Chapter 36
It’s another two days before I see Max again.
School has transformed from bundled-up sweaters and scarves to shorts and tank tops. Summer is slowly leaching into the days like ink in water.
Things are finishing.
Finals are completing. Projects submitted. The end is so close that we all feel it in the air.
In the studio, on the back wall, all the pieces of the mural are displayed. Everything but Romeo and Juliet. People stand around and take photos of their finished work, cropping out the spot where mine will eventually go.
Probably.
Maybe.
Doc smiles next to King Lear, praising the use of light and other things that make me want to scream at the sky.
I want to be done with this. I don’t even care if it’s good. I just want to be free finally.
So when everyone has gone, and it’s just the mural and me, I close my eyes, and I think about Benji’s poem—and something takes hold.
The wooden palette in my hand is filled with the colors of the rainbow.
And as I put in my earbuds, I paint. In swirls of purples and greens and pinks.
In smears of yellows and reds and oranges.
Each person that stands between Romeo and Juliet gets painted a color.
But I save the blue.
I paint Juliet first. A deep aching blue. Not one tone but so many it’s hard to see all of them. And then I paint Romeo the same.
They stand in shades of blue.
Benji’s poem has never felt more alive in my mind. I swallow and close my eyes.
“I thought you were working on faces?”
My eyes open to find Max standing in front of my mural, his back to me and his arms crossed.
“I am, but I needed to do this first.”
“Do this?”
“The colors.” I point like it’s clear that this is what the piece needed.
“You’re doing everything but the thing you’re supposed to be doing. Of course.”
It’s the of course that sets my teeth against each other.
“This is my project. I finished ours.” I stand back and look at the mural panel. “I want to get this right.”
“What is right?”
“I want it to say what the subjects feel.”
“What is it you’re trying to accomplish here? Why do they matter?”
“It’s … Romeo and Juliet.” I don’t know why he’s having a hard time understanding this. “They’re in love.”
“Is that what they are?”
I shift on my feet, feeling exacerbated. “Yes. It’s a classic love story.”
“They die.”
“What the hell is your problem?”
His eyes shift over my shoulder, and I follow his gaze. Doc is watching us, and suddenly, I realize what’s happening.
“Did Doc send you over here?”
“I’m a TA. I’m supposed to be helping you.”
“Well, you’re not helping.”
“Nieve. Why do the faces matter?” He repeats it slowly, like I’m not understanding him.
I know what he’s asking. If I can find out why they matter to this painting, then I can unlock the inspiration to get them right.
“They matter because … they love each other. They matter because they want to be together but can’t.
They matter because … they are faces, and everyone has a fucking face, Max. ”
He shakes his head once. “Why does it matter, Nieve?”
“I don’t know!” I shout, and it feels like the few students that are in the room look at us.
Max stares at me for a long time in a way that has me feeling unsettled. I can’t tell what he’s thinking, and I want to, badly.
“I don’t know what to do,” I tell him.
It takes him longer to respond. “I don’t know either. But you should start by finding out why those faces matter.”
And he leaves.
He leaves me.
He leaves the room.
He leaves my painting.
I sit staring at the colors. All the emotions given to it. Happiness, sadness, anger, apathy, frustration, fear, hope, defeat, love.
And suddenly I know why the faces matter. They have to show all of those things.
A heartbroken feeling with a definition didn’t make sense, until now.
It’s seven hours before I’m finished with the first layer of the faces. Linden comes to check on me, bringing an iced coffee and a sandwich. She doesn’t speak, just watches as I apply green to the eyes of Romeo.
And then she leaves.
I don’t eat. My heart blocks my throat, and the only thing that comes out is the pain there. The agony from the things that I don’t get to keep. The people who die to me with each reset of time. I put it all on the canvas.
And when I step back sometime in the hours between the darkest part of the night and the break of day, I see what I’ve done. Painted perfectly the feeling in my heart.
Longing.
Hands covered in paint pull at the two lovers as they dig into flesh, keeping them apart. Romeo and Juliet can’t even reach for each other.
And I ask myself, Why do these faces matter?
Why?
Why?
Why?
But what comes back to me is just as insane as I feel.
They don’t.
Not in any way that is truly important. Because it’s not about what Romeo and Juliet are feeling. That doesn’t matter. Love is a thousand things in a single moment. It shifts and changes, but there will never be anything other than this.
And the idea that people get to see Romeo’s pain and Juliet’s hope makes me irrationally angry. Another thing time takes.
Before I can talk myself out of it, I take my hands and move them across Juliet’s face.
Oh my god.
I’ve just ruined this painting. I’ve just—
The blur across her face distorts the longing into something otherworldly. Almost as if she stands in a hurricane.
The hurricane of people and emotions and expectations.
The hurricane of colors.
I do the same to Romeo and stand back.
The two of them look so different from the people around them. And I know now that their faces never mattered.
But I had to make them matter to learn why they didn’t. This piece was never for anyone other than me. I don’t want it displayed or critiqued. It’s mine, and I decide what’s going to be done with it. Time cannot have it.
I smear every last inch of my section of the mural, destroying the entire thing. Maybe time will reset again. Maybe it won’t. Maybe I will be cursed forever. But in this moment, I get to decide who sees this work.
No one.
It feels good to cry. Not for someone else but for me.
These tears are selfish ones. Not for Carter or Grandee or my mom or Linden or school or timelines that have been erased from everywhere but my heart.
I cry for me. Because I hurt. I feel tired and angry and sad and mad. And I long for something different from what I’ve been chasing, but I don’t know how to get there. And I don’t know how to keep it even if I do. This is all I know.
This hurricane.
The walk back to the dorm is quiet since almost no one is awake at this hour. One where the sun isn’t up, but it’s still changing the sky.
When I open the door to my room, Linden is on her phone as she lies in bed. “Did you figure it out?” she asks, setting her phone on her chest. When I don’t respond, she adds, “The mural?”
Her eyes are red, and I can’t tell if it’s because she’s tired or from something else.
Is there a group chat I don’t know about? “Yeah,” I tell her. “Turns out the faces didn’t matter in the end.”
She hums her approval. “I broke up with Carter.” She says it like she’s telling me what she had for dinner.
“What?”
“I didn’t have it in me to waste my own time anymore. Grandee wanted to know if you’d found a dress for the Founders Gala.”
“She’s really coming?”
“Of course.” Linden says. She looks at her phone again. “Hey, I want to ask you something.”
There’s a nervous twist to my stomach, and I pull open my dresser drawer to change into my pajamas.
“Do you think I should text Alex?”
“Alex?” The shirt over my head stalls. It’s one that has sheep on it, and I refuse to acknowledge that it reminds me of Max on Christmas Eve.
“Carter’s friend. The one who lived next door to his uncle.”
Alex, Carter’s white whale. “Why would you text her?”
Linden shrugs. “I don’t know; I just feel like I should. Let her know we broke up … I guess.”
“Shouldn’t Carter be the one to do that?”
“I don’t know if he will. And he’s not going to the gala, so I just thought maybe they could talk or whatever.”
Carter isn’t going. Carter isn’t going. My heart speeds up at this. “You should stay out of it, Linny. Let Carter sort through his own mess.”
I crawl into bed without washing my face or brushing my teeth, something I will regret in the morning, but as I drift to sleep, I think about all the ways this time could be different.
At night, so different from the festival that was all day. Grandee coming. No Carter.
“I think he might live,” I say into the sunlight.
But I’m only answered with soft snores.