Beneath The Skin(87)

“You need to reassure her,” says Dmitri seriously.

“How? That’s bullshit. I don’t look at other girls. I don’t even get any texts anymore. What more reassurance could I possibly give her?”

Dmitri shrugs. “I don’t know. Just continue to show her love. Make her something creepy and dark and tortured, to represent how lonely and miserable you are without her.” He pushes a finger into his glasses and lifts his eyebrows. “Maybe tell her you don’t think her stories are crap and that your little comment about her repetitive adjective choices and lack of a climax is, in fact, not offputting and perhaps is exactly what her story ought to be.” He glances at me, then realizes what he just said. “Uh, no. Sorry. I’m talking about my relationship suddenly. Shit, fuck. Damn it, I just cussed.” He buries his face into his palms.

I give his shoulder a hearty slap and a rub, jostling him from his mental torment. “You and Riley on the jagged rocks?”

“And sharp rocks. And invisible rocks. All the rocks.” He slaps his own face, once on either cheek. “It’s because I have some growing up to do. Nothing wrong with Riley. She’s … She’s just perfect,” he says, but his energy falls flat. He’s a bad liar.

“Alright.” I drop the subject, not pushing it further. “Thanks, man.”

“For what?”

“For pointing me in the direction of …” I sigh, at a total loss. Maybe I’m the one who needs reassurance. “In the direction of …”

It’s Clayton who punches my arm, stealing my attention. Then he says, “Keep it simple, dude. Let her know how you feel. Let her know that you’ll be there when she’s ready. And for fuck’s sake, bury yourself in that work of yours.”

Dmitri nods encouragingly, his dark eyes burning behind those thick glasses of his, and then his gaze breaks away, lost again in his own troubled relationship and whatever waits for him there. Clayton’s smile is infinitely more heartening, thoughts of Dessie and him giving me just the boost I need to make it through the night.

Afterwards, with a blanket of half-hidden stars overhead, I cross the quiet campus with my hands shoved deep in my pockets. It’s way too early for a cold front, but I feel downright chilly tonight. Seems like the weather is doing all it can to support my sullen mood. All I need is a damn rainstorm and I’d be all set. Not even the crickets sing tonight. My only company is the soft crunch of grass beneath my shoes, followed by the soft tapping of my soles against the pavement as I approach the School of Art.

I push through the doors, allowing an even colder air to swallow me up. I fold my arms as I move through the dim halls. On the way to my destination, I happen to pass by room 1401, the infamous room in which I first stripped down and took to a stool in front of Nell and the rest of her class. I hang at the door, noticing a few students inside sitting at their easels and chatting to one another, their drawings being ignored as they laugh about something to do with a Saturday night outing. They turn for a second, notice me, then return to their chat.

It’s so strange, to think back on that day when I bared it all for Nell, yet bared nothing at all, as she didn’t yet know me. Maybe naked isn’t enough. Maybe naked was never enough, not for someone as deep and dark and beautiful as Nell.

I need to get deeper.

I need to reveal myself. I need to show the parts of me that I haven’t revealed to anyone, parts of me that I may even be scared to reveal to myself.

My own scary Halloween stories.

Like, maybe I’m still the petrified kid in the back of the party, the one Clayton used to make fun of, the one who never touched a girl in his life. Maybe the “Brant” that everyone knows is just some armored version of my scared childhood self, like I wear all this cockiness and confidence on me like armor, masking all the fear and doubt and second-guessing I really feel. Maybe I’m a big ol’ liar and the real me is something so much simpler, so much more …

Naked.

These thoughts are what I take with me when I sit in the digital media lab and plug my camera into the computer. Sorting through the photos, I squint at the screen and think long and hard about what I really “saw” when I took each photograph. Crumpled leaves at the base of a tree. A strange fissure in the red bricks of the School of Music. Long strands of hanging beads on a costume rack at the theater. The backside of Clayton’s head as he’s watching Dessie perform from the wing of the stage.

So many photos. So many moments.

A view of the School of Art from the ground, the sunlight blaring behind it and turning the structure into a huge, daunting silhouette. A blue candy wrapper caught in the grass with a single ant perched atop it, separated from its family. The anthill from which that ant likely came, its impressive palace standing like the capitol of a great queen-ruled empire—with a condom resting at its base. Soil turned up from a tiny hole in the ground by a rosebush where a squirrel had hidden its dinner.