The Astonishing Color of After(91)

“Go home?” I repeat. “Why did she talk to you? And what—are you going to listen to her? Are you going to leave? Where is ‘home’?”

“I don’t know. I kind of like it here.” She smiles at me. “But anyway. Don’t worry about it for now.”

I have no idea what to say to this. I’d kind of thought that her home was here. That she’d… settled.

“I have to go run my errand. Goodbye, Leigh.”

I look up at her. Her head and limbs and body solid and bright against a shattered, cracked world.

She smiles. “See you later.”

As she walks away, I note how quietly she moves, so small and so light that the broken ground doesn’t make a single noise beneath her footsteps.

I turn on my phone. No new email from my father. My thumb pulls down on the screen to refresh.

Nothing.

Refresh again.

The chime of a new message. I straighten up; the wood creaks treacherously. But when the new email loads, it’s not from Dad.


FROM: [email protected]

TO: [email protected]

SUBJECT: (no subject)



I almost don’t click into it, because I’m still not sure how to feel about his last email. But curiosity gets the best of me. It turns out to be another one of those messages that has no words. Only a picture. A watercolor he made—I immediately recognize his style. But I can’t figure out when he would have painted me like this.

Because in the picture, I’m sitting curled up on his dusty tweed couch, wearing his favorite hoodie, hugging a giant bowl of popcorn, my face open and luminous and full of laughter. The stripe in my hair is blue, but I’ve done blue so many times that that tells me nothing.

Something about the way he painted me is so incredibly intimate. The colors soft and sensual. The careful strokes highlighting the curves of my thighs and the angles of my face.

Heat rises to my cheeks, thinking of him staring at me so closely. As if his brushes were hands that had traced every part of me.

I miss him. I miss the way things used to be. I miss sitting close enough to feel the heat of his body, smell his shampoo. Being able to tease him. Knowing his every thought just by the slightest twitch of his lips or the gleam in the corner of his eye. I miss the ease and the warmth. And the history. Everything between us that made us, us.





92





SPRING, SOPHOMORE YEAR


A part of me had hoped that with the seasons changing and the days growing longer, other things would melt away with the snow. Like my mother’s increased moodiness, which seemed to be dictated as much by the taste of the air as it was by her migraines. And the weirdness between me and Axel, still lingering from Winter Formal.

But it only got worse. I started to feel like I could no longer just walk into the Moreno house. I still saw Axel during art, but that was basically it. And Leanne had started eating at our table, which pretty much ruined lunch for me.

I let my portfolio take over—no art project had ever so consumed my life. I worked late into the nights and often fell asleep atop loose pieces of charcoal, waking up with my skin and clothes totally smudged and stained. I swam deep into the drawings until it seemed that all I breathed was the dust trailing my careful fingers, and everything in my vision became smears of black and gray.

I found my knuckles tracing things I never thought could be captured on paper. The delicate lines of my mother’s depression. Shadowy resentment toward my father. The negative space of our family’s gaps and divides. The bold, heavy wanting I had for Axel.

I made multiple drafts of everything, finessing my strokes, changing the light and dark, altering the focus. All I needed for the application were three strong pieces, just a sampling from a hypothetical series. Three pieces. It felt like a new mantra. Just three good pieces.





I emerged out of my sea of charcoal and paper just as the spring air was starting to boil. I traded my smock for a tank top and shorts and found myself down in Caro’s basement for the first time in ages.

“Have you talked to Axel lately?” I asked.

“Sort of,” Caro said. She sat on a stool in her basement, fiddling with the dials on an old camera. “You guys have been weird with each other.”

“I know.”

“Maybe you should talk to him about it,” she said.

“I’m not sure he wants that. He’s not the most confrontational.” I’d been doing a quick pencil study of Caro and her long torso curving over the stool, but she moved and now the light was different. I turned to a fresh page.

“You should still try.”

I shrugged, even though Caro was usually right about things.

“How are you and Cheslin doing?” I asked. Then I realized it sounded like I was comparing me and Axel to her and Cheslin. Except Axel and I had only ever been friends with a pathetic side of unrequited feelings. I chewed on the inside of my cheeks, hoping she didn’t think anything of it.

“We’re great,” said Caro. She grinned a little. “We decided we’re ready to… y’know. Go all the way.”

“Wow,” I said.

“I had this worry that we would outgrow each other. Sometimes that’s just what happens, you know?”

I couldn’t tell if she was also talking about me and Axel now, but I hated that thought. I didn’t like the idea that he and I might one day not need each other.