player who instantly begins to hover over her like an eager dog waiting for a bone to be thrown at him. Lisa and I both expectantly look at Peter. He notices our curiosity, so he gives us an explanation.

“We’re drawing portraits in art and she’s my partner,” he says. “She has my picture so that she can work on it at home.”

“Is she any good?” I ask. I know he said she’s improving, but I want to know if the slut has any talent. If she has beauty and talent, I just don’t know what I’ll do with that information. I want to hear that she’s stupid and talentless, rather than smart and skillful.

“She’s working on it,” he says. “She’s okay, but she has a lot to learn about sketching.”

I feel better hearing all of this, but I still have a lot of competition: Lisa, who is pretty in her own right, and Shakira, who is drop-dead gorgeous. I take out some cherry lip-gloss and slather it on my lips. If I do have bad breath, then the heavily scented gloss will mask it. I lean over Peter throughout the lesson, but he doesn’t notice my love for him. He pats my shoulder as if I’m a friend.

I don’t want him to be my friend. I have plenty of friends. I want him to sketch me in his pad as if I’m his muse. I want to be his Mona Lisa or Duchess of Alba (maybe I’d be uninhibited enough to pose naked, but I’d probably chicken out). Knowing that he’s sketching Shakira further infuriates me and makes me hate her all the more.