2 SELF-PORTRAIT AS WATER NYMPH
2
S ELF -P ORTRAIT AS W ATER N YMPH
Everyone did it, that first night back. It was tradition.
In the dark we were prowling animals, conjoined by linked elbows and a shared cigarette. We left the Manor and its mess just after eleven o’clock. My things still sat in their boxes, the kitchen light burning on as proof of our staked claim. Outside, the air smelled clean and wet and sharp. Caroline led the way with a bottle of wine in her hand. She drank from it as we walked, signet ring tapping against the glass. Rivulets ran down her jaw. I caught one with my thumb and wiped her chin clean before it could dribble onto her shirt. She gave me a smile that warmed me all the way down to my feet.
It was so natural to be together again. We fell into place as if no time had passed at all. To be fair, it had been barely two months since I last saw the four of them, though it had felt like a slow-crawling decade. In our absence a group chat kept us tethered, where we passed the same ten memes and screenshots back and forth, and we had all gathered at Caroline’s parents’ place in Michigan in mid-June for a week of heavy drinking, tarot readings, and skinny-dipping in the lake. It’d been Finch’s feet bare on the gas pedal as she drove us to the grocery store. The five of us oversaturated with wine and Saz’s pesto pasta. Sleeping in an ornate bed that had once belonged to Caroline’s grandmother, the pillows full and soft, borrowing Amrita’s sweatshirt and sitting by the fire until it was weighed down with the scent of smoke and her body wash. I’d never been so at peace.
Still, every time I left them for the regressive isolation of my parents’ house, I was reborn with the fear that I’d return to find that it was all false—that they would remember my faults and inch away from me.
Saz’s hand bumped mine. Our pinkies linked and banished my worries back to where they’d been manifested.
Lysander Gate marked the beginning of the garden. At night the path beyond it was a black snake lined with rosebushes slithering beyond the boundaries of campus. There was a Rotham story about an old woman who had wandered out into the woods and gone missing that we often used to terrify each other. We called her Mother Crone, rumored her into something Blair Witch–esque—lurking, invisible, hungry. Some iterations of Rotham mythology claimed she was a student who had drowned in the pond, mostly intended to keep us away from the water. In truth she was likely a forgetful Indiana local who’d ended up miles from her family, warped into something more sinister. But the fear remained. I avoided looking into the dark pockets of trees at all costs, where a gruesome face might peer back at me.
Instead, I kept my eyes focused forward and walked in the center of the walkway out of habit—once, drunkenly, Saz had fallen into one of those prickly roses, and it had taken an hour to pull all the thorns from her palms. My body remembered the hurt.
The moon seemed to sink as we walked—but it was just the path tipping down, the rising heads of trees obscuring the pale glow. Hedges framed the gate’s entrance. Beyond it, morning glories climbed rotten trellises and benches. The garden was something out of a storybook with its fountain and its sculptures and its lush greenery, but the dark made it a labyrinth. Caroline passed the wine bottle to Saz, then lit a blunt pinned between her lips with her free hand as Saz took a gulp. Caroline tilted her head back when she exhaled. She passed it to Amrita, who considered it without taking a drag and handed it to me instead. I inhaled, felt it sear my throat and lungs, and passed it back to Caroline, who gave me a knowing smile.
“Eleven eleven,” Saz said, her phone a white-hot light against her face. Her hand went up to her chest and squeezed, illuminated screen muffled against pink chiffon. “I wish I had bigger tits.”
Caroline, to my left: “You’re not supposed to say your wish out loud. That’s what they teach you on day one of wish school.”
I could hear voices in the distance, tidal and swelling.
“I don’t get why eleven eleven is supposed to be so lucky,” Saz continued, as if Caroline hadn’t spoken at all. “Seven thirty-seven is where it’s at. It’s such a good fucking time, you know? It feels so solid. Satisfying.”
“There’s something seriously wrong with you,” Amrita said, laughing.
Caroline rolled her eyes. “Is that a British thing? You know you’re obligated to tell us when it’s a British thing.”
The air was muggy. Fireflies darted between us. Humming crickets warred with pop music and the echoing splash of pond water. The party had already started. We were fashionably late.
