I’m not good. I’m the furthest thing from good.
There on that rooftop, with the city alive around us, Alex slid her fingers along my cheek and stepped closer and kissed me. A breeze was picking up and my wineglass was shaking in my hand, but Alex was kissing me. Her lips tasted like chocolate.
But I can’t think about her anymore. I can’t remember that kiss now.
I don’t want to.
—
I’d decided that for my elective this year, I would take Art History.
It was a choice I made on impulse that I came to regret after the final two weeks of summer, watching my mother entertain a dozen art curators in our living room, giving them tours of our gallery—the walls repainted and hung with fresh art, no evidence of violence, even though it hadn’t yet been a month since my mother took a knife to her collection of priceless paintings and pushed over sculptures, shattering them on the marble floor.
I’d hidden in my room while she shouted and raged and broke things, and when I had finally ventured downstairs again I’d found her crouched in the middle of the wreckage, sweeping porcelain shards into a dustpan like they were nothing but spilled sugar.
“Come help me, darling,” she’d said, her words still angled and blurry from all the wine she’d had after dinner, and I didn’t have a choice.
I’m not interested in art anymore, but it’s too late to change my schedule. The first two classes, we went over the syllabus, and the prospect of all those looming projects and essays made me want to put my head in my arms and go to sleep.
Before last summer, I had vaguely anticipated all of us traipsing down the halls of an art museum in Kingston talking about patterns of brushstrokes and pigments mixed from arsenic. Now all I envision is endless hours of slides and falling asleep in a dim room to theclick-clickof an overhead projector.
I dread this class more than the rest, primarily because the syllabus says we will discuss our project assignments today. The wordgroupisn’t explicitly appended before the wordproject,but it’s there nonetheless.
I slip into the room minutes before the bell, past our instructor, an emaciated woman with bird’s-nest hair and a fringed shawl, standing at the head. I remember thinking on the first day that the instructor looked like she might have emerged from between time, a relic of Dalloway’s witchiest years: the reincarnation of Beatrix Walker or Cordelia Darling.
Even now I wonder if I’d be able to tell. If she’d been possessed by the spirit of one of those dead girls, if she’d performed her own rituals in the dark, calling up spirits she didn’t understand, spirits that would never leave her alone, would I scent it in the air like fine perfume?
I claim a seat near the windows, sufficiently far from the center of the room that I hope to go unnoticed if this is one of those group projects that lets students pick their own partners. I’ll happily accept the dregs of who’s left after all the rich coven girls have been claimed.
I’ve just settled in and opened my laptop when I glance over and spot Ellis Haley sitting at one of the other desks, a plain black notebook in front of her and a fountain pen in hand. She must sense me watching, because she meets my gaze and one corner of her mouth quirks up before the instructor raps her knuckles on the chalkboard.
We begin inauspiciously, with a question—What is the history of art?—and a series of definitions. The project summary, when it’s distributed, isn’t as bad as I’d feared. Therewillbe museum visits, even if most of them look as if they’re meant to be done independently. And the project isn’t due until the end of the semester.
“With your partner,” the instructor says, “you will choose two works of art, and collaboratively you will write a research paper comparing these two works, situating them in their respective historical contexts. This is not the kind of project you can put off until finals week. To get a good grade, you will have to do extensive reading and research both into the construction of the works as well as their artists’ biographies, the sociocultural issues of their time, and how the works entered into dialogue with their contemporary societies. My standards will be high.”
I wonder how broadly she has construed the termart—if I might be allowed to use architecture, or a book of George Eliot essays.
Or I could write about art and the destruction thereof. About my mother’s hand holding that knife, the sound canvas makes when it rips.
“I’ve randomly paired you up, with one group of three since we have an odd number….”
The instructor reads off her list. Ellis is teamed up with Ursula Prince, who has an expression on her face like she’s won an award; I’m assigned Bridget Crenshaw. The moment the instructor says my name, Bridget’s hand snaps into the air.
“I can’t work with Felicity,” Bridget says without even waiting to be called upon. “She makes me uncomfortable.”
That’s code forI won’t work with a girl who killed her best friend.
Under the desk, my hands clench into fists as every face in the room turns to stare at me. Bridget’s pink-lipsticked mouth is set in a mean smile, and no—I immediately know exactly what this is. It has nothing to do with Alex. It has everything to do with the fact that Bridget applied to Godwin House every year and never got in, and since Alex and I were the queens of Godwin House, that became our fault. As if we’d hoarded our popularity just to make sure Bridget never got any. Never mind that Bridget is part of the Margery coven; never mind that Bridget had doubtless been part of the decision to excise me from that club.
I’m not queen anymore. This is a coup.
“I’ll be Felicity’s partner,” a familiar voice says.
I look.
Ellis has one hand half raised, her pen thrust behind her ear. Ursula Prince, to her left, looks deeply disappointed.
The Art History teacher makes a mark on her clipboard. “Very well. Bridget, you can work with Ursula. Unless you have a problem with Miss Prince, too?”
