After much revising, check out the re-written first chapter of my first YA manuscript.

Racists, Boys, Butthole and Old Lady Water Aerobics:

My Summer at the Joslyn Art Museum by Amy Delancy

Part 1: The Oompa Loompa Predicament, It’s Not All About the Skin Color

“Oh, bloody hell!” I exclaimed when Dad slammed on the brakes of our SUV, saving us from hitting a little sports car that whipped into our lane on the Dodge Expressway. My body flung forward and my peanut butter and jelly sandwich mashed into my face, spreading jelly all over my left cheek and dumping a blob in my lap.

“Amy, watch your mouth!” Dad shouted.

“Really? You’re more concerned with that than this driving? And look at me! I’m going to show up on my first day with a goober on my shirt.” I wiped PB&J from my face, leaving a sticky smear. Freaking buttmunching coconuts. What the heck am I going to do? I can’t look like a slob on my first day. The first day of my future. My first day to becoming a real, serious artist and here I am with freaking jelly on my shirt. I’m a loser.

I was thankful I only had to do this ride once a week. I rode to downtown Omaha with Dad on Monday, then stayed with Grandma who lives in Midtown, which is much closer to downtown than we live until Wednesday when Dad would take me back out to Millard, our suburb. It was the freaking longest drive ever. Dad should have let me drive so that I could get my practice in before I turn 16, but he thinks Dodge is too busy. It’s busy, obviously, we had almost just pulverized that little sports car, but I was going to have to learn sometime.

“Do you have your toothbrush?” he asked.

“Yes,” I grunted. I laid my head on the window after the minor excitement of almost dying in a firey crash. I stared out at the back of the car in front of us. Brake lights! Go. Brake lights! 

“Do you have all your clothes? Your vitamins? Your pajamas?”

“Yes, Dad. I have my sketching kit too. Were you worried about that?” I asked, not lifting my head off the window.  He was taking me to the Joslyn Art Museum, where I, Amy Delancy, only a freshman, would be participating in an elite art program for high schoolers of all ages. Jeez. My own father doesn’t even take me seriously as an artist. Why did I think other people would? If your family doesn’t think you can do it, then why would someone else? All I want is to be an artist. I think I’m an artist. But me thinking that doesn’t make it true. I have to show everyone that I am. This program will be my first step.

“Well, I guess I figured your art supplies are the things you wouldn’t forget.” He patted my knee. Even if I had forgotten something, I wouldn’t have told him. I’d no idea why my dad, and all those zillions of other people we were bumper to bumper with from Millard to downtown Omaha, would want to drive like that almost hour both ways every day. And we had to leave way too early for summertime. Summer was for sleeping in, dude. Not for getting up at the buttcrack of dawn!

“Why do we live so far away from your work? Why do you work so far away? It’s stupid.” When I grow up, I’m leaving Nebraska behind. Or at least I’ll live in downtown Omaha. That’s where the artists are. I want to be somewhere with old buildings to draw and where everything and everyone look different. Maybe I’ll move to Chicago and hang out in coffee shops and museums downtown and people watch for inspiration. 

“Your mom loves the suburbs,” Dad answered my question. “We have a great house and neighborhood. You guys go to a great school,” he rattled off the same list he and my mom gave to my grandma every time they talked about old Omaha versus the suburbs. 

###

Grandma lived in a historic house in Midtown, not far from the Joslyn. She thought old houses were homes and historic neighborhoods had character. So did I. Grandma thought our house was exactly the same as every other house west of 72^nd Street, and my mom thought Grandma would be mugged when she walked down the block to the coffee shop. Grandma was just glad she could still get “the good stuff” at her mom and pop coffee shop and not that “corporate sewage” at Starbucks, which she also said was on every corner of West Omaha, suburbia.

            Mom was so not OK with me staying with Grandma. Well, really she was way so not OK with me doing the program. Mom thought I would be attacked or hooked on drugs hanging out downtown and said I couldn’t go. I called Grandma. Grandma said, “Doesn’t your mom watch ‘Pot Shop?’ Drugs are all over the ’burbs!” I’ve never seen “Pot Shop,” but Grandma loved her HBO. Yeah, Grandma, great choice when you’re trying to get Mom to let me stay with you.

            “No way am I letting Amy stay with you while you watch that HBO trash, Mother!” my mom had yelled into her phone.

            “Oh, oh, really? You think that would be good for her? Spending time with you down there. What will she do with herself? She needs to be with kids her age. It’s summer!” Mom paced around the kitchen with her apron on and waved a spatula about in her free hand. I had been sitting at the kitchen table sketching, but my hand just hovered over my sketchbook while I listened and pretended to mind my own business even though that phone call held the fate of my entire future.

