Blood on the Canvas

Bianca knew she was in trouble the second Professor Adeyemi stopped behind her easel and went quiet for too long. "Talk to me about the negative space here," he said, tapping the corner of her canvas where a half-finished still life of dried flowers sat looking, in her own honest opinion, fairly lifeless. "It's... intentional?" From the stool beside her, Elizabeth made a small, strangled sound that was very clearly a laugh she was trying and failing to swallow. "Something to add, Ms. Ade?" the professor asked without turning around. "No, sir," Elizabeth said, straight-faced, and waited exactly three seconds after he moved on before dissolving into silent, shoulder-shaking laughter. "You're the worst," Bianca whispered. "I'm supportive. There's a difference." They'd met when they were nine years old, the day Elizabeth's family moved in two doors down and she'd shown up at Bianca's door holding a box of crayons, asking with the terrifying confidence only a nine-year-old possesses whether Bianca wanted to be best friends. Eleven years later, they'd built an entire language out of shared looks and half-finished sentences, and Bianca genuinely couldn't picture a version of her life that didn't have Elizabeth's elbow permanently jammed into hers at a shared easel. They'd survived a lot together, in the quiet, unremarkable way best friends survive things — Elizabeth had been the one who sat with Bianca on the bathroom floor the night Bianca's parents had their worst fight, years ago, the one that almost ended in her father moving out. Bianca had been the one who showed up at Elizabeth's house every day for two weeks after her mother's funeral, when Elizabeth was six and didn't fully understand why everyone kept looking at her with that particular soft, careful sadness. Neither of them had ever needed to say out loud what the other one meant to them. It simply was what it was, the same way gravity was what it was — a fact of the world, not something you thanked out loud. "You're coming out Saturday," Elizabeth said after class, packing up her supplies. "No excuses. It's been a month since we've gone anywhere that isn't this building or your kitchen." "I have a paper due Friday." "It's Tuesday." "Exactly. Plenty of time to feel guilty about it later." "I will accept no further appeals," Elizabeth said, already walking backward toward the door, grinning. "Saturday. Wear something you don't mind smelling like a bar afterward." --- The trouble, when it came that afternoon, wasn't about Saturday at all. Bianca found her father at the kitchen table with a beer already half gone, though it wasn't even five o'clock, and a second empty can sitting crushed beside it. She'd learned to read the pace of these things over the years — one beer with dinner meant nothing, two before dinner on a Tuesday meant something had gone wrong at the shop, or in his head, or both. "You're back early," she said carefully. "Laid off two guys today." He didn't look up. "Might be me next, way things are going." "Dad—" "I'm fine, Bianca." His voice had an edge to it she recognized and hated, the one that showed up right before he said something he'd apologize for later, or didn't say anything at all and just got quieter and quieter until the silence itself felt like an accusation. "Go do your homework." "I just want to know if—" "I said I'm fine." He finally looked at her, and there was something raw and humiliated underneath the sharpness, something that had nothing to do with her and everything to do with a lifetime of feeling like he'd never quite measured up to the life he thought he was supposed to have. "You don't need to worry about grown-up problems. Go." She went. She sat on the stairs outside the kitchen for a long moment afterward, listening to the specific, careful sound of a third can being opened, and felt the old familiar knot tighten in her chest — the one that lived somewhere between loving him and being afraid of the version of him three beers deep, the version who sometimes muttered things about wanting a son who could've taken over the shop, things he never quite said loud enough to be confronted, and always regretted enough the next morning to make it impossible to stay angry. She texted Elizabeth instead of doing homework. Bad night here. Distract me. The reply came within a minute: Dad's being weird too. Come over? --- Elizabeth was waiting on her front step when Bianca crossed the two doors between their houses, hoodie sleeves pulled over her hands against the evening chill. "What's going on with your dad?" Bianca asked, sitting down beside her. "I don't know. He got a phone call earlier and went completely white. Wouldn't tell me who it was. Just kept saying to be careful this weekend, to stick to well-lit streets, stuff he's never said before, not even after Mom." Elizabeth picked at a loose thread on her sleeve. "It's freaking me out a little." "Careful of what?" "That's the thing. He wouldn't say." Elizabeth glanced sideways at her, and for once there was no joke waiting behind her expression, just something quieter and more uncertain. "Aaron thinks it's about the gang stuff on the news. There's been more of it lately — some territory war a couple neighborhoods over. But that's not even close to us." "So why's your dad acting like it is?" "I don't know," Elizabeth said again, and the words hung there between them, unresolved, the evening going dim and cold around the edges as the streetlights flickered on one by one down the block. "But he made me promise to text him the second we're on our way home Saturday. Both of us. He wouldn't stop saying it." Neither of them said what they were both thinking — that fathers who had already lost people didn't get spooked over nothing. Bianca looked down the street, toward the corner where Cobalt Street cut off toward the bar district, quiet now, ordinary, streetlights humming the same way they always had. "It's probably nothing," she said. Elizabeth didn't answer right away. When she finally did, her voice was smaller than Bianca had heard it in a long time. "Yeah," she said. "Probably." Neither of them believed it.