Page 13 of Chasing Wild Heart

With my keys in my hand, I step toward the door and give him a shy smile. “Good night, Dash.”

“Good night, Juniper.”

“What’sgoingonwithyou and Dash?”

“I have no idea,” I admit, taking a step back to study my biggest project to date.

“Kinda looks like you two are falling in love,” Daphne sings out happily.

“It’s weird seeing you two get along,” Tabby adds. “I kinda miss the days of you giving him the stink eye.”

I chuckle, shaking my head, as I set a dirty palette knife on the bucket lid of plaster. With my eyes scouring the wall for major errors, I carefully step backwards toward the sound of my teammates’ giggles.

“Here.” Daphne pushes my plastic water bottle in my hand as I flop down next to her on the cool tile floor.

I don’t need to glance at the time on my phone to know it’s getting late. My body protests every move I make, first objecting to rolling out of bed at the ungodly hour of six in the morning. Then scurrying to the art center for a few hours. Bouncing from building to building for classes. Lifting weights for an hour before finishing practice with a five-mile run. Finally, scuttling my weary ass back to the center until I’m in danger of falling asleep with my face literally plastered to a wall.

Fortunately, my teammates love me enough to drop by with a sandwich for dinner and keep me company under the pretense of studying. Students from three separate art courses filter in and out of the spacious gallery area to work on their own projects.

Eden passes through because she’s been flirting with a handsome student named Marcos from a different class. Tabby claims the background noise helps her study. And Daphne likes to be anywhere but in her dorm room to avoid her politically active roommate.

Right now, we have the open but cluttered space to ourselves. Tabby sits in a folded chair with her long legs stretched onto another chair. Eden set up shop on a nearby scaffold, and Daphne leans against unopened industrial-sized bags of plaster on the floor.

“Perry’s looking good,” Tabby comments, dragging her emerald-colored eyes up from the laptop on her outstretched legs.

I follow her gaze to my current assignment: a gigantic octopus sculpture plastered to a wide wall. A variety of materials, from mesh wiring to recyclable plastic jugs to plaster, formed the basic outline of the sea creature. An ungodly amount of plaster powder mixed with water was manhandled and molded to shape the figure.

“Yeah,” I agree, taking a healthy gulp from my water bottle. A wave of satisfaction swells inside my chest at the progress I’ve made over the past month.

“Have you decided on the color scheme yet?” Eden asks, resting her chin on her arms folded across a scaffold bar.

A frustrated sigh billows between my lips as I shake my head.

Daphne studies the gray work in progress with a slight head tilt. “What are our choices?”

“A orange-reddish hue, a popular one used for a more natural look,” I explain, my fingers sliding across my phone to find rough color composites. “I was thinking about a somewhat dark-ish teal for a more dramatic and almost fantasy-ish effect. And the last would be a bronze – almost metallic – finish for an artsy fartsy look.”

Eden snickers. “You saidartsy fartsy.”

“I thought you were leaning toward the bronze finish.” Tabby frowns, staring at the unfinished octopus she named Perry during her first visit. She had been appalled I had been working without a title in mind, so she decided the tentacled creature itself needed a name.

I submitted my sketch with the bronze finish, knowing it would outshine the submissions by the mean girls in the class. After our professor went through the guidelines and requirements for the annual art show, the trio of terror believedone of them would nab the ultimate canvas at stake: one full wall in the gallery area that would remain throughout the year.

Their loud and obnoxious argument over who would use the “timeless and classic” flowers irritated me into avoiding anything scenic. But they truly pissed me off when they mocked my very rough draft of a dragon emerging from flames.

A night of sketching anything and everything led me to Perry. The sea creature might not seem “timeless or classic,” but I found beauty in a subject that was so out of my realm. My professor and other important people in the art department thought so as well and awarded me the wall.

Of course, the mean girls weren’t happy about the decision, especially when their unimpressive submissions were relegated to simple canvas boards.

Suck it, mean girls.

“I think the metallic effect elevates it as an art piece, but I kinda think color would give Perry some character,” I admit, standing up and stretching my arms above my head. “Does that sound dumb?”

All three shake their heads.

“Listen to Perry,” suggests Eden, a second-year art major. “Now, answer my question. What’s going on with you and Dash?”

I groan like a petulant child not wanting to take a bath, dropping my arms to my side. “My answer is still the same: I don’t know.”

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