Seductive Shadows Read Online Free

social security number and accumulated an enormous mound of debt. It would take half my life to pay it off. But I didn’t report her to the police; I couldn’t put a dying woman behind bars. So I consolidated the balances and paid the most I could each month.
    “Answer me, dammit!” she shouted.
    “No, I wouldn’t want to be rotting away,” I said.
    Her hand shook in the air as she pointed at me. “Then the least you can do is have some fucking patience with me.”
    I ground my teeth together, pulled the cigarette from her fingers and stabbed it into the ashtray. There was a lot I could blame her for: me not being able to take a full semester of classes, being the reason I still lived at home, being a shitty mother. But I wasn’t going to argue with her today.
    I set the pills in her hand. “Take these.” Then I left her room and shut the door behind me.
     
    ***
     
    The art building was next to the train station and not too far from my work, so I stopped by Professor Freeman’s office to drop off Kerrianna . He took her out of my hand, tore off the protective brown paper, and set her on the easel in the back room.
    Standing in front of her with one arm crossed and the other palm cupping his chin, he said, “Your pieces always introduce the darker side of life. But this…this is the darkest.”
    Being honest in my work was the only way I knew how to paint, but there were consequences and risks when using a darker hand. Had I taken it too far this time?
    “I feel her pain,” he said. “It’s surging though the canvas.”
    I smiled and nodded. A tingle sparked in my lower stomach.
    “Your sugar skull was an interesting creation; fresh and inventive. But this shows significant progress, Charlie.”
    In the previous class I had taken with him, our final project was to paint our own theoretical autopsy, and what we thought a pathologist would find inside of us. Most of the students incorporated their vices and showed how those would be their causes of death. Mine was a self-portrait; I wore black lace lingerie and let hints of my body poke through the sheer fabric. White powder covered my face, black lines ran down the length of my lips, and a large splotch dotted the tip of my nose. Swirls decorated my cheeks and chin, a web extended across the width of my forehead, and outlining my eyes were circles of teal. My face was a sugar skull. For me, every day was the Day of the Dead .
    The difference between Professor Freeman and everyone else in the art department was he knew the many sources of my pain. He lived in the suburb of Newton, the same town as me, and he had heard about the accident. When I had turned in the sugar skull, we discussed the origin of some of my inspiration. What he had taught me during this past semester was how to channel the hurt from the crash, from the noises and visions, and turn them into objects.
    This was what I’d done with Kerrianna .
    “I didn’t include her face because—”
    “I know why,” he said, “and I think your reasoning is brilliant. The whole piece is brilliant. Bravo, Charlie. Bravo.”
    My brows raised; I couldn’t seem to keep them down as I faced him. And after I fumbled with the first few words, I gave up and smiled. Of course he knew my reasoning; I had opened up to him. It meant that he also knew the similarities between Kerrianna and me. I still wasn’t sure how that made me feel.
    “I’m assisting a former student with her new gallery in the South End; it will be open and running within the next few weeks. This could be the perfect opportunity for you, I believe. An exhibit…late summer or early fall. What do you think?”
    I couldn’t believe what he’d just said.
    “Yes, of course…thank you, I would love that.”
    He laughed. “It’s settled, then. Why don’t we reconnect in a month or so to discuss the details?”
    “I’ll email you,” I said, and I smiled again. “And I’ll stop over for our regular meetings, like we discussed