She’d just walk. Anywhere.
Maybe the more Indy meditated on how angry she was, the more likely some action or clarity would come from the messy sludge stew of emotions that pumped through her body like a toxic spill.
“Don’t confront her without me!” Eleanor’s voice faded into the background as Indy bounded away with defiance. “I want to videotape it!”
Lucy knew how much Indigo liked Nick since they were actually kids, making lanyard friendship bracelets out of biodegradable craft materials and playing hearts in their bunk together at age eight and nine.
It hurt Indy’s heart to think about how Nick crossed her, but she wasn’t as angry at him as she was at Lucy—she was just devastated and heartbroken. She still loved him. Even though he was so full of shit with his “I would, but you’re a camper” shtick. Was that even what he said? Or just what she heard?
She couldn’t bear thinking about him betraying her, so Indy put Nick out of her mind. She focused instead on her hatred of Lucy, and tried badly to spiral her seething contempt for that snake into some kind of plan.
16
Indigo felt like a zombie as she walked to the studio. She just wished she could go back to a time before she saw Nick and Lucy in the woods together. Or somehow change history so it never happened. Her feelings toward him now were fuzzy and conflicted—part of her wanted to hit him in the face and the other part wanted to kiss him again.
But Indy knew at least one thing for sure. She was furious at Lucy.
She pushed on the studio door cautiously, but the room was completely empty. No signs of Nick or any of her fellow art majors. No light, no works in progress on the tables—no signs of life. Indigo was unsure what to do now that she was alone in the studio, so she inventoried the work she’d done on her big project.
A sense of guilt began to overtake her. She had so much more to do in time for Industry Showcase Day, which was in—was it only a week? Less? And what’s more, her tree sculpture, which until recently had seemed so well formed and on its way to becoming a finished—even great—piece, now seemed to taunt her with how much she had to do in order for it to be good. She took out her work and laid out her supplies on the drafting table, but she couldn’t will herself to do anything.
Indigo felt dizziness, confusion, and frustration all at once when she looked at her piece. It went from unfinished to imperfect under the scrutiny of her gaze. It didn’t help that her thoughts kept drifting back to Lucy and Nick and how neither of them could possibly be the same people Indigo had always thought they were.
She couldn’t even lapse into the reprieve of romantic fantasies about Nick, after what she’d witnessed in the forest. Thinking about making love to him—losing her virginity to the man whom she had first learned to associate “sex” with—was impossible now that she was this hurt. It was no longer a comfort. All of her hopes and optimism about their future melted like a chocolate bar in a glove compartment. What was left was messy and ugly, and she wanted Lucy to pay. She wanted her former best friend to feel as bad as she did.
Indigo couldn’t funnel her rage into her work, even as the idea occurred to her that it was what she was supposed to be doing. It was amazing how she realized exactly what would make her feel better but decided not to do it, then also managed to feel bad about that decision at the same time. She was clearly in self-destruct mode.
She thought about Jen Rant, that mousy jerk, and how she had said something about happiness getting in the way of creativity. So, Indy was damned if she was happy and damned if she was miserable?
Her eyes glazed over with fresh tears, blurring the artwork in front of her. She couldn’t bear it anymore. It was better to go to bed and end the day before things got even worse. She would just ride the tides of emotion that carried her into the darker recesses of herself until it was all over. If she tried to resist the undertow, she’d run the risk of drowning herself in her own misery.
Indigo was going to leave the unfinished sculpture on the table and just walk away. But suddenly, she had a fit of dark energy. With a burst of rage, she wiped her sculpture clear off the table and listened, satisfied, as it crashed to the floor with a loud thud. Then, she stomped on her tree, warping its frame and smashing the soda can ornaments she’d worked so hard to craft. She hated this piece, and she hated the naive person who made it.
She plugged in the blow torch by the metalwork station in the studio, not bothering to put on goggles or let it properly heat up, and kicked what was left of her piece over to it. She took the torch to her mangled tree and watched in horrified glee as the blue bullet of flame turned the coarse, coiled wire into a silvery, mushy gunk that coated the surface of the wooden studio floor panels. The chaos of it was exhilarating. She felt, for a moment, like the girl who didn’t care about the rules—as the rebel she’d always imagined herself.
