Killing time. I don’t think he counts me as a part of this, but the words are still wounding. I try not to let it show. “So where would you like to be? New York? DC?”
“No. And definitely no. I’m going to Vermont next year.”
I frown. “Vermont? What’s in Vermont?”
“The Center for Cartoon Studies.” Josh perks up at my confusion. He scoots closer in his chair. “It’s the only one of its kind – it completely focuses on sequential art. And it has this insane faculty, all of the best cartoonists visit to teach there.”
“Cartoonists? Like, what? The guy who draws Calvin and Hobbes?”
He shakes his head. “No, anyone who draws sequential art is a cartoonist. Superhero stuff, graphic novels, graphic non-fiction. It doesn’t just apply to the people who draw comic strips.”
“Oh.” And now I feel dumb. “How big is the school?”
“It’s not big. It’s about half the size of SOAP.” He picks up a pencil and rocks it between two fingers. “So what’s next for you?”
The nerve is struck. Just like that. “I…I don’t know.”
His pencil stops.
I should have seen the question coming, but it blindsides me. I’m humiliated to find myself fighting back tears. “I’m applying to both la Sorbonne and Columbia, but I don’t know where I want to go. I don’t know where I belong.”
Josh moves onto the bed, beside me again. “Hey. It’s okay. You still have plenty of time to decide.”
“No. I don’t. And you wanna know the worst part? I kind of hope one of them will reject me so that I won’t have to make the decision myself.”
His eyebrows raise. He’s silent for a long time, debating something in his head. “I’ve seen the charts in the head’s office.” He’s choosing his words carefully. “You’re the best student in our class. Both schools are going to accept you.”
So he does know. I scratch at my peachy-pink nail polish. Chip it away, bit by bit.
“What do you want to study?”
The pit in my stomach grows deeper. “Nothing.”
“Nothing?”
“I mean…I don’t know. I don’t know what I want to do, or who I want to be, or where I want to live. It’s like everyone else has their entire future mapped out except for me.”
Josh’s expression falls. “You know that’s not true.”
“Maybe at other schools, but at ours? People have plans. You have plans.”
“Well. Which city do you like better?”
I tug on my compass. “They both feel like home. When I was young, my family spent summers here and the rest of the year there. Now it’s the reverse. I’m a citizen of both countries, I’m fluent in both languages, and I’m comfortable in both cities.”
“Comfortable.”
Something about the way he says it. “What?” I ask.
“It’s just…don’t you want to try something new? What about all of those adventure stories weighing down your bookshelves?”
I don’t know. I don’t know. I like reading about adventure, sure, but I also like doing it from the safety of home. But what is home, besides a quilt-covered bed? Where is it?
Josh sees that I’m getting upset with myself, so he tries to lighten the mood. “You know where I think you should go? Dartmouth.”
“Yeah. I don’t even know where that is.”
“It’s in New Hampshire, on the Vermont border. And the Center for Cartoon Studies? Just so happens to be on the other side. And I’ve heard that Dartmouth has an amazing programme in Nothing. The best Nothing programme in the world. That’s what people say.”
I finally crack a smile. He’s teasing, but it’s still nice to know that he wouldn’t mind me living nearby. Or, at least, that he likes me enough to joke about it. I nod at his drafting table. “So show me your real work. Show me what you do in here all day.”
Josh is surprised and happy to give me a tour through his workspace: dozens upon dozens of brushes, pens and pencils, India ink, oil paints, watercolours, nibs, erasers, reference photographs, a hair dryer for speeding up ink-drying time, several different-size pads of what he calls his semi-precious paper, and an elephantine box where he keeps his best. Like me, he’s crammed a skinny bookcase into his room, but his shelves are packed with bound sketchbooks, art books, reference books, and what appears to be every graphic memoir ever written – Jeffrey Brown, Craig Thompson, Alison Bechdel, James Kochalka, Lucy Knisley, and tons of others I’ve never seen before.
There is a distinct absence of school-related work. The strap of his bag pokes out from underneath his bed, so I assume the rest has been shoved down there, as well. And below his dresser – where I’ve placed a second dresser for more clothing – he’s placed a large metal flat-file. His own graphic memoir has been divided between its drawers. They’re labelled: BSB FRESHMAN, BSB SOPHOMORE, and BSB JUNIOR.
“Do you have a senior drawer?” I ask.
“Not yet.” Josh taps his temple with a finger. “I’m still storyboarding last summer.” He shows me what he’s been working on – blue-pencilled thumbnails of his annoyed self in DC, attempting to block out the sound of his father recording an attack ad about Terry Robb. Terry is his opponent in the upcoming election. “It’s easier to start like this. It keeps me from making bigger mistakes later.”
“What do your parents think about you writing about this? About your private lives?”
He shrugs. “They don’t know I write about our private lives.”
I wonder if that’s actually true. “What does ‘BSB’ stand for?”
“Boarding School Boy. That’s the title.”
I glance at the top drawer, his junior year, and then at him. He nods. I slide it open and find a stack of thick paper with fully inked illustrations. The top sheet is a drawing of his friends in graduation caps, smiling, arms around one another. Josh stands apart from them, small and distant. I lift it up, delicately, to peer at what’s below. It’s a multi-panelled page of Josh wandering around a city that is unmistakably Venice, Italy.
Cartoon Josh is familiar. It’s the same Josh that I used to see wearing silly costumes on his door. It’s an accurate – though exaggerated – portrait of who he really is. His nose is more prominent, his frame skinnier. But he’s still beautiful. He looks sad and angry and tender and lonely. I lower the top illustration and slide the drawer shut. His work is so personal. I don’t feel as if I’ve earned the right to look at it. Not yet.