The Fall of Troy Read online

  Meghan James was an artist in every sense of the word. While my dad could stay focused on one task in his lab all day and forget about his family, my mother’s mind was always a million places at once, meaning that, from the other end of the spectrum, it was also easy for her to forget about her family.

  Well, that had been my opinion for the past six years and the reason I chose to keep her out of my life. Since I’d moved up there though, things were a little different than what my twelve-year-old eyes had perceived. She was still decidedly too emotional, but now that I’d chosen to live with her, she was determined to be a part of my life. It’s not what I came here for, but it was hard to deny that I both wanted and didn’t want her attention at the same time.

  After the first few months here, I realized it was too hard to fight battles on every front—my dad, Dr. Shelly, my mom—so I slowly started to let her in. Not anything crazy. But I no longer holed myself up in my room on Friday nights or turned them down when they wanted to go out to eat. I was okay with how things were going and just as long as she didn’t mention my father, there wouldn’t be a problem.

  “Of course.” She nodded. “But with the snow, I called to tell you that we could come pick you up so you didn’t have to walk.”

  “Good afternoon, Troy.” I looked up as Paolo strolled into the entryway with a casual smile on his face to join my welcoming committee.

  The first thing he did was walk over to my mother and kiss the side of her head and whisper something (thankfully in Italian) in her ear that made her smile. This was something that he did often, and something I’d never seen my father do.

  Maybe I’d just been too young. Or maybe now that his character was cracked, I was starting to see more flaws that I’d been naively blind to.

  My mother’s long-time boyfriend towered over us with his tall, lean form, jet-black sculpted hair, and intense brown eyes. In spite of that, his demeanor was quite calm and reserved—especially for an Italian. I supposed it would have to be in order to mesh well with my mother’s exaggerated emotions. They’d never married, although at some point the whole notion of common-law marriage had probably come into effect.

  If I had to admit it, Paolo was my quiet ally in this whole mess as much as I wanted to hate him. He’d been older than I remembered. Again, my twelve-year-old eyes exaggerating the kind of youthfulness that would’ve been necessary to tempt my mom away from her husband.

  “Meg, a little snow won’t melt her.” He reached a hand around my mother’s shoulder and gently rubbed her arm, giving me a ‘don’t worry about it’ smile as he pulled her hovering concern back to a breathable distance.

  He calmed her. He insisted she give me space. He suggested I find my own job instead of all the ones she wanted me to apply for. And, when she wasn’t looking, told me I didn’t have to sign up for any of her classes if I didn’t want to. He was the barrier that stopped her hovering concern from suffocating me and the start to our rocky new mother-daughter relationship.

  In rare moments that I thought not possible, I could see why my mother had fallen for him; he was emotive and attentive—things that my father wouldn’t know how to be even if given a chemical equation to make them. My father cared, he just wasn’t good at showing it. Unless you were Lilith Montgomery, apparently. There was also the fact that Paolo was Italian with a killer accent and was the George Clooney kind of handsome.

  “I also wanted to see if you were around for dinner tonight.” She looked up to Paolo. “We were thinking about trying the new Indian place downtown.”

  It sounded good, but I wasn’t up for it. Not tonight.

  “I’m okay, thanks. I have to finish up a few final things from my online classes and then I’ll probably just want to relax before the new job starts Friday and then brand new classes on Monday,” I begged off, unwilling to admit I was still rattled from what Dr. Shelly had brought up in our session.

  Plus, I did have a few minor things that I had to do for the courses they’d had me take since I’d missed all of first semester; this way I wasn’t completely behind.

  I slung my bag on the staircase and scooted past her into the kitchen.

  The hallway was decorated with all sorts of modern and abstract art—my mother’s favorite and her area of expertise. Her own renditions of many of Picassos works scattered throughout the downstairs rooms of the house. At first, I’d thought it was too much—too much color, too much personality, too much of everything—especially coming from our townhome in D.C. where the walls were still contractor white and the only decorative items were the ones my mother put up but hadn’t taken with her. Each space fit their respective personalities. But me? I was lost in the middle, belonging to both and yet neither one completely.

