I Kissed Alice Page 6

  “Are we okay?”

  “Yeah.” I lie. I’ll need another week before I’m really over it.

  She smiles and leans around my hair to take a look at my work. “What are you working on?”

  “My Capstone project.”

  I want so much to sound nonchalant about the award, but my voice gives me away: Each syllable drips with pride. Pride, and fear, and longing, and excitement, and God only knows what else I’m transmitting that I’m not aware of.

  The way Rhodes talks about these things is always so sophisticated, and I know Sarah sees the difference between us. I want to crawl under something and hide.

  I want this too much. I want everything too much.

  “You don’t even know if you’ll make it in,” she says. “What is it?”

  “Well, it’ll take a while.” I roll back onto my stomach and run my hands over the paper. Seventy-eight rectangles marked in white pencil, waiting to be filled with seventy-eight tiny vignettes. “I need to get a jump on it. It’s something I’ve always wanted to do, so I won’t regret it.”

  I don’t mind telling Sarah about this. She’ll never be able to replicate it.

  “It’s a paper-cut, Alice-themed tarot deck. I’m going to mount the cards in a grid between sheets of glass.” It isn’t hard for me to picture: A lacy, delicate cups suit featuring the Mad Hatter and the March Hare. A swords suit detailing the slaying of the Jabberwock, one card at a time.

  Alice, the fool.

  Cheshire Cat, the hierophant.

  Just like I wrote in my essay, each minor arcana suit is a story arc of its own kind, and it won’t be hard to use this medium to illustrate each of the arcs in the universe Carroll built in Wonderland. I just hope those old biddies will understand that I’m exploring the myriad ways we can use art to tell a story—and not attempting to summon the devil himself.

  “I can’t picture it,” Sarah says with a shrug. “I guess I’ll have to see it when it’s finished.”

  “I figured,” I say, but really I want to stretch myself over the paper so she can’t see the preliminary sketches already filling some of the rectangles under my arms. Something about Sarah’s tone makes me want to wad it into a ball and try something else.

  Instead, I focus myself on sketching in the Knight of Swords card—Alice, wielding the vorpal sword—and ignore Sarah’s presence to my left until she finally gets up and walks away. It’s all an act, though: I can’t focus on my work, or the pencil in my hands, or even the very conceptual basis of what it is I’m trying to accomplish.

  Alice might be on the verge of an academic disaster, but now all I can think about is Rhodes.

  Removing herself from the scholarship means she’s won in an entirely different way.

  * * *

  I-Kissed-Alice 10:14a: I still don’t believe this is something bad

  I-Kissed-Alice 10:14a: Do you really think I’m that bad of a student? Do you think I’m just not trying?

  Curious-in-Cheshire 10:15a: Of course not.

  Curious-in-Cheshire 10:15a: But you said yourself that you haven’t been turning stuff in. Your advisor is calling in your mom to talk to you. It doesn’t take a stretch of imagination …

  I-Kissed-Alice 10:15a: wow

  I-Kissed-Alice 10:16a: w o o o o w

  I-Kissed-Alice 10:17a: I just can’t believe you think this about me

  Curious-in-Cheshire 10:18a: can we please just talk about this?

  I-Kissed-Alice 10:18a: gotta go. Mom’s here

  Curious-in-Cheshire 10:18a: Alice.

  I-Kissed-Alice has logged out of the system.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 6

  RHODES

  Username: I-Kissed-Alice

  Last online: 30m ago

  Cheshire really hurt me today.

  She was supposed to be the voice of reason outside all of this.

  She was supposed to be the one who believed in me, even when people like Randall and Mom don’t.

  Instead, she joined the chorus of literally every other person in my life right now: You are failing. You only have as much value as your work.

  The vultures are circling over your head. You’re done.

  “Have you been crying?”

  Mom has only two volume settings: incoherent mumbling and the kind of pitch that projects halfway down the hall. Today, Mom’s loud. Every single senior in the hall stops in their tracks to stare back at us as we walk toward my advisor meeting with Randall.

