How to Be Brave Read online

  “Anyway, let’s talk about something else, okay?” Evelyn takes a drag. “Let’s focus on the positive.”

  Ah yes, the positive.

  Evelyn unpacks some special dessert for us. We rest our cigarettes in an old bowl on the side table.

  “Freshly baked,” she says, passing around the plastic bag full of goodies. “Just as you will be in about, oh, twelve minutes.”

  Man, I love this stuff. I know that this is probably not at all what my mom meant by her final letter, but it just feels so good when I do it. I feel alive. Like really alive.

  The sun goes down, and we stay up, stuffing ourselves on pizza and Doritos and Coke and Oreos that are beyond stale but that still, somehow, taste utterly divine.

  These brownies are relatively mild compared with some of the crazy stuff Evelyn’s gotten for us in the past. I like it. It’s a chill night. We listen to music and do each other’s hair, and I sketch a bit—images of the skyline, which is gorgeous from Evelyn’s twelfth-story window—and we talk about nothing in particular and everything we can think of.

  “Hey,” Liss says. “You didn’t cross off number ten yet.”

  “Oh yeah,” I say. “Right.” I reach in my bag, pull out my list, and cross off #10. Tribal dancing. That makes four items out of fifteen accomplished. “I’ve only completed twenty-five percent of my list. Lame. I sort of feel like I haven’t done anything, really.”

  Liss and Evelyn look over my shoulder at the list.

  Evelyn downs her Coke and asks, “What about skinny-dipping?”

  “Can’t. Already established that. It’s November and the lake is a frozen tundra.”

  “Well, there’s a pool upstairs on the top floor.” Evelyn checks the time on her phone. “It’s two thirty-eight A.M. It’s inside, no one is there, and I have a key. This is a no-fail plan.”

  Liss jumps up and down like a kid on Christmas morning. “Yes! Yes! Yes! Let’s do this! Two in one day, Georgia. This is a perfect plan!”

  Even in my stoned haze, this plan sounds anything but perfect. “We’ve been dancing all day and now we’re high and stuffed and exhausted,” I say. “This is the perfect recipe for a drowning.”

  “Come on,” Liss begs. “You really couldn’t ask for better circumstances.” Her eyes are totally bloodshot, and she’s hyped up on brownies and Coca-Cola.

  Ugh. I don’t want to get naked in front of anyone, even if it is my two closest friends. The thing is, the two of them are sort of perfectly thin, whereas … well, I’m just not.

  Whose big idea was this, anyway?

  Oh right.

  Mine.

  It’s as though Evelyn can read my mind. “My mom has a closet full of terry-cloth robes stolen from various hotels throughout Europe. We could strip down here, get in our robes, and then all we’d have to do is head upstairs, tear them off, and jump in.”

  Well, that certainly makes it sound more enticing. A quick strip, a quick swim, and then I can mark #5 off my list.

  “Fine,” I say. “Let’s do it.”

  “Yes!” Liss screams. “Number five, let’s go!” That girl has a set of lungs on her.

  “Okay,” I say. “But you have to be quiet in the hallway. People are sleeping.”

  “Whatever,” Evelyn mumbles. “They’re dying a slow death, is what they’re doing.”

  Evelyn leads us into her mom’s room, which is even messier than hers, and we pillage her closet and each pick out our own robe, mine with a Hilton emblem on it, Evelyn’s with a W, and Liss’s with what might be the Four Seasons. “Your mom actually got to stay in these places?”

  “Yeah, a long time ago, when things were better. Now she can’t afford to anymore, but she keeps this shit as a reminder of her long-lost glorious youth.”

  Liss and Evelyn strip down in her mom’s room, while I head into the bathroom to change.

  “You know we’re going to see you naked in about eight minutes!” Liss yells through the locked door, and Evelyn snickers. Then I hear them whisper something to each other. Probably something about me.

