Chapter 18
Nadya
THE STUDIO LOOKED EXACTLY how I wanted my insides to feel— empty.
Every surface was wiped down, the folding table in the corner covered in butcher paper, the ancient wood floor hidden under overlapping sheets of paint-splattered drop cloth.
There was a coil of extension cord, a Bluetooth speaker, and a beat-up mini fridge tucked in the corner.
No chairs, but that was fine. This wasn’t a sitting kind of work.
Nick had done his best to find me this space on such short notice, and I had no idea what I’d done to deserve it. He was too good. Hell, he’d even gotten me all the tools and paint.
I started with a large brush. The new, blank surface stared back at me, daring me to dirty it up with all the ugliness living inside me.
The first pass was a violent blue— the same one I used to paint fake bruises in art school.
Then came streaks of yellow, like the edges of the bruise beginning to heal.
I went after the whiskey in the first hour. I had bought it right before coming, knowing that painting alone wouldn’t be enough. Ignoring the ceramic mug I’d found under the sink, I chugged it from the bottle before returning to my work.
After the underpaint dried enough, I drew a bottle because that was always how these paintings started.
You got the shape down, then let it guide you.
The neck of the bottle bent at an unnatural angle, about to pour itself into a pile of takeout containers at the bottom of the canvas.
I gave the bottle a label—red, like a warning sign, but with all the words blurred and out of focus.
Instead of whiskey inside, there was this syrupy, ink-black mess.
I made the spilled liquid arc over the food cartons, pouring into them, over them, seeping beneath them. By the second layer, I couldn’t decide if it was liquor or blood. Didn’t matter. The painting made its own rules, like always.
There was no sound in the studio except for the brush’s whisper and the slap of sponge against canvas. The smell of new paint spurred me on.
I only checked my phone twice that afternoon, which was a new world record.
The first was when I took a break to dig through the mini fridge for a seltzer.
The second was when the phone buzzed on the drop cloth, screen lighting up with Nick’s text.
I didn’t read it. If it was a genuine emergency, he’d call, and if it was anything else, I didn’t want to know.
Instead, I put the phone face down on the table.
On the next pass, I switched to the knife, scraping the edge through the thick blue, pulling down lines like a monster’s claw marks. The streaks of yellow fought their way out from underneath, and I let them.
I stepped back to look.
My head buzzed with whiskey and memory. Melissa’s apartment had smelled like mold, Chinese food, and old trauma.
Her hands had twitched the same way mine did when I was hungover.
There were a thousand things I could’ve said to her, but I hadn’t.
Instead, I’d just sat there and tried to shrink into my own spine, hoping that if I went small enough, I wouldn’t have to listen to her talk about. .. everything.
I took another drink, wiped my mouth, and then started on the food containers.
The red pagodas on the side looked like the ruins of an empire that only ever existed to be burned down.
I painted them exactly how I remembered from Melissa’s table: three containers, each open— but in my painting, they were filled with dark red blood.
At some point, I realized I was hungry, but I hadn’t brought anything to eat except a couple of energy bars. It tasted like sawdust and sugar, but I choked it down anyway.
When I went back to the painting, the sun was lower, and the blue had already dried to a matte bruise.
I pulled out the big sponge brush and started filling in the background with black, swirling it around the bottle and cartons, making a storm that threatened to eat the whole mess alive.
I moved too fast, got paint on my hands, on my wrist, even on the inside of my elbow.
My phone buzzed again with another message from Nick: “Let me know if you need anything and tell me when you’re ready to get dinner.” I imagined him reading it over, wondering if it was too much, then hitting send anyway because he was built for saving people.
I wasn’t. I had never been as strong as Vera, who had gotten us out of that house, took care of us while we were hiding in the woods, and then done her best to raise us.
In the end, I was just a doll, too broken to become real. A doll for someone to play with. To share with his friends.
The blood in the painting looked flat, so I switched to the tiny detail brush and added pink highlights.
That made the spill look glossy, alive, like it was fresh and still pumping out of someone.
Then I sponged the area around the cartons, so it looked like the blood was eating into the paper, curling and warping it.
The painting got grosser and more real with every minute.
Eventually, I started to shake a little—not from fear, but from the slow, rolling crash that always came after a painting binge. I sat on the drop cloth, arms crossed over my knees and just looked at what I’d done.
If you squinted, it was a still life. Bottle, containers, puddle. If you opened your eyes, it was nothing but pain.
My pain. Melissa’s pain.
I pictured her in my mind with her translucent-looking skin, haunted eyes that were a touch glassy, like she had been on something. That was exactly how my own eyes looked on exceptionally bad days when I needed something stronger than alcohol to numb my mind. Melissa must’ve had a lot of those.
I pushed myself up, took another drink from the whiskey bottle, and set it on the drop cloth next to the protein bar wrapper before lowering my eyes to my paint-stained, trembling hands.
Pressing my thumb into the blue paint on my wrist, I created an imitation of a bruise from being gripped too hard.
What could I do to outpace the mess inside my own head? It only seemed to get worse with each passing day.
I looked at the painting again, and for a minute, I saw nothing but Melissa’s hollow face and the echo of her voice: “They liked to have a couple of girls there, especially if they had a lot of customers.” I thought about the way her apartment was piled with trash, and the way she’d wrapped herself in that ratty flannel shirt like armor.
I thought about the protein bar wrapper on my own drop cloth, the half-empty bottle of whiskey, the way I’d told myself I was better than her because I could still fake it, but who was I kidding?
If I had been alone, without my sisters to keep me in line, my apartment would’ve turned into a garbage pile just like Melissa’s. Hell, who was I kidding? If Vera hadn’t cleaned it up the last time she visited, it would’ve been exactly like that.
I got up, wiped my hands on the back of my jeans, and took one last look around the studio. The drop cloth was a minefield of paint splotches and trash. The air stank of whiskey and sweat. The phone sat face down on the edge of the table.
I picked up the whiskey, took a long pull, and then walked to the window. The sun had dropped behind the warehouse across the street, leaving the studio in shadow. I leaned my head against the glass and let myself feel nothing.
Nick said therapy had helped him. Good. Really, I was glad it had worked for him, but I’d tried it, and it was definitely not for me.
Problem was, painting might’ve taken the edge off, but that was it.
And drinking... I didn’t need my big sister telling me it wasn’t the healthiest coping mechanism.
I knew. The question was, how could I keep trudging through day after day after day without something to help me along?