“Yeah. See you.”
Sighing as they walk away, I try to gather my thoughts, but anxiety makes them scatter on the wind. I don’t know why I feel so determined to find Phantom again tonight, but I do, desperately, and so I collect myself and decide to just roll with it. My intuition won’t lead me astray.
When I make it to the final section of the festival, the area with the display walls, I notice half of them are already empty. The school staff must already be packing everything up for the night. Weaving through the rows, I admire the remaining art illuminated on the walls. Many of them are good, but only a few of them are great. I stop before an especially beautiful one, the aesthetic dark and mysterious. I don’t really understand the painting’s connection to the prompt we were given, but it’s mesmerizing all the same.
“You picked a good one,” a voice that I now recognize says next to me, as if it had materialized out of thin air.
“Phantom,” I exclaim, taking a startled step back.
Stepping back as well, they say, “Sorry, I didn’t mean to scare you.”
I shake my head, closing some of the distance between us. “I—I was hoping I’d find you again.”
“I was hoping you’d come looking.” The way their heavy-lidded eyes squint when they’re smiling is quickly becoming familiar, but now, looking at them head-on, I realize how slight the difference really is. If you didn’t know to look for it, you’d miss it entirely.
“I wanted to thank you,” I blurt out, willing the sudden heat in my cheeks to recede.
“It was nothing, really. I enjoyed painting the piece,” they respond.
My pulse roars in my ears as I mutter, “No. I don’t mean for the matching panel.”
“Then what for?”
Phantom’s gaze is piercing. So much so, I swear I can feel their eyes sweep across my face like a cool breeze. I guess this stupid face paint was good for something after all. It gratefully hides all the blushing, which around atrueartist like Phantom is humiliatingly inevitable.
“For being an inspiration to me all these years,” I say softly. “Without you, I doubt I’d even be painting right now, or at Lizbeth for that matter.”
I watch them tense at my words, and suddenly, I worry I’ve offended them.
“I’m sorry if that’s weird. I mean, I totally get how crazy that might sound coming from a total stranger. But I just... wanted you to know, I guess.”
“You’ve been an inspiration to me too.”
Like a finger beneath my chin, their words guide my eyes back to theirs. The candor I find there burns my skin for an entirely different reason.
I don’t know how to respond, so silence envelops us. It’s awkward at first, but after the initial shock of it, it mellows and quickly becomes comfortable. More comfortable than I could have believed possible with someone I just met.
Several moments pass as we stare at the painting before us. Then I notice Phantom shuffling from foot to foot and rolling their shoulders back, as if to release a tension that’s accumulated there. “You okay?” I ask. “It’s really cold outside.”
“Fine,” Phantom grunts brusquely. Their mood seems to have soured in an instant.
“Okay, um, I guess I’ll just get going then. I don’t mean to bother you.”
I’m three steps away when Phantom asks, “Without your painting?”
“Oh, right.” I cringe.
Why am I always such a babbling idiot around them?
“I have it right here,” they say, gesturing to a large, rectangular canvas bag leaning against the display wall behind us.
A few feet away like this, I can finally appreciate Phantom. They’re several inches taller than me, wearing dark wash denim and a black winter coat over the same white hoodie from the roof. The hood lays across their shoulders tonight, exposing a mess of brow-length, ink-black waves and a dazzle of earrings lining the edge of their ears to the moonlight. The cloth mask is the same as it’s always been, still smiling.
I wonder if they’re a germaphobe? Why else would they wear a mask like that all the time?
“Thanks,” I mutter, returning to claim the oversized bag.
After a moment’s hesitation, they offer, “I’ll carry it for you.”
