Daphne took her seat. Benji stared at her as she wiped stray drips of coffee on her pastel skirt.
“I wasn’t going to drink it anyway,” she told him. “If it was Dillion or the trashcan, I choose Dillion. Slightly less waste.”
Mr. Jervais clapped, silencing the whispers that had started up as Dillion left. “Alright! Anyone else want to throw away their morning coffee? No? Let’s get back to the class.”
Dillion didn’t come back. Benji tried to be comforted by this, but instead, he was stuck wondering what the asshole had planned after yet another humiliation. He barely paid attention to Mr. Jervais’s PowerPoint, and he only managed a distracted outline of the fruit he provided for the last half of the class.
He was more than ready to leave by the time Mr. Jervais dismissed them. But before he could follow Daphne out the door, Mr. Jervais called his name.
“Stay a minute,” he said.
Benji’s heart sank. He gave Daphne the nod to keep going, then turned back to their teacher. Mr. Jervais was frowning down at his laptop, clicking through his PowerPoint slides.
Benji gripped his backpack straps. He’d almost expected to find the article up on his screen, Mr. Jervais reading it with that same steely expression he got when he caught students scrolling their phones during his presentations.
“I know I missed a lot of class,” Benji said defensively. “IswearI was sick. I’ll make up the work.”
Mr. Jervais waved at him to stop. He leaned back in his chair, still watching his screen.
“That painting that got sabotaged,” he said. “Did these recent developments have anything to do with it?”
Benji swallowed. Mr. Jervais didn’t have any love for Dillion, but Benji didn’t want to piss off the guy any more than healready did. If he were a few years younger, he’d say yes just to spite Dillion. But Benji was tired of fighting. He just wanted Dillion to go away.
“Maybe,” he admitted.
Mr. Jervais nodded, scrolling distractedly. “Let me know if it happens again.”
“Oh. O…kay?” Benji had been expecting something less… supportive. Mr. Jervais was really changing his colors this semester.
“Thanks,” he added awkwardly.
Mr. Jervais waved at him again, annoyed. He snapped his laptop closed and stood, slotting it under his arm.
“How’s the end of exhibition project coming along?”’
“Fine,” Benji said automatically. Then he thought back to Noah telling him toopen up; the hours he’d spent stressing over his painting yesterday, feeling like he’d vomited his heart onto the canvas.
“Actually,” he started. “I’m having some trouble. Feeling… I don’t know. Blocked.”
“By what?”
Benji shrugged stiffly. “Sincerity?”
“Accessing it?”
“No, like—” Benji eyed the door enviously. Daphne would be waiting in the hall, wanting to know what they talked about. He was going to skip this part. “It’s— I don’t want?—”
“You don’t want people to see your noodles.”
“Pasta,” Benji said. “Yeah.”
Mr. Jervais breathed out hard through his nose. For a moment, he said nothing, just watched the wall behind Benji’s head. For the first time, Benji considered that Mr. Jervais didn’t avoid eye contact because of a lack of respect. Maybe he just didn't like it.
“Every artist has to decide if they want to risk being seen or hide behind their bullshit,” Mr. Jervais said finally. “Pick a side, Caulfield.”
Mr. Jervais’s words were still thrumming through his head when he went over to Noah’s apartment that night.
“We don’t have to stay in,” Noah told him as Benji looked through a takeout menu. “I can book someplace out. Security will deal with the paparazzi. No one will touch you.”
