“Would it be okay if we worked out here so I can help? I should, you know, since I’m Fiona’s . . .” I trail off, trying to remember what Fiona called me when she introduced me to Jordan. “Her . . . right hand?”
Jordan keeps writing. I grind my teeth. I may be just a teenager and an intern, but this . . . it’s bullshit. If Taryn were here, she wouldn’t let Jordan walk all over her. So neither will I.
“Jordan,” I say, my voice echoing in the empty gallery.
Her head jerks up. “What?”
“We need to work somewhere else.” Before I can lose my nerve, I reach into her office and pluck the binder off the desk. “There isn’t enough room for two people in here, and Fiona wants me to tell you my ideas for the show.”
We stare at each other, neither of us speaking. But then the corner of her mouth curls up. “Where would you suggest we work?”
I look around the gallery. She’s got a point—there’s nowhere to work in here. But just as I’m about to admit defeat, I remember Fiona dropping to the floor in her studio to sketch, and I grin.
“There’s plenty of room for both of us right here.” I sit down on the floor, crossing my legs in front of me, and look back at her. “See?”
Jordan’s lips purse in disapproval. “I can’t sit on the floor,” she says, smoothing her dress. “This is silk.”
“I hear you can dry-clean anything these days,” I say with a shrug, and flip open the binder.
Jordan joins me in the gallery and reluctantly lowers herself to the floor. She stretches her legs out in front of her, careful to keep her knees pressed together, but her dress is so tight it rides up her legs. She tries crossing them like me, but quickly changes her mind. “This is undignified,” she mutters.
I bite down on my lip to stop myself from smiling.
“So,” she says when she’s finally settled into an extremely uncomfortable-looking position, her legs bent off to the side, right arm propping her up. “The bottle sculptures. We should probably start there.”
“Right.” I turn the binder to face her. “So let me tell you about this light installation . . .”
• • •
“Oh my god, I’m so full.” Taryn collapses onto the couch next to me and pats her stomach. “YiaYia is a crazy good cook.”
I smile, but don’t look up from my sketch pad. The meeting with Jordan ended up going so well that we decided to celebrate by eating way too much of YiaYia’s incredibly rich pastitsio for dinner. But now that the celebration is over, I’m faced with reality: I have exactly five days to come up with a piece for Fiona’s show, and I have no clue what I’m going to do.
Taryn looks at the pad in my lap and points to a few quick sketches of the junkyard mirror. “Are you going to use it?”
“I really want to, but I have no idea what to do with it. What do you think?”
Taryn picks up the remote and turns on an X-Files rerun. “Don’t look at me. I found the mirror. My job is done.”
I put aside the sketch pad and watch as Scully runs down a long hallway, her chunky FBI heels clacking against the linoleum. Taryn leans her head on my shoulder. “I don’t want to go home tomorrow.”
“Then stay another night. But I’m going to be busy during the day tomorrow. Fiona wants to go over her expenses in case she forgot to pay any of the vendors that are helping with the event. But I’ll be done by five and then we can hang out.”
“I can’t,” she says, stretching. “I have classes on Thursday mornings, so I’ve got to get back the night before.”
“Classes?”
“Community college. I’ve only got a few units left, and then I’m hoping to transfer to Texas A&M or maybe Arizona State. I’ve got to get out of Oklahoma.”
I feel a prickle of jealousy at the mention of college, but I ignore it. “How does your dad feel about you leaving the state?”
“Not great, but it might be good for him if I’m not around. Like, maybe he thinks he has to be sad all the time because otherwise I’ll think that he doesn’t care my mom’s gone.”
There’s a knock at the front door. YiaYia calls from the kitchen, “Dessa? Can you please get that? I’m covered in pie dough.”
“Sure.” I force myself off the couch and make my way toward the foyer. Behind me, Scully is being kidnapped by yet another alien. You’d think she’d have more skills as a kick-ass FBI doctor.
“Who’s visiting your grandma at nine o’clock?” Taryn calls over Scully’s screams.