            “Well, of course there’ll be kids her age in the camp,” Mom continued, “but who knows what they’ll be like. She has friends here, in this neighborhood. Kids who go to her school, whose parents are on the parenting board with me.

            “I understand that you think it’s an honor that she got accepted, but the two of you went behind my back to apply for this thing. I have to put my foot down. I’m her parent, Mom, not you. You have to let me be a parent.” Then Mom punched the END button on the phone, slammed it done on the counter and threw her spatula in the sink. Dad came into the kitchen from the living room, where he had been watching Sports Center, I assume to find out what all the shouting and banging was about, but she just tucked her short blonde hair behind her ears and marched out without looking at me.

            Before I started crying—mostly from Mom’s lack of support for my passion and some from being guilty about going behind her back—I went to my room then and turned my miniature of Degas’s Little Fourteen Year Old Dancer sculpture around and around in my hands. I rubbed her smooth copper cheek with my thumb. I loved how her chin tipped up like she was waiting for a kiss from the sky: the kiss of inspiration for her next dance. Sometimes I caught myself waiting like that for a lightening bolt of brilliance to show me what to draw next.

I don’t know how Dad smoothed things over, but he obviously did because I was going to camp. I know that I went behind Mom’s back, but I knew she’d never sign the consent forms, and Grandma said it’d be OK. I had to do things like this camp. I had to be around others who understand my love of art and could help me become a better artist.

###

            I yanked my sketch bag off the floor of the car and onto my lap, ripped open the zipper and quadruple checked for my sketching pencils and pads. Yep. All there. Still there. Same as the last three times I’d checked since I packed the bag last week.

            “Are you nervous, babe?” Dad asked.

            “It’ll be fine. I got in, right?” I said, staring out the windshield.

            “It’ll be more than fine. You’ll be the best artist there.”

            I snorted. Yeah, right. I’ll be decent. I hope. “I’m not going to be the best. I want to just learn and improve.”

            “I know you’ll be fantastic.”

###

            That wass what Grandma had said too when she talked me into applying.

            “Do you really think I can get in?” I had asked her way back in March when she first brought the flyers for the Joslyn’s new summer art program for artists entering grades 10-12. We were sitting, decorating sugar cookies for Grandma’s church, at the kitchen table in my house. Grandma was staying with my little brother, Keegan, and me while Mom and Dad were in Hawaii for the week. Perfect opportunity for Grandma to present her plan while my mom was gone.

“I just finished ninth grade,” I continued. “Do you really think they want a bunch of Freshmen in there?”

            “It says they take the best, no matter age, gender or school. I suppose that means if all the best artists who apply are going-to-be sophomores from Omaha South, then that’s who will be in,” Grandma responded.

            “South is a magnet school for the arts isn’t it?” I asked. “God. Millard North is so lame. I’ll never get in to the Joslyn.”

            “You can’t self-doubt now. You just have to put your best work out there and let the judges decide. That piece you submitted of your mom’s wedding photo is amazing. Have you shown it to her? They’d be crazy not to accept you.”

“Do you think Mom would really like to see the picture?” I used to show my mom all of my drawings. My artwork had been shown at the Nebraska State Fair every year since first grade. My parents always went. We’d stop, see my ribbons, they would hugged me and tell me they were proud and then they’d run off to the next ride or to see horses or do a climbing wall or something. They bought me sketchbooks and pencils and pastels when I asked for them, but they never asked about my art. They never wanted to know my inspiration or what I was working on, what I struggled with or how I was trying to improve.

“I think your sketches are wonderful and so will these Joslyn teachers. You know your weaknesses: faces and emotions. Hopefully the instructors there will inspire you to new limits and help you overcome your faults. Your mom will come around, too. She loves you, Amy.”

I doubted Mom would be very impressed with my work, even if it was of her. Mom thought art was a hobby, not a lifestyle. Not something inside of me that I needed to do. She thought all artists were starving and would never make it on their ability to make art alone. I didn’t know how to make her understand that it wasn’t about being able to support myself on my artwork alone. It was about the need to create. The need to leave my stamp on the world and express things with my hands that I could only make clear through drawing. I knew she’d never get what that passion was to me.

###

Dad pulled up to the Joslyn and gave me a hug goodbye in the car. I walked up the steps and opened the doors. I’d been to the Joslyn before with Grandma often. We went every time there was a new exhibition or some fun class or activity, but I never seemed to get over the sculpture that exploded out of the floor in the main entrance. It was huge. I couldn’t decide if I loved it or if it kind of scared me. It was made of blown glass of all kinds of bold, brilliant colors. The colors were strong and pretty but commanding like the whole piece. The shards of glass were very sharp and angular—not like vases and globes like you normally see made from blown glass. They were almost harsh. The combination of beauty and power kind of made my skin crawl.

