Page 23 of Undone

The first time I read about it, I remember covering my right ear with my hand, like it might’ve disappeared in the night. Then tracing the edges, feeling it and hearing nothing—wondering if this broken piece of me might ascend me to some higher viewpoint of the world. To be an artist in that way.

And you failed at that, just like with everything else.

Even now, inside the yellowed concrete walls of my new art history classroom, I feel a slight pang of disappointment, staring at the projected photo of Botticelli’s The Birth of Venus with “The Western Canon” as the header for our first lecture. It feels remedial. Although my transcripts would prove otherwise, I’ve been an aesthete for as long as I can remember. Art was almost too ingrained into my brain to hold space for much else. Which, maybe, would make a case for why I’d failed other classes multiple times.

“Psst,” a boyish voice hisses, before I feel tapping on my shoulder. My eyes dart to Holden on my left. “Icebreaker time, did you hear her?”

It’s embarrassing to admit I didn’t even realize class had started because I was so intensely zoned out in my head, so I nod and turn my body toward him, seeing a similar pose from couples all over the room.

“It’s a ‘get to know your neighbor’ thing,” he says, slow but not insultingly. His eyes dart toward the whiteboard where our professor has written: Name, Hometown, Major, Favorite color.

“I can go first, if you want.” Holden doesn’t wait for my answer, before launching into, “Holden from Nashville, Tennessee. I’m a communications major and my favorite color is . . .” He hesitates, scrolling his eyes over me. “Blue,” he finishes with a wide smile.

Trying to clear my throat, I adjust myself in my seat again, crossing my ankles. “Okay. I’m Lillian, but you can call me Lily. I grew up in Walden Bay, North Carolina. Communications is my major too.”

Though that hadn’t been my choice.

“And your favorite color?”

“Oh—”

“C’mon, Lil, you have to have a favorite.”

I look up at Toren, biting my lip as I watch his golden eyes follow the pillow he’s throwing into the air and catching, over and over. He’s tall for a fourteen-year-old, all gangly limbs. His skin is so warm and dark against my white comforter. I want to reach out and touch him but—

Shaking my head, I push to stand and lie back on the bed next to him. It’s August—he’s skipped school again to stay with me in the middle of the day after my tutor left and my dad hasn’t come home yet. As soon as the streetlights turn on I won’t see him for hours.

“What’s yours?”

He smiles, turning his head toward mine to poke playfully at my nose. “You already know it.”

“Purple,” I say, grinning back.

“Not just purple, Lily—”

“Violet,” I say to Holden, my voice overlaying the boyish tone of a fourteen-year-old Toren.

“Good choice.”

Holden taps his feet and fingers to some unheard beat, smiling at me in a way that’s impossible not to smile back at. I feel ensnared by him, aware of his charm like an aura, but just as captivated. He’s different from so many people I’ve met before, unreserved. Genuine.

“How did you and Toren meet?” I ask, biting my lip a little after the question slipped from my mouth accidentally. Though I don’t have it in me to take it back.

He furrows his brow, grin still in place—like something I’ve said is both confusing and funny. “He just joined the team this year, last semester. So . . . hockey.”

“Oh. Right.” Stupid question, Lily. “Sorry,” I say with a light shake of my head.

Holden shakes his head back at me, before pointing to the new sticker on the back of my phone face down on my desk. “Is that Van Gogh?”

My heart surges, fingers trailing over the new sticker on the back of my case. It’s not the same as the one that I had for so long it was starting to fade, but it’s close. I ordered it online—one of the first times I’d tried that—before attaching it last night, albeit a little unevenly.

“It’s— A lot of people say they feel a swell of sadness when they look at it.”

“Is that what he was trying to do?”

There’s a swell of something in my chest. No dismissal or heavy sigh lies in Holden’s tone or voice—a genuine question.

I shrug and pick at the corner with my nail, before looking at the spread of his hands on his desk. “Art historians argue about it. Some think it’s religious. Some believe it’s about his emotional struggles. But . . . actually, Van Gogh called it a failure in his letters to his brother.”