Chapter Thirteen #2
He’s leaning in the closet, stowing the box on the shelf, but he shifts back to look at me. His mouth kicks up in a real smile this time, the lines beside his mouth grooving deep. “You’re welcome.”
Back in my room, I climb beneath my covers and take long, deep breaths, trying not to think about Jamie’s hands on mine.
Two days later, I’m still failing. And it doesn’t help that tonight at Stone my parents will probably never see it, and outside these four walls, it has no bearing on my life whatsoever.
So why do I feel I need to do well here as acutely as I do in the APM? Or, when Deonne looks my way, maybe even more so?
“Blair?”
I jump when a hand lands on my shoulder, and my knee bumps the underside of my workstation, sending two of my tools clattering noisily to the floor.
Eyes flick in my direction, which is no longer a foreign sensation to me.
I used to fly under the radar, rarely noticed on my own.
Starr and Leni put off light like two satellites you could see all the way from the ground in a crowded city, and I was like the tiny star barely visible beside them, the fat friend who’d grown all too used to being ignored.
The one people might point out in surprise, if they noticed me at all.
In the APM, I’m a satellite myself, but one that’s hurtling out of the sky in a heap of fiery ruin, and everyone wants to see where I land. Worried I might damage them on my way down. Hoping I crash into the sea, hurting no one but myself.
I don’t want Stone & Spiral to be like that. I don’t want to be the class failure here.
“Hey,” Deonne says gently, swooping to grab my fallen tools and return them to my desk. “I just wanted to see how you were doing.”
My hands curl into fists. “Sorry.”
“Don’t apologize,” she says, crouching beside me. “Are you okay?”
I nod, cheeks aflame.
Deonne watches my face for an uncomfortably long time.
Then she straightens and turns to the class, putting on a smile.
“Don’t forget, next week we’ll be starting on portrait sculpting!
This class is BYOM—bring your own model!
A lot of teachers like to have one model so that they can focus on technique—but I think the fun part of having a live model is getting to know your subject, or sculpting someone you already know well.
It adds depth to your work that can be very interesting.
Plus, we won’t have time to get through an entire portrait in a single class, and this is something I want you to have the chance to work on at home too, even far past the last day we spend together.
Which is why it’s important that you bring a model from your own life, who you’ll have access to long after we say goodbye. ”
Dread floods my system. It’s not like I forgot about this—it’s part of our syllabus, which I’ve studied at length.
Deonne even reminded us last class! But as far as prioritizing things I don’t want to think about, my brain is overloaded.
There are so many things I don’t want to deal with fighting for space in here.
“Blair,” Deonne says, stopping at my station as I’m cleaning up. “Come with me for a second. I want to show you something.”
I feel more eyes on us, and I quickly stand to follow her.
Deonne leads me to the back of the studio and into the storage room where most of our work is stored, as well as projects from her other classes, materials, and tools.
Along one wall is a low shelf, displaying our inner minds projects.
I spot mine right away—the girl-in-a-box sculpture, with the door carved into one wall.
But it looks different from here, and as I drift closer, I realize it’s because on one side of the box, a window has been added.
It’s propped open by a clay figure of a familiar-looking woman with braids, one arm extended toward the opening. Reaching, holding something very small.
A key.
“I hope you don’t mind,” Deonne says at my shoulder.
I whirl to face her. “Mind what?”
“My addition.” She nods to my sculpture. “I wouldn’t normally touch someone else’s art, but I thought it needed something.”
I swallow hard against a growing lump in my throat. It feels so hopeful, and when Deonne touches my back lightly, something in my chest loosens. She offers me a tissue, and I press it to my eyes and find it instantly wet.
“Yeah,” I say thickly. “It needed that.”
But what I really mean is I needed that.
Deonne studies my face, her expression soft.
“I’ve noticed something about your work when you’re here.
You seem to stick on these tiny mistakes, smoothing and reshaping them over and over.
And that’s what clay is for, really—it’s to model and perfect your design.
But it shouldn’t be something that holds you back from moving forward.
” She crosses to a shelf of stone blocks in varying sizes, some as small as my hand and others as tall as my forearm.
“This is soapstone. It’s good for beginners because it’s easier to carve than most other stone, but it’s not like clay—once you make a mistake in stone, you have to do what you can to fix it and move on. ”
“I’ve never carved in stone before.”
“You haven’t yet.” Deonne selects a smaller block from the shelf and passes it to me.
“But you will. This isn’t for class, okay?
This is just for you and me. I want to see what you can do with this.
I want you to have fun. To make something you love, or something you hate, as long as you make something.
It’s okay if it’s bad. It’s okay if you hate every second of the process.
I just think it’s important that you try to create without agonizing over how you’re going to fix every little mistake. ”
I flush. “I didn’t realize you’d noticed that.”
Deonne smiles warmly. “Blair, you’re my student.
