Empress of the World Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Acknowledgements

  Copyright Page

  Dedication

  Part One

  Part Two

  Thanks:

  Mom and Dad, all the friends I conned into

  reading drafts

  (you know who you are), UWG, STEW, Sharyn,

  David,

  and especially Steve.

  VIKING

  Published by the Penguin Group

  Penguin Putnam Books for Young Readers, 345 Hudson Street, New York, New York

  10014, U.S.A.

  Penguin Books Ltd, 27 Wrights Lane, London W8 5TZ, England

  Penguin Books Australia Ltd, Ringwood, Victoria, Australia

  Penguin Books Canada Ltd, 10 Alcorn Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M4V 3B2

  Penguin Books (N.Z.) Ltd, 182-190 Wairau Road, Auckland 10, New Zealand

  Penguin Books Ltd, Registered Offices: Harmondsworth, Middlesex, England

  First published in 2001 by Viking, a division of Penguin Putnam

  Books for Young Readers.

  Copyright © Sara Ryan, 2001

  All rights reserved

  LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

  Ryan, Sara.

  Empress of the world / Sara Ryan.

  p. cm.

  Summary: While attending a summer institute, fifteen-year-old Nic

  meets another girl named Battle, falls in love with her, and

  finds the relationship to be difficult and confusing.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-11839-9

  [1. Lesbians—Fiction. 2. Homosexuality—Fiction.

  3. Bisexuality—Fiction. 4. Schools—Fiction.] I. Title.

  PZ7.R957 Em 2001 [Fic]—dc21 00-052758

  Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  for Victoria, Susan,

  and Harry

  O Fortuna

  velut luna

  statu variabilis,

  semper crescis

  aut decrescis . . .

  O Fortune, you are changeable like the moon, ever waxing and waning . . .

  -from “Fortuna Imperatrix Mundi”

  (Fortune, Empress of the World),

  Carmina Burana, Cantiones Profanae

  Part One

  June 14, 4 p.m., Prucher Hall Auditorium

  I am sitting cross-legged on an uncomfortable seat, waiting for a speech to start. It has been approximately forty-five minutes since Mom and Dad left me here. I am going to be here for the whole summer, and I do not know a single person.

  I open my big new journal. So far all it has is a title page which says “Field Notes” in block letters. I turn to the first blank page and write:

  hypothesis: taking an actual class in archaeology will serve to confirm nicola lancaster in her lifelong dream of becoming an archaeologist.

  I scratch out “lifelong dream,” because it doesn’t sound scientific enough, and write “proposed vocation,” but that sounds pompous, so I write “lifelong dream” again, and then above it, in larger letters, “ignore: this is dumb.” Then I write: “speech notes” just in case I actually take any.

  A large pink bald man in a navy blue suit that’s slightly too small for him walks up to the podium in the middle of the stage. He taps the microphone a couple of times until he gets the proper loud staticky clicking sound.

  “Greetings, everyone. I’m so pleased to welcome you all to the Siegel Institute Summer Program for Gifted Youth. You are exceptionally talented, and we at the institute are privileged to serve as guides for this stage of your educational explorations.”

  if you bottled his voice, you would never have to buy cooking oil again.

  I look around.

  who else is being forced to listen?

  scary-looking kids in the front. guys with bad hair, button-down shirts, and ties. girls in perfect pastel floral-print dresses. one redheaded guy wearing a three-piece suit. mostly white, some asians, a few black kids. as usual, each ethnic group member is only sitting with other people from the same ethnic group. four disgusted-looking girls sitting together, dressed in all black with dyed black hair: the goth ethnic group?

  Two seats over on the right is a tall, solid girl with gray-blue eyes and a lot of curly red hair. She is wearing a green velvet dress and black sandals, and is carefully painting her toenails the same shade of green as the dress. Her fingernails are purple. I start to sketch her. I want to see if I can get her hair and her look of total concentration.

  I get her expression but screw up her hair, then ruin her expression in the process of trying to fix her hair.

  On my left are a boy and another girl. The boy has wavy, longish, dark brown hair, caterpillaresque eyebrows, octagonal glasses, and I don’t know what his eyes look like; they’re closed. He won’t notice me drawing because he’s asleep. Deeply asleep—I see drool glistening at one corner of his mouth.

  I draw his closed eyes and his open mouth. I have a hard time with the drool. It ends up looking more prominent than it actually is.

  I look back up on stage. “It is necessary to understand that giftedness qua giftedness, that is to say giftedness as giftedness, is not sufficient armor with which to attack the modern world.”

  you don’t attack with armor. armor is a defense.

  I sketch Large Pink Bald Man: an egg with arms and legs, and a smaller egg on top for the head. The resemblance to Humpty Dumpty is uncanny, so I draw a wall, then a second sketch—of his great fall. Splat.