  They’re staring at me, because artists who forget how to create are the stuff creative horror stories are made of. We’re only three months into our senior year, but it’s still enough of a contrast from my output as a junior to scare our entire graduating class. What if this is contagious? Can I pass it to someone by sharing a straw?

  If nothing else, it’s scaring me.

  “No,” I say, swatting her hand away long after it’s gone.

  We both know I’m not telling the truth, but Mom doesn’t press the issue.

  Have I given up on myself?

  Surely, if I just made my craft more of a priority, I’d get back in the swing of it, right?

  I wonder if this is what Randall is going to tell me: That I could be an artist again if I tried hard enough. That my grace period here is over, and if I can’t paint, I can no longer attend the Conservatory.

  Cheshire’s scared me, and it isn’t fair.

  This is so like her: She sees a fight everywhere. Everyone she encounters has a chip on their shoulder.

  I’ve been telling her as long as I’ve known her: If you’re looking for crap, you’re eventually going to step in it.

  “Do you know what this is about?” Today, Mom is in all of her blown-out, lipsticked Hot Mom glory: Soft fabric. Touches of lace. Too much eye makeup. Fresh highlights in her naturally dark hair. Skinny jeans and beachy wedges I’d break my neck in. Her breath smells a little bit too much like the white wine she likely downed with her lunch, but she seems to have no problem teetering about in her OTBT-brand wedges, so we’re dealing with a manageable tipsy rather than full-out drunk.

  Besides, Mom is a “lady.”

  According to Mom, ladies know exactly how much wine they can tolerate when they day drink. She’d never show up somewhere full-on wasted.

  Dusk wonders how much my mom—and women like her—hide poor coping skills in the woo-girl, mommy-loves-wine identities they’ve constructed for themselves.

  I think Dusk has a point.

  Mom’s out of place in the visual arts wing—around us, the entire senior class is a haggard, disheveled mess, shuffling between classes and slipping down to the nurse’s desk for Tylenol and a nap. Sarah’s curious, watching from a distance.

  If Sarah’s in the hall observing, then Iliana can’t be far away.

  Cheshire’s prediction—omen?—whispers in my ear like a cranky ghost, and suddenly all I want is to blend into the walls, but Mom is making blending in entirely impossible. Her sweater eases off her shoulder on one side, and I move it back into place. She looks like she belongs at a bar, honestly. Or on a date, maybe with Dad, more likely with literally anyone else.

  I don’t think she realizes I can read right over her shoulder when I’m home and she’s thumbfucking her phone. But none of this matters now, except that wine-flavored dishonesty seems to be the very thing that drives my mom-flavored ire.

  She shimmies until her sweater slides back off her shoulder. “It’s supposed to fall this way. It’s fashion.”

  Mom says this like she’s speaking a language I’ve never heard before.

  Mom isn’t entirely wrong.

  “Who are you trying to impress?” I put it back onto her shoulder a second time, and she allows it to drop again. “You can see your bra, by the way.”

  I can feel people watching us. It’s everything I can do not to make a quote-unquote “bathroom run” and hide in my dorm room until long after the meeting’s over.

  “Jesus, you’re edgy. Normally Griffin
’s the one acting like he doesn’t want me here.” Mom frowns. “You do know what Randall wants. You’re not telling me.”

  “I really have no idea,” I say. “Swearsies.”

  Randall appears in the doorway behind a throng of sci tech–track kids, cradling a laptop in his arms like a stack of books. He looks as disheveled as the rest of us, with his pouf of dark hair bouncing in a curly mess over his forehead and horn-rimmed glasses. He makes accidental eye contact with Mom and rakes a frizzy curl out of his face with one hand.

  “Y’all ready?” He gestures us toward an unmarked door between two studios, then tips forward to grab it and pull it open to usher us inside—a mundane shock after the visual arts wing’s wild, artwork-loaded walls.

  We normally meet in the library. Something about this is especially ominous.

  We’re meeting in Randall’s office instead.

