Shades of Darkness

by A. R. Kahler

  “Come on,” I said, standing up to stretch. We had a five-minute break before the next set of sketches. “I need to pee, and you need to gossip.”

  “Hopefully, not all at once,” he said. I just shook my head and led him from the studio by the cuff of his sleeve.

  • • •

  Ethan waited for me outside the bathroom, leaning against a cardboard Roman pillar. My little sanity anchor. My reminder that the past was the past and this was the present, and the present was pretty fucking great. He was doodling something on his wrist with a Biro pen and leaning beside one student’s collage rendition of a Monet, looking like he was waiting for someone to snap his Polaroid and label it Too Hip for Hipsters.

  I’d known Ethan since I came to Islington. We were given peer mentors before the start of term to help us newbies acclimate to the school’s quirks, and Ethan had been mine. He’d attended Islington since his freshman year and knew the place inside and out. During our first meeting, while our group lounged on the leather sofas in the Writers’ House with the electric fireplace going despite the late-summer heat, Ethan had presented us with a particular dilemma: Each of the mentor groups had been given a stipend to spend for group activities, and he wasn’t interested in doing the usual tie-dyed shirt and movie night thing. He recommended we use the money to fund a weekly café trip in hopes of finding hot men. He affectionately called the project Fishing for Dick. Then and there, my love for him was affirmed.

  “Come on,” I said. “Spill it.” I nudged up beside him and looked down at the notes on his skinny wrist. Sadly, they were just reminders of upcoming assignments and project ideas. Nothing juicy.

  “What?” he said. He glanced around as though we were already discussing his sex life, cheeks blushing. Save for a few girls chatting as they went into the bathroom, the hall was empty.

  I grabbed the pen from his hand, grasped his wrist with the other, and wrote in my hastiest cursive: “will u fuk?”

  When he looked at what I wrote, he went an even brighter shade of crimson and tried to scrub it off. He didn’t succeed.

  “You’re classy, you know that?” he said. Then he looked up at me, and a stupid little grin perked up the corner of his mouth. “And yes, probably. Maybe. Definitely. Gods I hope so.”

  I sniffed and wiped an invisible tear from my eye. “My little boy’s all grown up,” I said, making my voice crack.

  “Yeah, well . . .” But he didn’t say anything else because the girls came out from the bathroom then and it was clear our short break was up. He cleared his throat. “Did you want to go fishing or not?” he asked. Even though the mentor group eventually disbanded, Ethan and I had kept up the good fight: Nearly every Friday we went to the same teahouse, though it had become more a ritual for finishing homework before the weekend than finding men. Especially since Ethan had found Oliver at the beginning of this year.

  “Of course,” I said. I’d never miss out on these tea dates. Ever. Even if we did have to shuffle them around a bit now that a romance was in the picture.

  “Good. If you’re nice, I’ll tell you more about my planned seduction. Casanova’s got nothing on me.”

  “There’s still lunch,” I offered, because we didn’t have any more classes together today.

  “And my boyfriend still sits with us,” Ethan said.

  “Then you can tell me on the way there. You know I hate waiting.”

  Ethan just rolled his eyes.

  • • •

  “I swear to Paula Deen, if Andy assigns us one more still life this term I’m going to scream.”

  I snorted into my hot chocolate. We sat in the far corner of the cafeteria, nestled between a wall of past students’ art and a window overlooking the frozen lake. A flock of crows circled lazily in the sky. Sorry, a murder.

  “Did you really just swear to Paula Deen?” I asked Ethan.

  He nodded and crossed himself, holding a packet of butter in his hand as he did so.

  “I don’t think praying’s going to help,” I muttered, looking out at the lunch crowd. “Andy does love making us sketch the most exciting of subjects.”

  There was a groan, and then a thud, and when I looked over Ethan had his head on the table in defeat. I reached over and rustled his hat. His hand snatched up and caught my arm.

  “Watch the hair,” he mumbled from the tabletop, not budging an inch.

  “I am,” I said. “I’m giving you that hot disheveled look.”

  “He’s already hot and disheveled,” came a voice behind me.

