“Come over here, sugar,” Tiffany said. “Give some of that sweetness to Poppa.”
Lucy smiled and made her way over to Tiffany, then sat on the girl’s lap and kissed her quickly. Indigo cringed watching Lucy slide off her slip to reveal her magazine-perfect body in a bra and panties. Lucy had no body fat, only lean muscles and a soft, flat belly. The last time Indy saw her friend that way it was…Oh, God.
Oh, God, no.
No.
Indigo wouldn’t let her mind realize what her eyes had already put together, even though she knew exactly what came next.
Lucy, still in character, took her finger in her own mouth and traced the midline of her body down to the top of her underpants, then back up to Tiffany’s mouth, which elicited an audible “Yeechhh!” from one of the front rows. Then Lucy began gyrating…in the same exact way she had done in the nanny-cam footage Indy had watched with Eleanor days earlier.
This couldn’t be happening.
Indigo’s heart sank as Lucy finished her lap dance, and then, right on cue, made her way over to the dresser. She poured out some prescription pills, crushing them up with the bottom of the bottle. She then took a credit card out of the wallet on the dresser and divided the powder into lines. And just as she did on the surveillance video for an audience of two, Lucy’s head of bodacious curls went down as she snorted—or pretended to snort—line after line of “prescription pill dust.”
Eleanor and Indigo’s only smoking gun against Lucy turned out to be a toy pistol that shot bubbles. She was so mad at Eleanor for convincing her they had caught Lucy in a fireable offense, when all they had was rehearsal footage. Where was Eleanor, anyway? Indy scanned the audience, but it was too dark to see any faces.
Onstage, Lucy shook her curls like she was auditioning for Pantween all over again, and sniffed so loud the back row could hear. She rubbed the remainder of “pill dust” on her gums, cheating stage right to face Tiffany, who straddled something invisible off the side of the bed again. The lights lowered while the Al Green music faded out, to raucous applause.
“What an edgy play!” Yvonne yelped to Indigo, during the scene change. “Have you ever seen anything like it?” she marveled. Indy nodded, clapping along with the rest of the camp.
Unfortunately, she had.
20
The plot of the rest of Puja’s play was all a blur. There was a drug deal gone bad, and somebody put a hit on Lucy’s character. By the end, Lucy had laid slain in the center of the stage, her limp body anointed with stage blood placed just so, while a dramatic score drew the events to a close. When she sprung up to take her bow, the standing ovation that followed lasted five full minutes. The camp was under Lucy’s spell.
As the houselights came up, Indigo tried her best to maintain a calm exterior around the staff and campers leaving the theater. But all she wanted to do was scream at Eleanor for mistaking a dumb rehearsal video of Lucy and Tiffany for actual footage of her and Nick fooling around and doing drugs. Indy prayed that she hadn’t actually submitted it to Lillian yet. If so, they were going to look insanely stupid.
Another thing Indy hadn’t even considered until that moment was the possibility that they had violated a camp rule by installing a nanny cam inside a staff dorm. They’d have to go in front of a committee and would probably be sent home once they were found responsible. Or, worse yet—Indigo would be sent home after Eleanor inevitably threw her under the bus.
Indy weaved in and out of the human traffic of audience members clearing out of the tiny space. She hopped over seats, drifting toward the exit, cutting in line and trying to be as inconspicuous as possible. Once outside, the cool night air made her jean jacket feel thin on her shoulders and arms, and the breeze blew through her long hair. The moon was high, and the pines were silhouetted against the voluptuous summer sky. Indy looked into the distance, but soon the exiting mass of upper-hill campers and staffers blocked her view. Yvonne was there, and Erin, Megan, Lena, Puja, Desi…pretty much everyone except Eleanor.
Then Indy noticed Nick exiting the theater. He was talking to Jen Rant.
Her body reacted the way it always had when she saw him—with intense waves of prickly warmth, like how it felt when you first realized you were drunk, combined with the chilly coldness of her fingers and toes losing circulation. She couldn’t help but stare. He wore a dark blazer over an olive-green T-shirt and was freshly shaven. But he looked so good to her—it was like she hadn’t seen him in forever, and only in that moment did she truly feel how much she missed him. How she was still attracted to him. How it wasn’t up to her to decide who she was not supposed to want. The realization was almost a comfort.