People scattered throughout the garden. The fountain in the center burbled with sleepy life. Shoes piled around the stone lip where bare feet plunged into the water. The cherry ends of cigarettes illuminated like a new species of insect among the dark. Caroline called hellos and paused to stub her blunt against stone. The path kept warping past the gathered groups, through the stone arch that marked the end of the greenery and the beginning of the pond. The water reflected a hundred scleral moons back at us.
It happened like this, every First Night. The tradition traced back through a hundred and fifty years of Rotham students, and I assumed it had always had the same origins—though I lacked enough evidence to say if those past pupils spent their First Night exactly like we did, drunk and high and rowdy and nearly loud enough to get the whole thing shut down before it could really start, couples disappearing into the woods to get lost in each other, crickets thumping out a folk song. Freshman Jo had been so scared of it. I’d only met Amrita hours before. What I’d wanted most was to stay at Direpoint House where the two of us had been assigned that morning, our things still divisively half-unpacked on either half of the dorm room, her back to me as she did her makeup at her desk and I perched on my bed to watch. The hum of her then unfamiliar music. The vanilla cling of her perfume. Black hair falling down her back, eyeliner flicked and catty, the single bump in the bridge of her nose sloping to the septum ring that pierced it, the beauty mark high on her cheekbone accented by highlighter and purple blush. She was effortlessly beautiful in her black minidress, though maybe I just wasn’t aware of what effort looked like, in my jean shorts and oversized button-down.
I’d never been drunk, and the only makeup I owned was a four-color eyeshadow palette that I dipped my fingers into. Still—I wanted Amrita to like me, to think I was cool, to want to keep wanting to know me. She’d pushed away from her desk and stood confidently on the heels of her boots, brown skin shimmering with gold eyeshadow.
She smiled when she met my eyes in the mirror hanging on the back of our bedroom door and straightened her skirt with one hand. “Come with me,” she said. I hesitated.
“I don’t know about you,” she continued when she saw me freeze, “but I spent all of high school studying and going to bed early and depriving myself of anything remotely close to fun just so I could make it to this exact moment. Now I would love to get very drunk and very reckless.”
“I’m not sure ...,” I said, laughing, flushing red.
Amrita cocked her head as her smile spread wide, coaxing. “Friends don’t let other friends go to parties alone. We’re friends now, aren’t we?”
I could have never said no. I was always such a sucker for a pretty girl.
So I went that year, clinging to Amrita’s side and cementing ourselves as a pair—and then the next when we’d found the rest of them and become a unit. It got easier each time. It was just drinking and music, just the open air and a roster of Rotham voices. As we came closer, I recognized the other seniors I’d known since our early days: printmakers and ceramicists and sculptors and jewelers. Fellow painters Phoebe, Yejun, and Veda bent over a jug of indeterminate liquor as they leveled their pours into plastic cups. Cameron De Luca’s hand sat on Mars Jackson’s thigh—a relationship we’d predicted since we first saw the two of them sitting next to each other in a sophomore critique.
I knew Finch by her back—the narrow taper of rib cage to hips, tawny hair pulled away from her face and a white T-shirt stretched across the shoulders, smoke framing her like an apparition. The fine hairs frizzing out around her head glowed in the lantern light. The final painting major in our conglomeration, Thea Russell, sat beside her. They were deep in a conversation, heads tipped nearly temple to temple. Something pinched in my gut at the sight as Finch turned from the conversation to glance behind her. That same lantern light ignited her profile; her sharp nose, the circles under her heavy-lidded eyes, the satisfied curve of her mouth. My heart sang at that turn. It was like she had sensed us, like she’d know our footsteps anywhere. But my eyes rose and met the faces of the others, who had raised their hands in greeting as we stepped up. She’d likely just followed their welcome.
Thea angled toward us too. I wondered what made her think that Finch was hers to speak to. Then I wondered what made me think I had any hold over Finch at all.
“Finchard,” Caroline called, and now Finch fully faced us. The recognition in her smile was worth the wait—she never looked at anyone else like that. Like she wanted to hear what they had to say.