  “So… you picked your classes this morning?” she asked as they followed me into the kitchen, watching as I reached in the fridge for a bottle of green tea.

  “Yes. I met with Ms. Williams.” I scanned the rest of the contents, searching for something to eat.

  “And?” Meghan James had zero filter when it came to the emotions in her voice. In this case, expectant hope that I’d chosen her class as part of my spring semester schedule.

  “I have to take a bunch of general courses and then I have to take this elective thing that I missed first semester.” I made myself a bowl of cereal, wanting something quick and easy to fill my stomach after its rough-and-tumble morning.

  “The Value Electives. Did you sign up for—?”

  “No,” I interjected, steeling myself for the way her face fell and the way it bothered me more than it should. The lie was on the tip of my tongue to say that the registrar told me her class was full. Besides, she’d probably know how full her class was.

  I shrugged, trying to make my response seem casual. “Ms. Williams said the other course was being offered by a guest professor from France. I figured it would be good to pick that one since he’s only here this semester.”

  “Oh, of course,” she agreed with a false enthusiasm and continued to ramble. “Kristi Matthews was supposed to do a course, but she had a family emergency. I thought she was going to be back in time, but I guess Jack, our department chair, called in a friend of his from France to do the class. Baudin. I can’t place his first name right now.”

  I put the milk back in the fridge and looked up to the two of them, disappointment painted on my mother’s face just as vividly as if it were bright blue.

  “Okay, well, I’m going to go upstairs—”

  “I was just so hoping that you’d join my class—” She cut me off with a watery voice, pressing her fingers over her mouth before she broke into tears.

  These were the moments I didn’t like, the ones where she wanted more from whatever our relationship was. I was already here, living with her, spending some time with her, going to dinners with her and Paolo. Wasn’t that enough?

  “Meg, I think that’s a great opportunity for her to take advantage of,” Paolo said with his thick Italian accent, all the while gently rubbing up and down my mother’s arm to comfort her and try to get her to see it in a positive light. “Not too often a French master comes to teach.”

  Like a comic strip, I watched frame by frame as his words slowly brought her around to a modest level of disappointment.

  “That’s true.” She nodded.

  “Yeah. I thought it would be something unique,” I agreed, letting out a slow breath of relief. Once again, Paolo to the rescue… “Alright, well, have fun at dinner. I’ll see you later…”

  I brushed past them both, meagerly acknowledging their responses before jogging up the steps to my room.

  Like the subject of her VE class, the guest room that had become mine was decorated to commemorate Picasso’s Blue Period. I saw the hesitation in my mom’s eyes when she’d shown it to me the first day, afraid that it was going to make my ‘emotional instability’ worse.

  I wasn’t unstable. I was completely and utterly stable. And I was standing firm on anger and betraya
l.

  Locking my door, I stripped down to my underwear. I was never a fan of lounge clothes when they could be avoided. Glancing in the floor length mirror on the closet door, I caught sight of the French script tattooed down my side from right about boob height to down a few inches on my hip.

  Aux objets répugnants nous trouvons des appas.

  I turned eighteen three months ago and had treated myself to the massive marking on that very day. I never thought I’d be the girl to have tattoos, but then I remembered that girl wasn’t me. That girl wasn’t someone I even knew. And that I loathed that girl—the inkless, perfect little scientist. So I destroyed her image. And it hurt like hell, both the tattoo on my skin and the scar on my heart. Hot, silent tears had leaked down my face with each searing brand of the needle and burst of black into my skin. As they fell onto the table beneath me, I realized why people indelibly ink their flesh—because there are some hurts that should never be forgotten.

  In the things we loathe become the things we love.

  Baudelaire’s quote had defined me that day. I’d hated who I’d become, and I could only hope that whatever grew out of the ashes of my past self would become something…someone that I could love.

