The Art Student's War - Darcy Vebber

In retrospect, he might have been looking for a reason to leave. He hated the Pennsylvania winter, not the cold as much as the days when the sky was dark and close overhead. He felt trapped. The girl he was seeing, Amy, said it was because of his unstable childhood. She said he always felt the need of a way out, a direction to flee. Amy wanted him to go to counseling, which was free at student health but it turned out there was a wait of several weeks. By the time he could get in, the weather would have changed.

Amy painted him a big blue canvas, an homage, she said to O'Keefe's blue sky and clouds, and put it in his room at the foot of his bed. She had never been west of Kansas and Sam had offered to take her with him, when he went back, to show her the real New Mexico sky.

Sam thought of her as sunny, a thin girl with copper red hair, bright like a knife, certain of what she knew and she made his days bearable. Until she started in about his family, about his mother, really. Not content to just listen to his stories she asked questions about his feelings, his intentions, what happened after the story ended. It was clear she thought something was wrong with him. She said he needed to look in to his past, to dig in, to confront it. Unless he could do this, he could never be an artist.

It started happening in his acting classes, too. Balding grad students insisted on dredging up feelings of grief or fear or whatever. Go back to the time you thought your mother left you in a store. Only his mother had left him, over and over again. It wasn't like it was for the others, the ones like Amy who looked back on too much parental control, uncertainty about college, the vague feeling they weren't quite good enough.

He began to see that he was surrounded by people who had never experienced real hurt. They were rich, they had regular parents, people who drank or divorced or whatever but who were ordinary, lived in houses, ate regular meals, lived in the expected way. The press of their cheer and optimism, as much as the lowering sky, fueled his desire to get away. He said he wanted to get back to real life.

By which, Amy said, you mean denial.

It was their last fight. He actually wanted her to come with him still. He thought he could show her something and he liked her quirky view of day to day life. He insisted it would be fun, it would be real. This was what an artist needed.

She considered it, too. If he would wait until break, if he would make a plan. If he would promise to consider coming back to school.

He would not. That was the whole point, the purpose. He wasn't used to breaking up with girls like this, getting angry, feeling the edge of violence. He usually let himself be left, let the girl come to her own conclusions about the future, let her ask questions he couldn't really answer then, after some tears and some heartfelt comforting from him, they left. He prided himself on it. This was different. Amy had her teeth into something and she wouldn't let it go and neither would he. It came to shouting. Listen, just listen and No you listen to me.

He hated it. When she finally fell asleep -- they had been arguing in his room, in the student apartment he shared with three guys he barely knew because he hadn't gotten to know most people -- he went out walking in the cold.

The night was clear for once. He saw stars, open sky, all of it going on forever. He could have walked all the way home, he thought, the way people once had walked across the country to settle it. Amy said he was running away but he was certain he was running towards. Real life. L.A. In the morning, he would call Lisa and in a few days, he would be there. He felt the relief, under the weight of his wool coat and sweater, in his shoulders and the muscles along his spine and in his breath. Even in the cold, it came more easily now.