I walked into the studio. It wasn’t like going into any studio, well, really any classroom at Millard North, my high school. I stopped, cemented in the doorway, my heart kicking against my ribs and drumming in my ears. All the blood from my marching heart rushed to my face. I just stood there, glued. Many of the students were already in their seats. My eyes flit from table to table. Bloody crap! I was losing my breath again. Where am I going to sit? There were black kids, white kids, Hispanic kids, an Asian girl, an emo-looking kid with a bullring through his nose but I didn’t see any Hollister-wearing, fifteen-year-old, white girls like me. I knew I wouldn’t know anyone, and there would be upper classmen there, but with 27 accepted students, I guess I figured I would just fit in somehow.

A girl with pounds of makeup on her face shoved past me while I stood in the doorway staring at the tables. Normally the art studio was a calming place, but that day, my eyes bounced around from table to table, the smell of fresh paper and supplies didn’t even reach my nose because my breath came so fast. The girl with all the makeup glared at me while she made her way to sit beside a black boy who had his back to me. The workroom was like a high school science room with tables with sinks and cupboards in them and four stools around each one. There was a firing kiln in the back of the room and various tools and easels propped up against the walls.

“Let’s find a seat!” One of the teachers, a little man with a goatee and stocking cap on, clapped his hands at me. “Come on, missy, we’re going to start in three minutes!” Even though Grandma worked at the Joslyn, I didn’t know any of the teachers. I should’ve asked her if we could come meet them. What was I thinking? At least if I’d known someone, anyone, that might be better.

Or it might be worse. If I’d known all the teachers, the kids might think I’m some kind of goody-goody. Oh, bloody hell, this is scary.

I nodded and adjusted the single-strap travel bag that I had my supplies in. I slid onto a stool at the nearest table with a white kid with the messiest hair I’d ever seen and Hispanic girl with the most beautiful hair God ever gave to a real person. She looked way older than me, like she may have just finished their Junior year. She probably didn’t want to hang around a dopey Freshman.

We didn’t talk, which was OK, I guessed, because the head hancho lady, Ms. B (I know what Mrs. B. sounds like, but really she didn’t seem to be a B. She was teeny tiny, like five feet tall but that could be pushing it, and she had short thick black hair cut into a little bob. She had cat-eye glasses and looked like she stepped out of a fifth grade science lab wearing her painter’s coat) just lectured the whole time. Safety in the studio, class structure, lunch, field trips, blah, blah, blah. I imagined banging my head against the tabletop. Stupid. Stupid. Stupid. Why am I here?

Art. My future. My love. That is why I’m here, I reminded myself. I started looking around the classroom.

I felt crappy thinking this, but I didn’t know what else to think. I wasn’t racist, but I’d never been somewhere with so many not-white people. God, I sounded like a bloody bigot (said with a British accent). I wanted to bring bloody into the American vocabulary. My mom hated when I said bloody. She said it was a curse word. I loved it.

OK, I thought, getting myself to settle down. So, looking around makes me feel really self-conscious. I looked down in my lap instead at the jelly stain on my shirt. I flipped open my sketch book and started drawing my lap. Weird. I never thought of drawing a self-portrait of yourself from the chest down.

“Dude,” the kid with the crazy, curly hair whispered to me. “That’s fresh.”

“Huh?” Was he really talking to me, I wondered.

“Your sketch. It’s your own lap. That’s wicked fresh.” His head bobbed up and down as he talked as if nodding to a beat that I couldn’t hear.

“Um, thank you.”

His head just kept bouncing up and down, hair flopping back and forth, back and forth. I looked back down at my sketch.

After what felt like only a couple of minutes, though I knew it had to have been more because I finished my whole lap, even getting the details of each freckle on my knees and the daisy designs on my pink painted toenails. Ms. B said it was time to take out our lunches and do ice-breaker games while we ate. I HATE icebreaker games. So lame. Bloody lame. We went around in a circle, said our names, schools, what grade we were in, and why we love art.

The last question was hard. I didn’t even pay attention to anyone’s names or what school they went to in Omaha because I was so worried I’d say something stupid about why I love art. Uh, I love art because it’s beautiful. No, I was not going to be that dummy. I answered because art is the only way I know how to truly express myself. My artwork is the best of me put into a real physical form. I thought that sounded pretty good.

The bird-nest-hair kid nodded the whole time I talked and looked right at me. He could’ve been agreeing with me or maybe it was just that same head bob. His hair flopped back and forth, back and forth.

After lunch Ms. B told us our schedule for the summer. In the morning we’d all be together—practicing with different mediums that weren’t necessarily in our main interests and having models and stuff come in or having guest speakers or Ms. B would talk or we’d present what we are working on to each other. Then we’d have lunch. In the afternoon we’d break into our specialties groups. I’d be going with Jenna. She was the sketching instructor. She looked nice. She had curly red hair that she tucked behind her ears and sea green eyes and huge biceps. Wow. I was pretty sure she didn’t get those from drawing. I wondered if she was a boxer in her off time.

