Chapter 5

I was late to the first lecture of the day, but thankfully, none of my students were upset about it. I even managed to ignore Lacie for most of class. In truth, my mind was far too occupied by the strange situation I'd run into this morning.

It was no surprise that after class, my path led me back to the abandoned classrooms and the painting I'd started in there the other day. The canvas was still partly white, with different shades of blues filling the lower half, and more at the corners. There had been a storm in my mind when I'd done the first brushstroke. For a peaceful while, I managed to lose myself in it completely.

"A Thriller in Blue."

I cringed back and almost dropped the brush. Harry Stein's rumbling baritone was as familiar to me as the dried paint smell of the empty classroom, but he should know better than to creep up on me like that.

I took a breath and drew back my arm, the tip of the brush still shining a deep navy blue. "That was close. You know it's dangerous to sneak up on someone mid-stroke."

"My bad, Sam. I forget how absorbed you get when you paint. I did knock."

My eyes wandered to the door. Then I gave him an apologetic look.

"Can I see?" my old mentor asked and gestured at my painting.

I hesitated before forcing myself to step away from the easel. I felt more exposed than usual. But this was Harry. Just Harry.

"A Thriller in Blue," he mused again before twirling the end of his moustache around his finger in thought. He leaned close to examine the brushstrokes through his black-rimmed glasses, tracing the lines of the swirls before turning to me and giving me a wink.

He likes it.

"A Thriller in Blue, huh," I said, feeling more at ease now. "Sounds like one of those tragic romance novels. A man, a woman, some insurmountable obstacle…"

"Don't tell me you've started reading something besides bone-dry non-fiction?" He ripped open his grey eyes, a grin stretching his mouth so widely that deep lines appeared next to it.

Amused, I shook my head. Harryalways made fun of my love of biographies.

He theatrically wagged his finger at me. "It's not nice, getting my hopes up like that. And here I thought you'd finally seen the light."

"Says the man obsessed with Shakespeare originals."

"Well, I suppose there is no accounting for taste." He pressed a hand against his chest. "But a former student of mine hating on the classics? I have truly, truly failed."

"You're just a hopeless romantic, Harry. We're clearly very different." I gestured at the stormy background of the canvas, enjoying the back-and-forth. It reminded me of old times. "I meant to capture reality." Because reality was far less painful and scary than dreams. Far more attainable than any fairytale romance.

"Me being a follower of Shakespeare has nothing to do with it. I like this," he said and gestured at the canvas with an indulgent smile. "But I still think you're playing it too safe. It needs more browns! More reds! Art is a challenge. You need to reach for what is just outside your grasp. Even if you miss, it's better than never daring that last bold stroke that brings your work to completion."

Something built deep in my chest. The feeling of longing spread smoothly, almost gently, missing its sharp edges in the light of day. The words were an echo of what I'd said to my students, but I didn't like hearing them myself. I eyed the brush in my tense hand.

He wasn't wrong. The last bold stroke … It wasn't a risk that I took. Not with my art, and certainly not with my personal life. So what if something never achieved true excellence? The chance to screw up a good creation was too big. My leg twitched, the old scar that hid under my jeans echoing the pain. After you've been through hell, playing it safe was the only thing you could do. I had no intention of sharing my art with the world.

"What do you want me to do?" I asked and massaged the hardened muscle. The phantom pain wasn't unusual. "Paint a pair of lovers into the sea? I don't think a collective drowning would bring your desired levity. Of course, it would go nicely with the Shakespearean theme of tragic romances."

Harry chuckled, but his eyes, I was sure, had missed little of the tumultuous emotions that had flitted over my face. "Not a bad idea. It needs something to counteract the impending doom. It can't just all be about storms, Sam."

I turned back to the easel, trying to see beyond the swirling blues. "I'll think about it," I finally said.

"That's all I ask." Harry consulted his watch. "And won't you look at that, it's almost time for class. I hope your art students have been treating you well?"

"Is that why you came? To make sure I wasn't being chased away by the mob?"

He gave me a boyish grin. "Now, would I ever do that? Walk with me?"

On the way to the lecture halls, I assured him that the students were fine, though I omitted mentioning my infatuated one. Just this morning, I'd received another email full of subtle innuendo about a meetup after class, but it was far too mortifying to admit to any such thing in front of Harry. I'd deal with Lacie on my own.

As we reached the last crossing, Harry put a hand on my elbow, catching my eyes. His mirth faded, replaced by a more sincere expression. "Again, I'm sorry to have disturbed your peace. I just wanted to say … I'm glad that you're here."

A warm smile lit up his eyes behind his black-rimmed glasses. I remembered how he'd become my favourite teacher after sketching the intimidating faculty staff as cartoon characters on my first day of college. Popular for his antics, but loved for his warmth, Professor Harry Stein had nudged, cajoled, and supported me through difficult college years without breaking stride. He'd always been one of the very few people who just got me.

I cleared my suddenly constricted throat. "I'm glad, too."