Nick looked up and made eye contact with her. It was as if Indy’s thoughts had been broadcast, and he was the only one tuned in to her frequency. He blushed and nervously ran his fingers through his hair, tucking the strands that fell on the left side of his face behind his ear. And then, seconds after meeting eyes with the student he once called Supergirl, Nick darted his eyes to the floor in what seemed like shame.
It broke Indy’s heart. The fact that he’d also just seen Lucy’s sexual tour de force on stage only made her feel worse. Lucy would always be the one looking incredible in front of the entire camp in her underwear, and Indigo would always be the one whose stare would be deflected, never returned. Lucy would be the one who gets looked at; Indy the one who did the looking. The Actress and the Artist—like it was some kind of sad Silver Springs fable. Why had she even tried to compete?
Her face felt hot and the shame of having destroyed his piece came flooding back. What if he knew? He probably did—and soon everybody else would, too. But Nick’s opinion of her was all that mattered. If she could take back anything she’d ever done, Indy thought, it would have been that stupid night with the blowtorch.
“Hey, Indy—are you okay?” Megan appeared, putting her hand on her shoulder. “You know that Lucy didn’t actually die, right?”
Indy nodded without missing a beat. “It just really made me sad how her character couldn’t pull herself out of her horrible life.” She looked down at the rocky ground, face flushed red with embarrassment. “You know what I mean?” Tears welled up behind her eyes and in her throat. She had to get out of there.
“Yeah, I guess so.”
Indy turned on her heels and started back toward her bunk. Behind her, she heard Suzie McLandish ask Megan what her problem was.
“She’s sad about that dead hooker,” Megan answered knowingly.
Indy moved quickly toward the path that led to Ferlinghetti, assuming she’d already experienced the worst run-in of the night. In a few minutes she’d be back in her bunk, safe from the endless drama of the evening.
But Lillian Meehan had other plans.
“Hello, Indigo,” said the camp director, stepping onto the path. She moved her eyebrows into “concern” position and kept a strained neutral expression in her mouth—she was neither smiling nor grimacing. It was terrifying. “Do you have a minute?”
Indy’s mood, which had already plunged like a bungee drop, somehow plummeted a little lower.
“Of course,” Indy said. She followed Lillian, pulling up her long black dress. It had been dragging through the dirt all evening and now had ugly brown dirt marks all over its hem.
They sat down on a bench between the back of the theater and the path. The picnic area in front of them was illuminated by one of several solar-powered “green lanterns” strung from cables that ran from one theater to the next during Industry Showcase Weekend. It was supposed to look festive, but the lights usually just attracted a shitload of bugs. And though they were somewhat out of the way of the exiting campers, Indigo still felt everyone’s eyes on her. She was very conspicuously getting in trouble.
This had to be about the telltale Lucy tape. She considered feigning ignorance, blaming Eleanor, telling Lillian everything from the time she first crushed on Nick as a little girl—all of it. But then Lillian began talking, and In
dy realized that her excuses were useless.
“Indy,” Lillian began, making sure to speak in a non-patronizing manner and maintain eye contact, as she always did when addressing campers one-on-one. “I wanted to talk to you because I’m concerned. Of all the art majors at Silver Springs, I least expected to hear complaints about you.”
“Complaints?” Indy asked cautiously. That could mean anything.
“Your work has been all over the place this summer. And then, I heard you disappeared and were working out of your bunk? Is that true?”
“Sort of true. I was under the weather and didn’t want to infect any of the other art majors with something contagious.”
“Okay,” Lillian said. “Fair enough. But your disappearance also coincided with a rather disturbing incident around the art studio. It seems some artwork that may have belonged to a staff member—I’m not going to divulge who—was destroyed in a small fire.”
Indigo gulped.
“Do you know anything about that incident?” Lillian’s eyebrows arched with generous anxiety on Indy’s behalf, and her warm eyes beckoned with the benefit of the doubt.
The question hung heavy in the air. What the hell, she thought. She might as well get it over with.
