The Wicked Awakening of Anne Merchant (17 page)

“I can’t wait,” I stammer. And I’m not even lying. These women draw me to them in the strangest way—not like a moth to a flame, which can only end in misfortune, but like the waves to the shore. Inevitably. And powerfully.

Superbia closes the door behind her, leaving me and Dia alone.

“Aren’t they stunning creatures?” he says.

I can’t even speak.

“Sorry if that was uncomfortable for you.” He shows me to the area he’s set up for us. “They asked me if they could meet you.”

“They did?”

Of course they did
, I think. I’m the girl who outsmarted their former ruler, Mephistopheles, and lived to tell. I’d want to size me up, too.

“Now, take a look at what I did for the artist known as Anne Merchant.”

Half of Dia’s office has been transformed into an art studio, draped in white sheets, with an easel and backless chair just an arm’s length from a black suede chaise longue. A small shelving unit sits next to the easel and displays a rainbow of perfect little ceramic pots of paint. A silver stand meant for icing champagne is on the other side, its glistening vessel filled with a birdbath of warm water to clean my brushes in. Unlit pillar candles are positioned around the chaise; Dia catches me eyeing them up.

“Lighting is everything, isn’t it?” he says.

I flick a look from him to the candles. “You’re not planning on lighting those.”

“Of course I am.” He strikes a long match and walks from one to the next, creating a glowing trail.

“It’s just—have you noticed that candlelight makes things feel, um, more intimate?”

“Sexy, don’t you think?”

Ugh. That word.

“That’s kinda the problem, Mr. Voletto.”

“
Dia
.”

“
Headmaster
,” I push, hoping he gets my point. “Can we be honest?”

“Only if it scares you. You should always do things that scare you, Anne.”

I’m beginning to notice that he calls me
Anne
when we’re alone and
Miss Merchant
when others are around.

“I’d just like to be sure everything’s…Well, I know that some students here have reputations for doing, um,
favors
for extra credit.”

“You mean as Miss Otto does for her Guardian, Mr. Sedmoney?”

I nod.

“They have quite a relationship,” he says.

“That might be stretching the meaning of the word
relationship
.”

“He worships her.”

“I don’t want to be worshipped.”

With a dark smile, he waves out the match.

“Listen, Anne, I was serious about mentoring you. And I was serious about you painting me. I come from a world filled with succubae and incubi. If I say something that makes you uncomfortable, simply overlook it. Sex is a non-issue for me.”

“Just overlook it? Even though it makes me uncomfortable?”

“It’s just for fun. Adult fun, yes, but fun nonetheless.”

“I’m sixteen.”

“Exactly.”

“So not an adult.”

“Do you want to become a better artist?”

I cross my arms over my chest. “Please don’t give me some song and dance about sexual liberation and artistic liberation.”

“Dante Gabriel Rossetti—limited by Victorian morality in his early and forgettable years, but—”

“But revolutionary in his later years. Are you really going there?”

“Why was he so revolutionary, Anne? It’s because it was only as he aged that he realized morals were and are created by immoral people so terrified of the lust they feel for their own shadows that they castigate the unwed lovers they envy and label long-haired beauties
witches
simply because they’d like to make love to them but are rejected. When at last Rossetti surrendered to his thirst to paint sensuous women, it was then and only then that his art came alive.”

“Are you just pulling convenient examples out of the air?”

“That was a good example,” he insists. “I was, in my life, Italian. And, well, Rossetti’s subject Saligia is near and dear to my heart. So Rossetti is hardly random.”

“Well, I’m an American, so let’s not forget Rossetti’s friend and fellow artist, Whistler.”

“What of him?”

“His work was best when it rallied against eroticism. The model for
The White Girl
—”

“Joanna Hiffernan,” he says.

“—also posed for Whistler’s friend Courbet—”

“Several times. And it destroyed their friendship. But, hell, what a way to go.” Dia’s eyes brighten. “On a piece like
L’Origine du monde
. Have you studied it?”

