Same Difference (9780545477215) (23 page)

I
run up to the street and send Yates a text message.

where are you?

I wait as long as I can possibly stand for him to write back. It could be five minutes, it could be fifteen. It feels like forever. Then I send him another text.

please. i have to talk to you.

I stare at my phone, not even blinking, until it finally vibrates.

space invaded.

I step off the curb, throw up my arm, and hail a taxi. “Can you take me to ten twenty-six Arch Street? It's by the Convention Center.”

The cab driver makes a funny face. “I can, but it's only three blocks away.”

I guess I still don't know the layout of the city as well as I thought I did. I take off in the direction he points, and wish I was in shape like Claire. There's a sharp pain in my chest. It might not be from running, though. It might be guilt.

When I get to the gallery, I climb the stairs fast, stretching my legs to take them two and three at a time. I push open the door and the gallery looks so much different in the daylight. Smaller. Dirtier.

A boy sits at a junky wooden table, lit by the glow of his MacBook laptop.

“Is Yates here?”

“He's in the back.”

I walk down a long hallway, leading away from the gallery and into the divisions of studio spaces. It looks like a weird hotel, where the doors are all personalized with paint and fabric and pictures. The last door is open. Yates is inside with another boy. They're unwrapping his canvases.

“Hi,” I say, my bottom lip trembling. They both turn to look at me. I manage to bite down on it and keep from crying until the other boy exits. But once we're alone, I lose it. “Yates, I'm so sorry!” I blurt out. “I didn't tell them anything. They tried to make me admit it, but I wouldn't.”

“It's okay, Emily,” he says. His voice is tired and soft and somewhat comforting. But he doesn't come and hug me or anything.

I choke back my tears just enough to talk. “Are you kicked out of school?”

“I don't think so,” he says. He touches my arm lightly. His fingertips are icy. “But I lost my internship with Mr. Frank. And my studio space. And my free housing next year, because they stripped me of my RA position.”

I tip my head back and focus on the old paint chipping off the ceiling. I've messed everything up. “It's not your fault. I told them that.”

“It doesn't matter. I shouldn't have kissed you. I knew that deep down, but I did it anyway.”

Then I really start crying. Because Yates wouldn't have kissed me if I hadn't kissed him first.

He reaches out like he's going to pull me into a hug, but he stops short. “I don't mean to be paranoid or anything, Emily.” He steps around me and walks over to the window. The dirt on the glass makes the sunlight look stale. “I don't think we can see each other anymore.”

“Why? What does it matter now?”

“Things are complicated. I don't even have a place to stay and classes start in three weeks! I've got to try and find an apartment I can afford, which is pretty much impossible.” He closes his eyes. It's all too much. “Everything's really messed up, Emily. Don't you understand?”

Helplessly, I say, “But we both have feelings for each other. I know we were breaking the rules, but it's not like we don't have something real between us. And I'm not even a student anymore.”

Yates shakes his head. “I was known as the painter. Yates. I worked really hard to play the game and work my way up through the other students. Only now, the faculty is going to think of me as this … lecherous TA who hooked up with his student.”

“But that's not how it is. You know it's not.”

He looks at me over his shoulder, face tight. “It doesn't matter. People see what they want to see.” He motions toward a canvas, wrapped up in plastic and leaning against a big trash bin and some collapsed cardboard boxes. It's far away from the rest of the carefully arranged pieces. I can see my painted face blurry through the clear plastic layers, like I'm being suffocated right before my very own eyes. “I probably should have left this in Dr. Tobin's office.” His arm drops to his side. “I can't show this to Mr. Frank. It's tainted. It's worthless now.”

“Who cares what anyone thinks?” I ask quietly. “You said yourself that it's all a game, everyone playing pretend.”

“You don't get it. The painting, and what everyone thinks of it,
is
the important thing. It's bigger than who I am. I want to be an artist. I want people to take me seriously. That's what I care about.”

I can tell Yates is getting annoyed with me because I'm not just agreeing with him. I do feel terrible about everything that's happened to him, so terrible it makes it hard to stand up straight, but I don't feel like this is even Yates talking. At least, not the Yates who was with me at the baseball game, the guy who was so many layers all wrapped into one.

“I guess I don't get it,” I say, shuffling backward toward the door. “I thought you wanted to show me your true self, but here you are, going back to the role. That's not you.”

He doesn't say anything, though. He turns back to the window, leaving me no other choice but to walk down the hall. He's sorry — I sense how sorry he is. But he's not going to say it.

I move slowly at first, giving him a chance to come after me, to prove me wrong.

He doesn't.

Then, I run.

I
sit on the floor of my room. The crickets hiding in the lawn sound more like nails on a chalkboard than a summertime lullaby. I stare at my new and improved room. I appreciate the way it looks … but I'm not feeling it.

All I feel is absence. You can decorate absence however you want — but you're still going to feel what's missing.

I want to believe in art. But art isn't a boyfriend who can hold you and make you feel better. Art isn't a best friend who'll always be there for you.

I turn off the lights. I sit in the dark. The art disappears.

This is what I'm left with:

My thoughts.

My doubts.

My absences.

What have I done?

I tell myself that Meg and I were destined to outgrow each other. It's just what happens to friendships where the common denominator is the cul-de-sac you both live on. I try to believe this. I try to believe we were meant to grow apart.