“I did it,” Indy replied, stone-faced. “It was me.”
Lillian bowed her head and closed her eyes, like the confession was all too much for her to bear. As though it would have been easier for everyone if she had just lied.
“Oh, dear,” Lillian breathed, “I was afraid you were going to say that.”
“Am I in trouble?” Indy asked.
“I believe so.”
Indigo looked at her feet.
“I’m sorry, Indigo. But vandalism isn’t something we take lightly at Silver Springs.”
“I’m so sorry,” Indigo said, interrupting what seemed to be a meticulously planned speech. “It was a mistake, I promise.…”
“That’s not what you should be telling me. That’s what you need to tell the Fairness Committee tomorrow morning.” Lillian stood up as she spoke, smoothing out one of many wrinkles in her Eileen Fisher linen sheath dress. “You know the drill. A jury comprised of myself, your adviser, and two random teachers from your field of study will convene before breakfast tomorrow in the Harpsichord Room. We’ll hear your case, listen to your explanation, and then vote on what we think would be a fair punishment.”
“What sort of punishment?” Indy felt exhausted.
“You may be facing expulsion from the art show. And from camp entirely.” Lillian let the revelation linger in the air for a beat between them. “And at the very least, I know your parents won’t be happy to come up this weekend and find out your work isn’t being shown.”
“Right.”
“Good night, Indigo,” Lillian said as she walked back into the mass of campers and staff outside of the theater. Indy watched her walk toward the lanterns and the fireflies near the path, and finally, once Lillian was out of sight, spoke to herself, bluntly and at full speaking volume.
“Fuck. Me.”
The walk back to the Beat cabin was interminable. Her dad and Yoshiko were going to be furious if they were to drive all the way to camp to learn that she was getting kicked out and had made absolutely nothing all summer. At least Lillian hadn’t mentioned the Lucy tape. That was a boondoggle, but at least it still seemed to be under the radar.
But instead of thinking about what it would be like to endure the first Industry Showcase Day without any of her work displayed and how best to tell her parents about her humiliating blowtorch spree, Indigo mentally practiced exactly how she’d tell Eleanor off. First, she’d come in and slam the door behind her. Then she’d ask her sarcastically whether Eleanor had any other rehearsal footage they could use to get Lucy fired. Maybe an old VHS tape from seven years ago, when Lucy got the lead in The Pajama Game?
Indy arrived at the bunk to the sounds of miscellaneous pre-bedtime chatter and gossiping from the rooms on either side of the hallway as she walked toward her and Eleanor’s bedroom. “I heard she rehearsed for that role by charging all the Kinnetonka guys seven dollars an H.J.” “I heard Tiffany walked around with a sock down her jeans for all of last week.” “I’m so proud of Puja. I wish her parents had been here to see her play.” “I don’t know what my parents would say if I wrote a play about hooking.” “They’d probably say, ‘Write what you know’—or they wouldn’t have had to, since you already had.” “Has anybody seen my Chanel lip gloss?”
Indy burst into her room, expecting to unleash her temper on Eleanor right away. But the room was empty.
She studied her reflection in the full-length mirror across the room, the one behind the two trash bags full of her discarded artwork. She looked like a ghost of her former self—the time spent inside had kept her skin pale, and she’d definitely lost some weight in her face, eating only the dancer portions of the meals that Eleanor brought her. But her eyes looked blank; her eyebrows were tense. She had that little line between her brows that her stepmom routinely got Botoxed, and her mouth was dry, her nostrils flaring. Indy was pretty sure she looked like she was high on something. But she wasn’t on drugs—she was just furious and hopeless. And now that Eleanor wasn’t here, she didn’t have anybody else to take her anger out on.…
Besides herself.
Indigo rummaged through her drawers for something sharp she could use to cut herself with, but there was nothing. All of the wire she’d used for her sculptures was back in the studio, and a quick rifle through Eleanor’s dresser proved futile as well. All she found besides the cigarettes and pills her roommate had on tap were fuzzy size-zero Capezio wraparound sweaters, some expensive skirts and blouses, and pastel-colored, size 30AA La Perla lingerie.
