Little Lies

“Why is that?”

“Because so far, every conversation I’ve had with him has reinforced all the reasons he stopped talking to me in the first place.”

Queenie turns her head to the side, staring off at something in the distance. Her jaw tenses briefly, and she taps her lips. Sometimes I wonder how hard this is for her, because she knows both sides of this story. I’m not sure if she still talks to Kodiak the way she does me, but for a lot of years, she treated both of us.

“My relationship with him was like an untended garden,” I blurt out.

She turns back, a small smile tipping up one corner of her mouth. “That’s an interesting comparison. Would you like to elaborate?”

“Well, if a garden is left untended, the weeds creep in and take over, don’t they? No matter how careful you are, if you don’t take care of it, they’ll choke out everything beautiful, suffocate the delicate blossoms and replace them with hardy, ugly, impossible-to-eradicate parasites.”

Queenie nods. “What other principle does this apply to?”

I think for a moment, putting together all the pieces of my past with Kodiak. “Dependency.” I fish another marshmallow out of the box and flip it between my fingers. “Kodiak became my drug. I did things I knew would send me into a tailspin. And I didn’t use any of the strategies we’d worked on because I wanted him to help me.”

“To be fair, it wasn’t one-sided,” Queenie says softly. “But eventually you learned to depend on yourself again.”

“I know.”

Kodiak was complicit in our demise, determined to save me every single time.

For me, someone who felt powerless most of the time, it was a terrible, wonderful, heady feeling.

But it was me who single-handedly obliterated our friendship. He was the delicate flower, and I was the clinging vine. It was me who broke the beautiful, genius boy with a savior complex—one he could never satisfy, because the harder he tried, the worse it got.

Until it all came crumbling down.____________________

Thursdays end with art, my favorite class along with set and costume design, and I’m done by five thirty, which means my weekend officially starts in three hours.

Sure, I have lots of homework to tackle, but Maverick has an away game this weekend, and River has football, so I’ll have the entire house to myself. No smelly boys, no video games, and best of all, no random girls and no Kodiak.

I enter the art studio, my mood buoyant and rising further when I see the easels set up. I didn’t think we were going to be using them for another week or two, so this is an awesome surprise. In the middle of the room is a beautiful, black velvet chaise lounge.

Professor Meyer greets me with a wide smile.

“Human subject?” I ask, then shake my head. “I’m sorry. I’m just excited. How are you today, Professor?”

“No need to apologize, Lavender. And yes, human subject. We have a volunteer whose schedule isn’t very flexible, and today worked, so here we are.” Her smile and expression are ridiculously gleeful.

I glance around, noting the absence of palates and paintbrushes. “Are we sketching?” I’m a little disappointed. I love working with paint. But any opportunity to work on a human subject is a great one.

“We are. Why don’t you get set up and choose a seat?”

I pick a spot near the front and set everything up, giddy with excitement. The fact that I get to end my week with something I love is awesome. Maybe the rest of the weekend will be just as good. Even economics homework won’t get me down.

The seats around me fill with students, all of whom seem as excited as I am. Once we’re set up, Professor Meyer takes her place in the center of the room. “I know this is unexpected, but we had a rare opportunity present itself and a model offered to come in this week. Today we’ll focus on sketching and shading. I urge you to pay close attention to detail. Your goal today is to capture the raw authenticity of the nude male form.”

A quiet murmur goes through the room. I glance to my right and make accidental eye contact with the girl beside me, who also happens to be one of Bethany’s friends. Her name is Elise. She’s never been particularly friendly to me, but she’s been even more sour since the cafeteria incident. She’s also an art major and doesn’t like that I’m not and still managed to get into the class.

She loves to offer harsh critique of everyone’s work, especially mine. Last week she called my use of pastels juvenile and uninspiring. I think my silence also pisses her off, because I’ve never actually spoken to her.

“Please come on in.” Professor Meyer’s attention shifts to the back of the room, and the class turns as a group.