28. June
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT
JUNE
Rain splatters against the car window, turning everything the same shade of gray.
The rain has been falling steadily all day, turning the streets into mirrors.
Everything outside is monochrome but also with this distant, blocky style.
I think of the painter Giorgio de Chirico and his surrealist art.
Buildings that pass by are monoliths, casting long, geometric shadows that slice across asphalt.
And the perspective of the world is off.
Distant buildings are too large, like a massive wall trapping me here.
God, it’s depressing. Just like my life.
I sigh and glance at the driver. I’m in a ride share and thankfully the guy driving isn’t chatty. He’s just leaving me be as he takes me somewhere I’m surprised to be going.
It’s been a week since the cabin.
I’ve been going to class, eating meals, and doing my best to turn in assignments. I do all the things a functioning person does, but I’m barely aware I’m doing them.
Mom is worried and keeps asking me what’s wrong, but I don’t know where to begin.
I came back from the cabin, walked past her barely managing a “hey,” and went straight to my room.
I love her so much for not following me up the stairs, but she’s a counselor, and I can feel the pressure building.
Whenever I see her there’s this constant feeling like I need to spill my guts, but for the first time, I’m not yet ready to open up to her.
What Aubrey did hurt me that deeply. I just can’t deal, or maybe I’m trying to ignore and still in denial.
My phone buzzes with another text from Aubrey. The preview starts with: June please let me explain I swear on my life—
I take the plunge and finally block the number.
She’s been texting every day, swearing it wasn’t her and begging me to call.
Accepting her pleas about innocence would certainly be easier than dealing with my hollow chest, but I also don’t want to listen to her lies.
The phone was in her luggage, tucked under her clothes.
She’s the one who was spreading rumors and sending me nasty texts, and she has motive: she’s pissed that I got into the exhibition earlier this year and she didn’t.
It’s really insane how she’s trying to pretend she’s not guilty.
The car slows, and I peer through the rain at Dorien’s house. I’m shocked. I knew his family had money. But knowing it and seeing this massive house are very different experiences.
The house sits back from the street behind manicured hedges. There’s a massive arch in the front with a chandelier hanging above the front door. I’ve never seen a chandelier outside, but there it is. Everything about the exterior says, “I was designed by an expensive, talented architect.”
It’s gorgeous.
“Thanks,” I say to the driver, and get out.
I pop my umbrella and hug my backpack to my chest. Rain drums on the nylon above me and I stand on the sidewalk, looking up.
In all the years our mothers have been friends, I have never once been inside Dorien Kael’s house.
It doesn’t match him at all. This house is modern and luxurious and belongs to people who walk around wearing name brand clothes and spend their weekends on yachts.
Dorien shows up to school in black leather and the same ripped jeans he’s been wearing for five years.
I walk up and ring the doorbell. He opens the door and his eyes move over my face impassively. He steps aside. “Umbrella,” he says.
I hand it to him. He tosses it near the door where it lands on the marble with a wet thwack. Water is already pooling.
“Wait.” I point at the growing puddle. “It’s getting the floor all wet.”
He shrugs. “There are maids for the maids in this house. It’ll get cleaned.” He’s already walking deeper into the foyer. “Also, I don’t give a shit if I ruin my parents’ stuff.”
I follow, sneakers squeaking on marble. Pretty much every area of floor is marble, covered by lush, giant rugs in several places, like the living room. The lighting is recessed. I glance at a grand piano, there are chandeliers and sculptures, and there’s even a Picasso on a wall…
This is where Dorien grew up? Part of me wonders if he’s actually lying and he broke into this mansion. But there are family photos on the walls with him in them.
“Are your parents home?” I ask. “It’s been a long time since I’ve seen them.”
He laughs, dry enough to sand wood. “No. I don’t know where they are, but they probably won’t fly back until next month.”
As we pass a sitting room, I think about the few times I saw his parents when we were kids.
His mother would ask me about school and check her phone before I finished answering.
His father shook my hand once at a barbecue and immediately turned to someone else.
They seemed like kind people, but I also got the feeling they never gave Dorien much attention.
