“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.