Beneath The Skin (A College Obsession Romance) (5 page)

Two boys titter in the front near Iris. Someone else giggles, a girl in the fifth row. Some guy in the back says, “Amazing,” but I don’t bother to identify him. I’m just ready for this critique to end so I can take my work back to my desk and get started on the next one.

Linus takes a step forward, doing his usual routine to engage the class in offering their so-called constructive criticism. “Would anyone like to—?”

“It’s very …” interrupts Garnet, whose face is nearly missing behind her curtain of brown, knotted hair, “sexual …?”

“Yes, right,” agrees Linus. “It’s … well, it’s quite an interpretation of the assignment, to say the least.”

“I thought we were supposed to draw a cat,” someone mumbles.

“It
is
a cat,” Garnet retorts, squinting at my work, leaning so far forward that the desk creaks beneath her weight.

“A cat with big human boobies,” says a bigmouthed guy, fascinated.

“And her legs are parted,” someone else puts in, recoiling.

The comments keep coming like tennis balls, back and forth.

“She looks like the billboard graphic to some cat brothel in … in, like, some parallel world run by cats.”

“Sick.”

“Is that nail polish on her claws? I can’t tell.”

“It’s like Playboy Cat.”

“It makes me feel sad, actually,” offers a guy with three nose rings whose voice is as small as a sigh. “Cat can’t pay rent. Resorts to catcalls on the cat corner with the other cat prostitutes.”

A girl with a nasally voice speaks up from the middle of the room. “No, this is something else. Something political. Feminist? Or it’s like, scrolling through hundreds of cat pics on Facebook, and … Or maybe it’s about how everything’s commercial now. Advertising. Billboards.”

“Everything is sex, sex, sex,” someone adds, picking up on her vein in agreement.

“If we could sexualize natural disasters and monetize every tragedy that goes down in the world …”

“We do.”

Linus, through all the commentary, seems to visibly gather patience before addressing them. “What do you think about her
technique?
” he offers, guiding the critique with shifting eyes. “Is there, perhaps, some way she might have better conveyed her message? Is there anything you see that deters from that message?”

I love how effectively my
Pussy
caught him off-guard. And while the class continues to pull my work apart, arguing about what I’m trying to say or what my boob-bearing cat means, I find my mind wandering to a picture I remember presenting my sixth grade art class. I wore a bright green dress that day and I smiled proudly when the teacher praised me in front of the room for my watercolor painting of a girl hugging an enormous dog by her side. Even sitting, the big white dog still towered over the girl. It was a beautiful picture, and if the bitches on the bus hadn’t torn it apart, I might’ve framed it when I got home. When my mom asked where my project had gone, I lied and said the teacher loved it so much, she kept it and framed it in the classroom.

Here I am, standing in front of a class and totally
not
protecting anyone’s feelings anymore.

“My problem is, it’s too fucking obvious.”

Everyone’s heads turn at the criticism, which had come from pink-haired Iris in the front. Her arms are crossed, legs are crossed, and eyes are squinted in mild scrutiny.

“Care to expound?” offers the professor.

She starts
expounding
before he even finishes the question. “It’s so literal. Cat. Sex. Boobs. Great, thank you, my mind is so stimulated. Where’s the creativity? Where’s the originality? I swear I saw a meme of this very thing in my Twitter feed last night.”

“Let’s be constructive,” Linus coaches her. “How do you feel she might have better conveyed—”

“I’m not going to do the work for her,” blurts Iris, crossing her legs the other way.

I pay her words as much mind as they deserve: none.

Linus itches his beard, studying my work. “Perhaps this picture is … providing us with the problem. And maybe what it lacks is a solution.”

I can’t mask the smirk that comes over my face. “Solution?”

“Your picture …”

“
Pussy
,” I correct him, because he might as well say the name.

He smiles, his every word gentle and carefully chosen. “
Pussy
… is asking us, the viewers, a question. Yes? Perhaps what we’re lacking from your work is the answer.”

“Oh. I see.” I consider the room of agreeing faces for a moment, then turn to my professor again. “Should I provide a spoon with my picture, then?”

Linus doesn’t follow. “A spoon?”

“Yeah. So you can spoon-feed yourself my work instead of having to think on a
solution
or an
answer
on your own,” I spit back. “God forbid my art causes anyone to think for themselves. Isn’t that the point?”

Iris blows air through her lips, rolling her eyes. “I love how you pass this pretentious crap off as ‘art’,” she mutters, making air quotes with her fingers.

The class is unrested for a moment, stools shifting and a whisper of scandal bursting here and there. I toss my hair at all of it and grab my work off the easel, refusing for it to be judged any further by these elementary morons. I head for the door.

“Nell.”

I stop only because it’s Linus who says my name. I turn, allowing him my last ounce of patience.

“Sometimes we must hear the opinions of others. It’s the only way we can grow as artists, don’t you agree? It’s important to process the—”

“I’ve processed enough,” I say, cutting him off.

He lifts his brow, surprised by my lip, I assume. Then, with a tilt of his head, he asks, “Do you know when an artist dies?”

I stare at him, deadpan. “Is this some kind of knock-knock joke? How many artists does it take to screw in a light bulb? What are you getting at?”

“Do you know when an artist dies?” he repeats.

I frown, then humor him. “When?”

“When she thinks she has nothing left to learn.”

The heads in the class turn slowly to face me, as if they’re afraid of my reaction to his frigid last words to me. The clench I have on my artwork tightens. My eyes narrow, hating everyone in the room in an instant, and suddenly I’m in sixth grade again clutching a picture of a girl cheerily hugging an enormous white dog. I’m in sixth grade and I’m wearing that bright green dress, feeling so proud that I could burst, and can’t wait to take my pretty picture home to show my mom—a pretty picture she’d never see.

