Chapter Text
“I think I want to go to art school.”
Steph’s head lifts sharply; attention torn away from the worksheet in her lap that she had been pretending to complete for the last half hour. She stares dumbly, blinks once, and replies.
“What?”
Kelilah, fussing over a frizzy braid that sits flat against the shoulder of her greenish-brownish argyle sweater, spins around in her desk chair away from her own homework, that she had, presumably, actually been working on.
“Or study to be a marine biologist. I don’t know. I haven’t figured it out yet.”
Steph has to scoff. ‘Haven’t figured it out yet’? This was nothing like her best friend. Not at all. Kelilah was the kind of person to have her life planned out at least five years in advance. She was going to go to university with Steph and get a bachelor’s degree, then go to law school, pass the bar exam of course, and then become a lawyer and work at her father’s firm until she had the experience to start her own. That’s what the plan was, at least a few months ago, which was the last time Steph could remember hearing about it.
“What happened to law school?”
Kelilah shrugs, as if this newly found change of heart isn’t significant at all. Kelilah, one of the most fiercely stubborn people that she had ever met (perhaps only being bested by Kelilah’s own mother) suddenly had a new life only vaguely planned out, trading law school for art school no less.
“Are you, like… Okay, dude?” Steph asks, brows raised and pinched together in concern. It’s the other girl’s turn to scoff now.
“Of course I’m okay! What, don’t you think I could get into art school?”
“No!” Steph yelps, louder than she had meant to, desperate to refute the idea that she doesn’t believe in her friend. She whips her head around, scanning the blue bedroom walls covered in posters, polaroids, vinyl record sleeves, and some of Kelilah’s best paintings. Most of them are studies of animals, largely whales and dolphins and fish, the rest are landscapes of the Colorado mountains and other places she’d visited. Steph frowns and shakes her head vigorously. “That’s not true, you know that.”
She huffs a sigh in response, flicking the ginger plait from her shoulder to her back. She meets Steph’s eyes for a second before darting her gaze to the green carpet. She sighs and picks at the skin around her fingernails, and Steph knows she’s about to ramble.
“I am okay. I just- I’ve been thinking a lot since, well, do you remember that argument my dad and I got into?”
Steph nods, recalling it well. Kelilah had stomped to the bus stop with hot, angry tears rolling down her face in burning streaks. She had clutched the straps of her backpack with white-knuckled intensity, her teeth gritted together with the tension of a well-spun bar clamp. Not even Erin Fucking Cartman’s incessant pestering could rouse a word from her. In fact, she barely even spared her a glare of murderous intent. It wasn’t until lunch that day that she spoke, tears and fury reignited after half a day of silence. “He’s such a dick, he’s such a fucking dick!” She had seethed over and over, explaining that when he wasn’t at work or in his home office, which wasn’t often anymore as the days of their father-daughter fishing trips were seemingly far behind them, he had become a very unpleasant man to interact with. She described him as either being critical over petty things or ambivalent about everything she had to say. He had made some comment about her spilling her morning coffee on the countertop, which had been enough to spin out of control into a full-on row.
“I’m over it, I guess. Like, it was over a month ago, who cares, right?” ‘You do,’ Steph thinks but doesn’t say. “But, ugh, it has me thinking about the reality of working with him and I would be just so miserable. It had been my plan for so long because he’s my dad and I love him and want to impress him or whatever, but now I think it wasn’t something I ever actually wanted for me. And yeah, sure, I don’t wanna be a disappointment to my parents, but I also don’t wanna live my life for them and not for me.”
Steph inhales and tries to take it all in. If nothing else she admires how Kelilah can assess her feelings and figure out what she wants. She’s always been the more decisive of the two, acting with little hesitancy. She knows her friend is smart, and capable of accomplishing anything she wanted to. She loves that about her, that unwavering drive to get shit done and do it the right way. It’s just that even months of pondering feel too rash for such a big change. She’d been hearing about this plan since they were at least eleven years old, probably for even longer!
“This isn’t you changing your plans to spite him or something, right?” Steph broaches gently, shuffling her body forward but staying cross-legged on top of Kelilah’s comforter.
“God, do you really think I’d be so petty?” She spits out, but upon hearing herself she laughs into her palm. She shuffles forward to be close enough that their knees touch. “Okay, yeah, I am kind of a bitch like that. But no dude, I’ve really thought about it. That stupid coffee thing made me realize that I get no pleasure from arguing with people, man. I’m good at it, I was in debate club and all that, and I think it’s important to get my point across-“
“But it just makes you irritated.”
“Exactly!”
Steph nods with approval, more convinced now, and stares at the Robert Smith poster on the sliding door of the closet. Her eyes focus more on the scattered white scuffs where the print had eroded from rolling in and out than the design. She finds herself wondering which, if any, of the posters will be coming with them to their college dorm and thinks about how much she’ll miss sitting in this room and pretending to do her homework, or listening to music huddled together on the carpet, or watching Kelilah paint from the desk as she works at her easel. Her hands feel a little clammy, and she rubs them on the thighs of her jeans. Her worry about posters evolves quickly. They will still be going to the same college, right? They’ll soon be revisiting the shortlist they made over the summer. She almost speaks this fear aloud, but coughs into her fist instead. She looks up at Kelilah, heart in her throat, and finally asks a question that had been on her mind all afternoon.
“Can I have the answers to the math homework?”