We students could bounce around in specialties for the first half of the camp, but after we come back from Fourth of July break we would have to stick with one because we would be working on a big project to present at the end of the program. I didn’t think I’d be bouncing around in other art forms. I knew sketching was my thing.

Some rich anonymous Omaha person donated all of our supplies. I brought my own set of pencils and pastels, but Ms. B said we should all use the donated things and not waste our own. I knew that was cool and I should be thankful, but I had gotten new sets special for the program, and I’d been literally dying to use them. My parents or Grandma would get me a new set if I used mine all up.

After she explained things, Ms. B had us do creative project where we had to work with partners. The boy with the floppy fro hair jumped up from our table to partner with someone else. I slowly raised my eyes to look at the girl with the beautiful hair sharing my table but she had turned to another Hispanic girl at the next table and was chatting away. The other girl had a short pixie haircut and an eyebrow ring.

The face-plastered-with-makeup girl who bumped into me in the doorway walked over.

“I need a partner,” she said and plopped into the crazy-hair kid’s empty seat. She had fake bleach blonde hair that reached all the way down to her butt. Her makeup was even thicker up close. The eyeliner looked like charcoal and her thin lips were layered with red lipstick like she was trying to make them fuller by adding more and more gloss.

“I’m Amy,” I said, holding out my hand.

“Margaret.” She didn’t take my hand but instead yanked down on the hem of her white tank top revealing even more of the tops of her tan boobs than had been previously showing. “Let’s just do this, OK? I’m not here to make friends and I’m not big into partner work.”

Wow. OK. I’m not here to make friends either, I guess. I’m here to become a better artist just like you, but I’m not going to be a snotface about it.

The task Ms. B assigned us was for each partner to draw a scene, or scenes, from a favorite fairytale for fifteen minutes, stop, swap drawings without speaking about which fairytale they drew and continue our partner’s story by drawing the next scene/scenes. The idea was to see if our meanings were clear enough in our original drawings that our partner could easily pick up where we left off and continue drawing out the scene. I drew Cinderella at the ball. Pretty straightforward.

Margaret and I swapped drawings and hers was a mess of lines and shapes done in black pen. What the heck am I supposed to do with this mess? There’s no story here. It’s slop. It’s chaos. She can’t even call this abstract. That’s not fair. I can’t seriously be expected to draw another scene of pen scribbles.

But that’s what I did. I had no idea what the story could be she was trying to convey with that abstract mess. My paper was an array of lines and black squiggles and blotches.

We swapped back again when Ms. B told us to. Margaret had drawn a completely normal scene of Cinderella running down the castle steps and losing her slipper. Normal. Fit nicely with my first drawing. Margaret—blotchy makeup, blotchy squiggles but can draw a great castle and princess when she wants to.

“You didn’t know what my story was did you?” Margaret said.

I looked up from her drawing of Cinderella. “No. I’m not so great with abstract art, I guess.”

She had both of the drawings laid out on the top of our workstation. “It’s Alice in Wonderland, duh.”

I still didn’t see it. No rabbits, no clock, no tea, no cards, no Mad Hatter. Nothing. She walked back to her former seat and Ms. B told us to pack up to go. Perfect. Makeup McSnotface hates me, the Hispanic girl at my own table didn’t want to work with me, I froze in the front of the room, staring at people because I’m some kind of racist and all I did productive in the way of art was draw freaking Cinderella.

I told Grandma about the kids in my camp in the car as soon as she picked me up.

“I didn’t know who to sit with,” I told her, flopping the back of my head onto the headrest of the passenger seat. “It was awful. I couldn’t even think about what the teacher was saying. All that I could hear was ‘You’re a bloody racist! You froze and stared at the artists in your class like they were zoo animals!’ It was seriously like a zoo. Only instead of different kinds of animals there were all different kinds of people. I can’t go back. I’m so embarrassed.”

 Grandma laughed at me. “Oh, honey. You aren’t ‘all different kinds of people.’ You are all artists. You are all high school kids. It’s not that bad.”

“Yes, it is. Do you think I’m racist?”

“You aren’t being racist because you’re ashamed of how you acted. If you were a real racist you wouldn’t feel that way. You are just a product of a segregated city, and parents who don’t care to help change that.”

“Segregated?” I raised my eyebrows. Really? I asked myself. Did Grandma just get a case of Alzheimer’s? We aren’t still living in the fifties and my grandma, who lives here, surely can’t believe that.

