twenty-one

MARCH 18

When B asked what I was doing with our extra day off school, I told her I had to help my grandmother’s friend move some furniture. When Booker asked if I wanted to go to the skate park that afternoon, I told him the same thing. I may be a liar, but at least I’ve got my story straight.

There was something surreal about going to Green Pastures for lunch. It wasn’t just that the place felt like a massive monument to the unfairness of life and that every time I went there I felt like I was going through the front doors of the country club when I should have been going through the servants’ entrance on my way to the dish pit. The real issue with my visit to the Land of the Severely Overprivileged was that it was a whole new shade of shady.

Not only was I lying to my girl and my best friend, I was getting one over on the other contestants. They didn’t get to go to Green Pastures for lunch and/or get advice from one of Mr. Carmichael’s right-hand people. I was basically flying the Hypocrite Copter for Channel 7.

I justified it by telling myself it was all for Esther. I repeated that to myself when I locked up my bike and walked over to meet Tesla, who had just come out of the front doors.

She wore a gray dress. Plain, but probably the nicest dress I’ve ever seen. It looked as soft and petable as a sleeping kitten. The sleeves were rolled up to her elbows, and the hem reached just below her knee and was belted at the waist. It was the sexiest thing I’d ever seen for reasons I didn’t understand. I had to stop myself saying “wow” like some guy whose prom date has just come down the stairs.

“Hello,” I said, and stuck out my hand. “Nice to see you.”

She shook it, a bemused expression on her face.

“Well, hello,” she said. “Shall I escort you to the boardroom, or would you prefer to go straight to the corner office?”

“Sorry I’m being weird. This place makes me nervous.”

“Don’t be.”

The bell rang, and the students who started coming out of the doors looked, at first glance, like any students. Hungry. Bored. Worried. Hungry. Relieved. Hungry.

“Ready for lunch?” she asked.

“Yeah. I guess so.”

The people I know usually go to the corner store or the dumpy pizza place next to the gas station for lunch. None of us goes to the cafeteria at Jackson because it specializes in some seriously unfine dining. Gray meatloaf that tastes like it was made with chunks of erasers, eerily flavorless acid-green Jell-O, lumpy potato-starch goo, and carrots that taste like leftovers from the first Iraq war. Not the one in the 2000s, but the first military coup in 1936.

I had a feeling lunch at Green Pastures would be different.

“Come on,” said Tesla. With the exception of her dress, everything about her was golden and shining. Her hair, her skin. Even her fingernails were painted gold. It was like having lunch with a Disney Princess at her fantasy magic school. I felt plain. And hungry. And guilty. But at least I felt something other than resentful, which was a nice change.

We walked through the crowd, and I listened to random bits of conversation.

— “I want to try that stamp-on copper sheeting.”

— “I disagree with what she said about Chagall.”

— “The full potential of Silly Putty hasn’t been reached.”

— “It’s about capturing light. That’s why I’m making my own pinhole camera to document this piece.”

Not long ago this kind of talk would have made me want to punch a wall. But some crack had opened up in me, and a sense of strange possibility was leaking in. What would it be like to finish each class all fired up about some cool thing you learned? It must be amazing to end each day consumed with something other than disappointment at yourself and the world.

No one paid attention to Tesla and me, except for a few fashion people, identifiable by their black clothes and severe hair. They inclined their heads at her like herons inspecting something just under the surface of the water.

Tesla walked by without acknowledging them. “This week the Digital Arts students are doing the menu and the cooking,” she told me. “With the help of our regular chef, obviously.”

Obviously.

Jesus.

“Every program gets to design and execute the menus for one week each year,” she continued.

“The painters always plan their menus using the color wheel. Once they tried to get as many tones and shades of the same color as possible. Unfortunately, the color was white. We had rice and pasta and peeled apples and boiled eggs, white cheddar and kohlrabi.”

She laughed, and I tried not to squint at all the shine radiating off her.

“So what will Digital Arts serve? Thumb drives in a mercury sauce?” I asked.

“If it’s too awful we can go to the Salad Stop for lunch,” she said.

I swallowed and prayed for an edible meal.

We’d reached the cafeteria. It was announced by a sign in metal letters mounted on posts that arched over the doorway.

“It’s new,” said Tesla, seeing that I was checking out the sign. “Very industrial, isn’t it? Looks like the sign for a death metal club. Which works, I guess.”

There was so much I wanted to ask. About going to a school where the students made signs like that. About why she glowed the way she did.

