by Anna Birch
Me, placing myself in the position where this is the only option I have left?
“If this works out for you, you won’t hate me anymore,” Randall says, smiling. “That’s a promise.”
* * *
I-Kissed-Alice 12:15p: so it was fine
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:16p: oh wow
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:16p: that’s great
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:16p: So what was the big deal? why did your advisor pull in your parents?
I-Kissed-Alice 12:17p: just the usual stuff.
I-Kissed-Alice 12:17p: also I decided to do the Capstone Award, too. My advisor thinks I have a shot.
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:17p: The Capstone????? Like?
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:17p: Ocoee Arts Festival?!
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:17p: The Capstone Foundation Award?
I-Kissed-Alice 12:18p: yeah.
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:18p: Alice.
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:18p: The project proposal is in Nashville. If our essays are accepted, we’ll be in the same city at the same time.
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:18p: WE COULD MEET.
I-Kissed-Alice 12:18p: I can’t do this right now
I-Kissed-Alice 12:19p: I love you, but I don’t have the bandwidth to even think about this
I-Kissed-Alice 12:19p: you really hurt me today about the meeting with my advisor. It feels like you don’t believe in me
Curious-in-Cheshire 12:19p: Are you serious right now??
I-Kissed-Alice 12:19p: I need to go finish my essay.
I-Kissed-Alice 12:20p: I’ll have your notes back for #49 tonight
I-Kissed-Alice 12:21p: I think I need to unplug tonight. I’ll talk to you tomorrow
I-Kissed-Alice is no longer logged into the system.
* * *
SIX WEEKS UNTIL THE CAPSTONE AWARD
CHAPTER 7
ILIANA
Username: Curious-in-Cheshire
Last online: 3h ago
To say my nerves are shot would be the understatement of the century.
The turnaround for the Capstone essay round finalists to be announced was supposed to be relatively short—a day or two, max, and then we’d have a month to prepare for the project proposal.
It’s been seven days.
A lot will happen between now and the project proposal: Thanksgiving break, and the Alabama/Auburn college football game the following Saturday that serves as a state holiday in its own right (the Iron Bowl, every resident in the state will whisper in reverent tones). We’ll miss an entire week of studio time at the school.
It’s been seven days since I’ve talked to Alice, too. An entire week of waiting with bated breath, flipping between my email app and Slash/Spot until I bleed my battery dry, waking up in the middle of the night to the sound of notification dings that ultimately meant nothing important.
I’ve been stretched about as far as I can go, and the only thing left is for me to snap.
The Birmingham Museum of Art’s Wedgwood Collection sprawls around us all, brilliant yellow with ornate white trim, a sitting room straight out of an Austen novel plunked in the center of an otherwise minimalistic series of galleries. Wedgwood china, blue-on-white sets of antique dishes, sit in scattered rows behind glass. The room itself is arranged like an Edwardian sitting parlor, but there’s no denying that we are still inside the hallowed spaces of an art museum.
Randall stands just in front of an entire wall of antique cameo pendants the size of my fist.
Sarah, Rhodes, and I are here with the other senior mentors, Randall, and his eighth-grade exploratory art class. The mentorship program at the Conservatory is a time-honored tradition: Rising seniors are “tapped” by faculty to shepherd entering eighth-grade students around during their first year on campus, assisting them in mundane tasks such as setting up the digital portfolio they’ll contribute to during their entire tenure at the school and serving as de facto chaperones on field trips.
Being a mentor is yet another reminder of the kinds of things I missed out on by transferring in as a sophomore. I often wonder what kind of artist I would be if I had the same opportunities our new eighth graders have.
“If you forget that you’re looking at a room full of plates and shelving, what you’ll see are lines—lines everywhere. And what do lines do?” Randall is walking backward as he speaks. He flicks the tablet in his hand with one finger, then points to Charlotte Carmichael, an eighth grader I’ve never spoken to.
The questions aren’t for Sarah, or me, or any of the other seniors present. They’re for the eighth graders we’re supposed to be mentoring. Fortunately for me, my assigned mentee doesn’t need me: Etoria Marshall is a whiz all on her own, and I honestly have no idea what I’m supposed to teach her.
“Uh, um—” Charlotte’s eyes move from Randall to one of the girls on her left, then Rhodes, her mentor.
“Ingram?” Randall turns his attention to Rhodes—a caricature of herself, crumpled in the corner with her sketchbook, her hands knotted in her dirty black hair.
Caught in the existential crisis of the day, apparently.
“Yeah?” Rhodes is nothing but a set of wide, light eyes, peering over the top of her sketchbook. “Oh—um.”
“Your mentee—”
Charlotte, the mentee in question, is visibly uncomfortable.
Oh, how the mighty have fallen.
“Lines denote space, Randall.” Sarah holds a pencil in front of her as she studies an angle in the architecture, shifting it millimeter by millimeter as she moves her line of vision down a column in the distance until her eyes fall where it meets the floor. When she drops her head and marks the paper, the angle still isn’t right, and as a result, her drawing looks like the world through a fun-house mirror.
