Midnight Muse

That’s fine, really, because the movie is the furthest thing from my mind.

I can barely focus on what they’re saying, on the brightness of the movie that forces me to squint against every fiery explosion. It’s so different from the soft lighting in my room where I worked.

I refuse to look at anything but the screen but my eyes are unfocused as my mind wanders. When I force them back into clarity, I’m staring right at the door to my room as if I might be able to see past it and through the wall inside.

CHAPTER 7

QUINN

Things slowly begin to enter a new normal.

In the span of a few weeks, I get into the groove of classes, learn that Art History is not my thing, and I only had to reach out to Slate three times with mildly threatening texts to relay the message to Knox to keep the music down. It’s always followed by the slamming of his door and the revving of his motorcycle on the street outside my window, then a deafening silence that keeps me awake the rest of the night.

Progress.

Part of me feels bad for it, that he can’t stand being in the room without the need for music to drown out whatever nightly thoughts consume him. Are they that terrible that he can’t just put headphones on instead? Where is he even going so late at night?

On the other hand, Knox obviously doesn’t feel at all bad about it because he continues to do it, not picking up on any of the hints I’m sending his way: the slightly aggressive texts, pounding on the wall—which only causes him to hit right back—turning the music up a few more notches until my walls shake with it.

Perhaps he uses the music to mask the noises he makes when he has special guests over. When he’s pinning them to the bed and smirking down at them as he slowly teases his cock right against their entrance—No, Quinn. We are not thinking about Knox and how he fucks right now. Bad.

The other part of me wants to figure out the very reasoning behind the notes that hang heavy in the air.

Now that the semester is under way, projects for my classes begin pouring in and I can feel myself slowly becoming more and more stressed as all of my insecurities stack up.

I yearn for the ability to have confidence in my style, to gather inspiration from anywhere and everywhere. From a children’s character to war, from comics and landscapes to vehicles and buildings to even a pound of butter—inspiration from a fucking Campbell’s soup can. None of those things speak to me, make my fingers itch to sketch or paint or sculpt. Everything I create is a series of overthinking, and it shows. Every stroke of the brush or line I make with a pencil is over-examined, again and again and again, until the final piece is complete and there isn’t an ounce of pride surging through my body.

I hate it and I certainly don’t need Knox’s night-time shenanigans adding to all of the pressure I’m putting on myself.

As artists, everything is open to interpretation. We draw the way that the model sits, paint the way the still-life stands, mold the clay into shapes and forms that will inevitably be placed in galleries for all to judge. Interpretation means shit. It’s just a glorified word for judging the fuck out of something. People think they have to attribute meaning to everything in life and I wish it wasn’t all that serious sometimes. There is so much pressure to create something that has meaning, something objectively beautiful, and I’m not entirely sure I have that in me.

I feel utterly and completely average in comparison.

Sometimes, I sneak peeks at the others while they work. Reid, completely new to life drawing, understands the human body in a way that’s completely different from me. I can see his architecture background in the more technical approach he takes to drawing: perfecting the proportions of the model’s limbs as he goes. Instead of using the points on his pencil to gauge the length of an arm or a calf, he’s using his scale to proceed in a more mathematical sense, doubling or tripling the calculation in his head so he knows exactly how large to sketch the image. He’s drawing in that functional way that architects have, and it’s unlike anything I’ve seen thus far during my time in art school.

Rory, on the other hand, works in a vastly different way. There’s a fluidity to her lines that Reid doesn’t possess, as if each stroke is meant to express emotion rather than to serve a larger purpose. It doesn’t seem like she has to overthink anything, relaxed and with a soft smile on her face as she works, letting the charcoal guide her. It’s like she’s a vessel for the art flowing from her fingertips, wicked with a pencil, lethal with oil paints.

In Rory’s work, there are specific elements that she emphasizes, and other times she’s drawing a perfectly proportional model, confident enough in her craft that she knows exactly what her intentions are when she makes those artistic choices. Rory’s signature is adding a tweak of vividness with her colored paints: bright eyes, pointed teeth, sharp ears, and I can see that she’s brought that quirk over to drawing class with her, making the models’ eyes or lips pop.

She’s had her style figured out for years, since she was old enough to understand what made others unique.

And me? I don’t feel like there’s a specific way to approach things. Or, if there is, I haven’t cracked the code on it yet. I just…do. There is nothing special in the way that I draw the models, there’s no splash of color like Rory nor technical elements like Reid.

I’m just me.

So, when we receive the first project of the semester from Professor Beatrice, I’m kind of already fucked.

“What are you thinking of drawing for the assignment?” Reid asks after class one day. We’re walking with Rory towards the local coffee shop, the desperate need for caffeine a priority since it had been another sleepless night for me. Tiredness weighs heavy on my body in a sluggish cloud, but the lack of sleep isn’t from the jerk on the other side of the wall this time. I couldn’t sleep because of the impossible thoughts filtering through my head, fighting for the first-place spot in my mind. All of the assignments I’ll be working on this semester and how poorly I feel like I’m doing in Art History already despite the fact that we haven’t had a single assignment because the only grades in the class are the three tests we’re taking this term. There’s no hope for extra credit either. I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do there.

Add in the creeping sense of imposter syndrome, and I didn’t sleep a fucking wink.

I shrug, my lids scraping against my eyes when I blink slowly. “I’m not entirely sure yet.”

The assignment should be a simple one, yet here I am once again with no clue what I’m going to do. My mind must not be all that tired because a fresh spike of anxiety claws its way up my throat.

All we have to do for the assignment is copy the work of a well-known artist as close to the original as we can. To imitate and learn how the greats once created their art. The task sounds simple enough, but it isn’t, because there are millions of artists crafting works in a million different mediums and styles, all renowned in their skills. Popular names with perfect pencil marks or paint strokes, sculptures and prints.

I’m not all that confident I’ll be able to recreate such things, to be honest.