“Oh, come on, Amy. Who lives in North Omaha? The African Americans. Who lives in South Omaha? The Latinos. Who lives in West Omaha? In the suburbs? Middle class young white families. Segregation.” She pulled the Buick up to a parking stall at the Downtown Y.M.C.A. “You’ve got your bathing suit, right?”

We were going to water aerobics. It was fun hanging out with Grandma and her old lady friends. I knew most people would have been embarrassed to do water aerobics with their grandmas, but I wasn’t going to see anyone from my school down there.

The only part that sucked about it was changing with all of them in the locker room. So many different kinds of old bodies. Fat ones, saggy ones, wrinkly ones, veiny ones. They’d all be so hard to draw, such intricate lines. And it was hard because they were so nice, but here they were sitting next to me with their naked butts on the bench or bending over to put on their aqua shoes. And they just kept talking like it was nothing: Here I am hanging out in my granny panties talking about soufflés! But I wanted to say, “Let’s change fast,” (which means we’d have to change silently), “and get in the pool and chat there!”

As I pulled on my hot pink, leopard-spot patterned two-piece, Mary Ellen, who was like the female Santa Claus, round, jolly, jiggly like jelly, and very giving, cried, “Ooo, Amy, look! We match!” And she pulled out a hot pink, leopard-spotted one piece the size of a car tarp. Grandma looked up from her locker and quickly put her head inside it. She snorted and her shoulders shook with laughter. I glared at her when she finally got herself under control enough to emerge. “You can be twins!” she whispered to me.

We all climbed into the pool and everyone chattered away. Mary Ellen had an ulcer. Did we see they are tearing down another historic landmark in Midtown to build a chain store pharmacy? Omaha was going to the dogs.

But mostly they wanted to talk to me. How was my first day? Was I so excited to get in?

“Pay attention, ladies!” The instructor called to us. She was nice. She may have been annoyed that everyone just talked during her class, but really I thought she was probably just glad they were there and moving. Even if Grandma was in such a serious debate with her friend Sally that she was still doing Cheerleader Run while we were now on Rocking Horse, at least she was doing something. Those are names of the moves. Grandma should have been able to tell right away she was doing the wrong thing, because in Rocking Horse our arms are in the water, but for Cheerleader Run they pump into the air like you’re raising your pom-poms. Grandma’s arms were still flailing about. Old people.

“Just today when Amy got in the car after the art camp she was simply disgusted with herself. She thought she was being a racist because she was uncomfortable being in a class that was racially diverse. It’s not her fault, but it’s just pathetic!”

God. As if that day wasn’t enough, now Grandma was making me relive it. Bloody Racist Amy. What a crazy young girl. Stupid and pathetic.

“Oh, the poor thing!” Sally looked over at me. “Lord. Do you remember when we were growing up here it was like unspoken law that no one of color lived farther west than 56^th street. Fifty years later here now there are over 200 streets in Omaha and I still bet west of 56^th Street the population is probably 85 percent white.” She turned to me. “This will be so good for you, dear. We’ll get you out of the suburbs and into the real world!”

I knew Millard wasn’t that great, but I didn’t really know what “the real world” was and how I’d be finding it at summer camp. So far the real world was just showing me that I live in a place as diverse as a grocery store that only sells apples and it barely even dawned on me that oranges and grapes and strawberries exist just down the road.

 When I went to bed in my room at Grandma’s house, I thought about how I learned nothing all day. All I could think about was whether or not I was a racist or subconsciously racist. I lay there and stared at Grandma’s copy of Salvador Dalí’s The Hallucinogenic Toreador. Dalí is Grandma’s favorite. He’s a little odd for me. But this painting is not near as weird as some of his other stuff so I’m OK with it being in my room.

My brother, Keegan, has an Asian friend named Greg, who lives by us, but I don’t really know any black kids or have any Hispanic friends. I never realized it until I was a minority in the studio, but Grandma is right: West Omaha, which basically includes Millard, isn’t very diverse.

God, I thought, I’m a real butthole. A racist butthole. Butthole. I haven’t heard that in a while. Side note to self: bring “butthole” back into style.  We used to say butthole all the time when I was a kid, but Keegan is in fourth grade and he never calls me butthole. I’ll have to make him my first convert in the butthole revival.

###

            I showed up to class on Wednesday, determined to not be a racist; and holy crap, was I glad I did. While I was busy having my minor meltdown on Monday, worrying about how I’d fit in and if I was a racist, I managed to miss the absolutely, positively most gorgeous guy alive. Ever.

He sat down with me and the pretty girl with the perfect hair who I sat by on Monday. He was a little late and he came rushing in, so sweet and apologetic and flustered.

            “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean to interrupt class,” he said to Ms. B as he pulled out the stool next to mine.

