Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (36 page)

Then I’m reminded of a deep chasm in my chest. It was carved there the night Nell got in that car and took off. Here I am, trying to fill it with hours in front of this computer, convincing myself that any of these photos are worth shit. I tried filling it with Dmitri and Clayton’s words of encouragement. I tried filling it with assurance that I’d check my phone one of these times and find a message from Nell.

Nothing will repair the chasm but her.

After I’ve successfully completed nothing, I gather my things, throw my camera over my neck, and stalk out of the lab. It’s then that I notice the posting at the main intersection of the hallways. They’ve selected the End Of Year Showcase exhibits. There were twenty-two art pieces chosen.

Number twenty, right near the end of the list, I see my name.

NELL

The canvas is blank.

White, white, white.

Nothing.

Inspiration-deprived. Void of idea.

Zero clarity.

No burn or fire or thrill.

The spirits are silent. The world is quiet. The rage is dead.

And the canvas is blank.

“Maybe I was wrong,” I mumble into the phone, leaning sullenly against the windowpane and staring out at the courtyard outside the classroom.

“About what?” Minnie returns through a mouthful of whatever it is she’s eating on the other line.

I pick at my nails. My fingers are so …
clean
. Where’s the grit? Where are all the black smudges and charcoal stains and marks? Where is all the evidence of my torment and anguish and artistry?

“Listen,” Minnie starts, not waiting for my answer, “you either need to use him or lose him. Because this weird in-between shit isn’t cutting it. When I said you hadn’t produced any work for a while, I didn’t mean for you to go and half-dump his ass.”

“I didn’t do it for
you
, Minnie. Lord, self-centered much?”

She sighs into the phone. “You’re the closest thing I have to a sister and I don’t want you to discredit how much I adore you and your work. I
miss
your work. You used to be … visceral. You used to gut me with every single thing you did. Where’s the darkness, Nell?”

Here. There. Everywhere.
“It’s high noon, Minnie. Sun’s blaring in a cloudless sky. No darkness anywhere.”

“You’re wrong. Has it occurred to you,” she goes on, “that shadows
can only exist
when there’s light? I remember coming over to your loft and finding you knee-deep in paint, in clay, in oils and inks and chalk. You’d be positively buried in joy.”

I close my eyes and let that imagery return to me. My freshman and sophomore years, ripe and toiling with art, with design, with ideas. I mourn those years like a best friend that has passed away.

“You do realize,” she says, “that you can carry your darkness … with a
smile
on your face, don’t you?”

With my eyes still closed, I smile, still leaning against the cold windowpane.
I hear you
, I’d say to her,
but I wish I could believe you.

“Is all of this about the Showcase?”

I flip my eyes open at her words. “No,” I answer too quickly, my throat tight.

“You were simply outvoted,” she explains, as if telling a child why they can’t have all the candy they want in the store. “You had
my
vote. You know that, don’t you?”

“Of course.”

“Did you …
Ugh, I hate to even ask this, knowing the answer
… Did you submit to any of the other student showcases in town? Please don’t tell me you put all your eggs in one basket. Or, more accurately, your
one
egg in this
one
basket …?”

I keep my lips sealed tight and cross my legs, finding my eyes once again resting on the blank canvas before me.

“Alright,” mumbles Minnie. “I have a list of other venues you can show your piece at. I’m forwarding it to you right now. Check your email and get on the ball. Or keep out of the spotlight for the semester and just try to get into things in the spring, I don’t know. I’m tired of trying to pull teeth for you, Nell. I really don’t know what else to—”

“You don’t have to pull anything. I never asked you to.”

“Don’t get bitchy with me, Nell. I’m the one who’s trying to figure out how the hell to get you out there in the industry and
seen
by the people who matter.”

“Why?” I blurt tiredly. “I never asked you to assume whatever self-entitled throne you’ve found since graduation, acting like you’re the one with the favors and opportunity to dish out.”

“I am
not
self-entitled! And I act that way because I
do
have the connections and the people who can
help
you. Why do you have to make this an ego thing, Nell? Someone helped
me
up, too.”

“Stop trying to help me. I don’t need your damn help or your damn recommendations or your fucking pretentious-as-fuck End Of Year Showcase. What’s happened to you anyway? We used to make fun of the corporate, commercial, sell-out bullshit that would get picked for the show. We laughed derisively at those idiot judges and their dumb criticism and their senseless candor. Now you’ve become one of them.”

“You’re just pissed because
Captain Big Dong Brant
got in the End Of Year and
you
didn’t.”

My jaw tightens at her low-blow. An icicle has buried itself in my body as her last words circle my brain, taunting me the way she meant them to.

“Yeah, that’s the truth,” she pushes on. “It stings, doesn’t it? Well, fuck that sting, Nell. I know you. I know what you’re capable of. Pick up your goddamn pieces you’ve broken into, and
make some damn art!
”

“And what the hell have
you
done lately, Minnie? Are you following that old adage—if you can’t do, teach? You enjoy sitting back, judging everyone else’s work when you haven’t produced a speck of your own in half a year? I bet the higher-ups fatten your wallet considerably in compensation.”