Before I can answer, he darts to a distant bookshelf, which is filled with volumes on De Stijl, American realism, shock art, Ukiyo-e, and aestheticism, and, pulling down two, flips through them. Then, dashing back to me, drops one on a row of paint pots, rocking one until it tips, a mess he doesn’t seem to mind. The book is open to
L’Origine du monde
. I have to remind myself that it’s art, not pornography, and that no real artist blushes to see a naked subject.

“I can’t blame Courbet for painting her, and I can’t blame Whistler for being jealous.” Holding the other book open, Dia flips back and forth between the two paintings in question, huddling in with me. “If given the choice between the dowdy, reserved Jo in
The Little White Girl
—what is that fan she’s holding?—and the challenging statement of that very same woman’s spread legs here,” he slaps the page with Courbet’s painting and turns his sparkling eyes on me, “you must choose Courbet. Anne, you must! If only because your uptight American Whistler thinks of a stunningly sexual creature in such a sexless, childish way. If only for the sake of feminism!”

“Feminism?”

“Yes!”

“Mr. Voletto, both versions of this woman are courtesy of the male gaze.”

“Then explore it—her, me, yourself, everything—through the female gaze, Anne, with your own brush. Right here. In this room. With me.”

His wild and enthusiastic leer runs over my face, and I know at once that studying under Dia could elevate me to a level of artistry I’d forgotten existed and, perhaps, have never personally known. Art fired by passion. Art that begs and pants and commands unapologetically. Art that is, I hate to admit it but can’t help recognizing it as I watch his lip tremble distractingly, the opposite of what I’ve done in my life. I have painted timid, voiceless works within the confines of a hush-filled funeral home. I have painted flat, soulless works under the weight of competing for the perfection required to win the Big V. I have yet to really, truly express or explore myself on the canvas.

“Your purple is dripping down the back of the shelf,” I stammer.

“It’s violet, Anne,
violet
. And let it go. Let it all go.”

I stagger out of our session weakened by Dia’s fervor but—I can’t deny it—hungry for more. It’s with a ravenous appetite I can’t explain that I meet Ben, and, on seeing him, clutch his sweater at the chest, pull him to me, and kiss him, refusing to let him go even when he starts to pull away. It’s not until a snowball hits me in the back that I release him.

I turn to find Molly smiling at me as she shapes another snowball.

I turn back to Ben, and he’s scooping up snow, too. He stands, tells me to duck, and whips one at her. But she’s too fast for him.

“Nice try, California boy!” she shouts. She runs our way and throws a snowball at Ben, catching him just above the belt.

I join in, too. But my next mentoring session is on my mind; it can’t arrive soon enough. When it’s finally Saturday morning again, I show up ten minutes early and endure Dia vilifying every stroke I paint. But even when he scorches my canvas in the fireplace and tells me to come back when I have a better sense of who I am, I eat it up. I want more. I want to be the person—the artist—Dia sees in me.

Weeks pass.

Saturdays come and go. Ben says little about my rekindled obsession with painting, and I say little about how desperately fast his remaining days on Earth are flying by. It’s like we’ve both agreed that if the other person won’t like what we’re thinking, we’ll keep it to ourselves.

The Scrutiny hangs over our heads as November turns to December and Christmas nears.

The Scrutiny is held every New Year’s Day. The entire student body competes in it. It’s one of the few events in the year that gives us the chance to set ourselves apart from the others. Dia’s been talking about it in our sessions almost every week, though he won’t reveal what he has planned. Each year it changes, but it’s usually little more than brainteasers and word puzzles you have to solve.

Of course, Pilot is desperate for me to win it. I need to excel at everything if I’m going to stand a chance at the Big V because, although Dia seems pleased that I humiliated Mephisto, the other Guardians against whom Pilot will be debating are sure to spin my escape-plan-gone-wrong as a failure and, by extension, me as unworthy of a second chance.

“So focus,” Pilot insists when he sees me sketching Dia’s eyes behind my palm. We’re in our daily coaching session in the cafeteria. “How are you ever going to win the Scrutiny like this?”

“You don’t even know what this year’s Scrutiny challenge is,” I remind him as he balls up my paper and throws it over his shoulder. Whatever. He’ll be the one cleaning it up later, anyway. “We’ve been going over word puzzles and past challenges so much, I can barely see straight. Everything looks like a puzzle to me. The opening and closing of a door is starting to become a puzzle.”