            “Oh, that’s quite alright,” Ms. B said. She had to look up at Marcus even while he was sitting on his stool. She was so dang short! Ms. B turned to the rest of the class and said, “I value promptness because as artists we need to know how to make and meet deadlines. Deadlines are everything to us. Otherwise you’ll let your work sit incomplete when you get to a difficult part. If you set deadlines, you’ll push yourself past the difficulties and finish your work. There’s nothing worse than an unfinished piece. I do understand, though, that many of you’re traveling from all over the city and you have lives outside of class. I want no excuses. If you’re late, you’re late, just don’t make it a habit.”

            He smiled apologetically at the Hispanic girl and me. His teeth were so perfect and white like a movie star. Thank God I got my braces off last month, I thought. His teeth were striking against his brown skin. He was wearing yellow. Only people with good skin tone can wear yellow, i.e. not me.

            I followed behind him on the way to lunch. He was taller than me and not tall in that weird gangly way that I am. He was perfectly graceful and proportioned in his elegant height. Not many boys were taller than me. Mom and Dad said they would be next year. But Marcus was definitely over six feet. He even had a perfect walk. Straight and athletic but not cocky at all. He didn’t strut like most guys in my class with their chests out and arms stiff like they were trying to take up as much room as possible so you would have to notice them. 

            Because I followed him out to the lawn for lunch, I could’ve sat beside him in our circle for the icebreaker game. I didn’t. I sat beside the girl from my table and the girl other Hispanic girl with the pixie hair cut.

The other girl had an eyebrow ring. Her short hair was cute. I could never pull off short hair. She still looked feminine. I’d look like a dude. She wore cut off jean shorts and a baggie tank top and looked like she probably rolled out of bed without worrying what she threw on. It was not fair how some girls can do that. When she lowered herself on to the grass I could see the muscles flex in her calves. An eyebrow ring, short hair and muscles—this girl could kick some ass. Stop being a baby. She’s probably incredibly nice. Don’t be afraid of her because she could beat the crap out of you.

            “Amy, right?” the girl with long hair asked, smiling as she sat with both of her legs folded to her right side, smoothing her skirt down even though it laid perfectly along the top of her legs.

            “Yeah.” I smiled at her. I didn’t know her name yet since I didn’t pay attention in Monday’s icebreaker, but I knew we were doing another game soon so I’d get her name down in a few minutes.

            We didn’t have time to say anything else because Ms. B started the icebreaker immediately. We had to introduce a partner to the group and say three interesting things about that person after interviewing him or her. Since there were 27 kids in the program there had to be one group of three.

            I looked around. Crap! Who am I going to go with? The two girls beside me had obviously grouped together. My breath came fast. I felt sick. Stupid freaking icebreakers. More like awkward makers. Ugh! I feel so dumb.

            “We’ll be the group of three!” the Hispanic girl with the long hair said. She waved her hand at Ms. B and gestured to herself, the girl with the short hair and, holy freaking poop on a stick she was gesturing to me too! I was the three!

            “Alright,” the girl with the pretty, long, caramel-colored hair said. “This is tough. First, my name is Bere, well Bernice—but who wants to go by Bernice?, Salazar not interesting, but in case you didn’t remember. I know it’s crazy hard for me to remember everyone’s name from Monday. Icebreakers are kind of tedious, I think, but I suppose they are kind of good.”

            “Icebreakers make me think of Junior High. I’m Sofia by the way.” The girl with the eyebrow ring held out her hand to me and I shook it. Firm grip.

            “Right?” I said, not mentioning that I was in Junior High just last year. “I mean, I know we should know things about each other, but the games seem so childish.” I took a bite of my ham and cheese sandwich. “I mean, three interesting things? I can’t think of anything. Uh, I like art, but everyone here does and, obviously, knows that.” Holy crap, I was talking. Phew. Make new friends. Smile and be nice. Don’t stare so much at the eyebrow ring.

            “Well, you can tell them all Sofia Leon practices karate, is the owner of an original Frida Kahlo sketch and hates the color sea-foam green,” Sofia said.

            “A real Frida Kahlo? How?” I asked.

            “My great-grandma grew up with Frida outside of Mexico City. Grandma moved to the U.S. with my grandpa right after he graduated from high school, but they knew Frida and Frida drew their portrait as a wedding present.”

            That’s the coolest thing I’ve ever heard. Frida Kahlo drew her freaking great-grandma. Frida Kahlo.

            “I’ve got nothing that cool. I’m just a wannabe sketch artist,” I said, fiddling with the lid of my water bottle. I looked up at the summer sky. Clear blue with big fluffy clouds. Nebraska wasn’t so bad in May. The grass was soft and green at that time of year. Soon it would be so dry and dead and the weather would be a billion degrees with a hundred percent humidity.

            “Hm, well, what else do you do? You can say that I also dance Mariachi. I moved here from Mexico when I was ten,” Bere said.

