Snark and Stage Fright by Stephanie Wardrop Read Free Book Online Page B

time when I was about ten and my dad was teaching at a little college in Virginia. Before she gave up on all of us, my mom was absolutely rabid about getting my family into whatever local scene we landed in with each move for each of my dad’s short-term teaching positions. On the day I remember, she made enough potato salad to feed a Third World country and forced us all into the minivan to go to some Ladies’ Aid Society picnic.
    My sisters and I were all shower fresh and wearing pressed T-shirts and shorts; Mom even had the twins, Leigh and Cassie, in matching tops with rhinestone kittens glittering on their chests. And when we got to the big shady county park and were pulling our picnic blankets and vats of potluck potato salad in Leigh’s little red wagon, my dad had suddenly stopped grumbling about wasting a writing day and stopped dead in his tracks. I’d followed his eyes to the crowd ahead and saw that no one else was in T-shirts and flip-flops. The girls and ladies wore floral sundresses or pastel party dresses and big wide sunhats like they were staging a local production of Gone with the Wind , and the men wore pressed white or seersucker slacks and short-sleeved Oxfords. But before my brain could register all of this, my dad had spun around and was headed back for the parking lot.
    “We’re going, Pam,” he’d said, and my mom had stammered but turned the wagon around and we all piled back into the car.
    “I don’t see why we can’t just stay,” she had sighed as we drove through the brick-walled gate to the park.
    I remember looking at Tori, whom I usually counted on to know what was going on, but she had just shaken her head, once, really quickly. We ended up having our picnic on the benches at the elementary school playground. We ate potato salad with nearly every meal for about three weeks. And neither of my parents ever mentioned the event again. Neither did my sisters.
    I’m not sure how long it took me to figure it out, but looking back now, it was obvious: we’d left because we didn’t belong there.
    And now here I was where I didn’t belong.
    I texted Tori, but she didn’t respond. So I dug my sketchbook out of my bag and grabbed a pen. I guess other people write journal entries when they’re upset. I doodle. And an hour later, after I had rendered Forrest Ritter as a grotesque cartoon octopus with a lolling tongue and grabby tentacles, I felt a lot better. Good enough to draw a little sketch of Michael in his pj’s so I could practice more realistic portraiture—“mimetic,” my art teacher calls it—and so I could see him again before morning.

5  The Pancakes of Penance
     
     
    I must have drifted off at some point that night, my sketch pad beside me, because before the sun came up there was a knock on the door and I heard Michael whisper, “George? Are you up? May I come in?”
    In that instant, all I could think about was how ratty my hair probably looked and how rancid my breath smelled, but he opened the door before I could warn him. He caught my sketchpad when I accidentally kicked it off the bed in an effort to cover my legs and underpants, though he’d seen both before.
    “Let me guess—your rendering of Forrest Ritter?” He laughed as he flipped through the pages and landed on the octopus man I’d drawn last night. His laughter stopped suddenly when he’d flipped past a few pages; he looked up in surprise and delight, asking, “And … is this me?”
    “Who else wears bear shirt jammies?” I groused, thoroughly embarrassed.
    He climbed onto the bed and lay down next to me to admire my portrait of him.
    “I’m working on realistic portraiture,” I explained. “Trying to move beyond mean cartoons. I’m taking extra art classes this fall since I’ve gotten all of my math credits done.”
    “You’re not joining me in calculus? Who will I cheat off of?” he teased, because (1) he has the highest grade point average in most classes so he doesn’t need to