“It should! That means the practice is paying off,” he says.

“I can’t help but think I’d be better off with Teddy coaching me.”

“That twisted shithead would ruin your life, Anne. Avoid him. I’m serious.”

I roll my eyes.

“Listen, no one knows what the Scrutiny challenge will be,” Pilot says. “But if you win it—hell, if you even rank in the top— you’ll get tons of gold stars, Anne. You’ll be at the top of the short list, and that is where you want to be even if you’re not up for the Big V until next year.”

“Yeah, yeah. The short list.” The list that Ben’s nowhere near topping.

“Yeah, yeah. It’s just my life on the line.”

“It’s actually
my
life on the line,” I remind him. “Yours is already gone.”

“You’d think you’d feel remorse for having killed me, Anne. This is your chance to give me back the life you stole. I can’t make it up to Anastasia. You should count yourself lucky that you’ve got this chance to clear your conscience.”

“Is Anastasia the girl you murdered?”

Dropping his eyes, he nods. “I wish I had the chance to take that night back. I think about it all the time.”

A tear drops onto the sheet of paper, ballooning the word
liar
rather poetically. I watch him until he lifts his gaze. There’s no mistaking that he’s looking up to see if I’m buying his sob story. Which I’m not.
Same old Pilot
, I think as I leave him in the cafeteria and head back to my dorm room.

Night after night, Molly watches me sketch furiously at my desk and marvels at the number of trees that have to die just so I can crumple pages up and start all over again, all in an effort to impress Dia the following Saturday. Morning after morning, Garnet growls in our workshop, nonplussed by Dia’s interest in mentoring me, to say nothing of her frustration at Ben’s insistence that he doesn’t want to be with her—insistence that even I can’t help challenging. To no success. All I want is for Ben to have a chance at the Big V, but he refuses to give in to Garnet—he refuses to leave me for her, as if the short-term loss of our relationship isn’t worth the longterm gain.

Ben.

It’s only when I’m with Ben that I
don’t
long for Saturday and
don’t
hope the seconds will tick away faster. It’s only with Ben that the arrival and passing of another Saturday means something bad: we’re getting that much closer to his graduation. I’ve taken to coaching Ben the way Pilot coaches me, but, for someone as bright as Ben, it seems that nothing sticks like it should. He takes my energy, smiles appreciatively, and then reminds me that he’s doomed. As if I should give up the way he has.

And, to be clear, he has given up.

“Maybe you should be flattered,” Molly offers as I get ready for bed. “Ben wants to be with you for as long as he can.”

Molly has become the girl everyone goes to for illegal gadgets, which her gramps keeps her stocked with. Instead of taking payment, she’s been stockpiling favors. She is reading through envelopes of them as I groan about the new year being Ben’s last year on Earth.

“No, he wants to be with me for six more months. And then die. And in the meantime? I’m totally getting crazier about him.”

“Aww.”

“Molly, seriously.”

“It’s sweet! You have a boyfriend you adore who seems to adore you right back.”

I do adore him. I adore him more than I want to admit. I’ve never really believed in
meant to be
, but the way I feel just thinking about him, I can’t help but hope that it’s our destiny that we be together. But for how long? Am I supposed to fall in love with him… just to kill that love and live the rest of my life yearning for it? Letting him die would be like condemning myself to a living hell.

I just wish he would put my feelings a tiny bit above his.

My frustration with Ben’s stubbornness finds its way into my last session with Dia before Christmas and the Scrutiny. While the fire crackles, he reclines on the chaise and rolls up his sleeves to trace one of his many colorful tattoos with his finger. It’s my job to study him as my subject, which leaves me helpless to studying his body and gives me good reason to marvel, even in my frustration, as the blue, pink, and red of his many tattoos glow when his fingertip strokes them. I’m surprised to see him entirely transform a red rose tattoo into a Betty Boop with just the touch of his hand.

“Could you please stop redrawing your tattoos?” I snap. “It’s impossible to paint a changing subject.”

“Why don’t you throw that painting into the fire right now?”

“You haven’t even looked at it.”

“Yes, well, I can tell it’s garbage from here.”

Thanks,
mentor
.