            “Oh, wow. That’s cool too. And interesting. Both things—that you dance and grew up in Mexico. I’ve never lived anywhere but Omaha, well, actually Millard. I dance like a spastic monkey,” I said.

            “Haha, that’s hilarious! A spastic monkey. Well, that’s interesting and you’re funny.”

            Huh, I thought, I wasn’t trying to be funny. “Um, well, I won top prize at the Nebraska State Fair the last two years for landscape sketches that I did. That’s kind of cool, I guess,” I said.

            “Wow! That’s awesome. I do sculpture work. I’m currently working on an eight foot tall weeping willow,” Bere said.

            Eighteen feet? Holy crapatoli that’s huge. Life-sized, basically. She’s so tiny! I imagined Bere climbing a ladder to put together her tree. I didn’t expect her to be a sculptor and having to mold wires or cut wood and stuff. She seemed too soft for that. I suppose there’s a reason they say not to judge books by their covers.

            The hottie black boy was paired up with the boy with the corkscrewy hair who had sat by me on Monday.

“This is my boy Marcus,” said the white boy with the messy hair about my new crush. “Marcus plays basketball at Omaha North, just turned sixteen and bought his own car with money he made working at a grocery store the last two years. And the last interesting thing about this dude is that secretly loves to dance in his underwear and sing Disney songs.” The two guys burst out laughing after the last comment.

Marcus then introduced the other kid as James and said that James went to Omaha Burke High School, played guitar and secretly slept with eighteen dolls.

After the ice breakers, Ms. B, Jenna and the rest of the instructors let us wander around the Joslyn looking for inspiration.

“Sometimes the best source of creativity is right in front of you. Take time to notice it. Respect your creative intuition and run with it,” Ms. B told us.

Just wander around, huh? Mom would not like this. Bere and Sofia kind of roamed away—separately at least, so it wasn’t like they ditched me—to do their own things so I figured I better meander along my way as well.

I found myself thinking more about Marcus that what I was really supposed to be doing. Had he noticed me yet? I’d never been to Omaha North High School. I’d heard that when Millard North’s sports teams go there to play they had to be escorted by a police officer and the team members couldn’t go anywhere alone. Like had Grandma said on Monday, I knew that a lot of black people lived in North Omaha. Maybe Omaha was segregated.  Is that why school is dangerous? Because there are so many black students? God, I’m being a racist again. Black people aren’t any more dangerous than anyone else. Quit being stupid, Amy.

###

            Mom and Dad tried to talk to me about camp when I got home that night. Like they actually cared.

            “Did you make anything neat in class this week?” Mom asked me as soon as we sat down to eat.

            “Not yet. We haven’t started any projects yet. We’ve just been going over class procedure and rules and what the class will be like. We’ve done two creativity exercises, one in the afternoon on Monday and one after lunch today,” I said.

            “What do you do for a creativity exercise?” Dad asked.

            “Well, today we walked all around downtown and looked at the old buildings and people watched and just took in our—”

            “I hit 19 of 20 freethrows today in basketball camp,” Keegan interrupted.

            “That’s great, buddy, let Amy finish,” Mom said.

“Our surroundings,” I continued, glaring at Keegan. “We were all supposed to take one image in our mind and then when we got back to the classroom some of the people in class shared their image and how they would like to work that into a piece of art.”

Keegan kicked me underneath the table.

            “Huh,” Dad responded.

            “Like one of the girls that sits by me, her name is Bere—”

            “Betty?” Mom interrupted me, “What high school girl is named Betty?”

            “No, it’s Bere. I know it kind of sounds like Betty when you say it, but she is Hispanic, so you kind of say it with an accent. Her name is Bernice, but she goes by Bere. Anyway, Bere told us about an old man she saw waiting at a bus stop. She is a painter and a sculptor and she likes to do abstract art, so she was saying that she’d like to try a Picasso-like work with him. She’d use all blue and black hues to show his age and paint him old and sad, and then use really bold and vibrant colors for the background to show his lost youth,” I said. I looked at my parents who stared at me like I’d just tried to explain all the laws of the universe to them. “I’m sorry. I can’t explain it as well as she can, but it’s her vision, you know, so she can describe it better. The way she talked about the colors and the brush strokes you could almost see the painting she had in her mind.”

            “Interesting. What did you share as your inspiration?” Dad asked.

            “Oh, gosh, I didn’t share! We didn’t have a whole lot of time. It was so fun walking around and exploring downtown, we spent too much time doing that and Bere was the only one who got to share. I chose this cool stained glass window at St. Joseph cathedral. Grandma and I had been to the cathedral yesterday drawing and I had sat and tried to use my pastels to do it, but I couldn’t get it quite right. Grandma used some of my pastels and drew a pretty cool pigeon though. Today my drawing of it looked better, I used—knock it off, butthole!” I cried as Keegan kicked me again.

