Felix Ever After(59)

I look up and stare around at the groups of people in the parking lot—some standing by the lobby’s glass doors, Marisol smoking a cigarette. Some stand under the shade of the trees. Almost every single person has their phones out. It could be any of them, literally anyone here.

I’m thinking of giving up, just walking down to Ezra’s apartment, when Leah appears at my side.

“A bunch of us are going to White Castle,” she says. “Wanna come?”

Tyler, Nasira, and Hazel walk with us as we leave the parking lot, heading down the cracked sidewalk, dodging a carton of chicken wing bones and a clump of tumbleweave blowing in the breeze—that is, until Tyler grabs it and starts to chase Nasira, who screams and runs, Tyler cackling.

Leah winces. “So gross.”

“Ten dollars Tyler takes it with him to add to his collage,” Hazel says.

“I’m not betting against that,” Leah says. “He’s one hundred percent bringing it back.”

“How’s your portfolio going?” I ask Leah. I know that she wasn’t happy to be forced into acrylics, when she could’ve been using the summer classes to finesse her photography for college applications.

Tyler has stopped chasing Nasira and they wait on the corner and start walking as we reach them, the tumbleweave hanging out of Tyler’s pocket.

Leah shrugs. “It’s all right. It’ll never be perfect. I know I have to get over the desire for anything I create to be perfect. But it still sucks when I know it could be better. I don’t know—my portfolio’s nothing like your work, anyway,” she says.

“Wait, what? What do you mean?”

“I mean that your paintings are always freaking amazing.”

Hazel rolls her eyes. “You know, no offense,” she says, “but I don’t think Felix is even that good.”

She might as well have slapped me. Nasira raises an eyebrow. “Tell us how you really feel.”

Hazel continues. “His portraits are technically good, but I never really feel any emotion whenever I look at them.”

Defensiveness rises. “Okay. Good to know, I guess.”

“It’s just my opinion,” she says.

“No one asked for your opinion, but all right.”

“It’s nothing to get so mad about. We should all be used to critique and criticism by now, if we want to become better artists.”

“Yeah, but not good isn’t a real critique,” I say. The others don’t say anything. I roll my eyes. “It doesn’t matter. I don’t really care,” I say, even though that’s a straight-up lie. Of course I care what people think of my artwork, and Hazel’s comment stings, a little like hitting my funny bone, the pain vibrating through me.

“I really didn’t mean to offend you,” Hazel says. “I just get a little tired of these blanket statements. Felix is amazing. Like, what does that even mean? And how is that supposed to actually help you grow as an artist? I don’t think we should ever get complacent with our work or our talent. We should always be pushing ourselves to become better.”

I know that she’s right. I guess I just would’ve preferred to hear what she’s got to say in class, when we’re supposed to critique each other and I can see it coming—or even alone, in a one-on-one conversation, so that I wouldn’t have to feel as awkward as I do right now. It isn’t until the next thing she says that I even pause.

“I don’t know. For me, it always feels good to tell the truth,” she says.

It feels good to tell you the truth. I guess plenty of people believe that telling the truth is important—but that’s also almost exactly what grandequeen69 sent to me in an Instagram message. I squint at Hazel as the echoes of embarrassment give way to numbness. What if it’s been Hazel all along? I hadn’t really considered or suspected her at all, but maybe she was tired of my art and wanted to knock me down off my pedestal—or maybe she really had just considered the gallery to be valid artwork. It was the kind of gallery that I could see Hazel doing—art for the sake of art, without caring how her work would affect others. . . .

I pause and let everyone else walk ahead, but Leah stays behind with me. She seems uncomfortable, holding an arm to her side, and asks me if I’m all right. “It was kind of mean of Hazel to say that,” she tells me.

I agree with a nod, but I can’t stop the swirling thoughts that’ve begun to cloud my head.

“I’m sorry about Coney Island,” Leah says. It takes a second for my mind to catch up with the shift in topic. “I don’t know what’s gotten into Mari recently. I mean, I know she’s having trouble with her dad and everything . . .”

I didn’t know that. I’m not sure I need to know, either. Does having a hard life give anyone an excuse to treat someone else like shit? I’m not sure I need Leah to humanize Marisol for me—that I need Marisol to become some sort of antihero in Leah’s version of everything that’s happened. We all make mistakes. We all have a chance to learn and grow from them. But we all also have the right to choose whether we’ll forgive someone for the mistakes they’ve made, and I’ve chosen not to forgive Marisol.

“I feel like I’m supposed to say it’s all right,” I tell her, “but it’s really not.”