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It was surreal, walking back into the arts building to see Mandy’s cranes gone. I half expected them to still be there, like some ghostly trick birthday candles that could never be extinguished. But no, the hall was empty, abandoned, with only a few students lingering outside the textiles room farther down. The emptiness was a presence in and of itself, a wraith crying out for recognition. It felt wrong that something else should fill this space; I didn’t want to cover up her presence by inserting my own.
“I’m sorry,” I whispered. I knew how it felt to be alone, to think the whole world had abandoned you. I knew what it meant to stand on the edge of your own life and peer over the precipice at the darkness thirsting for your blood.
I knew what it meant to leap.
Which was why a very, very small part of me felt okay putting up my work here, even if the rest of me felt like an interloper. Mandy might not have known how much we had in common, but I hoped that maybe . . . maybe my thesis would help heal her spirit, help put to rest any residual negativity.
Before I could get too metaphysical on myself, I put in my headphones, pulled out my portfolio of images, and got to work.
I’d settled on displaying thirteen cards in all. A strong number. Most were Major Arcana, like The Hierophant and The Wheel of Fortune, while a few were Minor—Five of Cups, Eight of Swords. I wanted to tell a story with these. I wanted to show more than my best work; I wanted to show what Islington had meant to me. I wanted this to be the culmination of my time here, both artistically and personally . . . if there even was a difference anymore.
The Eight of Swords was first. The card was a self-portrait in many ways, though I’d never admit to it in public. A girl sat on a bed with her head in her hands, eight blades piercing the cloth around her to form a cage. Very dark, all blacks and blues, and outside the window was a raven perched on a branch, an eclipsed moon behind it, and a golden key dangling from its beak. Isolation, bitterness, self-imposed distance. And yet everything needed for your own release, right within arm’s reach. If only you’d look up and see it.
Next came the Ten of Swords.
I knew this card would raise a lot of shit for a lot of people. I knew some would see it as bad taste and the admin would probably think I should take it down. I didn’t care. It was my shit, too, and this was how I was releasing it.
This was the first card I’d ever painted. It was how I had moved forward. It also had never been shown to anyone.
It was a close-up of two wrists, the hands upraised and a dagger resting in the palms. Across the wrists were ten slashes, five per hand. Blood dripped down the wrists and across the blade. Around the edges of the painting were pieces of notebook paper I’d collaged in. Actual entries from my actual journal, the pen smudged from tears and glue, all noting how alone I felt. How tired I was of being different. Of feeling abandoned.
The card’s meaning was pretty fucking obvious: Defeat. Death. Loss of hope.
I put those cards in sequence, right at the entrance. If I was going to tell a story with my thesis, I was going to do it honestly. And luckily, from there, the cards got a little more uplifting in their tale. Islington had been my turning point; well, one of many turning points. At least the school had been for the better.
There was The Wheel of Fortune—a golden spinning wheel with a raven emblazoned on the hub and multicolored strands weaving the Milky Way—and The Star—a constellation reflected in a pool of water held within a statue’s hands. The Three of Pentacles had snippets of my acceptance letter to Islington, which was mirrored in its sister card, Eight of Pentacles. The Three was all about creation and physical beauty. Eight was hard work and dedication.
It didn’t seem like a project that would take very long—I was just hanging thirteen paintings, after all—but once I got all thirteen of the cards up, I began to fine tune. I moved cards around, changed height and distance and looked at them from all angles to make sure nothing looked cluttered (unless, like the cards at the beginning, I wanted it to look cluttered and chaotic). I took out a spool of silver thread and began connecting the cards, making patterns and dreamcatchers and knots. Anyone who knew how to read the cards would be able to follow a single thread and get an entirely different story from the connections. Order was everything, and I was hoping people would be able to discern different stories based on which way they viewed.