“Yes, Sarah, lines denote space.” As if Randall weren’t already in a crap mood from having to take a gaggle of spoiled eighth graders on a field trip, the fact that he’s having to deal with our Capstone nerves isn’t helping a bit.
I’m not sketching the Wedgwood Collection at all—the assignment is for the eighth graders, so those of us who are seniors are free to work on our own projects until our mentees need us. My sketchbook is littered with concept sketches for a Queen of Swords card, the pièce de résistance of my Capstone project. It’s hard to imagine a more important card for the deck than Alice bearing the vorpal sword, and even if it isn’t actually the case, I can’t let go of the idea that the entire deck hinges there.
Randall opens the sketchbook under his arm to show us a sketch he completed of the exhibit at some point before class began—months or years ago, apparently, judging by the differences in the placement of the Wedgwood pieces on display in the cases. Where there’s an empty wall in real life, there was an oversize curio cabinet on paper; what was once a row of plates is now a single urn.
When was the last time he created something new?
“So,” he says, gesturing to faint perspective lines with the point of a pen, “this sketch appears to be a fairly accurate representation of the space, right? Except the page is still flat; it’s merely the perception of space.”
“Perception,” Sarah whispers emphatically, mimicking Randall’s nasally vocal fry.
I drop the length of my pen along the center line of her paper. Sure enough, her perspective is just a little off. She frowns up at me.
“Perception,” I say.
Randall breaks from his lecture to wander from student to student, covering his eye with one hand and using his pen to measure angles, encouraging them to do the same. Soon, hushed voices become a cloud of noise, and a break from the lecture turns into independent study. Twenty-five eighth graders splinter into groups of two and three, gesturing and measuring and sketching and gossiping.
My phone dings in my pocket.
All three of us jump: Sarah, Randall, and me.
I pull it from my pocket, but I’m scared to look.
It could be an email announcing the Capstone finali
sts.
It could be Alice, for the first time since our disaster of a conversation about meeting face-to-face if we’re both in Nashville for the project proposal.
It could be my mom, tagging me in something ridiculous on Facebook again.
I don’t know if I want it to be the Capstone announcement or Alice more.
Sarah pulls her phone from her pocket; at the front of the exhibit, Randall flicks his tablet to life and scrolls through his notifications with two fingers.
Nothing times two. They both put their devices away and return to their work.
I can scratch the Capstone announcement from the list, and I don’t know if I’m relieved or disappointed.
My notifications just show a Hearts and Spades update from Slash/Spot: seventy-five new views. Twenty-three new comments. One-hundred-sixteen kudos. But nothing from Alice. I can’t take it anymore. It’s been seven long days of wondering if I’ll ever talk to her again, of being angry that she’s freezing me out, of worrying that something serious is going on. We’ve never gone this long without chatting before.
My pulse roars in my ears. My gut flops.
I flick over to my direct message conversation with Alice. It shows that she’s active now, and the last notification is a slap in the face:
I-Kissed-Alice 12:21p: I think I need to unplug tonight. I’ll talk to you tomorrow
Tomorrow was seven days ago.
I take a deep breath. I don’t know what else to say, so I just start like I always do.
Curious-in-Cheshire 8:58a: hi
It’s marked as “seen” almost immediately.
The typing indicator bubble appears at the bottom of the screen, then disappears again.
An entire minute goes by before she starts typing again.
Then it flashes at the bottom for another minute.
This goes on for what feels like an eternity, typing and pausing, breaking, typing and pausing.
Finally:
I-Kissed-Alice 9:00a: hi
I have no idea what to say next, so I just start typing.
Where have you been?
Nope. I shake my phone to clear the text field.
I’ve missed you???
Delete, delete, delete.
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:01a: how are you
I-Kissed-Alice 9:01a: my nerves are shot. I’ve been refreshing my email for three days
I allow myself a little relief. This feels like our normal.
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:02a: I get that
I-Kissed-Alice 9:02a: I’m an absolute mess over the project though
I-Kissed-Alice 9:02a: I have no idea what I’m going to submit yet
There’s something terrifying about this, that I didn’t completely comprehend until now: Alice is going to be a competitor.
It’s a cruel twist of fate, to have Rhodes out of the way and then be forced to face down Alice to get what I want. My conscience had no issue with sidestepping Rhodes for the scholarship—her parents’ money has solved every problem she’s ever had, so there’s no doubt they’d have any trouble paying for her college. But Alice doesn’t have any options left—her depression has left her grades in shambles, and the world deserves to see everything she’s capable of.
Alice needs the Capstone every bit as much as I do.
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:04a: Alice. Your work on Hearts & Spades has been incredible. Illustrate something.
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:04a: What if you proposed a series of Alice in Wonderland illustrations, set in space? Hearts & Spades style.
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:05a: Intergalactic Alice(TM)
I-Kissed-Alice 9:05a: You know I can’t do that.
I sigh.
This argument is old news.
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:05a: You can’t hide this part of who you are from the world forever.