The sculpture melted into something unrecognizable in a matter of minutes, and Indy scanned the studio for more to destroy. She left the torch on its side, still breathing fire from its spout, and brought back from her locker a heap of her drawings and sketches to feed it. But as she returned to the torch with her arms full of her most flammable works, Indigo found that the floorboards had caught fire. It was small and contained, but the flames were beginning to creep beyond the sculptural remains around the torch.
Her heart jumped.
She wasn’t as panicked as she would have been if she weren’t already in this bizarre, destructive trance—but she was still aware enough to know to grab the fire extinguisher from under the sink and remove the peg from the spout, as she’d learned to do in countless studio safety demonstrations.
But before she squeezed down on the extinguisher’s handle, Indy marveled at the appetite of the creeping fire, and how strangely pretty it looked—how out of place. Indigo grabbed her sketches and drawings and pages from her notebooks and tossed them into the flames, which lapped up the fruits of her labor hungrily and immediately. Then she tested the fire extinguisher. A stream of white foam expelled from the can and splattered all over the tables, making a satisfying Whoosh! noise.
She caught sight, in the corner of her eye, of Nick’s sweeping, postapocalyptic masterpiece. It was a canvas strewn with skulls, machine-gun shells, soot and ash and sand and nothingness, under a crimson red sky. A world he’d crafted in her company not long before. It stood there like a disapproving authority figure, watching over her maniacal episode, shaking its head in stern reprimand. “Whatever happened to Indigo Hamlisch, Serious Artist?” Indy heard the painting ask, in Nick’s deep voice.
“She’s burning up her own artwork.” Indy smiled to herself. “And yours, too!”
Indy grabbed the corner of Nick’s canvas and ripped his piece in half. The sound it made, the feeling of the tearing canvas, the sight of Nick’s world coming apart by her own hand, was terrifying and thrilling at once. Indy tossed the chunk of his painting—the bit with the skulls on the moon, or whatever the fuck it was supposed to be—into the fire. She watched in sick satisfaction as the flames lapped it up like a carnivorous plant hungry for blood. Once the painting had completely melted away into the ashes, Indigo put out the fire by shooting powdery white foam all over it. Suddenly she felt at peace.
But that sense of calm didn’t last long. Now that her trance was broken, she realized what she had done and began to panic. There was no way she wasn’t going to get caught for this. What was she thinking? And why did she have to burn Nick’s work, not just her own? Destroying another camper’s artwork was grounds for immediate expulsion—she wasn’t sure what the consequences were for ruining a staff member’s piece, but they couldn’t be much better. She started freaking out and tried to clean up the studio, but it was a horrible mess.
Indy wiped the tables and frantically swept up what was left of Nick’s canvas with her hands, dumping the ashes into the sink. She grabbed some rags and ran them under the faucet, then tried to mop the white stuff off the floor. But once the debris was gone,
the floor underneath was still black. It was no use. She’d really fucked up, and soon everybody would know. Indy’s heart leapt when she heard laughter in the distance. She had to get out of there, and now.
When she arrived back at the bunk, Indigo realized that she had absolutely no idea what time it was. The entire Ferlinghetti cabin was silent, which made her think that everyone was either at dinner or an evening activity, or even sleeping. It could have been anywhere from 6 PM to 1 AM. She resisted the urge to check her phone for the time, in case she’d see any desperate, pleading texts from Lucy. She climbed into her bed instead and closed her eyes.
“Oh, there you are!” Eleanor said, bursting through the door, with a convincing display of what seemed like true compassion. “I was worried about you.”
Eleanor had a glorious knack for bad timing. She had obviously just come from the studio, as she was wearing head-to-toe dancewear and still smelled of sweat. She plopped down on the foot of Indy’s bed and put her bony hand on her forehead like a concerned mom.
“Are you feeling any better?” asked Eleanor, clearly auditioning for the role of Indigo’s BFF, now that she’d witnessed the course of events that had left the gig vacant.