“Probably someone selling magazines,” I call back. But when I open the door, it’s not a stranger with a clipboard.
It’s Cyrus.
“Hey.” He smiles nervously. “I’m back.”
I stand there for a second, my eyes traveling over every inch of him. Gorgeous brown eyes, smooth skin, rumpled white T-shirt. He looks exactly like he always does, but seeing him there, standing under the porch light . . . it’s like I haven’t seen him in years.
I clear my throat. “Hey.”
“Can I come in?”
I step back, and he edges past, like he’s afraid to touch me.
At the sound of the door closing, YiaYia hurries out of the kitchen. “Welcome back,” she says, placing her slightly damp hands on his cheeks. “Are you hungry?”
“No, I’m okay,” he says, glancing over at me. “I grabbed McDonalds on the way here.”
YiaYia makes a tut-tut noise and goes back into the kitchen, leaving Cyrus and me standing alone by the door. I stare at my bare feet, unsure of what to say.
Cyrus sighs. “About what I said before I left—”
“I don’t want to talk about that.”
I see a flicker of doubt in his eyes. “Dess, I want to apologize. I need to.”
Taryn appears in the doorway to the living room. She’s got one hand on her hip. “Who’s this?”
“Taryn, this is Cyrus. He travels with us.” I widen my eyes at her, willing her not to say anything that’ll give away that we’ve been talking about him. “And this is Taryn. She’s the one I met in Oklahoma City.”
“Ah,” Cyrus says. “The girl who turned Dessa into a criminal.”
“The one and only,” Taryn says dryly. “So you’re back, huh?”
Cyrus shifts uncomfortably. “Yeah. I wanted to see if Dessa wanted to hang out. But you guys seem busy, so . . .”
He looks at me expectantly, wondering if I’m going to invite him to stay. I consider it, I really do. It would be the easiest thing in the world. We’d all go into the living room and turn on the TV, and I’m sure everything would be forgotten by the time we finished our third episode of The X-Files.
But then I remember the way I felt as he walked away from me. The way he was smiling in that Instagram picture. Why should I make this easy on him? Why should I pretend everything is okay when it’s so clearly not?
“Tonight’s sort of a girls-only thing.” I open the front door again. “But I’ll talk to you tomorrow, okay?”
Cy frowns, and something passes between us, a specter of our former friendship, waving goodbye as we step into unknown territory.
“Good to see you, Dess,” he says, and walks down the steps and into the night.
I close the door, my hands shaking, and find Taryn watching me closely, her arms crossed. “Girls only, huh?”
I shrug. “It’s your last night.”
She throws her arm around my shoulders and escorts me back to the couch. “Damn straight.”
• • •
We drag ourselves out of bed at eight a.m. on Wednesday morning and catch a bus to downtown Santa Fe, where Taryn’s meeting a friend of a friend for a ride back to Oklahoma City. We get to the plaza with time to spare, so we plop into a booth at a place called Tia Maria’s. The yellow walls are decorated with hanging red chile ristras and landscape paintings, mostly of the surrounding desert, punctuated by small adobe homes like YiaYia’s. Taryn orders eggs and bacon, and I order a breakfast burrito smothered in green chili, plus all the
coffee they can pour.
As soon as the waitress walks away, I lay my head down on the table. It’s sticky with syrup but I don’t care. “We shouldn’t have stayed up so late.”
“No, what we shouldn’t have done is made that peanut butter chocolate milkshake at midnight.” Taryn shakes her head as she pours creamer into her coffee. “Sugar overload.”
“I warned you,” I mumble.
Taryn takes a sip of her coffee, grimaces, and dumps two packets of sugar into it. “So, Cyrus.”
“What about him?” I try my black coffee. “Ew, this tastes like motor oil.”
Taryn slides the creamer toward me. I pour a bunch into my coffee, barely changing the color. I take another sip. Better, but still not good.
“What are you going to do about him?” she asks.
