Page 15 of Rivals

She plops down on the couch and bobs her head to the music. “Good song and very ironic,” she quips.

I shrug asPhantogramplays in the background. It’s going to probably take another twenty minutes or more for the drugs to kick in, and the air still feels awkward. I feel like I need to do something in the meantime. Revna curls up in the corner of the couch and looks out the window.

Maybe she’s more comfortable in her own silence. I can understand that. I sit on the other side of the sofa and lean my head back to stare at the ceiling. My eyes close, and I feel myself start to drift off.

Revna gasps, and my eyes spring open. I look for her on the side of the sofa where I last saw her, but she’s not there. I sit up and look around for her. She’s standing at the window, looking out at something. “What? What’s going on?” I ask as my heart thuds. I have to take a deep breath to keep the room from spinning.

“I think I’ve got it.” She turns around from the window with wide eyes and a funny grin on her face. I must have fallen asleep longer than I thought because she is very obviously riding her high.

“Well, what is it? Maybe you should tell me first,” I suggest.

Let her do it. Don’t question her.

Alright, then. I guess it kicked in for me, too. Revna goes to the canvas, and I decide to listen to the voice in my head, letting her do what she wants.

I watch her carefully mix a color and add water to thin it out. “Do you have watercolors?” she asks.

I go over to my small collection of supplies and pull out the red, blue, yellow, and black for her. I don’t use these often, so they are mostly full. Coming to her side, I look at what she’s done so far.

She has black paint smudged on the edges, beginning to create a shape, but almost hanging there as if it’s a fog because of how thinly it’s applied. There are two general shapes that appear to come to a point, and then it’s smudged more on the edges. It’s the idea of the shape instead of something more concrete to look at. She takes some red watercolor and mixes minimal water, placing the red in certain places. I haven’t caught on yet, so I continue to observe. Once satisfied with the red, she takes a big brush that holds a lot of water and sloppily spreads it over the red so it melds with the black and then begins to drip down the canvas. I take some blue and rub it in next to the drips. She looks at my hand on the canvas and then faces me. I can feel her eyes on my face as I push the blue into the red, creating the purple.

“I like it,” she whispers.

We continue to work as if we are one. She puts some color in one area, and I match it with another. Our hands are all over the canvas as the paint drips, water falls, and it’s like we’re in a trance. I feel like I’m barely aware of what we are doing. The colors feel brighter than they probably are. They feel like they are moving around us while we try to capture them and put them on the canvas.

The voice has been otherwise quiet while Revna and I have worked. “We have to let it dry,” I say while we stand side-by-side, staring at either trash or something that will put us into the next round. We have moved away from complete abstraction to the idea of it. There is a general shape and eye-catching areas, but it could still be any number of things. “It’s got an interesting gothic feel to it,” I mutter.

“I like gothic architecture,” Revna says. I look down at her, slightly taken aback.

“I do, too.” She glances at me and then goes to the sink in the kitchen to wash her hands. I stare at the painting some more.

It needs to glow.

I spoke too soon, the voice is back. But how would I make it glow? “We need to make it glow,” I say with my back to Revna.

“How would we do that? Doesn’t it already? Or is that just us?” she asks. We know we’re tripping, but sometimes it is hard to tell. I don’t recall adding anything other than watercolors and acrylics that naturally have a reflective quality to them.

“I don’t know, but it has to,” I say. We’re onto something. I know it. I can feel it.

Revna sits on the couch and draws her knees up to her chest. “Who are you?” she asks with glazed eyes.

“That’s a very broad question.” She shrugs as she studies me. My skin feels hot, like my shirt is scratching me all over. I grip the back collar of my shirt and pull it off. That’s better. Revna’s eyes are wide as she stares at me in my jeans and then averts her eyes to the ceiling. “Too hot.”

“Oh,” she mutters.

Her eyes go back to my torso, and she stares. I plop down on the couch again, a cushion between us, and I lean back with my arm across the top.

“I don’t know,” I say to the ceiling. My skin feels like it’s on fire—damn drugs.

“Why?” she asks.

“Do you?” I ask her.

She shrugs. “I’m an artist.”

“But you’re more than that, aren’t you?” I ask her. She goes quiet, and I don’t know if I should push the conversation. My lips are loose, so it would be smart to keep my mouth shut. Otherwise, I will probably tell her things that I don’t actually want to tell her, but the drugs do.

You have nothing to lose. Revna will understand.