Whistleblower ✓

37 | just words

Since my pride had already been smashed to pieces, I figured there was no use hiding my car in the garage across the street from the Palazzo anymore.

I drove straight home and parked in our building's lot.

Between the blast of my car's air conditioning and the shock of my confrontation with Rebecca, I felt cold and shivery. I pulled my emergency cardigan out of my trunk (I hadn't worn it in months; I shook sand off it and tried to remember when I'd last been to a beach) and tugged it on.

I'd forgotten how nice it was to not have to walk four blocks between my car and my apartment.

I found Hanna inside, sitting cross-legged on the kitchen floor, hunched over a large pad of newsprint and wielding a stick of conte charcoal with violent passion. She sat upright when she heard me come in and drop my bag to the floor.

"Hey," she greeted. "How was work?"

I hummed noncommittally.

Then I asked, "What're you drawing?"

"Nike of Samothrace," Hanna said, pushing a chunk of loose hair out of her eyes and smudging her forehead with charcoal in the process. "We've been practicing using sculpture as reference."

I reached out and buffed the charcoal off her forehead with the sleeve of my cardigan.

"Sounds bougie."

"It's the opposite, actually," she said. "The fine arts budget got cut again. We can't afford any more live models this semester."

I wish I could say I was surprised Garland University was prioritizing their athletics department and STEM majors over the arts, but who in the United States wasn't?

Hanna's parents loved her art. They did. But they were also terrified that, after graduation, she'd face the same uphill battle they'd faced after moving to the US—that she'd constantly feel like she was climbing upstream on a recently-soaped slip n' slide to pay her rent, put food on her table, and earn respect.

Once, very late at night and after a little bit of beer, Hanna had asked me if I thought she should transfer into a more useful major.

I hadn't known what to say.

Because it wasn't that having a fine arts degree was a kiss of socioeconomic death. Last summer, Andre had done a graphic design internship at a high-profile marketing firm in Huntington Beach. It'd been unpaid, but his parents had covered the cost of an apartment and all his public transportation for two and a half months. I didn't want to ask how much that bill had been. I doubted Andre even knew. Maybe he didn't even think about it.

But Hanna and I did. We always did.

Art wasn't the problem.

It was money.

Always, always money.

"I got fired."

The words came spurting out and hung there, suspended, for a moment. Hanna blinked in shock.

"You what?"

"Rebecca fired me. I'm fired."

I felt like a broken vase a guilty child had hastily patched together with wet Elmer's glue. Like I could sneeze and fall apart. But I managed to get the whole story out, from our VIP golf group to helping Bodie find his ball to Rebecca's less-than-warm send off.

"She told me to go back to Mexico," I said with a strangled laugh. "I mean—how dumb is that. She hired me. She knows I'm a US citizen."

"She said it because she wanted to fuck with you," Hanna said. "It's just words. You can't let them get to you."