Same Difference

  “Busy. I started this new graphic novel.” He pushes up his glasses and flips his hair out of his eyes. “It’s pretty much done. The first chapter, anyhow. My class gets to make a bunch of photocopied versions of them to hand out at the big closing reception, which is cool.” His face scrunches up like he has indigestion, and he checks who’s standing around us. “Listen … is Fiona dating that guy from Romero?”

  “Who?” It takes me a second to remember Fiona making out with the lead singer. I haven’t heard her mention him since. “Oh no. I think that was just a one-night thing.” I don’t know if this answer makes things better or worse.

  “Ah. Okay.”

  “Why?”

  He flicks his hair out of his eyes. “No reason. I was just thinking about what you said, about having to make a big statement to get someone like Fiona’s attention. So I made something for her. But I’m going to wait and give it to her at the show. You know, for maximum dramatic effect.”

  “I know exactly what you mean,” I say with a laugh. But then I wipe the smile off my face. “I … I’m sorry about everything that went down that night at the show. I was definitely hoping Fiona and you would, you know.” And the truth is, even with Adrian planning some big play for Fiona’s feelings, I still don’t know if she’d reciprocate.

  “Yeah. Me too.”

  Yates walks by, coughing to get my attention. I turn, surprised. We really don’t talk much in public, but he flashes me a toothy smile and a big thumbs-up.

  “What?” I whisper, because I have no idea what he’s trying to say.

  But there’s no time to tell me, because Dr. Tobin claps her hands in the center of the courtyard. “Gather round, students.”

  We do. Yates drifts away from me and stands next to Mr. Frank.

  “As you all know, this is the last week of regular classes for the summer program. Next week, you will help prepare the gallery for our closing reception, finish up your projects, and clean out your studio spaces. On that note, the faculty met this morning and discussed the outstanding work you have all completed. Each teacher was asked to present the best piece from his or her class, and then all teachers voted on the best five pieces from that selection of work. Again, please let it be known that this juried decision was a very difficult one.”

  Fiona appears by my side. She doesn’t say hello to Adrian. “What’s going on?”

  “They’re announcing the selections for the jury show.”

  “Oh.” She bites her finger. I think she knows it’s not going to happen with Mr. Frank. But Fiona thinks she really has a shot with her Performance Art class. I hope she gets picked. Especially when I see Yates wink at me.

  Right then, my stomach drops.

  “Emily Thompson, Mixed Media, for her collage entitled Thank You.”

  The first name. I am the first name called. And I am so scared, so nervous about what Fiona will say, that I can’t even look at her. Everyone claps politely. I close my eyes.

  Four more names are called. A boy from the Sculpture program. A girl from Jewelry. A boy from Adrian’s Graphic Novel class who I remember him saying was amazing. Each one is followed by applause. I don’t even pay attention to the final name, because it’s not Fiona Crawford.

  I muster the courage to look at her and immediately I wish I hadn’t. She’s got this confused look on her face. And then a second later it’s gone.

  Robyn finds me in the crowd. “Congratulations, Emily. It’s very deserving.”

  Like she’s even seen my piece.

  I take Fiona by the hand and walk away. I don’t even stop to say anything to Yates, who has a proud smile on his face.

  We all board the buses. I know I have to say something to Fiona, but I have no idea what.

  “Listen, I—”

  Fiona shakes her head. “Emily, I am so over this place. Don’t even worry. This whole jury show is ridiculous. I mean, what do they think they are? A real gallery? It’s going to be a bunch of parents there. And all these teachers. On a real First Friday? It’s pathetic.”

  I half believe her. But I figure out a way to make it better. So when the buses park in front of school, I force Fiona to come up to my studio space. “I want to show you my piece.”

  “I’ll see it at the show.”

  “Come on, please?” I want to show her that what I made, what I’ve become, is all thanks to her.

  “Emily, it’s no big deal.”

  “Please?”

  Fiona rolls her eyes, but manages a smile. “Okay, okay.”

  We step into my studio space. But my piece isn’t here. “Oh. It might be in the Mixed Media room,” I say.

  Fiona lingers a bit at the door, looking at some of the other projects I’ve been working on.

  I pull her hand.

