Everything's Not Fine by Sarah Carlson

Author:Sarah Carlson [Carlson, Sarah]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781684424115
Google: KWA4yAEACAAJ
Amazon: 1684424119
Publisher: Turner
Published: 2020-05-25T23:00:00+00:00

At lunch, Rafa hands me his Samsung.

I raise an eyebrow.

“I figured you’d want to use your own earbuds. So we don’t mix earwax.”

A bit of heat ignites in my stomach as I plug my earbuds into his phone. He pushes play, and the soothing waves of Sigur Rós fill the space between my ears.

In very un-Rafa-like fashion, he slams the nearly empty jar of red paint onto his palette, leaving only a stamp of red from the rim.

Then I remember in Psychology, I overheard Eisenhardt and Kenzie talking about the football team toilet papering Tomah’s goalposts. Apparently the police showed up. Omar led the escape, claiming to have outrun the Milwaukee police dozens of times.

“Omar’s never even talked to a Milwaukee cop, let alone been chased by one,” Rafa had burst out, earning looks of shock from both Eisenhardt and Kenzie.

I pause Sigur Rós, take the jar from him, and tap it on the side until some paint blobs out. Then I queue up Unrequited Death’s “Backstabbing Bitch” on my phone and hand it to him.

“I think you might have some repressed rage to release, King of Sarcasm.”

“Yeah. Suppose so.” He plugs in his earbuds and hits play. I hear the tinny, ripping electrical guitars. Rafa dabs his brush into the blood red.

I turn on Sigur Rós. This song starts with a chorus singing a cappella with the ocean crashing in the background. Then the lead singer’s smooth, buttery voice joins. I let words that mean nothing to me fill my head. Carry me away.

I add shading around the demon’s red eyes glowing through the shadows cast by the lip of his helmet. With this music, my brush moves slower, more gracefully, like how Rafa paints. I feel just a little bit weightless. Music in the key of Shelving It.

Below me, Rafa’s attacking the neck of the wolf head—almost literally, given the ferocity of his brushstrokes. Blood red smears his burnt-sienna skin. It’s the first time I’ve seen him get paint on himself. Rafa mixes blue into the blood color, then works on some of the sinews.

Then I feel eyes on us. I rip out my earbuds.

“Is that a severed wolf head?” a high-pitched voice squeaks.

I glance back to find Kimmy and Mike standing behind us. He’s wearing his red-and-yellow home jersey, festooned with his homecoming sash. His away jersey hangs off Kimmy’s small frame.

Kimmy morphs her disgust into a huge fake smile. “It’s just, you know, if we have any hope of winning homecoming this year, it’s going to come down to your painting.”

Her eyes wander down to the crap the underclassmen lazily threw down in like an hour. The freshmen painted a stick figure cowboy lassoing a stick dog. The sophomore window had another stick guy with a Greek helmet riding a doglike creature with a speech bubble that contained “Yippee ki-yay!” The juniors tried to paint the car from The Dukes of Hazzard with the driver wearing Sparky’s helmet, but it’s a box with wheels.

“Of course she’s gonna paint gory stuff,” Mike says.

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