Of course I notice you. And you’ve put your trust in me to teach you.
I get this feeling when I look at your art that you don’t like to be bad at something.
But so much of art is learning through your mistakes.
Let yourself be bad at it, okay? Don’t be afraid to show me something that embarrasses you. ”
If only I could explain to her that I’ve already shown her something that embarrasses me—my complete and utter ineptitude.
It should feel nice to be chosen, given a task no one else has. But instead I feel so starkly seen, it makes my stomach twist with nerves. The soapstone is heavy in my hands, the weight of it an added pressure that might be enough to finally crack me in two.
When I get in my car after class, I drop my soapstone into my passenger seat and begin my spiral over another brand-new stress—portrait day, BYOM. Finding someone I’ll have access to after August. Someone I’ll be able to see when my classes are long over and I’ve moved out of UGH.
My stomach sinks as I come up empty.
It doesn’t matter, I remind myself. This summer at Stone & Spiral is my last indulgence before I start college for real. I won’t have time for portrait sculpting after this. I barely have time for it now, with all that the APM has put on my plate and Cram Session on the side.
Still, there’s no one else I can ask but the obvious. One of my roommates isn’t just my best option—they’re my only option.
When I get home from studio, it’s DnD night, the campaign in full swing. They’re in the midst of rolling for something, and Heather with the pink hair shrieks, “Natural twenty, baby! Behead that bitch!” as I come through the front door.
I study her for a moment—the cute upturned nose and heavy-lidded eyes, dark eyebrows stark against pale skin, inch-long roots that somehow look purposeful rather than overgrown.
She’s the type of person I’d expect to find standing in the rain outside a small venue to see a band I’ve never heard of, or fighting with some frat guy in her Intro to Film class over whether or not Taxi Driver is actually a masterpiece (she says No, he insists Yes, obviously, and she calls him a sheep who can’t clock good cinema unless Rotten Tomatoes tells him it’s so).
I wonder what they did together. Did he sleep with her?
And also, why do I care?
She looks up and catches me staring, so I turn and walk straight through Mikey and Felicity’s open door.
Felicity isn’t home, but Mikey is there, sprawled on the half-made bed with a massive book balanced on her knees.
The floor is a sea of houseplants in varying degrees of health, and I hover in the doorway to avoid having to navigate through them.
“Hey,” Mikey says, pushing up on her elbows. “What’s up?”
And because I was not planning to walk in here and am bad at improvising, I blurt out, “Do you think you could be my live model for two hours next week?”
Mikey gasps. “You want to draw me?” She tosses her book onto the nightstand and rolls to the middle of the bed, head propped on her hand. “Like in Titanic?”
“Sculpt you,” I correct her. “And no, it’s just a bust.”
She motions to her chest. “Bust?”
“No, it’s—like, from the shoulders up is a bust.”
She raspberries her lips together. “For the best. My boobs are two different sizes anyway. Obviously I’m in!”
“In for what?”
I jump at the sound of Jamie’s voice at my shoulder, my heart hammering as I whirl to face him. He’s still dressed in his work clothes, so he must have just gotten home. I didn’t even hear him come inside, but now he leans in the doorway, untucking his green polo.
“I’m going to be a model,” Mikey says, kicking her feet and grinning. “I’ll remember you all fondly when Bee is a famous sculptor and I’m known worldwide as her muse.”
Jamie snorts. “Right.” He pulls his work polo over his head, and the friction takes his undershirt partway up his torso, revealing a sizable slice of flat, chiseled stomach. My head swims.
Out in the dining room someone catcalls. He flips them off without looking.
“Jealous much?” Mikey says, sticking her tongue out at him. “You don’t need to strip, Jamie. We get it, you’re cut by the hand of god—but this is a bust, so it’s face only. And I’m sorry to say, but I’m way more interesting-looking than you are.”
Jamie’s cheeks redden. “I wasn’t—”
“It’s next Tuesday,” I say quickly, turning my back on him. “From six to eight at my studio.”
“Marking my calendar as we speak,” she says without moving.
“What calendar?” Jamie asks. “You deleted the app from your phone because you said it was stifling.”
She glares at him. “You’re not doing much to convince me you aren’t jealous. Bee, I think Jamie is dying to be your model.”
“Nope,” Jamie says, and leaves the room.
“Jealous,” Mikey concludes, flopping back on her pillows and grabbing her book again. “If I get food poisoning that day, I think we’ll all know who’s to blame.” She points in the direction of Jamie’s room.
And even though I know Mikey was kidding, later when I’m working on Cram Session and my mind is begging to wander, I wonder what it would be like to sculpt Jamie. His long neck, the newly sharpened planes of his face, the straight slope of his nose, his mouth with its full lower lip…
I straighten, slamming my hands back onto my keyboard. Nope. Not going there. Definitely not going there.