“I’m not sure there’s anything I can do. He wants one thing and I want another.”
“So you’re just going to give up?”
I put my cup down. “You said Cyrus is the one who isn’t being fair. So how is it suddenly my responsibility to fix everything?”
“It’s not. But that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t do something about it,” Taryn says. “Stop letting him call all the shots. What do you want?”
We stare at each other across the table, a bubble of silence surrounding us in the midst of this noisy restaurant. I fiddle with my silverware for something to do. I’ve been in love with Cy for years, but last night, when I saw him standing outside my front door, little gnats flittering around the porch light, I realized something: My life doesn’t have to revolve around him. We went a full three days without speaking, and the world didn’t fall apart. I didn’t fall apart.
The waitress sets two plates in front of us. Taryn twists her bacon around on her plate so it makes a smiley face under the egg-yolk eyes.
“I know I can be pushy,” she says, “but it’s because I don’t want you to get hurt.”
“I know, I know. You’re right.”
“Of course I am.” She takes a bite of her bacon. “But enough about that. I Googled Fiona last night on my phone after you fell asleep—”
I raise an eyebrow at her.
“What? She’s hot. Anyway, people pay serious money for her work.”
“She’s the real deal,” I say, cutting into my burrito. Green chili sauce spills onto the plate. I take a huge bite. YiaYia wouldn’t approve, but how else am I supposed to get egg, chorizo, hatch chilis, onion, and cheese into my mouth at once?
“You’re the real deal, too, you know,” Taryn says.
I shake my head and take another bite.
“You are,” Taryn insists. “You work for an artist. You’re going to be in a real art show. You’ve got skillz.” She twirls her fork in her hand, clearly pleased with herself. “You’re going to kill it.”
“Or I’m going to fail miserably and everyone will know I’m a fraud.”
I mean it as a joke—kind of—but Taryn frowns. “Do you really think that?”
“Yeah, kind of.” I poke my burrito with my fork. “I keep freezing up. Fiona says it’s normal to be afraid, but that I can’t let it stand in my way. But . . . I’m terrified.”
Taryn takes a bite of her eggs. I watch her face, the way her jaw moves up and down as she chews, the way she doesn’t take her eyes off me. It feels like hours are passing as I wait for her to give me advice, to save me from my stupid self.
She finally swallows. “Get over it.”
“What?”
“I said, get over it. You’re scared. So what? I’m scared all the time! I was scared when my mom died. I was scared when my dad started drinking. I was scared when I applied to community college with my shitty grades. But I kept going, one foot in front of the other. I can’t stop living just because I’m scared, and you can’t stop making art. It’s who you are.”
“Holy shit.” I sit back in the booth. When she puts it like that, it sounds so obvious. “You’re right.”
“Duh.”
“It doesn’t matter if I’m scared.”
“Nope.”
“All that matters is that I never give up.”
The corner of her mouth curls up in a devilish smile. “Say it again.”
“What?”
“That you’re not giving up. Say it again.” Taryn leans forward. “Say it again and say it louder. Like you mean it.”
“Come on.”
“Say it!” Taryn says, a grin spreading across her face. She picks up her fork and knife and pounds them on the table. “You’re not giving up.”
“Taryn, people are looking.”
“You’re not giving up.” She bangs her fork again. “Say it!”
“I’m not giving up,” I say, barely louder than before.
“You’re not giving up!”
“I’m not giving up,” I say back, louder this time. It feels good. Really good.
“Again!”
“I’m not giving up!” I shout. “I am an artist, damn it, and I AM NOT GIVING UP!”
“And I am the manager,” a tall man with a thick mustache says, marching up to our table. “And if you two don’t keep it down, I’m going to kick you out.”
Taryn and I slink down into our seats, but as soon as the manager walks away, we burst out laughing.
“You’re going to get us in trouble every time we hang out, aren’t you?” I ask.
Taryn picks up her bacon and smears it around in the egg yolk. “Probably,” she says, and shoves the entire piece into her mouth.