  Oliver stepped around to the other side of the table, setting his tray beside Ethan’s. Ethan immediately sat up, grinning at his boyfriend.

  “Hey babe,” Ethan chirped. Oliver grinned, leaned over, and gave Ethan a quick peck on the lips.

  “Afternoon gorgeous,” Oliver replied, then sat down.

  Oliver was, as my mother would say, a tall glass of water—not that I’d ever say such a thing to his face. Six foot two, gorgeous coffee-color skin, and brown eyes to match, he looked like he should be playing bass in some smoky jazz club in Paris. His penchant for wearing button-downs and vests—and the fact that he actually did play bass—only made the image more tantalizing.

  “How you doing, Kaira?” he asked. He reached over and took my hand, raising it up to kiss the backs of my fingers.

  “Better now that my Prince Charming is here,” I said with a grin.

  His smile could have lit a cave.

  “You look tired,” he said, studying my face. “Have you been sleeping okay?”

  “Okay, seriously, I’m starting to consider plastering my face with foundation. I thought gay boys were supposed to be good for a girl’s self-esteem?”

  Ethan laughed. “I don’t know where you got that idea.”

  “Fine,” I said, shaking my head and readdressing Oliver, who hadn’t stopped grinning at me. “I was up all night working on homework last minute, just like you said I would be, oh prophetic one.”

  “Sometimes I hate being right.” The smile said quite the opposite.

  I went back to eating my veggie lasagna. Oh heavenly carbs, at least you’ll never betray me.

  “Anyway,” Oliver continued, unfolding a napkin onto his lap, “I need you to make sure this one gets his work done. I worry I’m distracting him too much.”

  “You know my babysitting rates double on weekends.”

  “I’ll pay. Pretty certain being your friend is paying my dues.”

  I chuckled. “Most of the time. But yeah, I’ll make sure he doesn’t slack off.”

  Ethan leaned across the table and waved his hands. “Um, guys? Still here. Can hear every word you’re saying.”

  “Of course,” Oliver said, completely ignoring his boyfriend, “this goes both ways. You only get paid if you both have your theses finished.”

  My hands shot to my heart. “Lo! I am slain!”

  Ethan slugged Oliver on the shoulder. “I told you never to mention that word to her.”

  “What? Finished?”

  “Thesis,” Ethan gasped. “The word of death.”

  As expected, Oliver just chuckled to himself and went back to eating. Ethan shot me a glance, one that read both I’m sorry he said anything and Oh gods, we really do need to finish these soon. “Thesis” was one of those words that carried the same sort of weight between me and Ethan as “juxtaposed” or “post modern.” We simply didn’t use it—ever—out of mutual respect for each other’s feelings. Oliver knew this, but it didn’t carry the same punch for him. He thought it was funny, the way we squirmed around like he’d just asked which of us he should behead first.

  Trouble was, he had a point. Ethan and I needed to get our shit together. Otherwise we’d both be showcasing Post-it notes of stick figures for our senior theses. And we couldn’t copy Jeremy.

  “Fine,” I relented. “We’ll do it. Prepare your kidneys, Ethan. We’re about to consume more coffee than any mortal has before.”

  Islington wasn’t li
ke most high schools. Actually, that’s sort of an understatement. I’m pretty certain the original founders had a meeting and said, “Let’s take everything they do at public schools and reverse it.” Like most boarding schools, we had things like evening sign-in and curfews and ridiculous lights-out rules that no one actually followed. Boys and girls were only allowed to mingle in public spaces or—if you got permission and kept the door open—in dorm rooms during specific hours. Unlike most boarding schools, we didn’t have a uniform or a dress code beyond “try not to expose too much skin because, after all, most of the school year is covered in snow.” We also didn’t have any sports teams steeped in glory, unless you counted ultimate Frisbee. And no one really did. Not even the team members.

  Islington was an entity unto itself—a bastion of learning and creativity. Or so the admissions guide proclaimed. Four hundred teenage artists from every discipline, gathered in one place in the middle of nowhere, each aspiring to be the Next Big Thing. No parents. Extreme workloads and stress. Raging hormones. Endless days of isolation and dark winter skies.