Guilt curls through my stomach because I wasn’t there for him during all those lonely years. We spent our entire teens avoiding each other, exchanging polite hellos when he came to hang out with Carter. Thankfully, he had Carter, who likely dragged him out of this mausoleum every chance he got.
He leads me up two flights to the third floor.
When he opens the door to his studio space the first thing I see is a tarp covering the entire floor.
The room is the opposite of the rest of the house.
There’s metal shelving crammed with chisels, rasps, and sandpaper.
A worktable built from sawhorses and plywood.
His black leather gloves are folded on a side table.
This room has been lived in unlike the rest of this house.
He points toward a corner where different-sized blank canvases lean against the wall. “Take what you want,” he says. “I also have plenty of acrylic. I know you prefer that.”
I set my backpack on the worktable. “Thanks. I brought paint, but I could use a canvas.”
I start sorting through the sizes. Behind me, I hear him move some things around. I glance over my shoulder and he’s already working with a fresh lump of clay. He seems focused, but when I turn back around I can feel his attention on me.
“Just go ahead and ask,” I say without turning around.
The sounds of movement behind me stop. I haven’t told him about Aubrey either. Cinna is the only one who knows because I told her not to tell the group yet, but Dorien has noticed I’m different. He notices everything, and my silence this week must’ve been concerning even by his standards.
The thing about Dorien is that he’s the opposite of Mom when it comes to pain.
She wants to gently probe and push, get me to “explore my feelings” or whatever.
With Dorien, he’s just here with no pressure for me to say or do anything at all.
He’ll sit in the same room with my hurt and never demand I explain it.
That’s why I needed to escape here today.
That’s why I’m doing something as insane as coming to his house alone, when three months ago I would’ve said I’d rather jump off a cliff than spend a Saturday with Dorien Kael.
“I won’t ask if you don’t want to talk about it,” he says.
“I don’t think I’m ready to talk about it.”
“Then I haven’t said anything.” The sounds of him working on clay resume. We had made an agreement to work together today on our pieces for the Alaria Prize, so that’s what we do.
I select a medium canvas and prop it on an easel near the window. I sit on the stool and stare at all the white. My mind is a blank gesso surface. There’s zero concept, no color calling to me or image forming behind my eyes.
I glance at Dorien. His hands move over clay with a certainty I envy right now. He knows exactly what he’s building.
“What’s your concept?” I ask.
He smirks without looking up. “Trying to steal it?”
I bite my lip and try not to smile. “No. I honestly have nothing in my head right now. I want to win and kick your butt, but I might not enter at all.”
He sets his clay down and walks over. Before I can react, he picks up a green acrylic tube from a small table I set up, pops the cap, squeezes a dot onto the center of my canvas, and smears it with his finger. There’s now a single streak of sap green across the white.
“There you go.” He wipes his finger on his jeans. “Call it ‘Reflection.’”
I burst out laughing. My face aches from it, and it feels good. “You’re so dumb,” I say, grinning.
He smiles, coppery-hazel eyes crinkling.
It’s so handsome that my pulse beats harder at the base of my throat.
During this past week I’ve missed this. His stupid, irritating attempts to get a reaction out of me.
He’s been giving me time, and I appreciate it, but now he’s loosened me up and feelings are starting to surface. So many feelings I keep trying to deny.
“Go focus on your art,” I tell him, because if he stands this close any longer I’ll have to deal with the warmth spreading up the back of my neck.
He returns to his worktable. I take a brush and smear the green dot into an abstract streak.
At least the canvas isn’t blank anymore, but I still have no concept.
I sit here staring for several minutes and even paint a dumb flower in the corner of the canvas just to have something to do. Then I give up and get off the stool.
I wander. The studio is fairly large, much larger than mine, and toward the back there’s a section with shelves of finished and half-finished pieces. Sculptures in various sizes, some abstract, some figurative, bodies in motion.
I slow down. Several of the busts look oddly familiar. The angle of a jaw. The slope of a nose. I lean closer. One has my exact eyes, or pretty damn close. I reach for a sheet draped over a larger piece on the middle shelf and pull it away.