her recital solo. You can sketch.”
It’s not a bad idea.
Different is fun. Different is good.
Maybe Griffin is right: The Same Old Thing is the problem, not me.
“I can probably wiggle a little bit on the nude thing.” I could do some quick sketches and focus the pieces on sense of movement…” It’s hard for me to see right now, but in an academic sort of way I understand that this is the next logical step: to focus attention away from the figure, and to point the viewer’s eye to the model in medias res.
It won’t take technical skill in a literal sense, just clever compositional choices.
Yes. I can do this.
I have to do this.
“I’ll bring dinner,” I say. “Is Sylvia’s okay?”
Mom’s and Dad’s voices filter low through the cracks in the frame, moments before a key rattles in the lock. Griffin and I make eye contact one more time. We gather up my mess and bolt to our bedrooms.
He doesn’t want to deal with our parents, either.
I flick off the lights in my room a fraction of a second before I hear the door open. And I’m in bed with my blankets over my head before the door to my room opens and somebody—Mom?—peeks inside. With my blankets over my head, I stare at my direct messages with Cheshire on my phone screen for what feels like forever. I don’t know what I’m expecting, but it only feels natural to be here, waiting to tell her good night.
I lapse out of consciousness like this, in that weird place between sleep and the waking world where my dreams feel like real life and the reality of my relationship with Cheshire being over could simply be fabricated by my imagination.
When my phone lights up again, it’s a phone call, and Sarah’s name is spelled out across the screen. I send it to voice mail and fall back asleep.
6 comments // 45 kudos // 67 reading now
USER COMMENT
Curious-in-Cheshire
I can’t believe you’d submit something without letting me see it first
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USER COMMENT
I-Kissed-Alice
are you effing serious right now
What, I have to get your permission now? Hearts & Spades is mine. It’s yours. It’s also *ours* together. I don’t have to ask your ~permission~ on anything
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USER COMMENT
Hearts-n-Spades-Fan-01
omg our moms are fighting, guys
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USER COMMENT
Curious-in-Cheshire
Whoa. Settle down killer, I just thought we always ran things by each other first
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USER COMMENT
Stay_curiouser1
Popcorn emoji x 10000000
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USER COMMENT
I-Kissed-Alice
Don’t tell me to settle down, Cheshire. Ever.
CHAPTER 19
ILIANA
Username: Curious-in-Cheshire
Online now
Rhodes’s—Alice’s—last Hearts & Spades update sits open on my laptop screen, staring back at me. I’m at home, and in bed, and everyone else in the house is asleep.
I got home from Nashville yesterday.
Which means it’s been two days since Alice—Rhodes—and I were supposed to meet, and we haven’t spoken since—either online or in real life.
Until now, I never missed living on campus—I’ve always understood that finances would never allow it, and at the end of the day, I needed the space. But I would give anything to be physically close to where Rhodes is right now.
I want to know what she’s doing, and if she’s okay.
I want to know if Sarah and Rhodes are talking, and if Sarah is Team Iliana or Team Rhodes right now, and if she’s going to spill the beans to Rhodes about who I am before I get the chance to do it myself.
In a cerebral sort of way, I know it’s my fault, but I can’t feel guilty about it. Months of drama between Rhodes and me has tossed around my mind ever since, searching (and ultimately connecting) with events I remember hearing about when I was Cheshire and Rhodes was Alice.
The “School Bitch” Alice always complained about is me.
I talked about Rhodes to Alice more than I talked about anyone else—not just about our fighting, but about the myriad character deficiencies I have always perceived in Rhodes. Character deficiencies I never saw in Alice.
This is the thing that keeps me up at night: Perception is 75 percent of reality, and now I have no idea how much of Rhodes is some kind of monster I’ve created in my mind because of the way she ruined my life, and how much of the things I believed about her actually exist in reality.
That night at Sylvia’s won’t leave me alone, standing with Sarah by the dishwashers.
You can’t blame Rhodes for your problems forever, she’d said. Her parents paid the school off for you. Are they supposed to pay for your college, too?
What was Rhodes supposed to do?
There’s no way Rhodes