I miss that girl in the bright green dress.

I let the door shut loudly behind me as I leave. When I pass the nearest trash bin, I throw my
Pussy
into it, then shove out of the double doors and into the courtyard. Ten seconds and a deep breath later, I slip back into the building, return to that same trash bin, and pull my work right back out, smoothing it gently against the wall. The longer I look at it, the more I start to calm down. One deep breath in, one deep breath out, and I give my deranged, whorish cat a soft smile.

I really, really miss that girl in the bright green dress.

Back outside, there’s something about passing through the tunnel that has me thinking about that guy named Brant again. Instantly, the cloud of bitterness around me parts, disintegrating to let in the sunlight. That sunlight happens to be his cocky face, and the further the clouds fade, the more of him I see: his smooth toned pecs, his rippling abs, his taut thighs and shapely calves.

His big dick.

I find myself smiling suddenly, all the anger from my art class gone in an instant. The girl in the green dress is very much alive; I have to believe that. The guy named Brant, though I know him for precisely what he is, is also the only guy who’s dared to breach my bubble in a very long time. Everyone else is too intimidated. Everyone else prefers to stare at me from a distance and whisper to their friends. I can only imagine what they say.
“She’s a witch,”
I’m sure I’ve heard.
“She sacrificed her own sister for some Satanic blood ritual!”
I wouldn’t doubt they’ve said that, too.
“She keeps one of her ex-boyfriends in a basement and cuts off a tiny piece of him every morning to put in her breakfast cereal!”

Maybe I made that last one up.

The point is, I have no idea who the hell that goofball womanizer-wannabe Brant is or where he came from, but I’m determined to test him at every opportunity, no matter how adorable or sexy or hot I think he is—and no matter how strong he comes on to me.

He wants to have fun? He’s going to learn fast that I get my fun first.

When I emerge from the other side of the tunnel, I sit down on the grassy knoll outside the psychology building and pull out my phone. After tapping her face on the screen, I bring it to my ear.

“Bitch, please,” is the first thing Minnie says. “Again?”

I sigh. “They were talking shit about
Pussy
and just weren’t getting it. I’m so ready to get the hell out of this school.”

“You’ve walked out of that class, like, ten times already.”

“We haven’t even had ten classes yet. School year’s just begun.”

“Nell. How many times do I have to say it? Don’t let the world ruin your art. Let your
art
ruin the
world
.”

I sigh and kick something in the grass. If it weren’t for this one person I have in my ear right now, I’d be pretty convinced that there wasn’t a person left on this planet who wasn’t totally put-off or offended by my very existence. People don’t like me. I don’t easily make friends and I live alone. Maybe that’s why I’m so good with animals.

Maybe Brant’s just a big, dumb animal.

“Nell?”

I bite a finger and rue the day I quit smoking; I could really use one right about now. “I need to leave this campus. You coming to get me?”

“No, I have that thing with Crystal, remember? Besides, I’m stuck on I-10, sweetie.
HELLO, WELCOME TO MY LANE, ASSHOLE.
Sorry. I’m an hour away pushing through Houston traffic. Listen, I’m all about you getting out of that school, but I want you to be carrying a degree when you do. Don’t just drop out like I did.”

I can’t stop picturing Brant sitting on that stool in front of me naked as his birthday—except I doubt he had that many muscles when he was born. It’s impressive, to be as slender as he is, yet to be so toned and cut with muscle in every curve of his sinewy body.

He is such a lean, mean cut of meat.

“Remember the nude model I told you about last night?”

“Yeah. The one with the big dong. How can I forget?”

I swallow a chuckle. “I was thinking of taking him to see
Object
. You know, the piece for my—”

“Oh, yes!” she cuts me off excitedly. “For your thing this weekend!”

“Right, my thing this weekend.”

“Do you think you’ll get into the End Of Year Showcase? You
have
shown your latest work to Diane and Jacquelyn, haven’t you?”

I grip the phone a bit tighter at her words, glancing off as a stray breeze catches my face and tosses my hair. “Diane’s always been good with me. It’s Jacquelyn whose taste is questionable.”

“Now, now …”

“It is,” I argue before she’s had a chance to say anything. “She has the emotional depth of a doorknob and wouldn’t know true artistry or innovation if her face were made out of it.”

“Considering the amount of makeup she wears, it
is
made out of it.”

“I’m going to have a piece in the showcase,” I go on. “There’s no doubt in my mind. The only question is, will they let me show the piece
I
want to show? Or will they censor and silence me?”

“I wouldn’t recommend offering them
Pussy
.”

“But
Object
, maybe …”

“Nell. You’re pushing it.”

“That’s what I’m made to do, Minnie,” I retort, pulling hair behind my ear to get it out of my face as the wind has its way with it. “Push. It’s an artist’s responsibility. If you’re not pushing, then you’re being pushed. And anyone in a crowded subway station will tell you, unless you’re making an effort to push through the bodies, you’re gonna miss the train.” I smirk knowingly. “And I’m
not
missing the train.”

“Well,” grunts Minnie, unimpressed, “if you’re feeling all that fiery inspiration, I’m not going to stop you. I hope your new big-dong friend enjoys
Object
as much as you do. Maybe he’ll inspire your next piece, the one you submit for the End Of Year Showcase, provided he survives you long enough to inspire. He sounds like a tasty drumstick.”