Drawing Amanda Read online

  Illustrations by S.Y. Lee

  Drawing Amanda

  Stephanie Feuer

  DENVER, COLORADO

  Copyright © 2014 by Stephanie Feuer.

  Illustrations Copyright © 2014 by S.Y. Lee.

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopying, recording, or other electronic or mechanical methods, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.

  For permission requests, quantity sales or special discounts, please write to the publisher below.

  8151 East 29th Avenue

  Denver, Colorado 80238

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  Publisher’s Note: This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination. Locales and public names are sometimes used for atmospheric purposes. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, or to businesses, companies, events, institutions, or locales is completely coincidental.

  Drawing Amanda / Stephanie Feuer – 1st ed.

  ISBN-13: 978-0-98873945-1 • ISBN-10: 0988739453

  Juvenile Fiction / Computers

  Juvenile Fiction / Boys & Men

  Juvenile Fiction / Social Issues / Strangers

  This book is dedicated to you, yes you, the reader, who could be doing other things but chose to read right now.

  Good choice. And thank you.

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  Contents

  Drawing Amanda

  Chapter 1 What’s New Is Old Again

  Chapter 2 Inky Signs On

  Chapter 3 Amanda in the Glass Tower

  Chapter 4 Inky Gets a Warning

  Chapter 5 Amanda Signs On

  Chapter 6 Small Places, Big Issues

  Chapter 7 Not a Girl in Megaland

  Chapter 8 Loaded with Audacity

  Chapter 9 Amanda Builds Her World

  Chapter 10 Inky’s Drawing Assignment

  Chapter 11 A Muse Emerges

  Chapter 12 Rungs Sounds Off

  Chapter 13 Class, Caste and Costume

  Chapter 14 Green Goddess

  Chapter 15 The Nth Factor

  Chapter 16 Between the Lines

  Chapter 17 The New, New Girl

  Chapter 18 Compare and Contrast

  Chapter 19 Inky Cleans Up

  Chapter 20 If the Shoe Fits

  Chapter 21 Conjecture and Proof

  Chapter 22 Justagirl in Trouble

  Chapter 23 The Lines are Drawn

  Chapter 24 Peccadilloes

  Chapter 25 Inky Feels Betrayed

  Chapter 26 Small Places, Large Issues

  Chapter 27 Inky Goes to the Glass Tower

  Chapter 28 Keep the Home Fires Burning

  Chapter 29 The Fog Rolls In

  Chapter 30 Making Contact

  Chapter 31 What You Don’t See

  Chapter 32 Size Matters

  Chapter 33 Can’t Say No

  Chapter 34 Ready, Set, Go

  Chapter 35 So This Is It

  Chapter 36 Justagirl in Megaland

  Chapter 37 Picasso2B in Megaland

  Chapter 38 Artboy and DiploKids Bust Creep

  Author’s Note

  About the Author

  About the Illustrator

  Drawing Amanda

  IN THE HISTORY OF SCHOOL LUNCHES, no one had ever paid this much attention to a side salad. Inky Kahn swatted a straggle of his long hair away from his face, scrunched up his storm gray eyes and tried to conjure the exact green of the iceberg lettuce in Amanda’s bowl.

  He wanted his drawing of her to be perfect, and focusing on the right shade helped. He knew he was rusty; last year he’d filled his notebooks with abstracts, a mad rush of color, emotion running like muck. Rivers of guilt traversing the page.

  There were definitely peas in her salad. He remembered how Amanda balanced one on her fork while she laughed (she laughed!) at his story about how he got his nickname. And asparagus? Did she have asparagus? Are there even asparagus in October?

  The top of his chest throbbed as if his heart had been pushed up, displaced by grief, his insides swollen from the burden he carried. He bit his lip as he struggled to recall the items on her lunch tray, then stroked a single line of black ink on the page before him. There were things that actually mattered in the world, Inky knew, and just in case he’d forgotten, his school, Manhattan’s prestigious Metropolitan Diplomatic Academy, served up heaps of world tragedy and disaster as part of the curriculum. But at this moment, the world, his world, depended on him drawing Amanda.

  Chapter 1

  What’s New Is Old Again

  THE CAFETERIA WAS LOUD. The welcome sign proclaimed in sapphire blue letters that 82 different mother tongues were spoken by Metropolitan Diplomatic Academy students. To Inky, it sounded like they were all being spoken at once. Twelve grades of excitement, none of it his.

  The first year in high school, Upper One, didn’t promise to be any different from middle school, if the cafeteria was any indication—same blue paint, big gray tables and uncomfortable popsicle-orange plastic chairs. Everyone was sitting at their usual tables, too—everyone who came back.

  Inky tucked his head as he passed Curry Hill, where a gaggle of Indian girls shared the right side of the cafeteria with the Math-letes who’d appropriated the table where he used to sit when his old crew was around. They were all now attending the High School of Art & Design. He’d missed too much school last year to bother applying, even though he was the most talented of the group.

  He felt a tap on his shoulder. “WB, dude. Welcome back,” his friend Rungs said. He was tall and twig-skinny. Over the summer he’d let his black hair go spiky, so he looked like a manga comic character.

