Defending Her Art
fiction by Christine Hopkins
Nadine Fowler was an artist, first and foremost. She was sixteen, she got along with her parents, and her favorite color was peach, like the sunrise that nestled the car in a quiet warmth on the way to her early-morning soccer games.
Nadine Fowler wouldn’t have minded playing soccer in college, but since she was an artist, she wanted to go to art school. She didn’t know much about art school, having only heard of the ones famous enough to be part of character arcs on teen soaps, but who was to say she couldn’t get into Parsons or Cooper Union or the Rhode Island School of Design? Sure, they’d be expensive, and they didn’t have sports, but her parents always said they’d find a way to pay for whichever college she wanted to go to.
Nadine Fowler dabbled in many types of art, photography and painting and sculpture, the idea being that her eventual portfolio would showcase her range, but her preferred medium was the pocketknife attachment of a Swiss Army knife on the fragile, pale skin of her inner wrist, though if the dried blood and fresh scars made it too crowded, she’d settle for knife blade on hips or even knife blade on thighs. No one else at Pinedale Preparatory Academy opted for the itchy navy sweater, not even the senior boys trying to charm their teachers into writing them Harvard recommendation letters. But Nadine silently vowed on the day she began her art career that she would never take hers off, not even if Bobby Marks ever got over himself and decided to take her virginity right there at school, preferably in the second-floor janitor’s closet, which her “experienced” friends always said had the fewest brooms and bottles of cleaning fluid to accidentally knock over in the act.
Nadine Fowler played goalie, which necessitated long, padded sleeves, especially with all the diving and sliding on the carpet-on-concrete that was Pinedale Prep’s turf soccer field. One evening, when the team decided to go for pizza after a big win, Nadine forgot her warm-up jacket, so she wore her long-sleeved goalie jersey to Fargo’s Pizza, grass stains and all. Her team was none the wiser. Like on the soccer field, they took her presence for granted. She was the last to approach the order window at Fargo’s, where the cashier informed her that “the gals ahead of you said you were paying for everyone.”
Nadine Fowler had to explain to her parents that night that all of her cash for the month’s school lunch was gone already, but she couldn’t bring herself to say why. Her mom’s face softened with concern as Nadine fumbled through a story about how someone must have taken it out of her soccer bag, but not someone on her team, because they’re all good people, they don’t steal. Her dad waited for her to finish, then pulled his wallet out of his pocket and placed five barely-folded bills on the table. This wordless reply was worse than being scolded. She thought about offering to pay back the $100 once she got a job, but the thought of offering $100 to her dad after he’d paid for four years of tuition at RISD made her stomach muscles tighten, as if accompanying some sarcastic laughter that never came.
Sometimes, Nadine Fowler imagined showing her portfolio to art school admissions officers at her interview. Her greatest fear wasn’t that they would dismiss her altogether, but that they might like her work enough to ask her on the spot if she had any more. And then she would have no choice but to roll up the sleeves of her tasteful, high-collared, long-sleeved dress shirt and show them what lay beneath. She imagined the female admissions officer’s eyebrows raising not quite in shock, but in admiration of the courage it would have taken Nadine to perform this work. The male admissions officer, on the other hand, would immediately dive into further questions, asking her to defend her art, to speak highly of her secret talent that, as of now, only three people in the world knew she was capable of executing. She would have to tell them about that night at Fargo’s in her goalkeeper jersey, and every day that another of her friends leaned over to her in first-period gym or fourth-period French with the revelation that, hell yes, sex with one’s boyfriend was the best after all. She would have to wade her way through detailing her guilt at her parents having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this very art school, and even then, even if they somehow convinced her that her education was worth any price, she would still owe them that $100.
Nadine Fowler was found the next morning in the middle of the wide ring on the soccer field, her petite body splayed out across the turf, obscuring the smaller, filled-in circle at its very center where the ball was placed to start a game. She had always promised herself that she would always be, first and foremost, the artist, the curator, and the patron of her work. But that day, with the soft peach light of the sunrise streaming onto her lifeless body, unrecognizable at first in only her underwear and a blood-stained white T-shirt, baring the existence of her life’s endeavors, the world would still never know her better for it.
