Page 31 of Make Me Scream

“You won’t. But I get it. What about spending more time with Lane?”

I chuckle, biting my lip.

“You want to feel that inspiration, right?” Joel asks. “He’d put some in you.”

Yeah, I’ll bet.

I try not to think about the women at Galleria Carnale; I’d never be able to concentrate.

“You’re not helping.”

Joel sets aside his paintbrush and sits down next to me.

“Look. If you want to make a great piece of art, it’s not just about finding inspiration. You need to hone your craft. I’m not painting you because I think your portrait will be the one to propel me to stardom. I’m doing it so I can get better at painting. I’m doing it so that if I get commissioned to create art and make a living, I’ll have confidence. This next piece of yours doesn’t have to be a stroke of genius. It just has to show artistic development, technical improvement or both.”

That’s rich coming from him — all of his paintings look like they were made by a master, not a student. Still, he has a point.

“Thanks.”

The wheels in my head start turning. Lane’s words come back.

He showed up in ways his subjects didn’t expect. You stood out in plain sight, waiting for the world to come to you.

When Joel finishes, he turns the canvas around to show me.

“What do you think?”

He’s made me look beautiful, as usual — but also pensive.

Mysterious.

Almost haunting.

“It’s amazing,” I say. “Inspiring.”

—

Dark, diagonal lines crisscross my lips; if I keep them sealed, they look sewn shut. Red face paint runs down my cheeks, starting from my eyes. No one can see my face, though — not with the hood of an oversized sweater draped over my head, which I let hang down.

Behind my back, metal handcuffs grip my wrists. I clutch a string in one palm, careful not to let it go. My arms wrap around a pole on the uptown R. Yes, I’m taking up the whole thing, making sure no one else can hold onto it, but it’s past rush hour and the car isn’t full, so no one complains.

Joel sits across from me, pretending to read his phone. He has to be close this time. A GoPro camera he stuck to the wall records me, saving the video to my cell and uploading it to the cloud. Should anything go wrong, he has the keys to my cuffs, and will grab the camera. It cost me too much to leave behind.

Lane Porter would point out that I am once again standing out in plain sight, waiting for my subjects to come to me — but they’re not going to expect what I have in store.

It takes a few minutes to land the first one.

All I see are black, tightly laced, leather dress shoes stopped in front of me.

“Hey, can you move?” the man says.

It’s not exactly the right opening, but it’s good enough.

I pull the string in my hand and look up at the same time, revealing my face to him. Joel taps a button on his phone, activating a Bluetooth speaker in my pocket.

My voice screams out, “Is this what you want?”

Between the lips, the fake blood and the scream, he rears back, nearly tripping over another passenger. A few people laugh at him. Somehow I manage to keep a straight face, glaring at the man until he turns around.

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