  I recognize the names on each of the little plastic plaques outside the cubicles—history teachers. Math teachers. Science teachers. English teachers.

  There are names I don’t recognize, too, but the ballet crap covering their cubicle walls gives them away as dance-track teachers. From somewhere in the recesses of the giant, open room, classical music starts, stops, and starts again at half speed.

  Randall’s cubicle is precisely what I would expect it to be: The shelves over his laptop’s docking station are open, stacked to the hilt with spiral-bound sketchbooks. The walls are papered with sketches I recognize from exercises he’s guided us through in drawing class over the past four years, rudimentary versions of what he eventually foisted upon us in class. It’s clear he worked hard at all of them, that we didn’t appreciate them at the time like we should have.

  Somehow, I always manage to forget that Randall is an artist first.

  Was this what he wanted for himself, to set his own craft aside in the name of equipping other people? The room begins to spin, and I drop into one of the chairs in his cubicle before I’m invited. Randall settles down next to his docking station to plug in his laptop, and Mom carefully lowers herself into the seat on my left.

  “How are you, Valerie?” Randall smiles. Mom blooms.

  “Oh, you know. Blessed.” Her smile is cautious.

  She’s nervous too.

  “Let’s just get to it.” It tumbles out of me, hard and loaded with sharp edges.

  “Rhodes!” Mom whacks me on the arm. Not hard—she’s never spanked me, not a day in her life—but enough that her fingers smack against my skin.

  Randall takes a long, ragged breath. He grabs his pant legs in bunches on the tops of his thighs and adjusts his position in his seat.

  “We need to talk about your progress, Rhodes.”

  “We’ve talked about my progress,” I say.

  “No,” he says gently. I don’t like his tone. “We need to talk about your progress.”

  Mom transforms in front of us: One minute she’s blushing into her hair and batting her lashes, the next her back is ramrod straight. Her eyes are wide, and she grits her teeth.

  Randall squirms under her undivided attention.

  “Well?” Mom pulls a pad of paper and a pen from her bag.

  “Everybody knows your senior year doesn’t matter,” I say. I don’t like how my voice shakes. “It’s all about your grades your junior year, right?”

  “No.” Randall pushes a piece of paper back and forth on his desk with one finger. “Rhodes, you’ll be lucky if you walk at graduation at all.”

  “You’re just trying to scare me.” I cross my arms to stuff my shaking hands into my armpits.

  “You don’t understand how bad this is!” Randall’s face is red, and his eyes dart from me to my mother. “I really don’t know how else to communicate this with you, Rhodes. Given your current coursework, your best bet is starting out at junior college, getting your GPA up, and transferring into a state school from there.”

  All the blood is rushing to my ears.

  “There’s nothing wrong with that,” he’s saying, “I mean, I started out at junior college, lots of people do—”

  I would be the first Ingram in four generations to go to a state school, rather than one of the sweet little New England private schools my dad’s family favors, and I’m barely going to have the grades for junior college.

  What the hell have I done?

  “Mr. Randall, remember that you are speaking to a child.” Mom’s voice is doing that thing where it’s only rail-thin and quivering because screaming isn’t socially acceptable.

  “With all due respect, Mrs. Ingram, I’m not speaking to a child. Rhodes is almost eighteen, and she’s made choices for herself that are affecting the rest of her life.” Randall straightens his tie.

  None of the other teachers wear a tie.

  Why does he wear a tie?

  “Seventeen is barely considered adulthood,” Mom says.

  “And as someone who spends more time with your daughter than you do, I am going to assert that she does not respond well to being coddled. Child or adult, she needs to hear it straight.” Randall swallows. “Ma’am.”

  “Excuse me—?”

  Mom is honest to God going to have an aneurysm. She’s just good enough of a mother to recognize when her parenting skills are being criticized. Almost good. Satisfactory.

  Randall looks like a squirrel about to be run over by a car.

  I think I’m going to vomit.

  “Mom—stop.” I’m trying to remember how to breathe. “He isn’t wrong. I see him every day, and you’ve been working in Nashville for months.”

