Page 11 of Hidden Lies

The teacher—Professor Linsey, the syllabus informed me—was doing the rounds, checking in with each student.

“Miss Kaplan,” he said when he came to me. “Welcome to Lost Lake. I trust you’re settling in well? I was very impressed with the portfolio you sent me.”

I nodded my thanks and noticed Micah’s glance out of the corner of my eye. As this was an advanced drawing class with limited space, it had a list of prerequisites students had to take before they could gain admission to the class. Since I was new to the school and hadn’t taken any of the prerequisites, I’d had to submit a portfolio to be allowed in.

“Do you have any idea what you’re going to start with today?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“I’m not sure yet,” I admitted, but he just nodded and stepped past me.

“I’ll be around to check on you.”

Pulling the edges of my cardigan tighter around my shoulders in a bout of insecurity, I glanced quickly around the room, noting what the other students were working on and feeling glad that I’d chosen a spot in the back row so no one could see my work.

There were a few displays set up around the room, presumably for future lessons, and I considered choosing one of those to sketch like some of the other students were. A couple of kids were sketching a bowl of fruit that was arranged on a table near the front of the room, while on the far side a small marble statue of a woman had been placed on an ornate pedestal, and a few others were recreating her likeness on their drawing pads.

A girl with strawberry blond hair and lots of freckles seemed to be sketching a sleeping cat from memory, and I saw a boy near the window drawing the view of campus visible through the glass.

I sighed, digging through the supplies in my box. None of those ideas were particularly inspiring. I closed my eyes, trying to remember a time in my life when there had been things to feel inspired by. It had only been eight months ago, but it felt like a lifetime. How had things changed so much between then and now?

“Draw what you love.” My father’s voice came to me. He’d said it often, when I was a child and he was creating a masterpiece on canvas and I was feeling young and foolish, like my skill would never match his. “Don’t compare your art to anyone else’s,” he’d told me. “Just draw what you love and draw it for yourself.”

I tried to remember if there was anything left in the world that I loved, and eventually I picked up a stick of vine charcoal and started to draw.

I drew the water.

Not the calm, placid water of the lake outside my dorm room, but the wild, roaring waves of the beach in California during a storm. It took me a few minutes to find the flow, the place inside myself where it was quiet, and pain-free, and focused, but eventually I lost myself in the art. I shaded the sky black, lit only with forks of wild lightning that I lifted out with a kneaded eraser. I drew the curls of the waves, savage and deadly as they crashed against the shore. The deserted beach. I drew it exactly as I remembered it, the last time I was there, less than a year earlier, standing with my dad. The last of a million trips to draw on the beach. He’d always said the salt air helped his creativity. We’d been frantically packing up our gear at the time, making a run for the car before the rain began sheeting down, and I remembered his wild laughter as he’d pulled me after him.

“Isn’t it beautiful?”

I didn’t realize my cheeks were damp until Professor Linsey clapped his hands at the front of the room, bringing me to the present in a painful rush. I dashed my hand against my cheek, glad once again I was in the back row.

“Okay, everyone, wrap it up. Starting next time, we’ll be doing critiques in front of the whole class. But for today, just partner up with the person next to you. Discuss each other’s work, and I’ll be around to talk to each of you as well.”

Oh, crap.

I’d gotten so lost in the drawing I’d forgotten who occupied the easel next to mine. I looked over to the still unfairly attractive man who sat at the top of my shit-list and found him meeting my gaze, his eyebrow raised in challenge.

“Well, let’s get this shit over with,” I muttered, turning my easel to face him.

The other eyebrow climbed to meet his first one as he took in my drawing. “Well, that’s…intense,” he said, and I gritted my teeth. “Looks like you’ve got a bit of an anger problem there, Camilla,” he teased.

I opened my mouth to snap at him, but he kept going, his voice turning serious. “I like the contrast. The black of the waves really brings out the lightning in the sky, and you can almost feel the wind blowing out of the paper. I’m impressed.”

I didn’t react, unsure how to respond.

“What?” he asked, his tone mild. “We are supposed to be critiquing, no?”

“Fine. Let’s see yours then,” I ground out.

His mouth twitched a fraction, and his hazel eyes twinkled behind his glasses. “You sure you want to?”

I glared at him. “We are supposed to be critiquing, no?” I snarked back, copying his inflection, but he smiled, then turned his easel to face me.

My breath caught in my throat and my heart stopped beating, even as blood coursed up to flame in my cheeks.

On his paper was a portrait, a perfect likeness of me. The detail was meticulous, from my raised hand smudged with charcoal, to the crease in my brow from concentration, to the tears leaving damp tracks down my cheeks. For a moment I felt naked, utterly exposed, and my chest grew tight with horror.

I raised my eyes to meet his above the portrait and found myself locked in a gaze that was deep, fathomless, and completely impenetrable. I didn’t look away until the teacher returned.

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