            “Hahaha!” Keegan laughed. “Butthole? Butthole!”

            “So, all of you just wander around downtown as a group? Or alone? You’re going to get lost down there, Amy. You don’t know your way around down there and you don’t know anyone to come and help you,” Mom said, setting down her fork, glaring at me and not even noticing that the buttmunch across the table from me was continuously kicking my shins. “What was I thinking letting you do this? These people are taking no responsibility for you!”

            “Emma, hold on.” Dad cut her off. “She never said any of that. Let her speak.”

            “We all go together. All thirty-two of us: twenty-seven students, four specialties instructors, and Ms. B. I don’t think I am stupid enough to get separated from a group that large.” My mom and I stared at each other while I spoke, and then I looked away. My chicken and salad were half eaten, but I took my napkin out of my lap and put in on my plate. “I’m full. Do you need me to help clean up the table when you are done?” I asked. I waited for Mom to get mad at me about putting the cloth napkin on my uneaten food potentially making it sloppy for her to put in the washing machine, but she just pursed her lips and sighed.

            “Don’t worry, Amy. I’ll get it. Thanks though,” Dad said, smiling at me. Then he turned to my brother. “Want to go to the batting cages tomorrow and hit a few when I get off work?”

I went in my room for a while and watched a couple TV shows while I doodled. Summertime TV sucks. Then I went back downstairs to the kitchen to get a little dessert, but while I was gone Keegan ate the last of the frozen yogurt, so we had nothing for dessert. I called him a butthole again to start my revival. He told me to go eat farts. Seriously? What kind of comeback was that? Kids these days—they didn’t know anything.

###

            My best friend Michaela and I went to the pool and got our tan on on Thursday. I told her all about Marcus. She said he should be my summer romance. Yeah, right. I’ve never even had a regular romance. Michaela was really into theater, and she tried telling me about this musical called Grease where these high school kids run around and wear leather and sing and dance and they have a song about summer loving. My life was not a musical, and I couldn’t imagine wearing leather during summer.

I told her about how beautiful Bere was. Michaela said if I get to Marcus first he’d be mine! Right. Stun him with my sparkling personality, butthole revival and all.

            “You just need to dress really hot,” Michaela said. She laid on her back on a chair on the sun deck at our neighborhood’s country club pool. She had huge black sunglasses on that were going to give her a ridiculous tan line. I tried to tell her not to wear them, but she thought they made her forehead smaller since she pinned her bangs back to avoid the tan line her hair would give her. Stupid—trading one tan line for another, but whatever, I didn’t want to argue. “That’s the thing about Grease,” she said. “In the end Sandy changes out of her frumpy sweaters and poodle skirts and dresses in tight leather and a skimpy top and heels and she gets the guy.”

            “I’m not going to dress like a slut to get a guy,” I told her and rolled over onto my stomach to work on my backside tan. “Besides, the only tight pants I have are those stupid skinny jeans my mom got me.”

I did remember, though, that my mom had gotten me a cool black tank top from Hollister the week before for “Happy Summer Break!” Mom was always getting Keegan and me new clothes, which was sweet, but she always said they were for something like Happy Friday! Have a new fleece! Oh, Columbus Day have a new pair of Nikes or Happy Mother’s Day, have a new pair of jeans, because without you I wouldn’t be a mother! It was really nice of her, but she could have just said she was at the store and thought the stuff would be cute on me. Also, it was hard to feel like you dress hot when all you wear were clothes your forty-year-old mother picked out for you.

            The pair skinny jeans she bought me last fall (Happy New School Year jeans!) were just awful. They made my legs look so long, like I was a stork. So she bought me another pair. Mom very much wanted me to be totally “in” as far as my fashion went. I still didn’t think that anyone would go for me in my skintight jeans unless he had a beak. (Do storks have beaks? Is that what they’re called? Side note: research stork beaks.)

###

            Bloody hell, I thought to myself the Sunday night before Memorial Day. I looked like a freaking sweet potato fry. I was burnt to a crisp. Even my eyelids were red. It was a disaster. I was so good monitoring my tan on Thursday and Saturday; I thought it wouldn’t hurt if I used tanning oil rather than sunscreen on Sunday. False. You could have poured ice water on my skin and it would have boiled. No cute black tank top could improve that Oompa Loompa look. Additionally, my legs were so burnt there was no way I’d be wearing tight jeans for, I didn’t know, probably the rest of the summer. Woo for soft baggie shorts and t-shirts. Man, I thought, I’ll look real hot. Luckily, tomorrow is Memorial Day so my burn will have two extra days to fester and boil before I go back to camp. I am awesome.

###