  Rungs raised his paper cup of coffee and took a big sip. “Jetlag. Got back from Thailand Sunday. Three weeks of mom’s cooking.” Rungs patted his belly. “And quality time with Apsara, who, IMHO, is prettier than ever. But that’s just my humble opinion.”

  “Excuse me, and WTF,” Inky said. “What’s with the abbreviations?”

  Rungs shrugged.

  “You talk like that? You can’t talk like that.”

  Rungs shrugged again. “Souvenir of my nerd summer.”

  Rungs, short for his last name, Rungsiyaphoratana, was a second generation computer geek. His father did intelligence work for the Thai government, lasting through a string of prime ministers.

  There was a momentary commotion as the Frenchies, kids from French-speaking countries or international schools, pushed two tables together, spanning from Curry Hill to the middle of the cafeteria where Sven Thorsson and the Soccer Boys had taken their alpha place in the center.

  Inky and Rungs walked toward the back of the cafeteria. “Anything else I should know?” Inky said.

  Rungs whipped out a mini pocket computer, sleeker than anything available in U.S. gadget stores. “64 gigs and the pre-release of the super nimbus processor.”

  The most ethnically-mixed group was a group of girls who sat down in unison like a rehearsal for a Junior Miss World pageant. The Sacred Circle, they called themselves, and they were all stunning in their own way. Hawk stood off to the side, petite but commanding because of her perfect posture and sinewy build. She shook out her dirty blond ponytail and changed from skateboard shoes to ballet flats. She looked up, caught Inky’s eye and sneered.

  Inky looked away as he and
Rungs sat down at the table in the back. “Never heard of it,” he said,

  “Deep beta.”

  “Sweet.”

  “Sweeter.” Rungs turned the small, crisp display screen to Inky to show a picture of Apsara, his girlfriend back in Thailand. Inky whistled.

  He put his device back in his pocket and said, “Check this out, dude. One of the nerdesses at geek camp told me about a start-up looking for kids to help with a new game. Could be the way to get you some exposure. Catapult you to the working art world. Who needs that art high school?”

  Rungs grabbed Inky’s pen, the cartridge pen with the swirly green marble design that felt so cool and smooth between his fingers. “Hey,” Inky said indignantly.

  “Dude, this could be your golden ticket. Recognition. Opportunity. It’s a start-up. The launching pad to fortune, my man.” Rungs deliberately glanced over at the table where the art students used to sit. “Chill. Don’t worry about your pen.”

  Inky stared at the pen in Rungs’s hand. It’d been his father’s, and he carried it like a talisman.

  “You gotta check this out,” Rungs said, ignoring Inky’s glare, as he reached for Inky’s black sketch notebook.

  “Don’t touch that,” Inky said, covering the pages with his hands.

  Rungs rolled his eyes and patted his pockets looking for paper—as if he ever carried any. Then he sighed heavily. Inky couldn’t help but smile, but held tight to his sketchpad.

  Rungs looked toward the table adjacent to theirs. Inky saw a girl with wild dark hair he didn’t recognize sitting alone behind them. Rungs reached his long arm over to her notebook, jiggling the table as he knocked into a chair.

  “You don’t mind if I borrow a piece of paper?” Rungs said, not waiting for her answer. The girl looked up—her eyes were brown with flecks of gold. Raw umber.

  “Hey,” she said, stretching out the word. She narrowed her eyes, and the flecks took on a more intense hue. Inky looked at her, then couldn’t look away. He knew he was staring. She wasn’t classically pretty; her features were a striking mix of pure Anglo and mestizo. It was a pretty he learned to appreciate at MDA—zebra pretty, the girls called it.

  Rungs snatched her notebook. She’d reached for it too late. Inky could see the curve of her arm through the stiff white fabric of her shirt.

  Rungs opened the notebook to the first page and tapped on the paper to get Inky’s attention.

  “You can thank me later.” Rungs pressed down hard as he wrote down a URL for the test site and a login password.

  “Hey, careful. You’ll break the nib,” Inky said.

  Rungs ripped out the piece of paper and handed it to Inky. “GTBOS, my friend. Glad to be of service.” Rungs returned the pen to Inky.

  He stood up and returned the notebook to the girl, bowing as he put it on the table. She glowered at Rungs, then Inky, and then her notebook. She reminded Inky of Picasso’s girl with a ponytail. Her look was muse-worthy; her face had depth, beauty and imperfections. Her gaze made Inky think of light streaming through a window crack.

  “Thanks. It’ll come back to you,” Rungs said to her in a way that sounded like a promise or an omen.

  Chapter 2

  Inky Signs On

  HOMEWORK ON THE FIRST DAY should be against the law, Inky thought, as the books in his backpack bounced against his spine on his walk home. The big tree outside his building cast a long shadow; the few fallen leaves were like an orange arrow pointing home.

  Inky climbed the stairs to his apartment. Inside it was dark and had a musty smell that was comfortingly familiar. He tossed the mail on the living room chair, releasing dust particles that danced in the light leaking through the venetian blinds.