  I take off my shirt and bra, pants and underpants, and I throw them in a pile in the corner of the floor. I look at myself in the mirror. I think of something I heard my mom say once, when I was twelve and I couldn’t find a pair of jeans in the Macy’s junior department that could fit me. I sat on the floor of the dressing room, sobbing. She had to take me to the adult section, where all I could find were these ugly, old-lady jeans that gave me high waters. I don’t know why she didn’t just take me to Old Navy or something where things would have been cheaper and cuter and where they actually fit me. I think she just always wanted to treat me well. She wanted me to have nice things even when we couldn’t really afford it.

  As I was sitting there on that dirty dressing room floor, piles of size 14s, none of which were even remotely close to fitting me, crumpled around me, my mom rubbed my back and said this: “Skinny girls may look good with clothes on, but bigger girls look better naked. Good ol’ Auguste knew that.”

  She was talking about Renoir’s nudes, which were always some of her favorite paintings to stare at. She loved their thick curves and full breasts and thighs full of fasciae and muscle and all kinds of fat that poured over their chairs.

  I don’t necessarily agree with my mom. I think Liss and Evelyn and even the likes of Avery and Chloe all have great bodies, and I would kill to be like them.

  But I see Mom’s point. I know what she was trying to say.

  I look for Renoir’s hand in my own body, and I think I see it. A little bit of beauty. Curvature. Fullness. Abundance. I don’t know if I’ve ever stared at myself naked before, at least not for this long. And not while high.

  I look like a woman.

  I look like my mother.

  “What’s going on in there?” Liss knocks at the door. “Are we going, or what? Don’t chicken out on us now.”

  I grab the robe, throw it on, and knot the tie around my waist as tightly as I can. We throw on our shoes and head toward the elevator. The terry cloth is soft on my skin.

  * * *

  The elevator carries us up to the fortieth floor, and my body is weighed down by the quick lift against gravity. Liss and Evelyn both have stupid grins on their faces. They’re baked, and so am I, but the realization of what we’re about to do has forced my neurosis to creep back in.

  “What if someone catches us?”

  Liss rolls her eyes. “Relax, Georgia. No one’s going to catch us.”

  “Yeah, but what if they do?”

  “Who?” Evelyn says. “The president of the condo association? She’s in Maui.”

  “No, like a security guard or something. The front desk guy. I mean, don’t they have cameras?”

  “This building’s not that fancy, Georgia,” Evelyn says. “They can’t even afford a night security guard.”

  “Let’s just go back downstairs.…”

  Evelyn walks over to me and takes me by the shoulders. “Chill out. Seriously. Get back to your happy place. You’ve entered the crazy paranoid place. I’ve been there, and it sucks. But you can get out. Make it a choice, okay?”

  Liss nods in agreement. “Nothing’s going to happen. We’re going to swim. That’s it. We’re not actually doing anything wrong.”

  Make it a choice.

  Easier said than done.

  The doors open to an empty hallway. We follow Evelyn toward a locked door. She fumbles with the keys and then pushes open the heavy door to the pool. I know Evelyn says this building isn’t that fancy, but this is pretty damn nice. The windows overlook the entire city. The lights twinkle in the night.

  Evelyn sets her keys on a table, kicks off her shoes, and throws off her robe. She’s naked and slender and very pretty. “Let’s do it!” she yells, and then dives in headfirst.

  Liss follows her. She throws her clothes next to Evelyn’s and dives in. They’re both in the water, and from up here at the eight-foot marker, I can see their perky breasts bobbing up
and down happily. They look like mermaids.

  Now I really don’t want to get in. My mom always called her breasts “hangers.” They were big, but they hung low. Unfortunately, my genetic expression is a carbon copy of hers.

  “Come on!” they yell. “What are you waiting for? Jump in!”

  Idon’twanna. Idon’twanna. Idon’twanna.

  I don’t have to do this. I could just go back downstairs, put on my clothes, and crawl on the couch, go to sleep. I don’t have to succumb to the peer pressure.

  And then they start chanting, “Number five. Number five. Number five.”

  “Shut up, you guys. You’re going to wake up someone!”

  “Well, if you don’t get in”—Liss twirls in the water—“we’re going to yell even louder.”

  And so Evelyn does. “Number five! Number five!”

  “Fine!” I exclaim. “Fine. Just … just give me a minute, okay?”