  I fell onto the full-size bed like the navy duvet was a sea I could sink into, popped in my headphones, and pulled out my sketchpad as the rolling R’s of Baudelaire’s Les Fleurs du Mal floated through my ears. I couldn’t read or understand the French perfectly—two years of high school French wasn’t sufficient enough for that—but it was more than enough to be able to enjoy the beauty of hearing the French words that were strung together with a fluidity that let them soak like water through the coarse sand of sadness in my soul.

  And while I listened, my mind drifted back to the mesmerizing melancholy of the deep blue sea, as my hand sketched out the harsh planes of the disheveled man to whom it belonged, and tried to ignore the way the memory made my body tingle.

  “The shipment of newsprint and large sketchpads for one of the electives just arrived today, so I’m going to need you to unload those right away, New Girl,” Jayden said as she pointed to about ten gigantic boxes stacked in the middle of the RISD Art Depot—the main art supply store for the entire school.

  Jay was a senior and the manager on duty today. The number of spikes on her clothing was in direct competition with the number of piercings contained on her face: ears, eyebrows, nose, lip, tongue. Good thing RISD didn’t have metal detectors to get into any of the buildings because this chick would never make it.

  The store was sprawling, taking up most of the first floor in the building adjacent to where I’d met with the registrar. Textbooks were jammed on shelves in the front corner, followed by aisles of pencils, brushes, paints, and every other possible utensil created to leave a mark. Then came the small open area where those boxes were currently stacked and behind them was an endless sea of nothing—or of possibility—depending on how you looked at it. Blank paper, blank canvas, blank frames—everything necessary for a clean start.

  And, from the looks of it, Jay and I were the only ones working today. That was fine. Between Kevin and Dr. Shelly and my mother, I’d had enough of people this week. Losing myself amidst the stacks of blank paper was a welcome retreat.

  “I usually like to give a quick tour and what you’ll be responsible for and all that good shit but there’s no time today,” Jay said in a huff, her spiked black boots clicking even as she walked along the carpet. “Over here is where all the stuff needs to go. We open in an hour and it’s going to be a madhouse.”

  “Great,” I mumbled.

  “Don’t worry, New Girl, you’ll be fine. And, yes, at some point, I’ll learn your name.” She stopped in front of two, long empty shelves all the way in the back corner of the store. “Alright. Here’s where the stuff in those boxes needs to go. I already have the tags out.” She pointed to where each section of the shelves was labeled. “So you just have to match the names or numbers and put the shit where it belongs. Whatever is easier for you. Good?”

  She stared at me like I better not have any questions. Not that I did. Unpacking boxes wasn’t rocket science.

  “Yeah.”

  “Great. You’ve got an hour.”

  I watched her walk off. I still had my jacket on and my bag slung over my shoulder. Guess I would find out where I could store them later. For now, one of the empty shelves would have to do. I shrugged out of my wet parka, leaving me in my dark jeans and white polo shirt that had the store logo embroidered on it. I shook the beads of rain off my coat before tossing it on the top shelf to dry while I went to work.

  The snow in the forecast had swiftly turned to rain—a steady flow with no end in sight—which seemed fitting for the all-around dreary atmosphere in Providence. I imagined that the first English colonists who came here in the seventeen-hundreds must have taken comfort in finding a land that seemed as similarly gray and gloomy as the one that they’d left behind. But I’d only lived here for a few months so my opinion was skewed.

  Hell, my life had gone to shit over the past few months so my perception was probably permanently screwed.

  Alright, focus Troy.

  Throwing my damp, frizzy waves up into a ponytail, I headed for the front of the store. It took all of one botched attempt to realize that the boxes were much too heavy and too large for me to lift and carry by myself. Smaller trips it was.

  It took me three trips for each of the first four boxes to get all of the sketchpads unloaded: charcoal paper, drawing paper, newsprint paper, tracing paper. You name it, I unloaded it.