  In the narrow hallway, Inky’s backpack snagged on the black nylon fabric that was stretched over the hall mirror. Behind the fabric he could just make out the pattern of its richly-carved wood frame—a souvenir from his father’s trip to Sri Lanka. Inky pictured the cinnamon wood he could not see and headed to the back of the apartment where his room and his father’s study overlooked the street.

  Inky had to be careful not to bump his head on the loft bed above his desk. An old photograph of himself was taped to a narrow slab of fake stone, a discarded kitchen counter that Inky and his father had found on the street. It sat on two sawhorses and doubled as a drafting table. The space was fine when he was young, but now that he was fourteen, it felt cramped. He threw his books on the faded blue carpeting, even though it would have been easier to use the big desk in his father’s study.

  The study was just as his father had left it before his last trip; they’d barely dared to disturb the dust.

  Although they’d never been very religious, when the rabbi gave them instructions after the funeral, Inky and his mother took the words almost literally. During shiva, the Jewish period of mourning, all mirrors in the house are covered and mourners don’t get haircuts or wear new or freshly laundered clothes.

  Neither Inky nor his mother had felt much like cleaning after the shiva period was over. Soon they were moving things only when they absolutely had to, sweeping merely as a distraction from grief. A year and a half later, the house was unkempt by habit, like one of those sorry ladies in sweatpants you see at the supermarket. When Inky passed the deli down the street, sometimes he’d smell the bleach they tossed on the sidewalk. It smelled sweet to him. His father had been the tidy one.

  Shiva, the Hebrew word for seven, lasts for a week, the rabbi had told them. Then the candle is blown out, the mirrors uncovered, the shades raised. The mourners take a walk around the block, a symbolic step back into the world, into the light.

  But Inky’s house was still dark.

  He parted the curtain to the lair underneath his bed and bent his head. Unlike last year when he couldn’t and didn’t concentrate on his work, this year he’d sworn he’d try. He wished he was in the same core class as Rungs, but at least he was not with Sven and Demos from the soccer team.

  Inky logged on to his computer to see his social studies assignment. He skimmed the type-dense paragraphs his teacher had posted about the importance of social anthropology. The teacher, trying to be hip, suggested they look at their Facebook pages to see the structure of their “tribes.” So much for fresh starts. He’d abandoned his page last year.

  At least he knew he wanted to be an artist, and maybe he didn’t need a specialized art school to get there. He pulled out the paper Rungs had given him in the cafeteria that morning and typed in the URL and password.

  “Welcome to Megaland” resolved across the top of his screen. He liked the chubby type and neon colors. A second later a text line appeared under the neon logo: “Megaland: Become your Dream.”

  Sure hope so, he thought. A box appeared at the bottom of the screen. “Click to get started.”

  Inky filled out the sign-in screen. He even created a username, “Picasso2B,” the name he used for most sites he visited. A chat box opened on the side.

  Megaland: Hello, Picasso2B. Glad to meet you. Megaland will be a game unlike any other, and we’re recruiting a core group of special, talented kids to help get it off the ground. Depending on your interests, you can help build scenarios or design beta game modules. Does that sound good to you?

  It sure sounded better than doing homework.

  Picasso2B: yes

  Megaland: Excellent. So let’s find out how you’ll fit in. A placement survey will pop up on your screen asking you about yourself. Here’s me: I was super successful in the music biz. Had a stretch of downtime and got into programming. Now I’m gonna use those skills to create a new breed of game. And you might be one of the ones to help. On the form, tell me what games you’re into, your interests and hobbies, the usual stuff.

  Inky clicked through the questions. For interests, he typed “design.” The questions about games were interactive.

  Megaland: Name a favorite game

  Picasso2B: video phone or computer?

  Megaland: Computer.
r />   Picasso2B: last yr I got back into Spore

  Megaland: What drew you to the game?

  That was easy—the logline on the box: “Tired of your planet? Build a new one.”

  Picasso2B: IDK, the advertising I guess

  Megaland: What kept you coming back?

  Inky loved designing those multi-eyed, gaudy-colored creatures. Their internecine battles had helped to keep the bright hot colors of loss out of his head, at least for a little while.

  Picasso2B: The Creature Creator is way cool, especially the animation. Plus it keeps my mind off stuff.

  There were more questions—a little annoying, but Rungs said this was a start-up, so it made sense that a cutting-edge game developer would do his research.

  Megaland: Ok. Let’s switch gears. Describe yourself. What are your best features or what would someone notice about you?

  He couldn’t quite say. After a year of the mirrors covered in black cloth, he’d gotten out of the habit of looking or caring. Every so often his mother would come out of her haze of distraction and look his way, as if seeing him for the first time. She’d gasp like she’d seen a ghost, and he knew it was because he resembled his father.

  Megaland: Please complete each question.

  The cursor blinked, wanting more. So Inky typed in the facts.

  Picasso2B: tall, light-skinned

  He hit return hoping to move on to the next question, but nothing happened.

  Megaland: Please provide a complete description before moving on to the next question.

  Harsh, Inky thought. He added something he knew people noticed.

  Picasso2B: long brown hair

  Megaland: What else?

  Picasso2B: gray eyes