Page 19 of Student Seduction
6
Emersyn
The Southeastern Museum of Modern Art was situated in the center of downtown between two larger buildings. The courthouse and the municipal building. Tucked away, further from the street than the other structures, you could almost walk right past it without realizing you’d missed it.
While the outside was tinted glass and stucco, modest for the most part, the inside was grand. Marble that looked as if it had been polished to shine day in and day out from floor to ceiling. A grand winding staircase and lights illuminating the areas where the displays sat in each nook.
When I was seven years old, my dad had brought me here to see a display on Aesop’s Fables.
I stood, my small hand in his larger one, feeling secure and certain that my daddy would always keep me safe. We admired sculptures of the lion and the mouse, the tortoise and the hare, and the boy who cried wolf surrounded by wolves.
The wolves were crafted with such beautiful detail that their teeth frightened me, prompting me to hide behind my father’s leg.
Instead of letting me hide, he told me that it was important to face my fears, so I would know they had no power over me. He let me touch the porcelain even though the signs said not to, so I could see that they weren’t real. That my fear was unnecessary.
Maybe I kept coming back to the museum because of that day, or maybe I just truly love art, but after my dad left, it became my safe place. My quiet, peaceful place. Almost sacred in a way, where I’d find myself sitting silently for as long as I could. I love the way it felt, the way it smelled, the way it made me feel. Clean. New. Full of possibility.
The few times I was able to carve out the time to come here, I’d sit and admire each and every exhibit, vowing that one day, someday this museum would house my sculptures.
Every day, someday felt further away.
Until now. Now I was no longer a visitor.
I worked here.
Granted they paid me in fine art credits for college, but it was real. I had a badge with my picture on it.
For a rare, hopeful moment after they’d taken my photo and handed me my official employee ID, I’d believed I was one step closer to my dream. I’d practically floated through orientation. I was starting to understand the expression ‘on cloud nine.’
Right up until I met the woman whose intern I would be.
Jecca Chambliss was the Special Events Coordinator for the museum. She was taller than me, built like a runway model with sharp angles, a platinum blonde pixie cut, and ice blue eyes that could freeze you solid where you stood.
Her voice was like a whip, harsh and unyielding. At the end of my first week, all I’d heard her use it for was giving demands.
“Emily, get my coffee. Emily, don’t forget to grab my mail. Emily, order my lunch now.”
After the fourth Emily, I stopped correcting her.
I was never going to get the scholarship if my direct supervisor didn’t even bother to learn my name.
The funny thing was, I got along really well with the competition.
Alexis, Lindsay, and Collin were the three other interns I worked with. We were assigned to different departments so, other than our daily lunch breaks, I didn’t see them often. But we had started grabbing coffee and lunch together and using the time to vent when we could.
Alexis and Lindsey worked for Joy, who was the Director of the Children’s section of the museum and was a lot of fun. I couldn’t help but envy them.Though they did get puked on more than the rest of us. Yay for little kids evening the score.
Collin, however, had it almost worse than me. He worked for Ken Whitfield, who was in charge of membership and ran Collin to death day after day. He still hadn’t learned his name either.
“Ken has taken to calling me ‘kid’,” Collin informed us over lunch that afternoon. “At least Jecca has an excuse for being such a witch.”
I arched a brow as I poured more creamer into my coffee. “And what would that be? Bleach gone to her brain?”
“Her high school sweetheart dumped her on her ass a while back and she recently saw him at a party with someone else,” Alexis informs me. “Joy was comforting her again this morning. Said when they broke up the guy just blew her off with no explanation and she was expecting an engagement ring any day. They’d been together like eight years.”
“Ouch,” Lindsay said over her bite of club sandwich. “That does suck.”
I frowned at my grilled chicken wrap. As someone who’d never had my heartbroken by anyone other than my father, I couldn’t exactly empathize. But it did give me hope that maybe she was just wounded and not inherently evil. Which mean maybe she’d be nicer to me as her broken heart healed over time.