  She’s sitting here getting offended because he’s not farting rainbows, but maybe Randall has a point—this is my life.

  “Why didn’t you tell me this three months ago, Randall?”

  “Mister Randall, Rhodes.” Mom throws a sharp elbow into my ribs.

  “Mrs. Ingram, Randall is fine.” He waves his hand. “I did tell you three months ago. And I warned you at the end of the last school year, too, when you ended the year with a D in Composition II because you didn’t turn anything in for the last two weeks of class.”

  He hands over the white sheet of paper he was pushing around his desk moments before. It’s a log of some kind, names and dates.

  A list of every one-on-one interaction we’ve had since the eighth grade.

  The last four dates are highlighted:

  One dated around May, another in August.

  One dated in the middle of October.

  Today.

  Mom snatches it from my hands, and I let it go without a fight.

  “So, what now?” Her eyes dart from the paper to the side of my head, but I don’t dare make eye contact. Instead, I watch her evolve from cherry red to an ugly, apoplectic plum from my peripheral vision.

  I won’t need to worry about college, because she is going to kill me.

  Randall shifts in his seat. “You won’t be happy with me, Rhodes.”

  “I’m already not happy with you.”

  “The only person you can be angry with right now is yourself,” he deadpans. “June Baker called me at the beginning of the week.”

  Mom flicks her glare over to Randall again, and he shifts in his seat.

  This is it. She is literally going to have a coronary and die.

  “To paraphrase our conversation, she wanted to know why you didn’t participate in the Capstone Foundation Award informational meeting a few weeks ago.”

  Mom cuts her eyes to me, again.

  I slide farther back in my seat. “I was there, Mom.”

  In the balcony. Doing my best to hide.

  But I was there.

  “And what did you tell her?” At this point, Mom’s words are only leaving her hissed through her teeth.

  Randall has no idea what kind of relationship our family has with June and the rest of the Ocoee board members. He will never understand what kind of hell he hath wrought if he has somehow damaged our family’s reputation in all this.

  “That
I couldn’t discuss the academic performance of a student.” Randall shrugs. “I think she got the picture, based on the conversation between the two of us that followed.”

  I want to crawl inside myself and hide forever.

  Embarrassed is an understatement.

  I don’t think there’s a word for what this is.

  “June is willing to waive the GPA requirement for Rhodes,” he says simply.

  Again, Mom shape-shifts in front of our eyes: The color fades from her cheeks.

  She takes a deep breath.

  Mom doesn’t smile, but she looks like she could again.

  Meanwhile, every bone in my body screams in protest.

  NO. Nonononono. No.

  I can’t.

  It’s not even that I won’t—I literally can’t.

  I have nothing left to give them.

  “I’ve already told you—” Tears well up and spill over onto my cheeks before I can check them. Mom moves to tut-tut and put her arm over my shoulders, but I shove her away. “I can’t—”

  “Yeah, you’ve told me. Artistic integrity, yadda yadda yadda.” Randall takes off his glasses and cleans them on the edge of his shirt. “You have to take advantage of your connections, Ingram. You put in your work for six years with June and the Ocoee Arts Festival—don’t leave any opportunities on the table. Know what I mean?”

  Mom sits back in her seat, visibly relaxed.

  She knows she’s won this battle. What the hell else am I even going to do?

  “I don’t have an essay,” I say. “Today’s the deadline.”

  Even if we all know I’m going to do it, I don’t actually say it.

  They can’t have this from me.

  It seems small, but I won’t give Mom the benefit of hearing it from my mouth.

  “You have makerspace next block, and I have prep block.” Randall lifts his laptop back off the dock station. “Let’s go to the library and crank one out.”

  “I hate you for this,” I say.

  This feels like betrayal, and I don’t know who’s responsible—Randall, negotiating something terrible with June?

  Mom’s happiness over my God-awful circumstances, if it means she’s getting what she wants? The specific feeling of being saved by the thing that so many artists are desperate for—financial stability, and connections, and people around them who can solve their problems—when all I want to do is be able to save myself?