Page 5 of Calculated Risk
"I don't hate him."
"You just told him to get the hell out of your gallery after he offered to help."
The details come into sharp focus in that hyperaware way that happens when emotions run high. The particular quality of the light. The ambient sounds that normally fade into background noise. The temperature of the air against my skin.
"That's different. He's—" I stop. How do I explain Marcus Chen?
"He's what?"
"He's perfect and I'm a mess. He looks at me like I'm a problem that needs solving instead of a person." I pick at a dried paint stain on my overalls. "Do you know how exhausting it is? Being around someone who makes you feel like you're doing everything wrong just by existing?"
"I don't think that's what he's doing."
"Then what is he doing? Because he's been avoiding me for three years, Isla. Three years. I thought maybe I'd done something to offend him freshman year, but no. He just decided I wasn't worth his time." I have no idea what I did to him. At one party we were talking, joking, and I really thought he was nice, someone who I might even go on a date with, and then he showed me he’s just like the other boys on campus. A player, a boy who doesn’t care about anything but his dick. He walked away from the party with one of my friends, and it crushed me. Since that night I’ve hated him.
"Or," Isla says carefully, "he decided you were too dangerous to his carefully controlled life."
"What's that supposed to mean?"
"It means Marcus Chen doesn't avoid problems. He solves them. But you? He avoids you. Which suggests you're not a problem. You're something else entirely."
I don't want to think about what"something else"might mean. I don't want to remember freshman year, when I first saw Marcus across the gallery at that opening night event.
Wearing a suit, looking uncomfortable and out of place among the artists and their messy emotions. But he'd been studying my painting, really studying it with an intensity that made my breath catch.
I approached him. Asked what he thought.
He'd looked at me with those dark, careful eyes and said: "It makes me feel something I don't have words for."
"That's kind of the point of art," I'd replied.
"I don't like not having words for things."
"Then maybe you should feel more and think less."
He'd smiled, this small, uncertain smile and for a moment, I'd thought...
But then his phone rang. Someone needing his help with something and he'd excused himself and left. And after that, every time I saw him on campus, he'd find a reason to be somewhere else.
Three years of careful avoidance. Three years of wondering what I'd done wrong.
"I need to focus on the show," I tell Isla. "Not on Marcus Chen and whatever his deal is."
"Fair. But Lilah? He was taking photos. Of the damage. I saw him."
"So?"
"So Marcus doesn't do anything without a reason. He's already planning something."
"I don't want his plans. I want—" I stop.
What do I want?
I want to rewind twelve hours and stop whoever did this. I want my art back. I want to graduate. I want to not feel like I'm drowning in impossible odds.
"I want to figure out who did this," I say finally. "Because this wasn't random. Someone knew exactly which pieces to destroy. Which sculptures to break. This was personal."
"Do you have any ideas? Anyone who might want to sabotage you?"