I-Kissed-Alice 9:05a: you don’t understand what it’s like to have the world expect something from you
I lift my eyes from the screen of my phone to glance up at the recessed lighting over our heads. We’ve had this conversation a hundred times.
I tell her to teach the world to expect something different.
She tells me it’s never that easy.
I remind her that there’s nothing harder than living in a world where people expect someone other than who you really are.
This has never been an issue for me—the world has only ever gotten exactly who I am, no compromises or apologies: Being an artist. Being bisexual. Being a loud, obstinate, angry girl. My parents have always affirmed who I am, but they’ve never been able to cope with the sheer amount of space I consume by merely existing. I’ve always sensed that I should make myself smaller around them, easier to deal with, but it’s something I’ve never actually accomplished.
Meanwhile, people like Rhodes take a lot of joy in turning up their noses at people like me, enumerating the myriad ways I’ll never have the couth to navigate their corner of society.
Alice is too concerned about what other people think, though.
It’ll ultimately be the thing that kills her.
Three phones and a tablet all ding in unison, and my train of thought is long gone. The sound echoes fractious down the wing, reverberating off every shiny, angled surface. Over the tops of younger, smaller, inexperienced heads, Sarah, Randall, and I find each other.
This is it.
I expected that it would be an individualized email from the Capstone Foundation—Dear Iliana, Your Declaration of Intent was the best essay we’ve ever read—but instead it’s a form email copied to God knows how many other people, with nothing but “Re: Declaration of Intent Essay” in the subject line.
My heart drops.
Sarah’s scream on the other side of the exhibit is ice in my veins.
“Randall! Iliana! The email!” Sarah is jumping up and down, clutching her phone in her hands. “I’m in! I’m in!”
There’s no way in hell Sarah made it in and I didn’t.
I can’t even wrap my head around it.
I scroll past a block of text—“The Capstone Foundation has existed as an auxiliary of the Ocoee Arts Festival since…”—and find a column of twenty-five names, listed one at a time. I don’t recognize any of them:
Xuewen Miao
Marquetta Oliver
Tia Leath
Marianna Walters
Adelaide Lyu
None of them are Conservatory students. I make a mental note to find each of these people on Facebook and keep scrolling.
Marianna sounds like a great “real name” for Alice.
I imagine myself whispering Marianna in someone’s ear.
Next, Tia. Marquetta. Adelaide.
It could really be anyone.
Sarah’s name finally appears farther down the list, and it’s the first I recognize. Even farther, a girl named Kiersten Keller from the Conservatory’s theater-track program—someone I didn’t realize was an artist at all. Judging by the scroll bar, I don’t have much email left.
I want to cry.
I scroll, and scroll, and it won’t be long until I reach the end—
Finally: Iliana Vrionides.
I look up from my phone, grinning, searching the exhibit hall for Randall and Sarah.
I want them to be happy for me, too.
It takes me a second to find where they are, kneeling with their heads together.
They’re smiling, and laughing, and hugging … Rhodes.
They’re celebrating with Rhodes. But before long, they’re pulling me into a huddle, too, hugging me and patting me on the back, eighth graders I don’t know and Randall in that awkward, endearing way he tries not to make too much physical contact.
Sure enough, I find her name listed at the very bottom.
When our eyes find each other over the tops of Sarah’s and Randall’s heads, it’s every bit the confirmation I needed:
Rhodes Ingram’s going for the Capstone Award, too.
* * *
Curious-in-Che
shire 9:21p: did you make it in
I-Kissed-Alice 9:23p: yep
I-Kissed-Alice 9:23p: did you?
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:23p: yep
I-Kissed-Alice 9:24p: looks like we’re meeting whether we like it or not
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:24p: jesus.
Curious-in-Cheshire 9:24p: don’t get too excited, Alice.
Curious-in-Cheshire has logged out of the system.
* * *
FIVE WEEKS UNTIL THE CAPSTONE AWARD
CHAPTER 8
RHODES
Username: I-Kissed-Alice
Last online: 30m ago
There are only two Saturdays between now and the project proposal.
Dusk and I can’t find a way to make our schedules work for a face-to-face appointment before I head to Nashville, so we settle for therapy-session-by-video-chat instead. The rooftop garden seems to be the safest place for this—if someone climbs the ladder I’ll hear it long before their head appears over the side of the rooftop wall, and this time of year there’s hardly anyone in the mood for gardening.
The kale is overgrown now.
A cold snap last week means the pea vines are withered and brown.
My laptop is open next to me, set carefully on top of my backpack to protect it from the dirt below. The sky threatens rain like it always does this time of year, but it’ll give way to blue skies by the time the morning is over. The only other person in the rooftop garden is my younger brother, Griffin, but he doesn’t count: He’s the only person who gets a rundown of my appointments with Dusk after they’re over. He’s the only one who knows how bad this really is, and the only one who believes me when I say there’s no way I’m going to pull myself out of this.
“It just feels like the universe is conspiring against me,” I say to Dusk through the computer. I’m lying flat on the ground, and the little rectangle on the corner of the video chat screen only shows a view of dying vegetation. It feels good to be invisible, like I’m not really here.