  The Mixed Media room door is closed and the lights are off. I step in and turn them on. There’s my piece, hanging up on the pushpin wall. I put Fiona dead center.

  She doesn’t say anything.

  “I call it Thank You,” I tell her.

  She snorts. Then she turns and looks at me. “Are you serious?”

  I nod. “I made it for you.”

  Fiona starts laughing, like it’s some kind of joke. And then she runs out of air. She turns red.

  I feel an ache spread through my chest. “Don’t you like it?”

  “J’adore!” she says, her French accent unhindered by her sarcasm. “I particularly like your use of shadow.” And then she turns around and walks out. The last word rings through my ears.

  Oh shit.

  “Fiona! Wait!”

  I chase after her, but she’s already gone.

  Panic sets over me. She thinks I’ve copied her. I wander out of the school, not sure exactly where to go or what to say.

  Yates sees me in the hallway. “What’s wrong?”

  “Fiona. She thinks I stole her shadow idea for my collage.”

  “Emily, don’t worry about it. She’ll come around.”

  I shake my head. “No, she won’t.”

  “Yes, she will. She knows you’re her friend, not to mention her biggest supporter.”

  I feel a little better. Fiona has to know that I’d never do something like that to her. Never, ever.

  “I don’t know why she’s so possessive over this whole shadow thing anyhow.” Yates goes on. “Artists are inspired by each other’s work all the time. Everyone innovates off everyone else. And it’s not like …”

  Part of me wants to let his voice trail off, but I also want to defend Fiona, even if only to make myself feel better for what’s happened. “Not like what?”

  Yates puts up his hands. “Emily, I mean, you have to realize that Fiona isn’t really that talented. I mean, I know she’s your friend and all, but she’s more attitude than execution.”

  “I don’t understand.” I really don’t. Art is Fiona’s entire persona. It’s in her genes.

  She’s nothing without it.

  I don’t see Fiona all of Thursday. It’s on purpose. I’m hoping to let her cool off.

  Yates and I have made plans to meet at his studio after class, so that’s where I go. I knock on the closed door. Quietly at first, and then louder when no one answers. I press my ear to it and don’t hear a sound on the other side.

  I hear footsteps coming down the hall and whirl around. But it’s not Yates. It’s Dr. Tobin.

  “Emily. Just the person I was looking for. Would you come back to my office, please?”

  “Um, sure.”

  I walk with Dr. Tobin out of the art building and back toward the atrium. I’m afraid that I’m in trouble for something at first, but every time I look at Dr. Tobin, she’s smiling at me, so maybe not. “Your collage was extraordinary,” she says to me. “And Mr. Frank mentioned that you’ve amassed quite a few portfolio pieces. Have you given any thought about applying to our college this fall?”

  “A little,” I say.

  “Well, if you do, I hope you’ll let me know. I am very close to the
Dean of Admissions, and he loves when I hand-deliver talent to his desk. We also offer a special scholarship to former summer program students. You would, of course, be a top candidate.” She holds open her office door for me.

  “Thank you,” I say, and step inside.

  The office is very, very modern. I sit down on a couch made of large fabric circles in primary colors, bolstered by thick metal rods. It looks uncomfortable, but it’s actually quite nice. Each metal rod has its own spring, and the whole thing forms to my body.

  “So, Emily, you must be wondering why I brought you here.”

  I don’t have to wonder for long. As soon as Dr. Tobin closes the door to her office, I see Yates’s portrait of me against the wall.

  “I’ve gotten wind of a breach in the code of our Teaching Assistants. I’m just going to ask you straight out — have you been romantically involved with Yates?”

  “What?” I bite the inside of my cheek. “No. Of course not.”

  Dr. Tobin stares me down. I shift uncomfortably in my seat.

  “You obviously fraternized outside of class for something like this to be produced.”

  “Well,” I say, choosing my words carefully. “I mean, Yates was my TA. And I did ask him a lot of questions about the classes and the college, and once he showed me his studio. My friend Fiona was there, too. You can see her at the edge of the photo.”

  “I need to know if anything inappropriate happened, because that would obviously jeopardize other students’ experience here.”

  “No,” I whisper, but I can tell Dr. Tobin doesn’t believe me, with the way she stares at me over the tops of her square black frames, her fingertips laced together, all but the pointers, which rise straight up like a church steeple and tap tap tap like a metronome. “Who would say such a thing?”

