Chloe said, “I know people felt like there was sexual subtext or whatever but is that supposed to be a big deal? I mean, she’s open, right?”
Michelle grimaced. “That’s literally her boyfriend’s bestie. Gross.”
“I thought she hated him?” Jason said.
“Now we know why Jason’s forty and single,” Oscar said.
“Oscar,” Milken barked.
“If she was in a normal relationship, that would clear the stakes up for me,” Jason said.
I stared at the clock. Only seven more minutes of class.
“Also it feels like Theo’s friend’s concerns are valid,” Michelle said. “Is Amira an unreliable narrator?”
“Is this a story or a novel?” Edgar asked.
“I don’t know.”
Oscar glared at me, smiling with all his little teeth. “Is this fiction or nonfiction?”
I didn’t say anything. I’d already left the room where their inquiries couldn’t reach me.
Milken pushed his glasses up his narrow nose. “You should maybe think about these things, Catherine.”
I waited outside Janine’s office. Registration closed in a month. I’d been holding out faith that a spot might open for her course, but I needed to take matters into my own hands. By that I meant cry in her office.
A girl came around the corner talking on the phone. Black knee-high boots, leather bomber that swallowed her, big sunglasses pushing her bob back like a headband. “… no, like I said, you’ll be hanging from a harness.” She paused outside Janine’s door and flashed me a distracted smile. I felt flushed, nervous, letting my gaze fall to the floor.
“She in there?”
I thought she was still on the phone, but then I saw she was looking at me. “Oh, what? Sorry.”
She dropped the speaker to her shoulder. “Ford. Is she in there?”
It hadn’t occurred to me that she wasn’t. Her office hours were beginning soon. “I’m pretty sure.”
The girl rested her back against the wall like she was suddenly exhausted from standing. She was petite, slightly bowlegged. Her silky red-brown face, her delicate mouth, straight brows absent any arch, struck a familiar chord in me.
“Are you here to argue your way into her class?” she asked, not hiding her amusement.
“Unfortunately. I wasn’t gonna argue, though.”
“Oh, she’ll be expecting an argument. If she tells you no, don’t take it.”
Everything she said was the opposite of what I’d planned to do.
“Are you in the writing program?” Maybe that’s why she seemed familiar.
“No, studio art. Though we can take any grad course—Taylor!” She jerked the phone to her ear. “I’m sorry! Let me call you back? Love you. Bye.” She threw her phone in her bag. It slapped something hard, a laptop. She kept fiddling with her nose ring. “You’re absolutely striking.”
I paused. “Me?”
She laughed, looking from side to side. “Who else?”
That’s when I remembered her from Janine’s reading, the girl with the bob at the front.
“It’s the harsh angles of your face. Here—” She stepped forward, running a finger along my jaw. “That’s the bluntest jaw I’ve ever seen. You should get that insured. Did you have a unibrow as a kid? You have mean, pretty eyebrows. You remind me of—do you know Noah Davis? He has a painting calledThe Narrator. It’s this dreamy oil painting. You remind me of her. The woman in it.”