Indigo made a beeline toward the bathroom. She’d swipe one of Yvonne’s nail clippers or Eleanor’s “complexion tool”—a glorified stainless-steel blackhead extractor, basically. She began to sort through the accumulation of nail, hair, skin, and tooth-related hygienic products in Yvonne’s cubby before she found what she was looking for—a sharp, half-jaw, Revlon cuticle nipper. Indy slid off the plastic cover on the tip, listening intently for the sound of anybody coming. The chatter from the bedrooms seemed to recede as she tucked the tool safely inside her left hand, checking the mirror constantly for any signs of company. She crept, in relative quiet, toward the bathroom exit. All was clear. Until a crazy scream pierced the silence.
“WOOOOOOO-HOOOOOOOOO!”
Puja, screaming dementedly at the top of her lungs, burst through the hallway and past the bathroom entrance with her eyes lit up like some kind of psychedelic campfire. Indigo dropped the manicure tool on the tile floor in surprise. It collided with the tile and bounced into one of the stalls.
“Indy! Hi! It’s so good to see you! Did you get out of bed? Have you combed your hair since I saw you last? Do you know I wrote AN IMPORTANT PIECE OF THEATER?” Puja was still shouting from the hallway, but the sight of Indigo near the sink had caused her to stop in front of the open bathroom entrance. Gradually, girls from the other suites, curious about whatever exactly was going on, drifted toward the shared bathroom.
“HEY, GUYS!!!” Puja, her eyes still manic, greeted the rest of Ferlinghetti—including Eleanor, who entered with Yvonne, in matching pajama sets in two very different sizes. So, Eleanor was busy recruiting and indoctrinating a new peon, thought Indy. Poor Yvonne.
“I SAID HEEEYYYYYY, GUYYSSSS!” Puja repeated.
“Are you feeling okay?” Indigo asked, because somebody had to.
“I AM FEELING GREAT, INDIGO!” Puja exclaimed at the top of her lungs. “Do you know WHYYYY?”
She swept all of the soaps, toiletries, and towels above the row of sinks onto the floor with a giant swoop of her right arm. They clattered satisfyingly to the floor.
“Do you know why!?” She repeated to the shocked group of girls who stared.
“Why?” Indy asked calmly.
“BECAUSE I wrote a HIT
PLAY! And I am the BEST!!!” Puja began to dance like an old-timey cartoon of a giraffe, moving her neck to the left and to the right in silly, exaggerated motions. Then she Suzie-Q’ed her way over toward the showers and back.
Yvonne looked concerned and slipped out of the bathroom while Puja continued to dance and lecture at her gradually increasing audience of bemused bunk mates.
“DON’T YOU GUYS UNDERSTAND THE POWER AND MAGIC OF THIS PLACE?” Puja continued with grand, sweeping arm gestures.
“The bathroom?” Tiffany Melissa Portman asked, looking around.
“NO! Camp!” She finally stood still, and her eyes seemed to bulge out of her head with the realization that all of the girls in Ferlinghetti were present. “For TWO MONTHS out of the YEAR we are able to MAKE OUR ART and NEVER HAVE TO WORRY ABOUT THE COMMERCE ELEMENT OF IT! I don’t have to sell out a room! I just have to FOCUS ON BEING GREAT! Which I AM! I AM THE GREATEST AT WRITING PLAYS! I’m Vishnu and Kali and Jesus and Bathsheba and Katniss FRICKIN’ Everdeen all up in one hot little package!!!”
Puja began to open all the stall doors in the bathroom. When she was done, she began running back to close them, naming each toilet as she did. “SCORPIO! Cancer! GEMINI! Sagittarius!!! READY OR NOT, here I COME!!”
The Beat cabin campers exchanged WTF looks. Finally, Yvonne returned to the bathroom, waving a manila envelope that had been ripped open. She shook her head in disappointment.
“Puja? Did you happen to eat this entire nutmeg that your parents sent you?”
“SO WHAT IF I DID?” Puja yelped. “I AM THE GREATEST AT WRITING PLAYS!” Puja’s eyes became a little more narrow as she lowered her volume and made eye contact with the girls closest to her as though she was about to reveal a great secret.
Art Girls Are Easy Page 17