“Everything,” she says. “College. The future. Everything.”
I nod, but as she tells me more all I think about are the conversations that she and I have not been having. About college, about the future. The one where I tell her how afraid I am and how this new fear scares me. The one where I confess that I don’t know how I got into UCLA’s art program, because I’m sure my work isn’t good enough, and once I get there they’re going to find me out. I’ll be laughed at; I’ll be humiliated. And the one where I tell her that nothing about college excites me: not the dorms or the dining hall, not the possibility of a great roommate or great parties, not the classes that will supposedly blow my mind or the memories that will supposedly stay with me forever. Nothing. I feel like a fraud every time anyone asks me where I’m going. They are always impressed, and I always feign excitement, and all the while I’m trying to stop time from passing, stop summer vacation from coming, stop classes from ending, stop everything.
“She’s going to Lewis and Clark,” Lehna’s saying, “which is great because Portland isn’t that far from Eugene, so we could meet up on weekends. She can’t decide whether she wants to major in history or math. She knows she wants to be a teacher. Can you imagine being just as good at history as you are at math? She’s so smart.”
“Cool,” I say, trying to sound enthusiastic, but I wonder if she can see through me.
I feel like she should, because friendship is about more than facts. It’s about knowing what someone is thinking, or knowing enough to know that you don’t. But I guess it’s also about not letting too much time go by without asking them questions, so you don’t end up looking at them one afternoon, the sun so bright you have to squint, realizing that you hardly recognize the person they’ve become. Maybe, when it comes to friendship, both of us are getting this wrong.
“Holy fuck,” Uma says.
“What?” Lehna and I ask in unison.
June doesn’t have to ask, because Uma is showing her something on her phone. Both of their jaws drop.
“Katie,” Uma says.
“Kate,” June says.
“Have you been on Insta today?”
I shake my head. I’ve been avoiding my phone.
“You have, like, five billion new followers.”
Uma shoves her phone at me, and it’s true. Where I used to have a modest number of followers, mostly people I know in real life and some friends I’ve made online, now the number doesn’t even make sense to me. There are way too many digits. I click on my latest picture—an elephant painting—and there are over three thousand likes.
“What the fuck?” I say. “Look at this.”
I hold the phone out to Lehna. It takes her a moment too long to take it, but she has no other choice. She looks. She frowns. She scrolls through the pictures and comments until she stops and her eyes narrow.
“AntlerThorn says: ‘Rumor has it a show with the fabulous Kate Cleary is in our future.…’” She hands the phone back to Uma. “That gallery was on the list I found. The best new galleries? How did they…? How did you…?”
She stares at me, waiting.
I could tell her about Garrison Kline and his friends and how they promised to work magic for me, but Lehna isn’t asking out of real interest or curiosity. Instead she seems angry, as if the art show wasn’t her idea in the first place. I barely looked at her stupid list.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” I ask her.
She turns away.
The bell rings before I can say anything else, and we all stand up and gather our backpacks and lunch remnants and try to ignore the tension between us.
*
Today is a studio day in Art. All I have to do is paint. I block out the world with my headphones and Sharon Van Etten.
I begin something new.
Squeeze paint from tubes. Mix the color of a circus tent, a sky at dusk.
Violet.
Fifty minutes disappear with my brush on the canvas and the thought of her, and then I am washing the colors down the sink and Elsa stops next to me to return a tube of glue to a drawer.
“Finally,” she says. “The tent.”
“What do you mean?”
“All semester you’ve had these circus elements. The elephant with the star; the tightrope; those hoops on fire. And now, finally, the tent.”
“I didn’t know it was so obvious.”
She shrugs.
“I wouldn’t call it obvious. I’d call it a theme.”
“Thank you,” I say. “And, oh, the cover of the journal looks great.”
“I was afraid they weren’t going to get it printed on time. I mean, we get yearbooks tomorrow. We have four days and then it’s over.”
I dry my brushes. I try to keep breathing. But the thought of my last yearbook, full of goodbyes from everyone I’ve known almost all my life, leaves me shaken as I make my way to the math hall. Each minute is bringing me closer to a future I’m not ready for.
But then I see Mark. And I feel better.
I sit next to him at the desk where I’ve sat every day for several months, but for the first time I turn to face him.