Finch hugged me first. I still think about that, the way one arm circled around my neck and her palm pressed into the small of my back, hooking me into her. It made my heartbeat glitter along every inch of my skin. The smell of her was overwhelming this close, the bite of apple in her cologne, like digging my teeth into just-picked fruit.
She moved down the line, saying hello to everyone else with a brief and tight hug, as if we’d all only been apart for a few hours rather than over a month. I didn’t know why I felt so anxious when she looked at me again. Some part of me was still afraid that I was standing on my own, waiting for permission to belong.
“Hey, Joanna,” Thea said as I hovered, because she always called Jodie Finchard my designated “Jo” instead of by the name we’d chosen for her and left me with the mouthful of syllables. She inhaled around something charred and small—a habit that, in combination with the time she stomped on a bug in the junior studio, earned her the title “Roach Crusher” from Caroline behind closed doors until Finch asked her to stop. Thea’s face was half-obscured past hanks of red hair and opaque smoke.
“Yeah, hey, Joanna,” Finch said mockingly, touching my wrist. She gave me an unbothered smile. It wasn’t meant to be wide, but I could see a hint of her teeth anyway.
Our unity lent itself to performance. Being in their circle made me want to lean into the evidence. Caroline’s lithe elegance. Amrita’s imposing ardor. Saz’s vivid energy. And Finch’s understated glow of charisma. Their attention gave my presence a little more reason.
“Which one of us do you think will be the last one standing? By the time Moody is done with us, at least.”
Phoebe Arnett hadn’t made a sound as she came up behind us. She was smiling, blond hair bobbed around her pinched face. I always found it impossible to discern if she actually wanted an answer to what she said—she spoke rhetorically, like her questions were posed for an invisible entity struggling to catch up.
Mars looked up from Cameron’s hand on their knee. “Come on, it’s First Night, Phoebe. Don’t make us go to war yet.”
Caroline smiled thinly. “Haven’t we been on the front lines since day one?”
“You looked thirsty,” Finch whispered as she nudged my side. There was a new beer in her hand when I glanced down. She shook it a little in offering. When I reached to take it, she pulled away with a tsk and balled her shirt up in her fist to twist the cap off.
“Pretty girls don’t open their own beers,” she scolded playfully as she pressed the bottle into my hand and closed my fingers around it. Cold glass battled with the warmth of her touch. I fought not to shiver.
I was grateful for the first swallow settling in my stomach despite its sour cling and touched that she’d approached me like that—like we belonged to each other, even if circumstances wanted to pit us against one another. Somehow there could be nothing worse than imagining the year to come and what kind of threat it held over us. I’d been trying to push it from my mind since I met them in the early days, since I understood what we’d be forced to do.
“Wasn’t talking to you, Mars,” Phoebe said, slinging an arm around me. I watched Finch’s eyes catch on the place where Phoebe’s hand squeezed my shoulder. “I was asking my friend here”—another squeeze, harder this time—“who she thinks will Solo.”
Friend was a fickle word. Yes, I wanted these people to like me. I’d spent nearly every class with the same painting majors since I was a sophomore, after our freshman prerequisite year ended and funneled us into concentrations. We became collaborators. We went for coffee runs together. We hovered next to each other’s easels and let easy compliments slip from our mouths—an olive branch extended across the inevitable threat that was Solo.
Of course, I knew what Solo entailed before I even signed the papers to attend Rotham. We all did. Throughout our final year, every student was expected to create a body of thesis work. From this work, most of us would have one or two pieces selected for the senior exhibition, where they’d fill the Grainer Gallery with a representation of our class’s capabilities. But one person, whose skill and promise went beyond the rest, would earn a Solo Show. Their entire body of work would be showcased with a public reception that typically resulted in offers of representation from gallerists around the country. It was a guaranteed start to a career as a fine artist. And it would be taken from all of us, save for one lucky student.
“Come on,” Phoebe stage-whispered beside my ear. “We alllll know it’s gonna be Finchard.”
“Shut up,” Finch said around the mouth of her bottle. She’d tucked loose strands of hair behind her ears, lashes long and low, spidery shadows cast over her cheekbones. I couldn’t tell if she was blushing or if the light was making her rosy.
