Page 142 of Wicked Dreams

Guilt crawls over me. “I’m sorry. I don’t mean?—”

He waves. “Stop. You’re allowed. But if you want to work on it, I’m around today.”

Once we’re done eating, I run upstairs and change into clothes I don’t mind getting paint on. I need to figure out exactly how I’m going to capture Caleb. He’s a riddle I haven’t found the answer to yet, always shifting pieces and parts. A mirage.

I cart down my canvas, my box of paints, and brushes under my arm. Robert has already laid out newspaper in the dining room, along with an easel sized to stand on the table.

He comes in as I’m setting up.

“Do you know why I picked oil paints for this assignment?” he asks.

I shrug, staring at the vague outline of Caleb. “Because it’s a difficult medium, and you wanted to challenge us?”

He nudges me, shaking his head. “It is difficult, but it’s also forgiving.”

I tilt my head. We’ve been working with a bunch of different paints—watercolor, acrylic, oil. I haven’t picked a favorite. Maybe we haven’t worked with oil enough.

“You make a mistake? Go over it. Erase it. Hell, do a painting and then repaint it the next day. You can’t do that with watercolors.”

“Ah.”

“You’ve barely touched the surface here, Margo,” he says. “You’ve painted an interesting background… and that’s it.”

That’s all I had the nerve to do last time Caleb and I faced each other in class.

Robert leans on the table. “You don’t need him in front of you to paint him. In fact, I think you’d capture his essence better when you’renotlooking at him. Go with how he makes you feel.”

He leaves me alone while I stare at the canvas. The space where his head and shoulders should be, filled in only by the shadows and highlights from a few weeks ago, and the boring background texture I tried out on Friday.

Sooner or later, I just have to start. Take a chance.

I take my time putting the paints on my palette, preparing my brushes, lining up the charcoal and turpentine. I mix a few different colors together, experimenting until I find the right shade to match Caleb’s skin.

But nothing is perfect, so I just…

Put a stroke on the page.

So what if it isn’t beautiful? He’s not beautiful—not on the inside. He’s broken, just like me. It comes out in the way the colors clash on the page. I take Robert’s advice and redo the background. The blues and purples I had originally painted, trying to go for anicelook, don’t work.

His jaw comes to life with dark slashes.

I leave his eyes blank for now. I’m tempted to paint them completely black, honestly. Yet, that wouldn’t quite do.

“Wow,” Robert says over my shoulder.

I twist around. “How am I doing?”

“Fantastic emotion.” He leans closer. “Once this dries, you can go back with an artist’s eye and clean up some of the lines. Make every stroke purposeful.”

I nod and glance at the clock. I’ve been sitting here for two hours.

“What do you have planned for his eyes? And lips?”

“I haven’t decided.” Because I can’t see it yet.

He chuckles. “That boy is in trouble.”

“I think I’m the one in trouble.” I stare at Caleb’s face. It isn’t exactly in his likeness—it’s a little too abstract for that. Plus, there are the blank gaps: his eyes, his lips, his eyebrows. To capture the scowl or make him smile…

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