Nadine Fowler wouldn’t have minded playing soccer in college, but since she was an artist, she wanted to go to art school. She didn’t know much about art school, having only heard of the ones famous enough to be part of character arcs on teen soaps, but who was to say she couldn’t get into Parsons or Cooper Union or the Rhode Island School of Design? Sure, they’d be expensive, and they didn’t have sports, but her parents always said they’d find a way to pay for whichever college she wanted to go to.
Nadine Fowler dabbled in many types of art, photography and painting and sculpture, the idea being that her eventual portfolio would showcase her range, but her preferred medium was the pocketknife attachment of a Swiss Army knife on the fragile, pale skin of her inner wrist, though if the dried blood and fresh scars made it too crowded, she’d settle for knife blade on hips or even knife blade on thighs. No one else at Pinedale Preparatory Academy opted for the itchy navy sweater, not even the senior boys trying to charm their teachers into writing them Harvard recommendation letters. But Nadine silently vowed on the day she began her art career that she would never take hers off, not even if Bobby Marks ever got over himself and decided to take her virginity right there at school, preferably in the second-floor janitor’s closet, which her “experienced” friends always said had the fewest brooms and bottles of cleaning fluid to accidentally knock over in the act.
Nadine Fowler played goalie, which necessitated long, padded sleeves, especially with all the diving and sliding on the carpet-on-concrete that was Pinedale Prep’s turf soccer field. One evening, when the team decided to go for pizza after a big win, Nadine forgot her warm-up jacket, so she wore her long-sleeved goalie jersey to Fargo’s Pizza, grass stains and all. Her team was none the wiser. Like on the soccer field, they took her presence for granted. She was the last to approach the order window at Fargo’s, where the cashier informed her that “the gals ahead of you said you were paying for everyone.”
Nadine Fowler had to explain to her parents that night that all of her cash for the month’s school lunch was gone already, but she couldn’t bring herself to say why. Her mom’s face softened with concern as Nadine fumbled through a story about how someone must have taken it out of her soccer bag, but not someone on her team, because they’re all good people, they don’t steal. Her dad waited for her to finish, then pulled his wallet out of his pocket and placed five barely-folded bills on the table. This wordless reply was worse than being scolded. She thought about offering to pay back the $100 once she got a job, but the thought of offering $100 to her dad after he’d paid for four years of tuition at RISD made her stomach muscles tighten, as if accompanying some sarcastic laughter that never came.
Sometimes, Nadine Fowler imagined showing her portfolio to art school admissions officers at her interview. Her greatest fear wasn’t that they would dismiss her altogether, but that they might like her work enough to ask her on the spot if she had any more. And then she would have no choice but to roll up the sleeves of her tasteful, high-collared, long-sleeved dress shirt and show them what lay beneath. She imagined the female admissions officer’s eyebrows raising not quite in shock, but in admiration of the courage it would have taken Nadine to perform this work. The male admissions officer, on the other hand, would immediately dive into further questions, asking her to defend her art, to speak highly of her secret talent that, as of now, only three people in the world knew she was capable of executing. She would have to tell them about that night at Fargo’s in her goalkeeper jersey, and every day that another of her friends leaned over to her in first-period gym or fourth-period French with the revelation that, hell yes, sex with one’s boyfriend was the best after all. She would have to wade her way through detailing her guilt at her parents having to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this very art school, and even then, even if they somehow convinced her that her education was worth any price, she would still owe them that $100.
Nadine Fowler was found the next morning in the middle of the wide ring on the soccer field, her petite body splayed out across the turf, obscuring the smaller, filled-in circle at its very center where the ball was placed to start a game. She had always promised herself that she would always be, first and foremost, the artist, the curator, and the patron of her work. But that day, with the soft peach light of the sunrise streaming onto her lifeless body, unrecognizable at first in only her underwear and a blood-stained white T-shirt, baring the existence of her life’s endeavors, the world would still never know her better for it.
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