I picked up a blank canvas and set it on the wooden easel in front of the rummy tally on my wall. A couple of days ago, I had gone to the hardware store and picked up a can of paint with every intention of erasing it. I had told myself it was time to paint over it.
But I hadn’t gotten around to it yet. Or maybe I wasn’t quite ready to see it go.
I opened up several pots of paint. Dipping my brush into the green, I smeared it across the white space. Then blue. Then black. I painted for almost five hours before stopping.
When I was done, I couldn’t even look at the finished product.
I knew what I’d see.
My heart thudded painfully. I opened the closet door and shoved the still-wet painting inside, in the dark, where it belonged.
Chapter 8
Meghan
I recognized the number as soon as my phone started ringing at 7:00 the next morning. Only one person would be calling me at such an ungodly hour. Even my mother knew better than to try and catch me before ten if I wasn’t working.
“Skylar, do you know what time it is?” I asked, my words punctuated with a jaw splitting yawn. I had painted until almost midnight and then slept hard. It was the best sleep I could remember having in ages. I suspected it had something to do with finally being able to create something. Getting engrossed in my work was better than any sleeping pill. Even if the finished product wasn’t something I wanted to look at any time soon.
“It’s time for you to get up, lazy ass. I’m only in town for the day, and I won’t let you waste it in bed,” she said matter-of-factly.
I sat up in bed, stretching my back. Ouch. One thing I hadn’t missed was the lumpy, twin-sized mattress. Even though I had slept deeply, I felt the effects of the twenty-year-old mattress on my joints and muscles. Maybe I could talk Mom into letting me switch out beds with the double-sized one in the guest room.
“You’re in Southport?” I asked in confusion. What day was it? What was going on?
“No, I’m in Miami.” Skylar’s sarcasm was as blistering as always.
“Dude, it’s too early for me to try and navigate your witty banter.” I yawned again. “What are you doing in town? I thought we were going to meet up next week. I planned to come to Pittsburgh to have dinner with you and Mac.”
“Yeah, well, I kicked Mac out last night, so dinner’s probably out,” Skylar answered in her characteristic bland delivery.
“Woah, hang on a sec. Did you kick Mac out? Why? What happened?” Skylar had been with Mac for over six years, engaged for three. He wasn’t my favorite person in the world, but he had always seemed to make Skylar happy—well, as happy as Skylar ever let on. My friend wasn’t one to emote much, if at all. Even though she had grown out of her goth phase somewhere around sophomore year of college, she was still the most dead-pan person I knew.
Mac Stevens was a musician of the struggling variety. He played drums in an industrial metal band called Flypaper. Skylar hated their music but still went to all their shows. When Mac wasn’t hammering away on the skins, he was a librarian at the university, which is how he met Skylar when she came in to check out the latest serial killer biography.
They had seemed like a good match—Skylar was a talented graphic designer, and Mac was super smart, but he was also a raging douchebag that was a little too up on himself to be tolerable for long periods.
“He’d been spending our savings on internet porn. He’s thrown away more than twenty thousand dollars meant for a house down payment so he can jack off watching a barely legal girl named Tiffany on a website called Lusty Schoolgirlz. With a ‘z’.” I could hear the hitch in her voice, which she suppressed immediately. “It’s all good. Just glad I found out now rather than after the wedding. So I’m here at my parents’ house while he clears his crap out of my apartment.”
“Shit, the wedding, Sky,” I gasped. “Can you get refunds on the reception hall and the caterer?” Mac and Skylar had been planning for a spring wedding next year. Skylar had booked the botanical gardens and a renowned caterer in Pittsburgh that she had to put down a hefty deposit to secure.
“I don’t want to talk about the wedding, Meg,” Skylar said quietly, and I knew how hard it was for her to hold it together. “I’m at the house with my parents, and they’re already driving me insane. Mom has made me three different herbal teas that all taste like cat piss. I need caffeine. The real kind. So meet me at that new coffee place on Lane Avenue in ten minutes.” She paused. “Please.”