Krell walks over to the front row and shoves his finger in Bernadette’s face. She jerks back, her blue eyes enormous. “What do you think of this painting?” he says.
“Ah, I don’t know,” she stammers.
He goes down the row. “You, Mr. Walker.”
Kevin glances at me, determined to help. “It’s intriguing,” he says.
“Why? Why is it intriguing?”
“Because a dead bird on an expensive plate is bizarre and unexpected. Like Edgar Allan Poe.”
Krell gives me a pitying smile. “Were you thinking about ‘The Raven,’ Ms. Reyes?”
“No.” My leg jiggles, and I hold my head up even higher, hoping it will keep me from sliding down the wall.
“Were you thinking about anything?”
I try to swallow. I can hear my artistic statement in my head, every single syllable, but the words are stuck to my tongue like gluey papier-mâché.
Appetite is about the powerful consuming what they want with no care for who or what they destroy. The ugly dead reality of a bird that was never meant to be eaten served up on the costliest china.
Krell pounces on my silence. “This painting lacks daring, insight, and soul.”
My eyes bore into the wall above everyone’s head while my legs turn liquid. I need to get out of here without losing it.
“You may resume your seat, Ms. Reyes.”
I lift my painting off the easel and lock my gaze on the floor, because one pity smile as I walk to my seat will send me crashing. I slide back onto my stool and wrap my long crocheted sweater across my body.
Krell starts in on the next critique and I don’t look up to see who it is. I dig my nails into my palm, hearing him crow that the abstract is “bold” and “risk-taking.”
I don’t get it. I thought CALINVA loved my work. You don’t give someone a full scholarship if you don’t think they’re amazing. So why is it that for the last six weeks, Krell has slammed every single piece I’ve shown him?
Angry tears pool in my eyes, but I blink them away, because I will not, absolutely will not cry in front of these people.
When the bell rings, I’m out the door first and flying for the exit. I’ve got an hour before Color & Theory, and I’ll be damned if I’m going to spend it fending off sympathetic classmates in the student lounge.
CALINVA is five blocks south of the trendy main drag of Old Town Pasadena, so I take off in the other direction. The last thing I want is to run into anyone from the institute or the art supply store where I work.
It’s heating up, so I tear off my sweater and stuff it into my messenger bag. Then I head for a taco truck parked a couple blocks away at a construction site.
I’m almost to the truck when “Hey, smile for me, sweetie!” Come-ons and kissing sounds rain down on me.
I swear if any of those guys get down from that roof and come over, I will slam them with my portfolio case. I pull out my wallet and check how much I’ve got, considering it’s got to last until Friday and this is only Monday.
I pay for a can of guava juice, then park myself on a low cement-block wall in front of a battered office building. I roll the icy can over my forehead while Krell’s insults burn in my ears. My work lacks daring, insight, and soul.
What am I going to do? I can’t avoid him for the next four years; he’s the head of the department.
Oh God, what if I lose my scholarship?
I flash back to Irina Gonzales in the student-aid office. “Do you understand that the Zoich is a merit scholarship, Sabine? That it can be revoked if your performance does not meet expectations?”
And what do I do, then? Go back to sleeping in my car, being the girl who scrubs toilets in an office building at midnight, who carries plates of ribs to half-drunk diners, and charges twenty bucks for a pet portrait at the dog park?
My chest starts to tighten, and my lungs feel like they’re shrinking. I spread my fingers over the surface of the juice can, telling myself to focus on the sensation of coolness. Be in the now. Look around you. What do you see?
I draw my eyes over the truck, taking in the crudely painted combo plates and faded menu on the side, the grease-blurred window, and the beefy arms of the man working the grill. A composition forms in my head with the window as the focal point, and I’m about to reach for my sketch pad when a woman saunters out from behind a building across the street.
Black pants and black tee, she stands out in the bright sunlight like a black line on a white page. A band of fake fur rings her light hair. She walks over to the light post on the corner and leans against it, clutching a handmade cardboard sign that reads GOD BLESS YOU! I’M JULIE. I HAVE CANCER. PLEASE HELP.
She’s facing my way and I try not to stare, but I can’t take my eyes off her. Her tan cheeks are donut plump around her sunken mouth, and the only word that comes to mind when I look at her closed-lip smile is “beatific.”
There is something transcendent about this woman whose skinny pants are almost fashionable, and whose bare feet and hands are black with dirt. Grace and goodwill flow off her like vapor off dry ice.
I fumble with my sketch pad, knowing I can’t possibly capture what I’m seeing in pencil, and I put it away. I feel for my phone, then gather up my things and cross the street, sure Julie will walk away before I get there.
As I get within ten feet of her, I realize I’ve been so caught up in her smile I missed how she’s stroking a white rat perched on her shoulder.
My phone is right in my pocket, but I hesitate to take it out, because I hated the student at my high school who treated homeless people like props for his AP photography portfolio. Is it using Julie to want to draw her?
I wish I had an extra ten to give her, but I don’t. I unbuckle my messenger bag. “Do you like apricot bars?” I say, and hold up a small paper bag.
Her eyes crinkle even deeper. “Apricots? Yes, I love them.”
Even up close, I can’t quite tell how old she is. Forty? Sixty? I hand her the bag. “My landlady baked them. She’s a really good cook.” I pause, because I almost hate myself for asking, but, “Would it be okay if I take your picture?”
“Go ahead, dearie. I don’t mind. A person takes your picture, it means they see you.”
I step back and she tells me to be careful to get Sweetie, her rat, in the picture, so I do. I take five or six shots, and then, feeling awkward, pocket my phone and thank her.
“Have a blessed day,” she answers.
I walk away, thinking who am I to take her picture, that I of all people should know better than to do that.
CALINVA’s right up ahead, and the last thing I want to do is face everyone who witnessed my critique, but I tell myself: Suck it up and keep going. You’ve survived a lot worse than this.
And once you figure out what Krell wants, you can get him off your back.
When I get back to CALINVA, the first-years are milling in the hall outside Color & Theory. I hesitate on the edge of the group, because even though I know their faces and names, I haven’t really put myself out there to make friends.
After Mom’s accident last spring, I couldn’t be the artsy, snarky friend that Hayley and her other friends expected. One day, while they complained for the hundredth time about the unfairness of not being allowed to use their phones during school hours, it hit me that my reality wasn’t theirs, and if they knew the truth about me, they’d label it, but they’d never understand it. I drifted away, and never drifted back.