  As one could expect, it was a reality TV show waiting to happen.

  After leaving the cafeteria, I headed toward Myth and Folklore. Being a lit course, it was one of the few academic classes I had to take to graduate, though unlike the other options—like Russian Literature and Postmodern Poetry—I was actually interested in the subject. Not that it prevented me from spending the majority of class doodling in the edges of my notebook and passing witty notes back and forth with Elisa. I had to be careful and look like I was paying attention, though—the instructor was Mr. Almblad (aka Jonathan), my faculty adviser. Screwing up with him could screw up the rest of my year.

  Elisa passed me a tightly folded note while Jonathan scribbled the names of Norse gods and their associations on the whiteboard.

  “Wild party tonight?” the note read.

  I grinned and nodded. Elisa and I had been roommates from the get-go, and we had our own little code. In nerdy art-school land, “wild party” translated to “soda and bad movies night.”

  Like me, she was in her senior year. And, like me, she’d sent herself here her junior year, much to her parents’ dismay. That’s pretty much where the similarities ended.

  Elisa was a figure painter’s wet dream. She was a theatre student, which meant that, unlike most of the kids in my own department, she cared about her looks. Her long brown hair was always perfectly wavy, even today when it flowed from under her knit hat like a waterfall. Delicate, almost Nordic-elf features, bright blue eyes, dimples. She did yoga and modern dance and could hold a modeling pose for hours. And, since she was my roommate, she often got roped into being my subject.

  “Out with Ethan. After sign-in? What are we going to watch?” I wrote on the other side of the note. I folded it into a crane and tossed it to Elisa when Jonathan was turned around.

  Last year, people were positive she and I were a lesbian couple. After all, we walked hand-in-hand to and from dinner, and spent most of our free time (well, the time I wasn’t with Ethan, which wasn’t too often) working together. Neither of us refuted the rumors, mostly because we didn’t care—Elisa was bi, and I was definitely not dating. We probably wouldn’t have ever clarified anything, but our hall counselor asked outright because having couples room together was against school policy.

  Now she was dating a dance major named Kyle who, we were both pretty certain, also played both sides of the field. And I, as planned, was still resolutely single. I preferred the term “off-limits.” Ethan preferred the term “future crazy cat lady.”

  I watched Elisa bite the tip of her pen in consideration of what movie to stream, but before she could write it down, Jonathan turned back around and addressed the class.

  “As we’ve read time and time again,” he said, standing behind his desk, “the worshipers of pagan gods didn’t see their deities as untouchable creatures. The gods were living, breathing things, able to interact with mere mortals and disrupt their affairs. From the Celts to the Greeks to the Egyptians, the old pantheons were notoriously interactive with their mortal subjects. The Norse were no different in that worship—to them, Loki and Thor and Freyja were as real as their own kin. The gods were allies, albeit feared ones. It was the gods who blessed you with good crops, and it was the gods who took the innocent away.”

  Jonathan had been my adviser for only a few months—my old adviser left to do a photo residency in Brazil after fall term—but we’d gotten on immediately. Like my drawing instructor, Jonathan had a penchant for wearing jeans and blazers. Unlike Andy, Jonathan actually pulled them off. He had curly brown hair and a short beard and wire-rim glasses. His blazers were often tweed with leather elbow patches. Some even had pocket squares. And he was maybe in his early thirties.

  All of this paired quite well with the fact that he was covered in tattoos from the jaw down. I’d never seen most of them, just the bits that poked up from his collar and cuffs (birds up the neck, clouds and vines and figures on the forearms), but I’d asked him once what the grayscale tattoo was. He said it was a scene from Ragnarök.

  Gotta love the hipster professors. I was pretty sure 90 percent of the male and female student body wanted to jump his sexy-intelligent bones. I just wanted to be him, tattoos and nonchalant air and all.

  “Over the next three weeks we will be shifting focus from Celtic folklore to Scandinavian mythos. As you’ll quickly learn, there is a great amount of crossover between the two pantheons and modes of worship. And, as I’m sure you expected, that will be the topic for your next research project.”