  Grabbing the first ten or so pads from the fifth box, I slowly wobbled my way back to the back corner, almost tripping over my clunky rain boots. Good thing I had the path to the shelves down because with the way my arm strength was rapidly dying on me, I resorted to clasping the sketchpads against my chest which completely blocked my front-facing view.

  With a grunt, I hoisted this latest batch up over my head onto the top shelf where they belong—for Professor L. Baudin. Wiping my forehead, I evened them out as I stared at the tag in front of me.

  ‘A Study of David.’ VE102. Prof. L. Baudin.

  The Frenchman probably wouldn’t even be grateful for the way his sketchpads were killing me right now. I huffed with my hands on my hips and tried to catch my breath, kicking off my boots and leaving them next to the shelf. No, this was good. I hadn’t done any sort of physical exercise in a long time; Lil and I used to run all the time—her thing more than mine. Now, I couldn’t stomach it. Plus, it was too cold up here.

  Resting my arms on the shelf, I bent forward and let out a heavy sigh. Anger was exhausting, but just like this class, it was a lesson I had to learn.

  Maybe I should have just signed up for my mom’s class. There were no sketchpads here for her.

  Shaking my head, my legs moved like they were programmed back toward the other five and a half boxes that were left waiting for me. Absentmindedly, I began to roll the short sleeves of my polo up farther—a small effort to keep my overheating body cool.

  There’s no way I was going to get the rest of the supplies unloaded in the next ten minutes before—

  I froze. Body. Mind. Soul. Like someone pressed pause on the sad film of my life the second I saw him. The man from the Wise Bean. The man with the deep eyes and the deeper sadness. My stomach clenched as I let myself stop and stare—as though I had another choice.

  What was he doing here?

  He didn’t see me. He was talking to Jay, his arm moving back and forth as he spoke before his fingers speared through his hair in frustration and my own twitched at my sides wanting to run through it. I wondered if his felt as soft and silken as it looked the way it curled at the ends by the collar of his shirt. The man appeared like the world itself frustrated him just for spinning. Like he was some sort of gorgeous genius god who’d been stuck dealing with miserable mortals for far too long to be anything but irascible.

  I wondered if touching him
would soften him just a little… melt some of that misery.

  Today, there was no crowd to hide him and even without the comparison, he was as tall as I remembered. Jay was tall and then had black platform boots on and still she just barely came to his nose. Without a jacket on, his wrinkled shirt showed just how trim he was and the way he had the sleeves bunched at his elbows—like he’d been in the middle of working on something and trying unsuccessfully to not dirty it. It revealed muscles that were deceptive; they weren’t large or bulging, instead his strength was compacted in sleek defined planes that disguised just how swiftly and subtly he’d be able to take down Goliath.

  I saw Jay talking to him. I saw her mouth moving and her eyes on his face. And yet, out of nowhere, his head spun and his gaze pinned mine. He didn’t steal my breath, he ripped it from my small, clinging fingers like you pull a toy from a child. It was only a second—maybe two—that the deep blue swallowed me whole, a second that felt like he looked right inside of me, strolled around the deepest, darkest part of my past and my emotions before he looked away like my life and trials were nothing but child’s play.

  Miserable mortal.

  With one look, he’d turned my anger and sadness into trivialities and I felt that familiar hate spark violently toward him again. How dare he? My anger was just as justified as his. Blood rushed to my pale cheeks but I didn’t bother to look away; he’d already followed Jay off somewhere so there was no risk of him seeing it.

  Anger and adrenaline pumped through my veins and, putting them to use, I picked up the remaining sketchpads from box number five—almost twenty of them, the most that I’d attempted thus far.

  Grumbling to myself, I had the insane urge to tell Kevin that I saw his man-crush. I didn’t even have his number. Or his last name. I huffed in annoyance. How had the sassy, gay stalker managed to implant himself in my mind to where I instinctively wanted to share this with him?

  You don’t do friends, Troy.

  Although, at least this one wouldn’t sleep with my mom…