“That’s not the same. Oh, you’re such a bitch.”

“Sell-out,” I blurt out, not even hearing what I’m saying. “Corporate lapdog.” All I do is pull out every word like a knife and fling them at her. “Commercial cunt.”

“I’M DONE!” she shouts into the phone. “You’re dead to me, Nell. Good luck selling your blank canvases, you arrogant charcoal-fingered twat.”

“Love you, too.”

I mash my perfectly clean thumb into the phone, hanging up on her, then pitch the thing halfway across the room, furious. Folding my arms in an effort to both hug myself and to somehow quiet or expend the built-up, seething anger and bitterness within me, I grip myself tightly and glare out the window. I hate every person who strolls by the glass. Especially the ones who smile. Or laugh. Or breathe. Or walk with someone by their side. Or act like life is so damn easy and uncomplicated and bright.

I have, all my life, wanted to be simple. I’ve desperately wanted to feel as light as everyone around me. Why am I always the lump of lead in a pool? Everyone else floats and swims … and I just sink.

Sink, sink, sink, sink, sink …

Deeper, darker, sinking into that abyss where there’s no sound, no sight, no anything. It’s where I’ve always lived. It’s where I belong. My father’s anger put me there. My mother’s silence kept me there. And maybe it’s just supposed to be my life to sit at the bottom of the lake and stare up at the wavy, shimmery sky that’s so, so far away … shielded from me by the rippling surface of the water where all the
light
,
happy
,
normal
people swim and float and smile.

And among them, Brant swims.

I was an idiot to let myself believe, even for as short as it lasted, that I belonged up there with the rest of them. I’m an artist. I’m an architect of pain. I’m a surgeon who transplants emotions. I creep beneath the skin of every unlucky lover who passes through my bed, and I leave all my marks in ways that cannot be seen.
I’m sorry, Brant. I hope someday you’ll forgive me for the mark I left on you.

“Sucks, doesn’t it?”

I lift my head off the window, ignoring the smudge my forehead left on it and turning toward the voice. It’s Iris, but she’s dyed her hair a sharp and vibrant purple with subtle orange highlights. Her arms are folded and she leans against the doorframe, her eyelids heavy and her smirk heavier.

“What sucks?” I ask back, bothering to entertain the notion of a dialogue with yet another bitch today.

“Not getting into the End o’ Year.”

Great. Has she come here to gloat? I can’t wait to hear what glorious work of hers was chosen.
“It doesn’t matter,” I say, turning back to stare out the window. “My piece was shit.”

“I didn’t see it, so I can’t say what I thought of it.”

“Not that I care,” I mumble.

“Hey.”

I ignore her, crossing my legs away from her and hugging myself, pressed into the window so tight, you’d think I was trying to osmose myself through it.

I hear her footsteps. Then, unexpectedly, her voice calmly touches my ears. “I didn’t come here to hate on your sulky parade. I came to join it.”

I turn my head slightly, quirking an eyebrow.

“Yeah, you heard me.” She rolls her eyes and squints through the window, like the sunlight bothers her. “I didn’t get in either.”

“Oh.”

Iris snorts. “Good for nothing bitches. They don’t know real art. They just pick the most commercial, the most
safe
, the most
investor-impressing
type of shit work that they can. How is that representative of the whole program? How is that representative of its students? They ought to pick a fair selection of
every
type of art out there, including the subversive, including the provocative, including the seditious, the insurrectionary, the inflammatory, the offensive.”

“What are you, a thesaurus?”

She shoots me a look. “What I’m saying is, they should’ve picked both our works. It’s your last year too, isn’t it? Aren’t you graduating in the spring?”

I sigh, rubbing at a spot on my arm, which oddly reminds me of how Brant would softly touch me there after sex, running his fingers up and down my arms while we were in his bed, or mine.

“I’ve got an idea.”

I meet her eyes. “What kind of idea?”

“But I can’t do it alone.” Her whole mouth tightens up, as if the next words she’s about to utter take all the effort in the known and unknown universe to produce. “I … need … your help.”

“Alright. For what?”

She taps the edge of my blank canvas. “We’re going to do our own little … ‘showcase’. Your work. My work. Hopefully many others too, if I can enlist those who will dare to be a bit …
rebellious
with us.”

I hesitate. “Rebellious?”

“What I have in mind isn’t exactly … legal, per se. I mean, it’s legal-legal. But it’s, um …” She tries to find the words, despite the growing look of concern on my face. “It’s … going to garner a lot of attention.”

“Hmm. Isn’t that the point?”

“Yes. And … it could potentially get us in trouble with the school. And it might even …”

“End our careers as we know it?” I offer sweetly.

Iris shrugs. Then her pretty little eyes turn dark. “I may not like you, Nell. Maybe since day one, I just couldn’t stand your work. But after being around it for so long, I’m starting to understand your particular brand of …
getting in people’s faces
. I’m starting to relate to it. After being overlooked for so long, you can say I’m acquiring a certain taste for … the
loud
… and the
dangerous
.”