“Yeah, I’m just tired.” Indy hoped her roommate would take the hint.
“You’re warm, but that’s probably from the crying. Do you have a headache?”
“I’ll take a Tylenol or something.”
“Well,” Eleanor said, nodding with an Oscar-worthy demonstration of good intentions, “let me know if you need anything stronger. For the pain, or if you can’t sleep, or just to take the edge off.”
“Thanks?” Indy wasn’t sure that any of Eleanor’s pills were going to solve this, but it was kind of sweet anyway.
Eleanor made her best attempt at a warm smile. “You know,” she continued, “for what it’s worth, I think what Lucy did to you is disgusting. And I want to help you feel better about it.”
“I don’t want drugs,” Indy said, stifling a yawn. She felt completely beat—her body had been through so much today. From the jubilation of feeling wanted, to the realization that her best friend was deceiving her, and finally to the rage and guilt she felt in the studio moments before. It was all too much, and now, because she felt so depleted, she was vulnerable to whatever Eleanor was about to say. Indigo was a captive audience of one.
“I think what would make you feel better”—Eleanor offered Indigo a sip of the diet Red Bull she carried—“is to take action.”
“‘Take action’?” Indy pushed the can away and looked at her roommate, who was already morphing into scheming mode. Eleanor’s face always looked more lizardy when she was plotting. Her eyes slitted up like two blips on a TV screen before it went to black.
“Well…” she said, with what seemed like genuine delight, “what if we got Lucy fired?”
“That’s insane,” Indy said, sitting up against the wall. “What the hell are you talking about?”
“Last year”—Eleanor scootched closer to Indy on the bed, her face ablaze with intent—“when I heard about Nick and Lucy, I got so close to getting that scumbag fired. So close! But I learned from my mistakes, and now I’m telling you, we can do it to her instead.”
“Wait,” Indy said. “That was you who tried to get Nick fired?”
“Well, yeah!” Eleanor said, as in “Duh.” She began removing bobby pins from the tight bun at the nape of her neck. Her hair began to fall down in sweaty, blond clumps.
Indy couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “So, you forged that e-mail? That incriminating one you said he sent to Lucy from the computer lab? That you ‘found’?”
“Of course not!” Eleanor said, a little too quickly. “I didn’t make anything up—I just presented the facts as they happened. Nick was having an affair with an underage camper—your pal Lucy—and I was simply kind enough to gather and present the evidence accordingly.” Eleanor pursed her lips and ran her fingers through the pile of discarded bobby pins on the bedspread. There must have been about forty.
Indy looked her in the eyes. “I don’t get what you’re suggesting I do. Send a fake e-mail?”
Indigo’s brain was fuzzy, and she didn’t feel like thinking about the ethics of Eleanor trying to get Nick fired a year ago. She still wanted him, but she wasn’t nearly as protective of him as she would have been earlier, had she heard that her roommate had designs on his job stability.
“No, way better.” Eleanor continued. “I’ll have my mom overnight me a few of our old nanny cams, from when she was suspicious of the help.”
Eleanor got up and paced, like she was in some crummy soap opera.
“We can install one nanny cam in Lucy’s dorm,” Eleanor said, “plus one in her acting studio, and maybe one out in the woods by the lake, where you saw her today…kissing Nick.” It was like Eleanor was twisting the knife, saying his name and repeating what happened.
“I dunno, Eleanor. Sounds kind of extreme.” Indy was reluctant to go along with her roommate’s scheme, but it wasn’t like she had any other plan.
“This way, we can catch her doing something that could be considered grounds for getting dismissed from camp,” Eleanor continued, ignoring her roommate’s protests. “Nobody can argue with video footage. It’s not like an e-mail that can be misinterpreted or forged…or that people can think is forged, even if it’s not.” Her confidence around her methodology was mesmerizing and weirdly impressive.
“Eleanor, let me sleep on it, okay?” Indy said, her eyelids at half-mast by now, like a Garfield cartoon. “I’m not sure that setting up surveillance cameras to catch my best friend in some yet-to-be-determined, nefarious act is the best—”
“Your FORMER best friend,” Eleanor interrupted her. “A best friend wouldn’t lose her virginity to the one guy you’ve had a crush on since the beginning of time!”
