“I’m old guard, Winters,” he said with a wink. “Four years here and you can get away with murder.”
Before I could ask how Ethan managed to score a sleepover at his boyfriend’s, our instructor, Andy, came forward. He was in jeans and a blazer, dapper as always, but there was something about him that seemed a little off. Maybe it was because he was in his sixties and still tried too hard to connect with his students. I mean, all teachers at Islington tried to connect, and most of them succeeded because we’re all a little batshit. But something about Andy just made him feel like a doddering uncle. Potentially because he kind of smelled like cabbage.
Our model, Mr. G., took his place on the chair and carefully arranged his red bathrobe to cover his delicate bits. Give him a pipe and a library and he’d look like the perfect English gentleman: thinning white hair in a cunning combover, wispy eyebrows, and skin that didn’t appear to have seen sunlight since birth.
“Good morning, everyone,” Andy said. “It’s Mr. G.’s last day with us, so we’re going to hit the ground running. After break we’ll bring out your assignments for critique. Sound good?” My classmates gave a couple of half hearted nods. I couldn’t help that skin-crawly feeling I got whenever Andy spoke to us. He just made every interaction so awkward.
Without any further forced preamble, Andy nodded to Mr. G. and went back to his desk.
At that, Mr. G. disrobed completely and the work began. Our warmup was simple and familiar: minute-long sketches in charcoal to capture overall shape and tension. I grabbed a piece of willow charcoal and began to sketch, my arm and wrist arcing across the tablet of paper, black lines blooming under my fingertips like curving road maps. I looked over to Ethan only once; beyond that glance, I was lost in the flow of the line.
The figures that formed were simple and clean: Mr. G. adopting The Thinker pose, him standing on one leg, him reclining with legs crossed. Figure drawing had always come easily to me, which was a good chunk of the reason I’d sent myself off to Islington in the first place. Not many kids my age cared to go to an arts school that promised an extra two hours of daily class time, extended summer hours, required after-class studios, and double the workload. But I did. I couldn’t stand public school, with its stupid cliques and braindead jocks. I couldn’t even fit in with the goths or the geeks or the band nerds. I wasn’t dark enough or gamer-y enough or into obscure music. Though, if I wanted to be perfectly honest, that was only a small part of the reason I came here. Home was filled with ghosts. And here, hundreds of miles away, their cries were silenced. At least, in theory.
You just need to get out and relax a little, I convinced myself as I drew. You’re just stressed. Too much work and too little sleep. That would make anyone a little nostalgic and a little . . . sensitive.
After the warmup, we did a few ten-minute poses and worked our way down in time until we ended in twenty five-second traces, each in a different color of oil pastel but occupying the same space. My hands were greasy and looked like a rainbow had vomited all over them, but the resulting explosion of color on the page was fantastic. Andy paused behind my stool and put a hand on my shoulder.
“Nice work, Kaira. Really nice work. It almost looks angelic.”
He moved on and said something to Jane that I didn’t really catch because I was too busy trying not to laugh over Ethan mouthing “akwaaaaaaaard” when Andy’s back was turned. I tried to focus on the sketch instead. The center of the page had a dark outline of Mr. G. from where his parts had overlapped, but there were strands of color arcing off—arms and legs and arching torsos, so it almost looked like he was sprouting rainbow wings.
“Show-off,” Ethan muttered in my ear. I jerked and looked back. He was standing right behind me, his lukewarm coffee in hand (he wasn’t a pro coffee drinker like me). I swatted him in the chest, leaving a light blue smear on his now multicolored sweater.
“Come on,” I said, standing up to stretch. We had a five-minute break before the next set of sketches. “I need to pee, and you need to gossip.”
“Hopefully, not all at once,” he said. I just shook my head and led him from the studio by the cuff of his sleeve.
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