Cameron rolled his eyes and turned back to Mars, intent on letting Phoebe’s words die. Some of the other painters had tuned in now, the contempt on their faces barely disguised—I caught Yejun and Veda watching and went stiff under Phoebe’s hand. The beer was hot and foamy in my mouth when I took another swig, but I swallowed it again and again. I needed to be drunk.
As if reading my mind, Saz spoke up and said, “I’m not having this conversation now. I came to get trashed.”
She handed me her can of something sickly sweet and wriggled her dress over her head. It landed in the grass as she blew me a kiss and took the drink back and ran at the water with an echoing whoop. The pond stretched from tree line to tree line, water bugs skidding the surface and leaving ripples, everything so blue in the dark that the world glowed like a jewel. Saz crashed past its surface. The spray arced behind her, and she disappeared under the water, can held over her head like a buoy in the dark.
“She just got eight new diseases,” Amrita said.
Saz came up again, water running over the bright blue cotton of her bra. Her hair slicked and stuck against her forehead and jaw. The moon lit her up—all pale skin and jewelry glinting, teeth bared in a grin, dark eyes taunting us. She looked like something yanked from myth. A water nymph awakened from an endless sleep. Rich with life and promise and allure.
“Don’t make me swim alone!” she sang, leaning back into the water, arms spreading wide until she was making angels among the pond scum.
A breeze shook the cattails. Music coiled crass and loud between us, and laughter flickered down the crowd. Other students started stripping down to join. Caroline muttered a curse—something along the lines of that’s so fucking nasty —and then yanked her shirt over her head.
I stepped out of Phoebe’s grasp and started to unbutton my own shirt. “Seriously?” Amrita teased, but I ignored her in favor of shedding my shorts and toeing off my sneakers. I left my things in a pile and started down to the shore, Finch already following me, stripping to her underwear and laughing as she stumbled. I loved that sound, loved that we had caused it.
“You all suck so much,” Amrita called, but there was laughter in her voice, too, a barely disguised pleasure.
Together we crashed into the pond, the five of us half-naked and half-drunk under the moon’s spotlight, the water thin and cool. Amrita threw her arms around me. Finch went under and slicked her hair back as she came up again, water dripping around her smile. Caroline wrapped her arms around herself to keep from shivering, and Saz tackled her, pulling her back to the rest of us where we could splash and dunk each other.
“Enjoy this while it lasts,” Caroline said, laughing with her head barely poking above the water. “When it’s time for Solo, you’ll wish you’d drowned me.”
Saz pushed herself skyward with her hands on Caroline’s shoulders. “Don’t tempt me, Aster. I have all the power right now.”
“You’re drunk,” Amrita said. She twisted her long hair into a coil and wrung water from it. Finch stood dripping beside her, backlit by the bonfire. She slipped a hair tie from her wrist and held it between her teeth before beckoning to Amrita, who went smiling, eyes slitting shut with contentment as Finch braided the wet hair away from her face.
Saz released Caroline at last. In the dark, her grin was radiant. “No, I’m a witch. The moon is charging me up.” She threw her head back, arms flung wide. “I’m going to cast a spell and sacrifice our enemies and make us the best artists that ever lived.”
Finch let out a sound past the hair tie pinned between her lips, half grunt and half laugh. She plucked it free and twisted it around the end of Amrita’s braid as she said, “Right, let me know when you’re done with that.”
Saz held up her can in a toast. “Give me two to three business days, and I’ll incant five Solo spots. Nobody loses. The whole family wins.”
It was such an indulgent dream, one that instantly made me sink lower into the water where no one could see the flash of want wash over me. Right now, it was a joke. The funny, far-off inevitability of Solo, the teasing insinuations that it would be Finch or Caroline in the number one spot. What other choice did we have? We joked because we wanted it desperately. I wanted it desperately. But could I bear being the one to Solo if they couldn’t? Could I watch them succeed without even the tiniest hint of resentment?
“Yeah, good luck with that,” Caroline said to Saz as she tackled her back into the water, the two of them splashing each other until Saz started to whine, scolding Caroline for getting pond water in her drink.
Tradition was a thing hard won—by the end of the night most of Rotham’s senior body was in the water, all of us screaming and singing and floating and swimming and beaming. It was my last First Night. It was a temporary perfection.