  The girl on my left has the most beautiful hair I have ever seen. It’s blonde and very long, thick, simple, and heavy. All the blonde girls I know do so much crap to their hair. They curl, spray, and gel it into submission. Actually, that’s not true; there are the hippie girls who part it in the middle and braid it, but they’re the exception. This girl’s hair doesn’t look like that. You’d think that with the heat, she’d put it up, but it’s just hanging down her back. And it’s blonde, all right, but not platinum blonde, and not that really yellowy blonde, either. Honey is the closest color, but it would have to be different kinds of honey that are different shades, like alfalfa and clover, and maybe some spices too, like ginger and cumin. Of course, this doesn’t really matter, because all I have is a pencil and I doubt I could get her hair right if I had the world’s biggest box of crayons. I couldn’t get her eyes right, either. They’re so green. They look like they would glow in the dark.

  I realize I haven’t drawn anything yet. I quickly sketch the shape of her head and start doing her hair. The nose will be hard; I always mess up noses. Maybe I should do the mouth first. She has narrow lips.

  For a while I forget where I am. I’m trying to be like Dad, to look at her the way he looks at things when he draws. He says he breaks objects up into forms: like he doesn’t see a head, he sees an oval.

  But I just keep seeing this girl.

  She has her index finger in her mouth. I can’t quite tell, but it looks like she’s peeling off the skin around her cuticle with her teeth.

  I didn’t think anyone else did that.

  I know I’m drawing too quickly and sloppily now, but I want to have evidence that someone else damages herself in the same small subtle way. She takes her finger out of her mouth too fast for me to capture it on paper, but when she does, I see a spot of blood. Beautiful Hair Girl has messed-up fingers like mine.

  Just as I
’m thinking this, she looks over at me with those glow-in-the-dark green eyes. I feel myself start to blush. Then she smiles. After a moment, I smile back.

  “One of the most important parts of your experience at the Siegel Institute will be making friends with your peers, and you will have many opportunities to do so. But I must caution you strongly that initiating, uh, romantic connections is not an appropriate use of your time here. You are all mature young people and I have every confidence that you understand the issues involved.” LPBM clears his throat several times and takes a sip of water.

  “Jesus, somebody must have gotten pregnant last year,” the Redhead mutters.

  LPBM starts talking about all the other things we are supposedly mature enough not to do: drink, take drugs, steal, cheat, destroy university property. Then he says, “If you find yourself dealing with any difficult issues, I encourage you to bring them to your Residence Advisor. They are all trained counselors and they are here to help you.”

  I take a chance and whisper, “She got pregnant and then killed herself.” I hear a snort of suppressed laughter from the Redhead.

  When Large Pink Bald Man finally shuts up, people applaud in relief. The applause wakes up Drooling Boy, and the Redhead pokes me in the arm and says, “Hey! You were drawing the whole time! Can I see?”

  I’m frozen. It’s like she asked me to take my clothes off. But I can’t figure out how to say no, so I hand her the notebook. Almost immediately, confirming my worst fears, she starts laughing.

  “You are so totally right about his voice! That’s hilarious!” she says, pointing to my cooking oil comment.

  I’m so relieved that I can’t think of anything to say, so I just smile. “These are great!” she continues. Then she addresses Formerly Drooling Boy. “Hey, you!”

  He has already gotten up to leave the auditorium. He’s wiping off his mouth, looking embarrassed. She beckons. “Come over here, and get the girl next to you, too!”

  The Redhead says, “Oh, I’m totally sorry, I didn’t even ask if it was okay—but you guys, look, she’s an artist! She drew all three of us during that heinous speech! Isn’t it cool?” She passes my notebook to Formerly Drooling Boy.

  “Was I that bad?” he asks. I shrug. He passes the notebook to Beautiful Hair Girl, and I feel suddenly even more tense. She studies it intently for a minute or two. “Those are excellent. My name is Battle.” She restores my notebook to me, and I clutch it to my chest like a stuffed animal.

  “I’m Nicola, but most people call me Nic,” I say.

  Battle looks at me with a strange expression, as though what I’ve just said is far more shocking than I think it is. I know I have a bizarre name, but hers is worse.

  The Redhead says, “I’m Katrina—and please tell me you don’t hate me because I got all excited about your art! I’m always doing things like that, all the time. Who are you?” She turns to Formerly Drooling Boy.

  “Uh, Isaac.”

  We all smile at each other, not knowing what comes next.

  “Battle,” Katrina says. “I’ve never heard that name before. Were your parents anti-hippies who named you to protest all the babies called Love and Peace and Sunshine?”

  “No,” Battle says. “Battle Hall is the building where my parents met. I’m named after a building; it’s too weird.” She grimaces.

  “I’m named after a scientist,” I say, surprising myself. “Scientists are almost as weird as buildings.” Battle grins.

  “What scientist?” asks Isaac.

  “Nikola Tesla. I don’t really understand anything that he did, but my parents love him.”

  “Oh, Tesla, right! Are they scientists?” asks Katrina.

  “Mom is. Dad isn’t,” I say.

  “We’re the only ones left,” Battle says, looking around. “Let’s vacate.”

  When we get outside, Katrina says, “Hold on a second, guys,” and digs in the huge black bag she’s carrying. After a minute or two, she triumphantly holds up a pack of American Spirits. “Now I just need to find the lighter. . . .” She says this with a cigarette already in her mouth.

  “Hey, give me one of those,” says Isaac. She does.

