He loves this Lupe song, “Superstar”; he’s been listening to it for over a year and he mouths along with it. And then Ms. Courtney, one of his design teachers, twenty-eight and from Williamsburg and so sick cool with her retro bangs and her miniskirt and combat boots, flags him in the hall, so he pulls out his earbuds. She and some of the kids from Honors Design are meeting in July, after school’s out, to catch the opening of the Emory Douglas retrospective at the New Museum, all that fucking amazing graphic design for the Black Panthers, and does he want to come? Yeah, sure, he says, I’m down. He’s working at Utrecht, the art supply store, that summer, but he’ll request that afternoon off, so he’ll be there, yeah, sure.
“Awesome,” she says, with that hint of irony he loves about her, and he moseys on, noting that Ms. Courtney didn’t tell him to put the iPod away — which, technically, she should have, because it’s against school policy to use them in the facility — but then again, it’s the last day of school, there’s a loosey-goosey atmosphere along with the humidity, and, also, he suspects Ms. Courtney has a secret crush on him. She can play it cool and appropriate, but by now he knows how to pick it up in inflections. And he knows what he projects, how to turn it on and off, all the dials — the artist, the homeboy, the gifted child and all his drama.
So, his last day of high school. He’s alone in the hallway and he feels so good. He shows up late to Advanced Illustration, but it doesn’t really matter because half the class is absent for different reasons — all sorts of administrative loose ends to tie up today with transcripts, graduation rehearsals — and everyone’s just sitting around doing a crit on one another’s final projects, with cool Mr. Adeyemo and his massive locks tilted halfway back in his teacher’s seat, presiding over it all sleepily. Dude’s even wearing Birkenstocks today and damn those feet are ashy and need a cocoa butter rub.
He sits down next to Zoya, with her half-Egyptian, half-Boricua indie fierceness, her Amy Winehouse eyeliner, and rests his leg against hers. She rolls her eyes but doesn’t move her leg. He remembers when she spooked him back in March. They had been dating for all of two weeks, but it was complicated because there was that shortie, Vanessa, from Professional Children’s School whom he’d met at a rave in Greenpoint about the same time. He was at Zoya’s place in the East River Houses, overlooking the water and the condos going up in Billyburg, smoking herb, listening to Portishead, and feeling retro. A cold March night and they were wrapped in her Care Bears blanket from when she was little, giggling about stupid shit. And then that herb kicked in good and there was this period where the two of them just stared flat into each other’s eyes during “Roads,” and that line that hit him: I got nobody on my side. And surely that ain’t right. And surely that ain’t right.
“That’s me,” he told Zoya, and she spooked him because she said, “I know. I can see that about you so obviously.”
He tried to giggle off her penetrating stare. “What do you mean?”
“You said it yourself,” she answered. Then she burrowed into his concave chest, making this kind of mewing sound that was half cute, half annoying, and she left him to himself and his stoned brooding.
But they stayed friends — hey, it’s senior year, everybody’s friends by now — and now they’re leg-to-leg on the last day of school. And she’s like, “You going to Oscar’s tonight, right?” And he’s like, “I wouldn’t miss that shit.” And finally the crit comes up on his final project, After L.B., which was this intricate illustration of spiders using forced perspective. He called it After L.B. because earlier that year he got really into Louise Bourgeois, especially her big spider sculpture that he saw at the Dia center upstate, and he wanted to pay an homage to that cute old French lady with her sick, scary, genius art.
“So what do we think about Mr. M-Dreem’s study?” asks Mr. Adeyemo in his faint Nigerian accent, which M-Dreem loves. He adores Mr. Adeyemo, partly wants to be him. “What’s working and what’s lacking?” That’s a favorite catchphrase of Mr. Adeyemo’s.
The class is lethargic today, drunk on dreams of flight. “Good use of values,” says Horatio Cordero, sweet faced, bespectacled. “Good lines. Organic.”
“There’s good movement from top left to bottom right,” drawls Zoya. She says it in as bored a way as possible without looking at M-Dreem, then finally glances his way. He grins at her. She rolls her eyes and looks away, but it’s nice, he thinks, how their legs have been pressed together still this whole time.
M-Dreem finally speaks up on his own behalf. “I wanted the spiders to, like, make their own web. Not a spiderweb, but a web of actual spiders.”
Oooh, goes Zoya and another shortie, Alexa. “You’re so deep,” says Alexa.
Everybody laughs, including M-Dreem. “You just can’t handle all my levels,” he flips off.
Mr. Adeyemo leans forward, does that dramatic openmouthed thing where he’s going to speak and gets the class to shut up. “Let me tell you something, Mr. M-Dreem.” Another quiet round of ooohs goes up — everyone knows that when Mr. Adeyemo gets all enunciative, he’s about to get pronunciative, too. “We all know here you got mad skills.”
More laughs.
“We’ve all known that since day one you came in to Art and Design,” he continues. “You had good classes before you came.” Now this pricks M-Dreem a little bit and he frowns slightly at Mr. Adeyemo, hurt. Why’d he have to throw that in? “But it’s clear you had that thing.” Is Adeyemo trying to mollify him now? “And you’re just going to continue developing your skills and your technique next year at that fine school.”
“At Pratt, oooh,” goes Alexa.
M-Dreem shoots her a look. “Don’t make me,” he says.
“Double oooh,” she goes.
“But here’s my question for you going forward,” continues Mr. Adeyemo. “With all your form and skills, what’s M-Dreem trying to tell us? What’s up with the spiders?”
“What’s up with the spiders?” M-Dreem echoes defensively. “Nothing’s up with the spiders. I just think they’re cool. So did Louise Bourgeois. The work,” he says, pointing to his study, “it’s a pure expression of form.” He loves this term, which Ms. Courtney uses all the time, and he says it now maybe just a little haughtily. He and Mr. Adeyemo stare at each other for more than a natural moment, both of them with half-smiles on their faces, but there’s a strange, face-off vibe. There are some nervous titters. Zoya gives his leg a squeeze.
“I got two words for you going forward, my gifted M-Dreem,” Adeyemo finally says. “Be open.” He’s mad enunciating now. “Be open to it all, the form and the feeling.”
“That’s, like, twelve words,” Alexa remarks.
“You’re right, it is, Ms. Quiano,” Adeyemo says. “So let’s talk about your study now. Girls with Good Hair Jumping. What’s working and what’s lacking?”
The class starts in on Alexa’s study, which is just what it sounds like: little girls with flowy long hair doing double Dutch, which M-Dreem thinks is kind of a mess technically, but he’s too distracted by Adeyemo’s strange injunction to him to really care. He’s glad the spotlight’s off him. Be open. I’m fucking open, he thinks, and he doesn’t even realize he’s sitting there slumped back, his leg off Zoya’s now, kind of brooding, until Mr. Adeyemo catches his eye amid the chatter and mouths to him, “It’s cool.”