Film noir
dialogue excelled at describing lethality – “blue steel”, “a cookie full of arsenic” – and after I graduated from high school, I could never hear such descriptions without thinking of Sarah. After she devastated Dave, and I saw how she would have destroyed me, I counted myself fortunate, but neither of us had seen our danger until too late. You had to dig deep into the tundra of Sarah's soul to find the ice.
The Brothers Grimm described Snow White as having skin white as snow, lips red as blood, and hair black as ebony wood. The first time I saw Sarah, she was a goth Snow White with bad hair. She had a china doll complexion, preferred cat eye spectacles, and wore too much mascara. Framing her face was a frizzy coal-black mane that spoke of a lost battle with a frayed power cord. While she favored a goth look, there was always part of her ensemble that was discordantly cheerful – one day it was a Hello Kitty purse, the next it was rainbow earrings, or a vintage ABBA concert shirt – none of which most goths would be caught undead wearing.
Halfway through our freshman year, and after her parents' divorce, Sarah had moved into our school district. She made a strong impression quickly, as she rebelled against any high school convention she could find. I first noticed her, a week after her transfer, when she was tormented in the hallway by Sumbeech Carl, who was a starting lineman on our varsity football team, even as a freshman. Carl mocked her clothes, and questioned her sexuality.
She inspected him as if he were a new species of dung beetle. Sidney – a short redhead with an acne problem – happened to pass, and Sarah captured her in a tight embrace. “Mock us not, for we know the true passion of forbidden love. And no, you cannot watch.”
Sidney shrieked and fled down the hall. Sarah condescendingly patted Carl on the cheek, and left him slack-jawed. I was stuffed in a locker for the mistake of not muffling my laughter.
Most of her antics that year were less amusing. Sarah had disciplinary problems, and I often saw her in detention for cutting classes to catch a smoke, or for mouthing off to a teacher. She was the prime suspect by the police in a trashcan fire that risked exploding the chemistry lab. She was headed down a bad road, and I was therefore surprised when I saw her name on the tryout list for
Guys and Dolls
, the spring musical. I was even more shocked when they gave her a part.
All three of us were in the chorus. Dave and I loved the acting and writing, and continued to speak Damon Runyon-style dialogue through most of the summer. Sarah was different. She was captured by choreography. She eventually would collect artistic skills the same way I collected knowledge, but Sarah always came back to her true love – dance. That summer, she signed up for jazz dance lessons in Rochester, and was transformed.
By our junior year, her makeover was complete. The discipline problems vanished, and she was competing on the honor roll. She maintained her rebellious streak, but she chose her targets better. She would still mock the authority figures who displeased her, but they were never quite sure they were being mocked, such as when she told the English teacher that his literary selections were “daringly conventional”.
Her physical evolution was just as profound. Contacts replaced her cat-eye frames, better revealing her blue eyes. Her previously unruly hair – now tamed by conditioner – became a black fractal wave cascading down her shoulders. Her goth-lite clothes stayed dark, but seemed to shrink, better displaying her new terpsichorean physique. Ratty flannel vanished in favor of snug shirts that exposed her midriff – flaunting a navel pierced with a red ruby, color-coordinated to match her favorite lipstick. She still wore too much mascara – giving her a hint of darkness, or cosmetic incompetence, depending who you asked. She had even learned Taekwondo – a school was next to her dance studio in Rochester, and she coordinated the lessons.
Soon, she defined, rather than defied, the socially acceptable – the scandal at the art exhibition our junior year, her martial arts-inspired cheer-leading choreography, and her antics at the Halloween Dance. In many respects, she ruled the school. She didn't, however, have a boyfriend.
Sarah scared the bejesus out of most men. The bottom of Lake Monroe was rumored to be the graveyard of prospective suitors who failed to meet her expectations. Few had the courage to test the rumors.
Dave and Sarah took art together, and were paired on a project in December of 2000. They quickly bonded over a mutual contempt for most studio art produced since World War I, with particular revulsion for Duchamp, Kandinsky, and Warhol. They differed over the nature of the failure. I had joined them in the cafeteria while they were in mid-debate – the first time Sarah ever lunched with us.
Dave possessed throwback Victorian aesthetics, and decried the loss of representationalism. Sarah detested “the focus on form and irony over emotionally-meaningful content”. They debated the cause of artistic morbidity and irrelevance, in the self-important and affected way that only young artists can. I let it continue for a while, and then asked if they weren’t saying the same thing.
Sarah’s eyes opened wide in delight. “Darling!” She hugged Dave, and exaggeratedly pecked him on the cheek.
Dave was equally theatrical. “Let us never fight again! I pledge my love undying!” Dave would talk that way – he would ask random women to run away with him to Paris, where they could dance nude on the banks of the Seine. A glint in his eye, and an inoffensive smile, usually saved him from being kneed in the groin. However, I could tell by the blush in his cheeks that this was different, and noticed Sarah didn't catch the lack of irony in his words.
The two of them threw around ideas for their art project. Sarah wanted it meaningful. Dave argued it should be political and environmental, then he stopped short, and looked at me. “Your protest idea. It’s winter now.”
“I'd forgotten about that,” I said.
“What protest idea?” Sarah asked.
“A Cunning Plan,” Dave explained. (We had borrowed the term from
Blackadder
, but aspired to better success.) “Last spring, Lance had an argument with Courtney in Chemistry, over global warming. Courtney being Courtney, she denied the whole thing. Then last summer, we were reading
Calvin and Hobbes
cartoons, and Lance had the idea for a practical joke we would leave in Courtney’s front yard.” Dave gave her the details.
Sarah’s eyes sparkled. “I'm in. I always wanted to do guerrilla art.”
I was skeptical. It was too much work, and for me the concept was usually more fun than the execution. “Using Courtney’s front lawn for an art project? You won’t have a chance to get it graded. Courtney will destroy it seconds after she sees it.”
“I was thinking a diorama,” Dave suggested. “We could turn it in for class.”
Sarah was aghast. “A diorama? What are you, in fourth grade? This is no longer for art class. We can create our own project for that. I just want to do this, and I want to do it in front of the school. Life size.”
Dave was sold. “When?”
“Now. Tonight,” she said.
They both turned to me.
This sounded much better than a practical joke with Courtney as the only audience, and executing one of my Cunning Plans had the appeal of novelty. I nodded agreement, and the conspiracy was formed.
Sarah quickly sketched out a task list with assignments and a timeline, and she fetched tagboard and brushes. Dave picked up lumber and paint. I brought the carrots, charcoal, and empty milk jugs. We met in Dave’s basement to paint the signs, and fill the jugs with warm water, then arrived at the school late, after the last activity bus had left.
We sculpted our wintry army until well past midnight, then fitted them for battle with our signs, only taking two breaks for hot cocoa from Sarah's thermos, and another break for a snowball fight. The longer we worked, the more alive I felt. I had ideas like this protest all the time, discarding them as fast as I created them. I had performed experiments as a kid, but had lately thrived in an imaginative world, where brilliance was in the concept, not the creation. I had discovered the thrill in the reality that lay beyond the idea and its shadow.
Sarah and I worked on the sixth snowman, a burly soul whom Sarah had crafted into a recognizable likeness of Vice Principal Murphy – her nemesis for all things controversially artistic. I looked at Sarah, and realized she was the one to make this happen. Dave and I never followed through on our ideas. She had somehow provided the push. I smiled at her across a carrot nose. She winked at me, and I loved her, not knowing the wink was just in fun.