CHAPTER 16
“Dessa, over here!”
I drop my bag on the ground and hurry across the studio. Fiona is struggling in the corner, her back braced against what looks like a massive birdcage on a pedestal.
“Give me a hand?” she grunts. I push my back into the cage, and together we heave the metal monstrosity back onto its base.
“What’s this for?” I ask, staring at it in wonder.
“The show! I had the idea at the last minute, and I stayed up all night working on it.” She sticks her arm inside the cage and waves at me. “What do you think?”
I circle the birdcage, taking it in from every angle. At first glance, it’s just a huge, black birdcage, but as I examine the thick bars, I notice that they’re actually made up of four or five smaller wires, twisted together, and that the artfully curled pieces every few inches are too perfectly shaped to have been done by hand. “Are these hangers?” I ask Fiona, pointing to one of the bars.
“Yes! You know how dry cleaning comes on those crappy hangers everyone throws away?”
“Yeah, I know the ones.” There are about thirty of them hanging in my RV closet.
“I came across tons of them at the junkyard while you and Taryn were looking around,” Fiona says. “At first I figured they were too much trouble. But then I couldn’t stop thinking about them, so I went back yesterday and bought about two hundred.”
“Where did you get the idea for this?” I ask, nodding to the cage.
Fiona walks around it, running her fingers along the bars. “I was watching TV, and one of those reality shows about models came on. Those girls are so talented, but the beauty standards in our country . . . they’re just not healthy. Or realistic.” She wraps her fingers around one of the bars. “Buying clothes one season, replacing them the next. Making sure you have the perfect makeup, the perfect tan, the perfect body.” She gives the cage a little shake. “The more I thought about it, the more unfair it felt.”
“Like being trapped in a cage,” I say. “But it’s not just about the cage—it’s about the person inside it. I think . . . I think something’s missing.”
Fiona tips her head to the side and considers the cage. “What do you think it needs?”
“It’s about the people, right? Not the cage itself.”
“Right.”
“Well . . . I think you need a person inside, then. Someone who will embody that impossible beauty, but also show how unobtainable it is.”
&n
bsp; Fiona looks unsure. “So you want to hire a model for the show?”
I picture a girl sitting inside, looking purposefully bored. It could work, but it doesn’t feel quite right. Plus, we’d have to pay someone to do it. “What if we used a mannequin? Like, one of those fancy ones they have in department store windows. We could dress her up in really nice clothes, but leave her face completely blank.”
Fiona narrows her eyes and walks slowly around the cage. I hold my breath, praying that she doesn’t hate my idea.
She stops walking. “I love it. And I know just the place to get the mannequin. I saw a bunch at the junkyard. I’ll go back tonight.”
“That’s great,” I say, more than a little relieved.
She runs across the room and pulls a slim purple notebook out of a drawer. “Come here,” she says, beckoning me over.
I watch as she flips through the notebook, pieces of loose paper slipping onto the floor. I stoop to pick them up, and see that they’re covered with her plans for the birdcage. There’s a perfectly scaled drawing of a hanger, complete with measurements, and then a rough sketch of the cage itself. I climb back to my feet, notes in hand, and see that she’s scanning a page of handwritten notes. “Here,” she says, picking up a pencil and pointing to a blank space next to yet another sketch of the birdcage, this one so big it takes up a whole sheet of notebook paper. “Add your idea.”
I take the pencil from her, and in my neatest handwriting, make a few notes about the mannequin. It feels like I’m adding my mark to the Magna Carta or the Declaration of Independence. I grin as I hand the pencil back to her.
“I know Taryn just left,” Fiona says as she closes the binder, “but have you had a chance to think about what you’re going to make for the show? You’ve only got a few days left.”
I follow her over to the couch, where I sink into my spot by the window. “I’m still having trouble coming up with an idea. I keep staring at your little yellow flower, but so far . . . nothing.”
Your Destination Is on the Left Page 16