  There was a collective moan throughout the class, which just made him smile. I wasn’t one of the kids whining, however. This sort of shit was right up my alley. Besides, any excuse to look up mythology could only help my painting thesis.

  “We’re going to start by examining how the Norse viewed the worlds of men and gods. If you’d open up to the chapter titled ‘Yggdrasil’ and follow along?”

  The name was a shot of adrenaline to my chest as I turned to the chapter. The print of a tree, black and stretched between the realms of man and gods, stared back at me. A stain. Ink on paper, blood on concrete. . . . I squeezed my eyes shut and took a deep breath.

  Something landed on my desk, and I opened my eyes with a jolt. I glanced at Elisa, who had flung the note my way while Jonathan was rooting in his desk. I tried to grin as I spread open the paper over the chapter header, quickly covering up the woodblock print of Yggdrasil, the World Tree.

  “Let’s watch something bloody,” the note said. “Also, give Ethan my love.”

  • • •

  The last few hours of my day were spent in silversmithing, my throwaway arts course. I spent so much time staring at canvas or paper that doing something that involved getting hands-on and dirty—and I mean really dirty, like wearing goggles and leather aprons and lighting things on fire dirty—was a nice switch. The studio was in the back of the arts building, near the loading dock. It was one of the few areas in the entire building that didn’t provide some stunning view of the grounds, mainly because the only window looked out on the outdoor welding and soldering area, which was only picturesque if you liked the industrial motif.

  By the class’s end at five, my stomach was rumbling and the coffee from this morning had long since worn off. I put away my saw blades and sandpaper and put on the ring I just made for myself—a tiny silver band with little birds cut out. Technically speaking I should have been working on a collection of brooches for my final project, but the instructor, Ginny, didn’t mind. It was one of the few year-long classes at Islington, and by now she’d learned that I always got my shit done on time. Always. So long as I was working on new techniques in class, she wasn’t too bothered if it wasn’t strictly for the project.

  After all, how would we learn our own style if we weren’t allowed to play?

  “Nice work,” Chris said as I admired the ring.

  I tried to hide my blush at the s
ound of his voice, hoping the extra five seconds it took me to put on my coat was enough to let the rouge fade.

  “Thanks,” I replied. And then I did what I’d been training myself not to do this entire school year. I looked him in the eyes and smiled.

  There were a few rules in my life that I followed to a T. One: Never ignore an omen. Two: Never pass up a new opportunity unless, you know, you’ll die from it. And three: Never fall in love.

  They were all tried and true rules, but Rule Three was the most important. Love was for getting hurt. Badly. Or hurting someone else in the process. It wasn’t safe, in direct violation of Rule Two.

  Chris made me want to ignore the rules in spite of all that. And that’s why I had to keep him at arm’s length.

  Every time I saw him, I imagined him darting through the woods like an elf. His usual earthy, hand-accented attire only helped that image. He was a senior, like me, with a brown floppy undercut that was almost a mohawk and a goatee. His hazel eyes had that really unnerving habit of not looking away when you were talking to him.

  Like they were doing just now.

  “How’s your thesis going?” he asked. Again, he didn’t look away, and I know I said it was unnerving, but it wasn’t creepy. It was actually really charming. The unnerving part came from the gravity it created. The pull I’d been fighting from day one. Chris was gorgeous and talented, albeit a few inches shorter than me, and the first two points were definite reasons we couldn’t date. Never, ever trust the pretty ones with your heart. Unless, of course, they’re gay.

  “It’s going,” I replied. It took me a moment to realize him saying “thesis” didn’t cause the same violent reaction it usually did. Probably because I was already so focused on not looking into those eyes. “I should be ready though. How about you?”

  He ran a hand through his hair and looked over to his shelf in the corner. Jesus, that boy’s jawline. His face was basically the embodiment of aquiline. My fingers itched to sketch him, but that was an alley I was not going down. Getting him alone to stare at him for a few hours? Danger, Will Robinson, danger.