Page 16 of That's Not a Thing

“Okay, fine, I’m full of shit.” He draped my jacket on the back of his wooden desk chair. “I just thought you might be kind enough to help, especially since I myself hate art. I’m the dream killer of baby glitter and construction paper everywhere,” he joked, referencing my comment about my shoddy baking skills from the previous night. He picked up a few pieces of poster board and laid them on the gray linoleum tiles between the beds. “I was supposed to make decorations for the dorm during break, but I decided no one cares about the hallway decor. The SRA came by today and told me I was not at liberty to veto my assignment, to put our conversation nicely. I have two days to get it done.”

“SRA? You and the acronyms,” I complained from where I was leaning against his desk. “First the CIA; now this.”

“Senior resident advisor. Karen Bromley. I’m sure you’ve met her.”

I nodded, thinking about the extremely perky RA who was always stopping by our room, trying to persuade us to join hokey dorm-wide games in the student lounge. There was one race through the hallways with an egg on a spoon that Daphne had gotten excited about. Beyond that, we had mostly evaded that overly cheerful go-getter from the fifth floor. Karen Bromley was just the type who would lament the lack of jaunty posters adorning the halls.

“Lu came to my rescue,” Wesley continued, “but we’ve spent precious little time creating motivational artwork and most of the last hour hashing out all the reasons why her ex-boyfriend sucks.”

“The biggest reason being,” Lucy piped in, “that he doesn’t want to be my boyfriend anymore.” She picked up a pair of art scissors and made a repetitive stabbing motion in the air, reminiscent of the moviePsycho.

“Anyway,” Wesley said pointedly, as he gave his cousin the side-eye, “now it’s poster time.”

Lucy hopped off the bed and started arranging a few containers of glitter according to color on the floor next to the poster board. She put down two jars of sparkling silver flakes, a blue and a white, then a pearlescent-looking glitter glue.

“So, Wesley was thinking of doing some sort of winter wonderland theme,” Lucy explained to me as she continued flitting around the room, grabbing at paintbrushes and filling a cup with water. “That was Karen what’s-her-face’s suggestion, but I explained to your friend here that if he does a winter theme, he’s just going to have to redo the artwork when spring comes around—you know, to remain seasonably appropriate. Then it’ll be all green and pink glitter and, like, Easter bunnies or something. So, I was thinking ...” She paused to place her hands on her hips and survey the supplies all over again, but a knock on the door interrupted her brainstorming.

Wesley opened the door and stood motionless for a moment before turning to look at Lucy. When she nodded at him, he made a resigned gesture with his hand and stepped back from the door, admitting the visitor. In walked a guy with light, shaggy surfer hair and skin so tanned that he had obviously spent winter break in some sort of tropical location. As he focused his attention on Lucy, I noticed that his red puffer jacket was much too large for his lanky frame.

“Can we talk?” he asked her in a voice that sounded raw, strained.

Lucy’s eyes darted to Wesley and then back to the guy, who was clearly the lousy ex-boyfriend, soon-to-be boyfriend again, maybe.

“Uh, yeah. Yeah.” She quickly grabbed her Ugg boots and coat before turning to Wesley. “He can walk me back to my building. Let me know if you don’t finish the posters, and I’ll come back tomorrow.” She looked at both of us as she said it, and then she and the repentant boyfriend were gone. And Wesley and I were alone.

“So, what do you think?” He turned to me as the door closed behind Lucy. “Are you game for a little poster magic?”

“Are you for real, trying to put me to work for the second night in a row?” I crossed my arms against my chest in defiance.

“Always. And, if you recall, you refused to cooperate with the baking, so here’s a chance to redeem yourself.” He smirked. “What do you think we can do with silver and blue that will be sufficiently seasonless? I had been thinking snowflakes and, you know, winter frost when I bought the supplies, but now we need something that says ‘January to May.’” He opened his arms wide in a gesture of expansiveness, and I stifled a giggle. “Something that can live happily on the Carman walls until my tenure is complete.” He was trying to be sarcastic, but the glow behind his light eyes told me that he was secretly enjoying this project. He crouched down next to the poster and started shaking a jar of blue paint.

I pushed off from the desk, eyeing the copious supplies on the bed where Lucy had been sitting. In addition to the glitter and paint, Wesley had also stockpiled many other crafts supplies, significantly more than necessary for the job with which he’d been tasked. I saw packages of popsicle sticks, cotton pom-poms, pipe cleaners, paint-brushes, and a bag of feathers.

“Googly eyes?” I asked, grabbing a little bag of the jiggly circles. “Judging from the quantity of supplies here, I think you’re more into this project than you’re letting on. Perhaps even a craft savant.” I exchanged the googly eyes for a bag of ice-blue sequins. “I mean, sequins?” I held out the packet in accusation.

“Nope.” He twisted the cap off the paint bottle. “Pass me a brush. I just channeled my one summer as a day-camp counselor. I dated the arts-and-crafts counselor that year.”

“Uh-huh ...” I looked at him dubiously as he shifted onto his knees and started painting something on the poster. Instead of studying the blue streaks he was making as he leaned across the paper, I found myself watching his form, the fluidity of his movement.

“Toss me the white. I’ve had a stroke of genius.” I pulled my eyes away from his body to find the proper jar among the art arsenal. As I handed it over, he glanced up at me, and I could see some sort of trepidation in his eyes.

“So, do you want to talk about your mom?” He looked back at the poster and kept painting, his brush moving rhythmically across the poster board as he waited for my response.

“Not really.” I plunked myself down perpendicularly on the bare mattress and shifted backward until my shoulders were resting against the wall.

“But she’s okay for now?” His eyes were focused on the strange shape he was creating. For a second I thought maybe he was making a chef’s hat, but then the shape curved in the wrong direction.

“Yeah, for now,” I answered. I worried I was being rude, playing it too close to the vest after his multiple attempts to show support throughout the night. But in the hour since I’d left Sloan Kettering, I had been actively struggling to keep images of my mother’s withered body from flashing through my mind, freeze-frame style. Re-hashing everything for Wesley wouldn’t help. I tried to think of what else I could say to show I did appreciate the concern, but then the image on his poster started to take shape beneath his brush.

“A cruise ship?” I asked, too harshly, as Wesley had unknowingly alighted on a personal trigger point. “You can’t make posters full of cruise ships.” I would not live the remainder of my freshman year surrounded by images of cruises and daily reminders of what had happened the last time my family traveled together.

“Why not?” He stopped mid-stroke, sounding genuinely confused. “School colors, right? Blue oceans, white ships. And traveling’s not a theme that’s tied to any particular season.”

“Why can’t you use cruise ships as the dorm motif?” I repeated, trying to rein in my emotions, unwilling to reveal the true reason I was so averse to the concept. “Let me count the ways. First of all, it’s classist. Not everyone at this school can afford exotic vacations. It’s elitist and the antithesis of Columbia’s message. Second of all, cruises are just plain cheesy.”

“Not if you go on the right cruise ship.”

“See? There you go again. Uppity.”