  “I’ve led a sheltered life. You guys both smoke?” I ask.

  Katrina says, “I do.” She reaches over and takes the cigarette out of Isaac’s mouth. “He doesn’t. You want the end with the filter on it closer to your mouth.” She sticks the cigarette behind her ear.

  “I just did that to see if you’d notice,” mumbles Isaac. He’s blushing a little. “I don’t feel like a cigarette right now, anyway.”

  “How long have you been smoking?” I ask Katrina.

  “Too long,” she says. “I’m going to quit soon. I promised myself. It’s just that things are so stressful right now.” She inhales deeply. She sounds very Eastern. I wonder if she’s from New York.

  “Smoking is foul. I’m going to get dinner,” says Battle, holding her nose. She starts walking towards the cafeteria, and after a moment, the rest of us follow her.

  “Come on, you all should ask for kosher,” says Isaac as we’re standing in line for some as yet unidentifiable but reddish and vaguely pasta-like substance.

  “Why?” asks Katrina.

  “Well, I was here last year, and the deal is that if you want kosher, they have to make it for you specially, and that means it has a fighting chance of being decent. Plus it pisses them off, but they can’t say anything ’cause it would be anti-Semitism.”

  It sounds good to me, but Katrina shakes her head. “I think it’s far more important to continue my campaign to have ranch dressing recognized as a food group.”

  “Ranch dressing is grotesque,” I say.

  “Ranch dressing is a food group,” Katrina counters.

  “I’m with her. Ranch dressing rocks,” an unfamiliar voice says from behind Katrina. It belongs to a gangly Asian guy with long hair pulled back in a ponytail, an army jacket, baggy jeans shorts, white socks, and what I can only think of as concert shoes—black patent leather, formal looking, like what we have to wear for orchestra concerts at school.

  “Thank you, citizen, for that unsolicited testimonial. I’m Katrina, and you are?”

  “Kevin.”

  We all tell him our names, and he smiles in a slow sleepy way. I wonder whether he’s on drugs or just chronically mellow.

  “What are you in for?” Battle asks him.

  Kevin looks confused.

  “I think she means what class are you taking,” I translate.

  “Oh—right, like jail. That’s funny,” he says, without laughing. Then, after a few moments of silence, he adds, “Uh, music. Theory.”

  I say, “My viola teacher wanted me to go to some of those classes because I can’t take lessons this summer, but I don’t actually know what music theory even is. What is it?”

  Kevin blinks a couple of times. It’s like we’re in a chat room and he’s got a really slow connection. Finally he says, “It’s the underlying structures that make composition possible.” After a few more seconds, he adds, vaguely, “Modes.”

  I have studied viola for over five years and I have no idea what he’s talking about. Maybe he’s making it up.

  “So music theory is something you want to do,” says Battle. “As opposed to what your parents want.”

  Kevin nods, and moves next to me and Battle in line.

  “You, too?” asks Isaac.

  Battle nods. “World History, joy oh rapture.”

  “I took that last year; it was okay,” says Isaac. “Taking what your parents want is such a waste. But when it’s either that or having to spend the summer with them—” Isaac starts, and Katrina finishes, “You take what you can get.”

  I laugh along with everyone else, but it makes me feel a little strange. Am I the only person here who likes her parents?

  Isaac asks for a kosher meal, and then looks horrified when he’s handed an unidentifiable khaki mass that looks even less appetizing than the red mass the r
est of us are waiting for. “Stuffed cabbage,” says the guy behind the counter. “We had so much demand last year they decided to have some kosher stuff premade for each meal.”

  “Shit,” says Isaac.

  “No, cabbage!” says Katrina cheerily. Then she asks the guy, “Can I get a salad and, like, seven extra things of ranch dressing?” He lets her.

  “That is so unbelievably gross,” I say. Katrina just laughs, and arranges the dressing packets on her tray into the shape of a K.

  “So what are you, a vegetarian?” the guy asks me.

  “What do I get if I am?” I ask.

  “Grilled cheese sandwich. Green beans,” he answers.

  “Yeah!” I say. That’s my all-time favorite lunch, except for the green beans. “You’ll have to wait a few minutes,” he says. The magic words.

  “Fine,” I say, grinning. Kevin decides to be a vegetarian, too.

  Katrina, Battle, and I sit together in a row on one side of the table, which makes both Isaac and Kevin look slightly disappointed. Isaac obviously wanted to sit with Katrina—but did Kevin want to sit with me, or Battle?

  They sit across from us and spread out in a boylike way, taking up the maximum possible amount of space.

  “You were here last year, too,” Isaac says suddenly to Battle. She nods.

  “What’s it like?” I ask.

  “Well, I’m back,” says Battle.

  Isaac shrugs. “It’s better than staying home.”

  “You got that right.” Battle takes a contemplative sip of iced tea, makes a face, and dumps several packets of sugar into her glass. Then she says, “But I think this year will be different.”

  “Different how?” asks Isaac.

  Battle shakes her head. “I don’t know. Just different.”

  I wonder if Battle made friends here last year. And if they came back. But if they had, wouldn’t she be sitting with them instead?