I felt suffocated.

We both felt suffocated.

Now it's over and I'm still finding it hard to breathe.

I wish things could have ended better. I wish I'd let myself stretch and bloom in my own light. I wish I hadn't gotten scared. I wish I hadn't stepped into someone else's shadow.

If only I had let myself be more open. If only I'd made a big group of friends. If only I'd looked for chances instead of changes.

Maybe I could have really become myself.

Now I have nothing. Nothing but the drawings on my walls and a portrait of a me, a me who only has a shadow.

They're not enough.

They'll never be enough.

I
nstead of normal class on Tuesday, all of the summer students meet down in the gallery to prepare it for Friday's art show.

Fiona doesn't appear.

I'm not surprised.

We're all given jobs and tasks, like spackling the holes in the wall from the last show, touching up the white paint where it's dirty or scuffed, sweeping the floor, adjusting the spotlights. Robyn and I go down the lists of students and put strips of masking tape up on the walls where their pieces will hang.

“I honestly can't believe Fiona ratted out you and Yates,” Robyn says.

I tap my pencil against the clipboard, afraid to look up at the eyes that might be trained on me. “Does everyone know?” For some reason, I didn't think gossip would work in the same way here that it does in Cherry Grove.

Robyn looks around the room. “Umm, yeah. Pretty much. I mean, Yates isn't here. And Mr. Frank has been snippy with you all day.”

She's right. I asked him a simple question about where our class would be showing our pieces, and he almost bit my head off. I wish I could tell him that it's not my fault, but I know that's not true. It's Yates's fault, and definitely Fiona's, but I'm not innocent, either. I knew what I was risking when Yates and I kissed. All I was thinking about was what I was going to get. I didn't think once about what I might lose.

I reach
FIONA CRAWFORD
on the list. Robyn must figure it out from the look on my face, because she writes the name down on a big strip of masking tape, even though I don't say it out loud.

“Do you think she'll show?” she asks me as she presses the tape against the wall. “She might. Like, storm in all dramatic and turn this place on its head? I can see her doing that.”

I don't say anything. Maybe because a part of me hopes that she
will
show up. It still kills me to think that Fiona might give up her art forever. Even though I'm mad at her, furious even, I don't want that to happen.

Adrian comes over. “Hey,” he says. “Sorry about what happened.”

“Geez,” I say, annoyed. Everyone
does
know. And then I notice the huge box in his arms. “Hey! Is that your graphic novel?”

“Yep.” Adrian grins. He opens up the box and hands me a full-color copy. It's got a funny cartoon boy on the cover, with two thick black swirls across his upper lip. It reads
MR. MUSTACHE FALLS IN LOVE
.

“Oh my God!”

“I know. I thought about what you said. About making a big statement. I know she's done some bad stuff to you, and she's definitely hurt me, but you have to admit … hanging out with her was pretty amazing.”

“Yeah, it was,” I concede. “But Fiona only kept me around because I made her feel good about herself. I was her ego boost.”

Adrian considers this. “She was yours, too, though … right?”

“I guess.” I mean, I did have loads of fun being with Fiona. She made me feel bigger. “But that doesn't erase what she did. It's obvious that Fiona wasn't as strong as we all thought she was.”

“There are definitely some deep insecurities there. I mean, everyone has insecurities. But we have to work to get over them.” He sighs. “I guess this is mine. To really admit to her how I feel. And not to care what anyone says about it.”

“That is brave,” I say. “Really.” We both wear sad smiles, because we know that, with Adrian going back to Kansas, there's really no chance for this love story to have a happy ending. But for Adrian, that's not what it's about. It's about him making something with the feelings he has.

“Only thing is, I'm afraid she won't come on Friday night. You've been to her house, right? Could you get this to her somehow?”

I really don't see myself being in touch with Fiona ever again. But I want to do this for Adrian. To give him closure. “Yeah,” I say. In my sketchbook, I have the directions to Fiona's apartment. I could put Adrian's graphic novel in the mail. “Sure.”

Something over my shoulder grabs his attention. “Umm,” he says quickly. “I'll talk to you later.”

I turn and see Mr. Frank walking straight for me.

I look for an escape, but I'm surrounded by a crowd, by other students who are quickly becoming aware of this impending showdown. I try to look brave.

I don't come anywhere close.

“Emily, can I speak to you for a minute?”

“Sure.”

He walks past me and I follow, out into the hallway.

“I want to talk to you about something that happened in class the other day.”

“Okay.”

“When you showed your perspective drawing in class that day, I knew you had been lying about your progress. I know you did that drawing fifteen times. I saw you getting better with each assignment.”

“Oh.”

“Emily, you must never stifle your own potential to make concessions for those who don't have your gifts. Hiding will never give you the perspective you need. You can't help the fact that you are who you are, just like Fiona can't help who she is.”

Lesson already learned. But what good will it do me?

He continues. “If there's one thing I've discovered, it's that stifling yourself will only lead to more misery. For a time, I tried not to make art. I felt undeserving. But my life was miserable. I polluted all other happiness because I was afraid to let myself create and change. You have to have courage. Real courage to explore, to fail, and to pick yourself back up again.”

He stares at me, trying to gauge how much of his wisdom is penetrating. I wish it was more than it is.

I still feel undeserving. Maybe I always will.

Maybe I just have to learn to accept that.