It was creepy how much Eleanor knew about everybody’s personal business.
“How did you know I’ve liked him for so long?” Indigo asked.
“The way you change around him. How you blush when you see him. A friend notices that stuff,” she added, clutching her hand. Indigo felt herself squeeze back, against her better judgment.
“It’s for her own good,” Eleanor continued. “She can’t break the rules without learning the consequences. And think of it this way. We’re just keeping an eye on Lucy. If she doesn’t do anything wrong, we won’t have any evidence to submit, and she won’t be fired. See? Win-win!”
“Fine,” Indigo said, her eyes shut and her head fully down into her pillow.
Eleanor smiled and turned out the light.
And just like that, their unlikely alliance was official.
17
After the fire, Indigo decided, with Eleanor’s encouragement, that she would spend the rest of her time at camp working in her bunk instead of in the studio. The last thing she needed was to return to the scene of the crime. She felt horrible about what she’d done that night—especially to Nick’s painting. You never touched another artist’s work, period. No plagiarism, no vandalism. Those were really the only two rules to live by at Silver Springs—and she blew it. Indy’s remorse grew bigger by the minute; she couldn’t face herself, and she certainly couldn’t face the studio. What if she were to go back there and Nick saw her and confronted her? She couldn’t bear seeing him in any context, let alone one in which he exerted his authority or expressed disappointment in her. That would surely push her over the edge.
The night after the fire, she enlisted Eleanor to keep watch outside the studio while she gathered supplies—paints, pencils, brushes, easels, turp—anything she could carry in her arms back to Ferlinghetti, as Eleanor led the way with her flashlight and the lit end of a Marlboro Light. Once they arrived, Indy set up her and Eleanor’s room as a single-serving art creation unit.
Over the next few days, things started to get messy. What was once a modern, minimalist room with two beds, two dressers, and a generous closet now held
the clutter of Indigo’s frantic mind state. There was newspaper and glue everywhere, wire and clippers by the foot of each bed, and canvases and bottles of spray fixative leaned up against the vanity. To enter, Indy and Eleanor had to tiptoe around various charcoals, pastels, and stacks of palette paper.
Their door remained closed in an effort to be discreet about Indy’s secret mini-studio, and Indy barely left the bunk, entrusting Eleanor to retrieve snacks and meals for her from the dining hall instead. Indigo knew how she’d probably look to the outside world—like a kook who’d gone off the deep end.
A few days into the madness, Puja and Yvonne innocently poked their heads into Indy’s suite to ask if she wanted to join them for a quick game of Dance Dance Revolution in the Cindy Sherman Snack Bar. The look on Yvonne’s rubbery face when she saw the mess Indy sat in at the time—she was surrounded by a nest of tin foil and newspaper, like a homeless person but with better skin—was enough to show just how the rest of the camp probably thought of her. Or would, if they had seen more of her. Puja looked concerned; Yvonne looked genuinely horrified and disgusted to see what her friend had since descended into. Madness? Clutter? Heartbreak?
“It’s starting to look like an episode of Hoarders in here, dude,” Yvonne said, picking up a piece of twine and twirling it around. “Like, the ones that they save until the end of the season, to get the ratings up. The real psychos—”
“Yvonne, I think she gets the point,” Puja said, and then turned to Indy. “Seriously, though. Come take a break.”
“You know, I think you guys are right,” Indy said, standing up from the small patch of floor that wasn’t occupied by some crumpled drawing or tube of paint. She stretched her arms above her head and heard a few snaps and pops. It was getting pretty claustrophobic in there.
She wasn’t producing anything she liked, and she smelled like a wild animal. It was frustrating: usually artists endured the pain of creation knowing it was necessary in order to make something worthwhile. But if what had been ruining her life was just a roomful of shitty-looking garbage, was Indy just living like a recluse for no good reason? The idea of all that wasted time was enough to make her want to cry.
Art Girls Are Easy Page 14