  “Just throw off your robe and get in here!”

  I close my eyes, take a deep breath, and strip.

  “Yes!” Liss yells. “Dive in!”

  And I do.

  And it’s freezing.

  I come up for air. “Holy shit, you guys! It’s like swimming in the Arctic!”

  “Well, it is November,” Liss reminds me.

  “But it’s supposed to be a heated pool.”

  “And it’s almost three in the morning,” Evelyn says. “They’re not going to heat it now.”

  “Right.”

  “Come on! Let’s play Marco Polo!” Liss yells, and closes her eyes. “I’ll go first! Marco!”

  Evelyn and I rush away from her, and I get caught first. We swim and play like that for what feels like hours. We do somersaults and backflips and handstands in the water (good practice for #2). Evelyn and Liss take turns doing cannonballs and jackknives, and after a while, I forget that I’m naked or even that they’re naked. It’s just so much fun being here in the middle of the night with my two closest friends (or rather, my only two friends), swimming a good five hundred feet in the air with all of the city below.

  And then we hear a rustling at the door.

  “Oh fuck!” Evelyn yells. We race toward the edge of the pool. I jump out and throw on my robe right before the door opens and a security guard walks in.

  I look over at Evelyn, who’s dressed and laughing, and Liss, who’s naked and fumbling with her robe.

  “Hey!” the guard yells. He’s old, maybe nearing eighty. “What are you girls doing up here?”

  “Hi, Officer!” Evelyn sputters through her laughter.

  “He’s not a cop,” Liss mutters.

  Close enough, I think. Son of a bitch. Now we’re in trouble.

  “We were just swimming, is all!” Evelyn says this all flirty and giggly.

  “You are not supposed to be here at this time of night, especially doing whatever it is I know you were doing.” He adjusts his glasses, probably to see if he can catch a view of Liss, who’s still tying up her robe. Ugh. Dirty old man.

  Then he puts a finger up. “You girls wait here while I go get the police!” And miraculously, he turns right back around and heads out the door.

  “Wait? What?” Evelyn laughs. “Did I just hallucinate that?”

  “Um, no,” Liss says.

  “Where’s he going?”

  I’m shivering and my heart is beating a million miles a minute. “I thought you said there was no security guard at night!”

  Evelyn shrugs. “Guess I was wrong.”

  “Let’s get out of here,” Liss says.

  We count to sixty seconds to let Mr. Buzzkill get in the elevator, and then we sneak out the stairwell.

  We have to run down twenty-eight flights of stairs, dripping wet and naked under our robes. I can feel my thighs chafing together, and I know that Liss and Evelyn don’t have this problem. They’re giggling in unison, but I’m utterly pissed.

  But then Liss turns back to me and whispers, “When we get back, you can cross off number five!”

  And my mind turns to this day—this whole entire, perfectly wonderful day. To the yoga and the dancing and swimming naked in the middle of the night.

  I scurry down the stairwell behind them, smiling all the way.

  9

  The hallway’s buzzing. Everyone’s on a post-Thanksgiving, pre–winter break high. There’s only three weeks of classes left, which makes everyone freak out, about their grades or their college applications or their ACT scores. The only thing I’m freaking out about right now is seeing Daniel again and figuring out the rain check situation.

  But I haven’t seen him all day. I run to Marquez’s class, taking the steps two by two. I’m out of breath when I get to the door. I peek inside, but Daniel’s not there yet, so I slide into my desk and try to calm myself down.

  Play it cool, Georgia.

  Everyone is deep in conversation around me. I play with my phone and pretend to be busy. The bell rings. I look up at the door. No Daniel.

  “Okay, people!” Marquez yells. “Let’s get started!”

  Damn it. Where is he?

  No one listens to Marquez, so he tries again. “The bell has rung,” he yells. “Everyone take a seat!” No one pays attention to him. He’s lost all control. They all go right on talking.

  And then Daniel runs in. He’s about to head to his seat, but instead he looks straight at me and comes my way. My heart is in my throat. It’s as though I’m still running up those steps.

  “Are you going to Avery’s party?”

  “Yes!” I say. “I’ll be there!” I feel like I’m yelling. I feel like I’m not playing it cool at all.