Instead, I followed her through the double doors, and we were greeted by a Digital Arts student dressed like a carnival barker.

“Come and get some delicious, healthful vegetable candy,” he said. He had a handlebar mustache. Kill me now.

We were served a stack of julienned vegetables arranged to look like Pick-Up Sticks, a little pile of white navy beans that had been dyed to look like jelly beans, and a puree of bright green “minty pea mash” served in a tiny plastic Garbage Can-dy bin. There is such a thing as too much irony and not enough food.

I figured all the items on my tray topped out at seventy calories, max. Seventy-two if I ate the plastic container.

Tesla asked a girl wearing an apron with a giant plastic lobster pinned to the front if we could have two garbage bins each. The girl said no, there weren’t enough.

No wonder students from Green Pastures come to the Salad Stop every chance they got. Compared to this, one of our salads was the caloric equivalent of a hot dog and fries.

When we sat down, Tesla pointed to her pink plastic pail.

“Isn’t it just so perfect that Spiegelman came up with this?”

“Mushed-up peas? I thought the Brits invented that.”

“No. The Garbage Can-dy concept. Do you know Spiegelman’s work?”

I thought I did but was afraid I might be wrong, so I didn’t answer and pretended to be busy eating.

“He won a Pulitzer for Maus, but what gets me is his work on alternative comics. She denies it, but you can tell our most famous graduate was influenced by him. A little too influenced, if you ask me. Keira Pale? You know her? The graphic novelist who drew all those stories about her family? Her sister still goes to Green Pastures.”

I’d heard the name. Knew there was some controversy. But until now I made a point of not caring about the dramas of the ultra-successful graduates of Green Pastures.

I ate a spoonful of pea mash. It had a texture like lightly crusted over snot but was surprisingly tasty. “He should have made them bigger,” I said. “The cans, I mean.”

Behind us the Digital Arts barker announced: “We have run out of delicious, healthful vegetable candy. You will now have to eat regular cafeteria food.”

A sturdy woman with two blonde braids wrapped around her head began switching out chafing dishes, removing the empties, turning on the electric heaters underneath.

“Want to go up again?” asked Tesla. “There should be chicken and rice and a vegetarian option.”

“You?” I asked, ready for her to say no, she couldn’t possibly, because she had to maintain her size zero figure or get thrown out of the club of people who never eat more than seventy calories per meal.

“God, yes,” she said, and got about twelve times cooler in my eyes.

And we went back for scalloped potatoes and curried carrots, and I took a breaded chicken cutlet, and she had some kind of tofu dish.

“This is a weird cafeteria,” I said. “But the food’s good.”

“Everything about Green Pastures is weird and good,” she agreed. “That’s why I love it.”

When we were finished, she asked if I was ready to go to the fashion wing.

I glanced at her as we got up.

“Are you sure you’re allowed to be doing this?” I asked. “Bringing me around. Helping me out.”

“I told you, I’m just an assistant,” said Tesla, moving efficiently down the hallway. “Mr. Carmichael asked if I’d help and I said yes. The scholarships are important. The school needs to be accessible to talented people whose families can’t afford the tuition. It can get a little rarified around this place.”

I didn’t trust myself not to say something ungrateful or bitter, so I changed the subject. “And is what’s her name?—Bijou?—is she all about the common folk, too?”

“Bijou’s all right. Her dad is Charles Atwater and she’s superrich, but she mostly uses her powers for good.”

“She volunteered, too?”

“No. She’s being punished. She was too harsh with some little kids when she judged their fashion show.”

That I believed.

“What’s Carmichael going to say if he sees me with you?”

“He won’t see us,” she said. “He’s in Montreal this week. And anyway, I’m not going to do your design for you. We’ll just talk about it. I’ll see if there are any resources I can connect you with. Books or websites. I’m sure you know a lot already, since your application was accepted. I’m just taking an interest.”

She stopped outside the atelier with its carved wooden double doors.

“There’s nothing untoward going on here,” she said.

Still More Inspiring Sayings for John Thomas-Smith’s Bad Mood Board

The Technical Textile Markets report that “in the fashion industry, the demand for man-made fibers has doubled in the last 25 years.” Since this clothing is made from synthetic materials, they do not degrade and will forever stay in the ecosystem.

—“WASTE COUTURE: ENVIRONMENTAL IMPACT OF THE CLOTHING INDUSTRY.” FROM HTTP://FASTFASHION.WEEBLY.COM/ENVIRONMENTAL-ISSUES.HTML