The Casquette Girls (Book 1)

5. Busy Signal

Once I left the French Quarter, signs of life went from slim to none. The conditions of houses significantly worsened after I crossed Esplanade Avenue—the change was so sudden it almost seemed purposely engineered. The Faubourg Marigny was a neighborhood where immigrants had originally settled to build homes and chase the American Dream. In more recent years, artists and bohemian types had taken over here because it was cheaper than other parts of the city but still well located. Post-Storm, one could argue whether it was really so well located—in between the Mississippi River and the Industrial Canal.

Pre-Storm, the Faubourg Marigny had been one of the most colorful parts of the city, literally. The cultural diversity of its inhabitants brought a distinct flavor to each one of the old Creole cottages. Chartreuse, orange, magenta—pick any crayon from the box and you could have found it here. Now it felt like I was looking at everything through a dirty gray lens. Rust and mold were the new accent colors, and the neighborhood was more akin to a junkyard: tricycles, hi-tops, ceiling fans, and bunk beds were sprinkled on the lawns. The contents strewn about varied from block to block, but every street looked exactly the same, like it had drowned and then been left out to bake and rot in the Indian summer sun. Flipped cars and boats, some smashed into houses and storefronts, became commonsight. The sidewalk lifted in various places, reminding me of colliding tectonic plates from seventh-grade science.

A cloud of flies swarmed an overturned refrigerator, and an accidental glimpse of the maggot-infested mystery meat spilling out made me gag uncontrollably. I tried to move away quickly, but there were still puddles the size of ponds and no clear paths. I took a giant step, barely avoiding a drowned rat, and said a quiet thank-you for my shit-kickers.

A bad feeling crept up as my school came into view. All the windows of the old converted-factory building were blown out. I approached the nearest one and peered in: a foot of stagnant water still filled the ground level. My heart sank.

The warm, familiar feeling I usually had on campus was replaced with that strange sense of trespassing. A piece of paper inside a plastic sheath was nailed to the front door:

New Orleans School of Arts

Closed—Indefinitely

Contact the office of the

School Board Superintendent

for current status updates.

Despite the official stamp on the paper, there was something so unofficial about the posting that it looked piteous: the handwriting, the nail. For the first time in my life, the lack of bureaucracy made me uncomfortable. School and bureaucracy went hand in hand.

I snapped a photo and texted it to Brooke, adding only a sad face.

NOSA, as the student body called it, was an audition-only arts high school where we were taught that creativity was in everything, even in trigonometry, which I struggled to believe. After my audition, my father had sat me down and very seriously explained that the greatest lesson an artist could learn was how to deal with rejection. I think the day I got my acceptance letter was the best day of both our lives.

Now I wondered if this would be it for NOSA.

As I approached the corner where I'd normally see my father's beautiful ballerina sculpture, I braced myself for the possibility that she'd be mangled, vandalized, or missing altogether. He'd donated the sculpture for the school's fortieth anniversary. She was who I'd hidden behind, crying, after Johnnie West robbed me of my very first kiss during a scene-study class freshman year. She was the one who'd always listened to my nervous banter before my juried exams. I'd grown attached to seeing her every morning.