Dying Is The Easy Part

Chapter Three: January 3rd

The second semester began two days later.

Quinn was more relieved than they cared to show; classes meant a routine, meant a distraction, meant having a pencil to hold onto and a professor's direction to guide them, theories and techniques and things that made sense. Classes meant being around people who were real and solid and who didn't look at Quinn like they were the answer to an unspoken question they had absolutely no desire to hear.

Monday morning, they were one of the first students to arrive to their ten a.m. class, a life drawing seminar that was run by one of Quinn's favorite professors. With her hair, which was dyed a screaming red, and her colorful dresses, Mrs. Conti always reminded Quinn of a bird of paradise, fluttering excitedly around the room as they trudged inside.

"Quinn!" she exclaimed. Her eyes crinkled at the corners as she squinted at them from across the room—her canary yellow glasses were pushed to the top of her head as per usual. In a few minutes, she would probably ask if anyone had seen them. "How lovely to see you! How were the holidays?"

"They were fine," Quinn lied, loud enough so that Mrs. Conti could just barely understand them as more people filtered into the room.

"Good, good," Mrs. Conti said, pleased, before she moved on to fuss over the next newcomer.

Quinn hesitated in the center of the room, their eyes darting towards the windowsill. It was the same room where they'd seen the ghost of the blond boy two nights earlier. In broad daylight, his presence was impossible to imagine; Quinn would have been tempted to chalk him up as a sleep-deprived hallucination if it hadn't been for the shock that still sat in their bones, cold and visceral.

Tearing their gaze away, Quinn took a seat on the lefthand side of the room, as far away from the desk where they had fallen asleep as possible. While they fished their sketchbook and pencils from their messenger bag, they briefly glanced at the clock. It was almost ten and Valerie was still nowhere to be seen. Quinn tried to push down their unease and put their bag down on the seat next to them to save it for whenever she decided to arrive.

At the front of the room, Mrs. Conti had already arranged a backdrop for the life drawing. It was the usual set-up: a small pedestal in front of a simple black curtain along with a block the model would be able to prop their arm on. Two heaters were already set up and pointed at where someone would be posing any moment; the art building was especially drafty, to the point that Quinn had taken to keeping their coat on during classes over the last few months.

Valerie burst into the classroom three minutes before ten, looking tousled and breathless as she dropped onto the seat next to Quinn. "Hey," she panted. "Sorry I'm late. We totally slept through our alarm."

Quinn swallowed against the taste of envy in their mouth. Or maybe it was just loneliness. The two tended to blend into one when Valerie spoke like this, in first-person plural and with affection coating every word like spun sugar. Quinn was happy for Valerie. They were. It was just hard sometimes, holding down the jealousy that reared its ugly head whenever they thought about Valerie in the warmth of Rhia's bed—in the warmth of another body—while Quinn lay shivering on their thin dorm mattress and counted the hours until dawn.

Their thoughts were interrupted by a delighted exclamation from Mrs. Conti. "Luis, there you are! Always so on time. Come in, come in!"

Quinn looked up to see what had to be the model for this class sauntering into the room. It was a boy, barely older than them, wearing a black robe and slippers. His hair was a mess of brown curls that he blew out of his eyes as he offered Mrs. Conti a bright grin and said something that Quinn couldn't hear over the general noise in the classroom.