Harry waited for a beat before spinning around and walking down the hall, waving a hand over his shoulder in goodbye. Before he turned the corner, though, he spun back once more. "Don't forget to do something about all that blue! I want to see you dare. Do it for your old teacher."

I shook my head in amusement.

Ten minutes later, another throng of eager faces stared at me. Once again, I suppressed the urge to fidget. Being amongst my students, the differences between us only became more obvious: their easy interaction, the playful jostling, the fact that none of them seemed to worry about coming across as weird.

And then there was me—someone who was trying so hard to appear relaxed that she came across as anything but. What was it those two students in the hallway said? So awkward. And all the infantile chatter aside, I got why they thought that way. It always felt like everyone was operating on a wavelength I couldn't quite key in to. It was fortunate that I only taught them about art history and not about life. What would I even tell them? Don't become an oafish hermit?

With an internal wince, I gestured at the painting on the large white screen behind the lectern, drawing comfort from the fact that Lacie wasn't part of this class.

"What can you tell me about the art movement this painting belongs to?" My question brought a murmur of voices with it, and a hand in the last row hesitantly twitched up. "Madison?"

"It's surrealistic?" The young woman leaned forward with a hopeful look.

"That's correct." I asked the room, "Why is it surrealistic?"

I would've loved a more elaborate answer, but I would take what I could get. Another timid hand went up. Hopefully, the general shyness of my students would dwindle in the coming weeks, as they got more comfortable with me, and I with them.

With an encouraging smile, I motioned toward Thomas, a serious-looking guy with blond dreadlocks. He glanced down at his notes. "It depicts a dreamscape or a hallucinatory state, with the bird looking at the egg in flight."

Now, that was an answer I could work with.

"He's right," I told the class and walked towards the whiteboard. Snapping open a pen, I started writing, Surrealism. I just wanted to show that I was plunging deeply into the human mind. I settled down on the edge of the lectern table.

"Surrealism, ladies and gentlemen, was founded by André Breton in 1924, and its goal was to liberate human experience from the stringent boundaries—some called them oppressive—of rationalism." I gestured towards Thomas. "That included the exploration of the unconscious mind: dreams, hallucinations, imaginations."

I made a short pause, giving them time to absorb the words. "The painting is called Clairvoyance, and it depicts exactly what Thomas said earlier: the dreamscape of the bird's mind."

Then I grinned, letting them see my enthusiasm. "If you're wondering about the phrase I wrote on the board, there's one story about the peculiarity of surrealistic artists that I find particularly funny. Have you ever heard of the Spanish artist Salvador Dalí? Once, he delivered a lecture wearing a full deep-sea diving suit. And, because he was shall we say … eccentric, he refused to take it off, almost suffocating as a result. He also had a very strange obsession with cauliflowers, once arriving in a Rolls-Royce filled to the brim with them. In short, he was a man who refused to adhere to any of society's rules. He was called an eccentric, a showman, even a maniac, but what he most certainly was, was unashamedly himself. That isn't easy, but for an artist, it's one of the strongest enablers to capture the essence of something else. Still, the boundary between mad and artistic was very narrow in Dalí's case."

I was aware that I was preaching something that I couldn't even do myself. Being fully myself? Sharing my art with the world? Even the thought of someone like Emmanuelle Renaud seeing one of my paintings made my neck break out in a cold sweat. All that scrutiny.

Good thing they don't know you're a hypocrite.

We spent another hour talking about the surrealist painter before I glanced at the clock on the wall. It was a fascinating topic, and the time had passed quickly. Still, whether it had been Harry's words or my lecture about Dalí, I felt unsettled enough to still feel the scar on my leg ache.

It had been fifteen years since the glass had sliced my skin, but on some days, it still behaved like an open wound.

"Dalí kinda sounds like a pretty interesting dude," a girl with green pigtails and white platform shoes said to me at the end of the lecture. "How do you spell that, by the way? I wanna google him later. I still need a topic for Professor Stein's next essay that isn't bore-me-to-death vanilla."

As I wrote his name on a piece of paper, one of her peers stopped close by. "I bet Stein loves that type of stuff. Him and Dalí are both frikkin' oddballs, finding jokes in everything. Is that why the other teachers hate him, Ms Hale?"

"Oddball? Really?"

The student gave a half-apologetic wince. "Sorry, Ms Hale."

"Good. And no, they don't hate him." I waved her off. She was right on both accounts. Harry was funny, but his teaching methods weren't always universally liked. Anyone who gave his students this much autonomy was sure to draw the ire of the more conservative staff.

The first student tapped one of her white shoes on the ground. "This Dalí guy? I can really get behind his whole I-won't-take-crap-from-anyone attitude."

The second one nodded. "And all those abstract hallucinatory themes aside, dreams are powerful shit."

I regarded the painting. Dalí had certainly dreamt big, never wavering, not even in the face of opposition and disapproval. I'd bet that he had never hesitated to make that last bold stroke either. I wondered what it would take to get me to do it. I wondered if someone like Emmanuelle Renaud had ever had the luxury to be reluctant about sharing parts of her soul with the world.