Page 41 of Stranded

Alph pushes himself up on an elbow, frowning with genuine confusion. “Why do you think they’ll do better?”

“They always do. Especially last year, when the teachers started marking us tougher. I try to come up with original ideas, and they do something similar that looks way better.”

Alph grunts. “That doesn’t make sense. You’ve got ten times the imagination of anyone I know.”

“Yeah. But I don’t have the same technical skills.”

It stings my pride to admit, but I’ve always been more of a designer than a maker. I’m always the one who manages to do a seam inside-out, or forget that I’ll need a zipper in the back of a dress.

“I didn’t know how to drive a ferry until, oh… six months ago.” Alph smiles up at me. “You can learn fast.”

“Yeah. My roommates got better really quickly once they got a studio and started working on their brand,” I roll my eyes. “But that’s not what worries me… it’s the concept. What if they keep coming up with my ideas, but making them better?”

Wait.

I stop and stare across the water. My brain is whirring at a thousand miles an hour.

That’s what always happens, over and over. The menswear project. The evening gala dress. The historical costume. Isn’t that a little bit… weird?

“What?” Alph says. He scoots back over the stones to sit next to me, pressing both of his hands around mine. “Ronan?”

His touch helps ground me, keeps me just calm enough to think straight. I gulp as he squeezes me and rubs circles against the back of my hand like he’s trying to warm me up.

“Let me think,” I whisper, shaking my head dizzily. “Their final projects last year. Breanna… she used old pieces of curtain and silk ties. Patchwork, sort of like me.” That’s an awfully shaky premise so far.

“Uh huh.”

“Shane sewed a cape into, like, a bubble that floated around the model…” My heart leaps into my throat, and my hands won’t stop shaking. “Over a jumpsuit. Sewed up to look like officewear. Dress shirt, trousers, tie… all in black and white panels. Like me.”

Fuck. How come I didn’t see before?

“What about the third one?” Alph asks, prying the wine bottle away from me. He rests his palm on my knee. “Derek?”

“A see-through wedding gown. With an opaque veil and train… all in blood-red lace…”

I take a deep breath as the last scrap of my uncertainty vanishes. I feel like I just got hit in the stomach with a cannonball, but at last I know what’s happening.

“Just like me,” I finish.

Alph’s nostrils flare. He sits upright and shoves the bottle firmly into the stones so it stands upright, then turns to face me fully. “They’re copying you?”

“They must be.” I shake my head. “But why? They’re always saying how much better they are…”

Alph shakes his head, squeezing my knee until I look at him. “Don’t worry about that yet. Do you knowhow?”

“My portfolio,” I whisper. “I guess it would be easy. My process is… messy.”

Alph’s lips twitch. “It spreads all over the room?”

“Sometimes I lose drawings, and I swear I can’t find them, but they come back. They’re always barging in when I sew. Trying to annoy me…” I trail off.

“Or trying to see what you’re doing.” Alph grimly nods, and I nod back. I feel sick. “So why the hell haven’t they gotten caught?”

I sigh. “It’s subtle. It’s not one-for-one copying. Sometimes people have similar ideas—that’s not unusual. It was just consistently the three of them, all year long, doing similar things but sewing them better.”

“Arethey sewing them?” Alph raises his eyebrow. “If they don’t even want to come up with their own ideas…” he trails off meaningfully.

“There’s assignments in class—” I cut myself off, and then I clear my throat. “And they fuck around like arrogant dickheads. Acting like they’re too good to be there. They go away and fix their mistakes later.”

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