Page 8 of Roses & Ruin

“Exactly!” I say, grinning.

“It kills me, dude. Were any of your crew pumpkin spice freaks? I just can’t imagine drinking a pumpkin spice latte and being like ‘Ah, fall,’ as sweat from my upper lip drips into the foam.” Delia glances at my face. “Or were you the PSL lover in your friend group?”

“Ha, right.” I kick at a passing leaf. “Actually, I was more of a…lone wolf kinda girl.”

“Right on,” she says. “Wolves were always my favorites.”

“What about you?” I ask, deeply curious about this new girl in my life. “Where’d you grow up?”

“Where didn’t I grow up?” She shakes her head. “My mom’s a stage actress. I was born backstage at a community theater production of The Winter’s Tale. The sperm donor, some loser on the tech crew, ditched, but the director of the play had fallen madly in love with his Hermione, aka my mother. So they married, he adopted me, and we traveled the country doing theater together.” Delia says theater like THEE-ah-tah.

I laugh. “It sounds so romantic, a beautiful traveling family sharing their art with the world.”

“It sounds nice.” Delia’s face falls a little. “But ask me how many high schools I attended.”

“How many—”

“Sixteen. Now ask me how many friends I made and kept.” Her smile fades and her dark eyes go distant, like she’s looking somewhere very far away. “Guess I have a soft spot for lone wolves because, well, I am one.”

The arts building is gorgeous, just like every other building on this campus. It’s at least four stories tall and made of handsome dark brick, with pointed arches and rich ornamentations of snow-colored stone. Long, arched windows line either side of the front double doors. My little Mary Shelley–loving heart is melting at the Victorian Gothic vibe.

“What the hell,” Delia mutters as we approach. “This campus should be somewhere in the moors of Scotland. Like, doesn’t it feel like you need to say the magic words to get in?”

“Absolutely,” I huff, a little too sincere.

The lobby of the building is crowded with bundled-up students. Some are feverishly glancing at the signs to track down the classrooms. Most are like Delia and me, heads thrown back to take in the array of art displays in the glass cases, on the walls, and hanging from the magnificently high ceiling.

Above us, a school of papier-mâché salmon as big as dogs swim through the air, some posed in a leaping arch, all of them intricate and impressive. Delia and I follow the signs to our studio room number, marveling at the hallways of paintings and sketches, surreal, charcoal, minimalist, and more I don’t have the vocabulary for. I stop walking when we turn the corner and are suddenly faced with a giant mural.

I’ve never seen anything like it. Twenty feet high at least, and running down a great length of the hallway, it’s a painting of the most prominent buildings on campus. But the style is a perfect marriage between a classic Renaissance style and a more grungy, graffiti-type art.

“It’s not bad,” Delia says, surveying the giant stretch of hallway.

“I love it,” I whisper. “I love it so much.” I search for the artist’s name, curious, and find Julian Hughes scrawled in the bottom corner of the mural.

“Come on, heart eyes,” she says, tugging my sleeve. “I don’t want to be late.”

Our classroom is a large studio with high ceilings and a wall of tall windows, flooding the room with natural light. A semicircle of easels is arranged around a small platform stage with a single folding chair on top. It’s not a terribly big class, looks like. About a dozen students are already sitting at their easels, the low murmur of hushed conversation echoing in the giant room.

Delia and I are some of the last students to file in, but thankfully, the professor’s not here yet either. We grab two paint-stained aprons from the rack by the door and find two empty easels beside each other. I catch the eye of a familiar girl three seats away—Bianca, I remember, the girl who helped me into Coupland Hall that first day. I give her a tentative wave, and she smiles at me, waving back.

I look at the towering shelves of supplies, the messy, paint-splattered rows of equipment. There’s so much I don’t recognize, including the scent; it smells like a cleaner, sharper version of my old art room from elementary, that sweet Play-Doh smell of paint and glue, but, like, the adult version.

I imagine I’m smelling something like turpentine, hundred-dollar tubes of acrylic paint, camel-haired brushes, the tools of the greats. It makes my stomach do a nervous flop.

“Have you ever painted before?” I whisper to Delia.

She shrugs. “Not really. I did a couple classes in high school, but it was mostly abstract stuff. I never loved still life or landscape, and it’s not like I studied pointillism or whatever.”

“Pointa-what?” I rasp.

The classroom door bangs open, and the room is immediately silent. A severe, stupidly handsome guy wearing black trousers and a slim-fit black button-up strides into the classroom. He runs a critical eye over us all as he walks to the far side of the room, tossing his messenger bag on an ancient-looking desk.

No way this is our professor. This guy is so…young. Professors are supposed to have gray hair and elbow patches on their tweed jackets. They’re not supposed to look like they’ve just stepped off a runway in Milan. Casting a glance around the room, I sense that every other girl in the room’s having the same thought.

“Holy hell. God, I hope he does one-on-one tutoring sessions,” Delia whispers. I clamp my teeth around my lips to keep my nervous giggle in.

“Professor Brown, who usually teaches this class, is currently on tour.” His voice is rich, deep, and has an English accent. Of course he has an accent. As if he wasn’t hot enough. He sweeps an irritated hand through his thick golden hair. “As his TA, typically I’d be accompanying him. But as a sacrifice for future great artists, I’m here, teaching Methodologies and Methods of Painting.” He narrows his eyes. “I’ll also be the one running studio. Do not make me regret giving up a European tour.”