Mabel

22

"Tal, how do I arrange all of these?" I ask, catching my dearest friend coming out of the kitchen after a search for food or... a sense of purpose maybe, judging by the washed-out aura represented by her greasy-ass bangs and grubby sweatpants.

A general eugh feeling about her that could only have resulted from non-stop dance practice, a physics final and not seeing Morin in three days.

"The what now?" She asks, and I would probably tut at her and tell her she looks like the mouldy pasta welded onto the bottom of the cooking pot we haven't bothered to clean out since our four AM past adventure last week if I didn't kind of relate a lot.

Besides, she did promise to help me out with all of this with the condition that I do not tell her another single detail about the amount of feelings I have for one Kai Adkins ever again.

A small price to pay. I've just been grossing out Luca instead.

"My project," I say, gesturing to the mess of paper and canvas and one failed sculpture that I'm putting in anyway that's swallowed up the entirety of our living area floor, "I've got all the analytical stuff down but I don't know what order to put the pieces in."

Curse the past me that had the easy ability to be distracted by fish when I was supposed to sort this all out months ago.

Talia's eyes lazily scan over the collection, and she seems to snap out a little of her haze then, popping open the bag of chips in her hand and stuffing too many into her mouth before she mumbles, "Huh, lemmeh seeth," around the mess of corn tortilla mush. 

"Ew," I snap, grabbing her wrist before she can touch one of my murals, "Get your nasty Dorito Dust fingers away from my art."

Talia makes a face, like I'm the unreasonable one, and pulls back her wrist from my grip, making a show of licking all five fingertips clean before waving the tiny appendages back at me with a smirk.

"All good, see?"

"Nuh-uh, cheese fingers."

"Maybe I should go find a best friend that appreciates my cheese fingers and not help you."

I want to tell her that she'll literally be looking for the rest of her life but I don't have time for that, so I opt for grabbing her elbow, saying, "Okay, no, come back –what do I do?"

Talia is by no means an artist (connoisseur of drawing sharpie dicks over my notebooks in high school, maybe) but she has eyes, whereas mine are clouded over by lack of sleep and the inability to look at my own art and see it as art, instead of my art.

In short, even my cheesy-fingered friend is better than me in this situation.

"I don't know, May," Talia says earnestly, but not without consideration, "Why don't you... just... put it in the order of what feels right. Chronological, maybe."

"Of when I made them? I don't know, it's not really all that interesting," I say, thinking back to just how many times I've chucked them in like that over the years – even back in high school. Usually it works, but this time... this project feels different – like that wouldn't do it justice. Wouldn't portray its meaning.

Not that it actually has a meaning.

I'm hoping Kang'll pull something out of his ass to give it one.

"Then, how about in order of when you took the photos? At least as a starting point. Anything that doesn't feel right, you can move yourself."

I pause.

I hadn't actually considered that. I didn't use the photos horrifically out of order, but in the middle, things got a little jumbled–I was spending so much time with Kai that I just drew whatever was handy, not necessarily in the order I took them.

"Good idea, cheese fingers."

Talia scoffs, flips me off with one hand, the other shovelling more chips into her mouth.

"You like this cheese finger?" she asked crudely, waving her stupid middle finger in the air.