Same Difference. Siobhan Vivian

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      The most striking thing about this girl is her hair — brown, blunt, and cut in a pageboy falling just past her chin, with bangs straight across her forehead. But there’s also a bright streak of electric pink underneath. That thick pink strand is about five inches longer than her brown hair, and it cascades over her shoulder and onto the concrete like a Kool-Aid waterfall.

      My eyes wander back to her face, only to see that the girl is now staring at me from the ground. Like, obviously staring at me. She lifts one hand and waves, a fluttering gesture, demure like a beauty queen.

      I quickly turn away and lower myself back in my chair.

      Dr. Tobin returns to the podium. “Okay, students. It is now ten o’clock. You will be free to finish up the registration process, say your good-byes to your parents, and get some lunch. All of you will be expected to report to your first classes by twelve-thirty. If you have questions or need any more information, please report to my office on the third floor.” She claps her hands together. “Have an exhilarating first day!”

      Everyone stands up and scatters. I wait a few seconds before moving, just in case that girl is still watching me. As I lean over to grab my stuff, I glance outside. I don’t see her.

      I walk outside to the courtyard between the east and west dorms. Everyone’s looking down at the ground. Pointing. Smiling. The girl has traced shadows all over the pavement in smooth lines of colored chalk — a tree, a bush, a statue of a stone head perched on a big marble pedestal, a trash can. The sun has already shifted the shadows just outside her lines.

      By the number of tracings, it’s a safe bet that this girl probably didn’t go to orientation at all, if she’s even a student here. She was outside by herself the whole time, making art.

      My phone rings. It’s my mom again, but I still don’t answer. Instead, I walk the edges of the shadow outlines the girl has drawn, careful like I’m on a tightrope. Other people around me do the same. Someone’s mom asks a security guard who did this. He shrugs and calls maintenance on his radio, telling them to bring a hose. He doesn’t get that the lady wasn’t complaining. He doesn’t get it at all.

      I try to line myself up to where the girl was when she waved at me. There, her outline is traced on the ground. It’s different from the kind you see police draw around dead bodies — there’s detail and depth to it. I can see the wrinkles of her clothes, the fringe of her choppy hair, features I never thought possible to capture with sidewalk chalk.

      When no one is looking, I step inside the lines. My shadow doesn’t come close to filling it up.

Four

      On my way out of the university cafeteria, I accidentally bump into a thin, frail girl hovering over the food bar.

      The force knocks the serving tongs out of her hand and into a nearby tray of thick, mayonnaisey tuna salad. Splats fly everywhere. One clump hits my capris, just above the knee.

      “Oh! I’m sorry,” I say, and then catch myself staring into the girl’s take-out box with fear and concern. Strips of fake bacon are piled high. They look like plastic play food, technicolored in an entirely unconvincing way.

      “The vegan entrée has been contaminated!” the girl screeches to no one in particular, but glares at me through her thick shaggy hair like I’ve just slaughtered a pig right in front of her. A cafeteria lady in a white apron and black hairnet rushes over and pushes me out of the way.

      Oh well. So much for good first impressions.

      I walk through a door, up a set of stairs, and out onto the street. Philadelphia feels huge. If I squint, I can see City Hall in the distance, dead center in the middle of Broad Street. It’s a really ornate building, a stone-colored wedding cake. A statue of William Penn is perched at the very top, watching over the whole city. It was probably the tallest building at one time, but now it’s dwarfed by the surrounding skyscrapers.

      My very first class, Drawing, is held in the main art building directly across the street from the atrium. It’s a totally uninspiring location, where you might expect the office of an accountant, except that it has a huge, empty gallery space in the lobby. I walk to the corner and wait for the traffic light to change while other kids dart across the street when they see holes in the oncoming traffic.

      I flash the security guard the college ID dangling around my neck, even though he’s too busy talking on his cell phone to notice, and head down a long hallway to a set of elevators. There’s a bunch of people already waiting. I delicately squeeze my way onto an elevator and reach out to press the button for the seventh floor, but it’s already lit up. As the doors shut, a girl with a corncob blond pixie cut, tight pencil-leg jeans, and a red silk scarf knotted around her neck runs toward us. No one holds the door for her, though, and she looks annoyed as it closes right in her face.

      The elevator moves incredibly slow. I’m stuck in the corner near the buttons, and can’t see the people behind me. But I hear two iPods playing different songs in a musical mess, and someone smells like they haven’t learned what deodorant is yet.

      I think the first stop is a photography floor, because the chemicals make my eyes water as soon as the doors open. That, and one of the kids who steps off the elevator turns around and, with his camera dangling mid-chest, takes a picture of us.

      “Idiot,” a boy next to me mutters as the doors close. His long hair is split in two pigtails. Fake white plastic flowers are tucked into each elastic.

      I try not to stare. Maybe he’s sweet or secretly good at sports, but I can’t help but wonder how exactly a boy like that survives in high school.

      By the time we stop on the seventh floor, there are three kids left in the elevator beside me. I smile at one freckly girl with thick tentacles of auburn dreadlocks. She nods her head at me, not exactly in a friendly way, but not meanly either.

      It’s slightly encouraging.

      Room 713 is a large studio that smells of turpentine. There are twelve sets of easels and stools arranged in a circle, surrounding a tall pedestal made out of stacked white plywood boxes in the very center. The long tables across the back of the room are covered with half-finished assignments from the undergrad students — heads carved out of clay, wooden sculptures, plaster casings.

      Shadow Girl is near the window, sitting on a stool. She scrapes her purple nail polish off with her teeth. Her shorts are dusted in chalk powder of all different colors, like the clouds in a summer sunset.

      I wonder if Shadow Girl knows how many people were looking at her tracings in the courtyard. But I’m not going to tell her. I don’t want her to remember that I was staring, so I put my head down and walk quickly past her.

      She grabs my arm and pulls me to stop.

      “I love your shoes,” she tells me. “They’re like . . . princess slippers or something.”

      “They’re not mine,” I admit. Though as soon as the words leave my mouth, I regret it. I should have said they were. After all, I do have practically the same pair.

      She presses her lips together. “Umm, all right then,” she says, followed by an awkward laugh, because I didn’t leave much room to expand the conversation. “Well . . . make sure you pass along my compliment to their rightful owner.”

      “Okay.” СКАЧАТЬ