  It’s a stupid question that I don’t need the answer to, because I already know.

  I run straight from Dr. Tobin’s office to Fiona’s Performance Art class, but she’s not there. I check her studio, and she’s not there, either. So I run to the train station and buy a ticket to Fish Town.

  I feel so betrayed. I supported Fiona through everything. I was her biggest cheerleader. She should have believed that I didn’t steal from her. I was inspired by her. And anyhow, her problem should have been with me. I don’t understand why she had to bring Yates into it.

  When I get to the platform, I see Fiona sitting on a bench, waiting. She’s surrounded by all her shadow pieces and supplies. She’s obviously cleaned out her studio already.

  I storm up to her. Words fill my mouth, but before I can push them out, Fiona sneers. “Don’t even start with me, Emily.” There it is, that Big Sister voice. “I’ve got nothing to say to you.”

  Only I’m not the little sister anymore. I’ve grown up.

  “Are you kidding me? I’ve got a lot to say to you! If you’re still mad at me, fine. But why did you tell on Yates? He had nothing to do with it!”

  “Didn’t he, though? Don’t you think it’s strange that you, the girl who was obviously the worst in our class, gets picked for the final show? You honestly don’t think Yates had anything to do with that?”

  She’s trying to rattle me. And it works. But I know I’m not the worst in class. I know that the compliments that my Mixed Media professors and Yates and Dr. Tobin gave me were all real. “It was a consensus by all the teachers. And who cares about the stupid final show?”

  “I care!” she screams. “You knew that shadows were my thing — and you stole them! You can just go back to the suburbs and your perfect life, but this is all I have, okay? This is it!”

  “What are you talking about, perfect life? You saw what my parents are like. You saw my best friend. I don’t have anything in Cherry Grove.”

  Fiona’s not moved at all. “That’s right! First you were a carbon copy of your old buddy, Meg, and then you latch on to me and try to become me. I didn’t know any better. I thought you were just some nobody loser from the suburbs who I felt bad for. I took you under my wing, gave you clothes, and turned you cool. And this is how you thank me? By taking over my life?”

  “Stop trying to make me sound like a bad friend! I’m the only one who’s been there for you! I’ve defended you so many times!”

  “Oh yeah? To who? Robyn? You think I care what Robyn thinks of me?”

  I second-guess myself fifty times in the matter of one single second. But I say it anyway, because I want to hurt Fiona. I want to hurt her the way she’s hurt me. “Yeah, I do think you care. I think you care that Robyn thinks you’re a poseur. And she’s not the only one. All you can do is draw shadows. And you do it because you don’t have any real talent.” As soon as I say the words, I want to contradict them. Because I do think Fiona has talent. I think she’s afraid, afraid to go deep, afraid to fail for whatever reason, but I do believe in her.

  Only I don’t get a chance to say any of that. Because it’s too late.

  Fiona gasps for air. She starts to laugh, even though a few tears fall down her face. “You know what? Maybe I should thank you, Emily. In a way, you saved me. Now I know that this college fucking sucks and that I don’t want anything to do with you or this place anymore. Maybe I’m the idiot for caring so much. If people like you, people who don’t give a shit about art and about what it means to do this … if people like you are the ones that succeed, it’s better that I just give up now.”

  A whistle sounds, and the roar of the train pulling into the station drowns my ears with noise. I know our conversation is over. She’s going to get on that train and leave. I doubt I’ll ever see her again.

  But then Fiona does something unbelievable. As the train chugs forward, she scoops up all her shadow work, all her drawings, and even her sketchbook, into her arms. She walks over and throws everything down onto the tracks.

  By now, she is full-on crying. Hysterical.

  I stand there, my mouth wide open as the train clicks over the pile. Fiona climbs onto the train. A second later, the doors ding closed and it pulls forward. Every single car that passes by crunches the paper.

  When the train pulls clear out of the station, I take the smallest steps up to the edge. I peer down and see a mangled pile of dirty confetti, of colored chalk ground into dust, of a sketchbook sawed to pieces.

  It’s no longer art. It’s no longer anything.

  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 b
oy 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.”