  But he’s so nice. “Good!” he says. And then he puts his hand on my shoulder and squeezes it tight. “I want to hang out!”

  I’m melting. His hand feels so good. I’m about to say that I want to hang out, too, when Marquez starts flipping the lights on and off like we’re in the third grade. “People!” he yells. “Have a seat already!”

  “Oops!” Daniel laughs. He lets go of my shoulder and runs to his desk. Everyone quiets down.

  “If we do not begin at precisely two twenty-seven P.M.,” Marquez intones, “the administration is going to come in here and strip me of my tenure!” He’s not really mad at us—he just likes being the center of attention and ruining my chances of connecting with hot guys.

  “Now, you had an actual standards-driven assignment due today.” He drops his voice to a whisper. “But please, don’t tell anyone about this. It’ll destroy my reputation.”

  Ah, that old Marquez. He’s a laugh a minute.

  I shuffle through my backpack to dig out my paper. We were assigned a one-page proposal previewing our chosen artist and our motivation for choosing him or her for our midyear project. Today, we’re meeting with Marquez individually to get approval. I’ve titled my project “Parallel Uplifts: An Exploration of Lee Mullican, California Painter.” I printed out copies of a few of his paintings, in case Marquez isn’t familiar. I don’t expect that he is. My mom always talked about how he was one of the most underrated painters of the twentieth century. She thought it was a crime that no one, except for the art historians on the West Coast, had heard of him.

  “You will all work on your sketches or paintings—or whatever you want, really, your math homework, your dating schedule, your nails—while I meet with you individually.”

  Marquez calls people up one by one. He starts with Eddie Yang. Because our names both start with A, Daniel and I are going to be last up. Marquez’s sole purpose in life is to do things opposite of their normal order, even the alphabet.

  My sketchbook is pretty full, so I spend half the class drawing in whatever empty spaces I can find and half the time working on my chemistry homework, which is like trying to learn Mandarin. I’ve never been so close to failing a class before, but chemistry seems to be my Achilles’ heel. Oxidation numbers and covalent bonds and complex ions. And crazy Zittel yelling at us if we walk behind his desk (“Do not
invade my van der Waals space!”). When will I ever have to use this shit in my life?

  I bet Daniel is good at chemistry. He’ll have to use it. I glance over at him. He’s busily painting at his desk (he creates these sorts of geometric mountain landscapes, and he’s pretty good at them). I should just go over there and ask him for help.

  And I’m about to, but Marquez yells out, “Mr. Antell, come on up! You’re the next contestant on The Price Is Right!”

  That’s weird. I should be next. Working from the bottom up, Askeridis should be before Antell. I wonder why Marquez skipped me.

  Daniel sets down his paintbrush, picks up his paper, and heads to the front of the classroom. I overhear them talking about Paul Cézanne, Daniel’s chosen artist. I should have guessed from his stuff that he would choose a post-impressionist. Makes sense.

  They’re chatting and laughing and getting all chummy-chummy. I look at the clock. Only three minutes left until the bell. I guess I won’t have time to meet with Marquez today. Sucks. I was actually looking forward to hearing his opinion.

  Daniel gets the thumbs-up from Marquez and goes back to his seat.

  The bell rings. Marquez turns his head toward me, winks, and points his index finger, like he’s looking down the barrel of a gun. “I have not forgotten about you, Miss Askeridis. I’d like you to stay for a few minutes, if you can.”

  My heart drops. Shit. Am I in trouble? I’ve been trying not to miss his class. Why does he want to talk to me?

  Everyone packs up around me and disperses out the door. I take my stuff over by Marquez’s desk and sit down. As Daniel passes by me, he presses my shoulder again (siiigh) and whispers, “Good luck!”

  “Thanks,” I say. Dear Lord, I think I need it. I’m about to get busted for all the cutting.

  Then Daniel adds, “Don’t forget about Saturday!”

  Yes! Zero to eighty in 8.2 seconds. How is it humanly possible to be simultaneously terrified of the imminent consequences about to be imparted by an angry teacher and elated to the point of dizziness?