Harder (Caroline & West #2)(45)

“Or maybe you are afraid to take up too much space in the world,” she says. “I think for my class, you should be as wasteful as you can be. Cut up all the paper. Make the biggest paintings. Then we will see what you can do, hmm?” She leaves me alone after that. I push my triangles around, searching for the best arrangements. In the sketchpad I’m required to keep, I jot down some guesses for number values and use them to predict which colors will be the best matches. I’ll try them out on Frankie later, see if I can trick her with them. Then I’ll do bigger versions of the best ones for my portfolio.

It’s a better approach, more logical than Rikki’s.

It doesn’t have anything to do with how much space I want to take up in the world.

Outside after class, I’m thinking about whether all studio art classes come with a side of psychoanalysis or if it’s just Rikki’s art-therapist thing, when I almost walk into Krishna.

I try to go around him. He blocks me.

I feint to the other side, spin, and head off in a different direction, annoyed because I don’t want to be this guy, but I am this guy, and I wish he’d let me alone.

“In case you’re wondering,” he says, jogging up behind me, “I’m not giving up.”

“I’ve got class.”

“That was your last one. Now you’re going home to study, and then you’ve got work.”

“What are you, stalking me?”

“I asked Caroline.”

He runs a few steps to catch up. There’s a lot of foot traffic on the path because class just let out, and in order for Krishna and me to walk side by side, everybody who’s coming the other way has to step off into the snowbank and get their ankles wet.

Krishna clearly doesn’t give a f*ck.

I kind of like that about him.

“I’m having a party,” he says. “For my birthday. I want you to come.”

“I can’t.”

“You’re supposed to ask when it is in order to make your excuse more plausible.”

“When is it?”

“Tomorrow night.”

“Oh, tomorrow night. I can’t.”

He tries out a signature my-shit-doesn’t-stink Krishna grin on me. The wind’s gusty, blowing his black hair around, making him look like some kind of Desi movie star. “Sure you can.”

“Fine. I don’t want to.”

“How come?”

“I’m busy.”

“You’re always busy. Think of some other excuse, because I’m never going to take that one from you.”

“I hate parties.”

“Yeah, but this is my birthday. You’ve got to make sacrifices for your friends on their birthdays.”

“I don’t have to do anything.”

“There’s a party at Minnehan at eight, so we’re going to kick ours off at ten. It’s at the house—you know where I’m living?”

Where Caroline’s living. Of course I know.

“I can’t make it. Sorry.”

“Try.”

I glance at him. He’s not smiling now. He’s got his hands shoved in his pockets, his dark eyebrows drawn in against the wind and maybe against whatever it is he’s feeling right now, which is strange because Krishna usually makes out like he doesn’t feel anything.

“I can’t leave my sister to go to a house party.”

“Can’t you find someone to watch her?”

Laurie and Rikki have offered more than once. “Even if I could, what am I going to tell her, ‘Look, I know you hardly see me and you haven’t got any friends or anything, but I’m going to be at this house party tonight for some guy you’ve never met’s birthday, don’t wait up’?”

“I’ve met your sister.”

“When?”

“Caroline brings her by. She’s cute.”

Irrational jealousy grips me. Jealousy of Frankie for having seen Caroline’s place. Of Krishna for hanging out with my sister while I’m at work.

“Look, I don’t think it’s gonna happen. But happy birthday, all right?”

He stops. Just stops walking right in the middle of the path, and I keep going for a few steps, but it turns out I can’t leave him there like that.

I’ve been trying to leave him since I left Putnam last spring, and every time I cut him out of my life I feel crueler, but I’m accomplishing nothing. It’s like he’s impervious.

Except I know he’s not impervious.

Krishna hasn’t got that many friends. Not real friends. The number of guys Krishna has ever spent a night at home with, drinking and watching basketball and doing more or less nothing—I’m pretty sure it’s just one.

The number of guys who know what his home life is like, his * father who thinks if he doesn’t take over the family company in India he’s a complete failure as a human being—also one.

I stop moving.

“It’s not all right,” he tells me.

“I know.”

“I’m not sure you do. You’ve been back in town two months, and it’s not f*cking all right, the way you’re acting.”

“I know.”

“Then why don’t you do something about it?”