The Anatomy of Emotion

Chapter Eighteen

May 2007—École des Arts de Cannes

"Corin Brynmor, you will take this seriously!" Cecily Olivier screams at her sulking teenager.

Corin glares back at her. She is flushed and frazzled. Yelling is not her forte. He, though, has lungs enough for them both.

"I'm fine, mom, now let me out!"

"Fine? Fine? You—"

"—tried to kill yourself, the doctor said six weeks blah, blah," Corin rolls his eyes, "I give zero fucks. You said I could go back to school. Now let me out."

"I just don't feel—"

"What you feel doesn't matter!" He says, "I'm the one with the bandages, and I'm going to go even crazier than I am stuck in the house with you guys for two more weeks! I'll call you if I have any problems, deal?"

Cecily stares him down. Corin stares back. Blue on blue on blue. His father would mumble something about equal opportunity stubbornness about now. He would also remind his wife that their son is legally able to make his own decisions. Cecily seems to realize this as well, because she sighs. Her tiny knuckles whiten on the steering wheel.

"Any problems, Corin. You trip, you call me."

"I will, I promise."

Cecily unlocks the car doors, and Corin darts out before she can change her mind. Or worse, insist on coming with him. He runs down the drive until he sees the main building. And then, he stops to bask in the energy of an art school in full swing.

It is half past noon, the lunch break for the first grade and a fifteen minute sketch for the terminale photorealism class. The grass is covered with oversize sketchbooks and half eaten sandwiches and the scraps of theater costumes. He can tell they are doing Macbeth from the ridiculous dress one girl is fighting with. He can pick out the art students because they are inevitably, irrevocably dirty. Paint, turpentine, bits of brush hairs and charcoal dust and clay. He looks for a specific face among them, but it is either not there, or too dirty to recognize.

"Hey, Corin!" Someone waves to him as they go by.

He doesn't recognize them, but he smiles, "hey, have a great day."

They smile back and head toward one of the outbuildings as the bell rings. Corin looks at his watch. He's due at one of his voice classes. Cutting through the main building will get him there faster, so he goes. Through a throng of dusty artists, past one of the accolade walls, past the lovely navy-and white wooden lockers. Several people are clustered there, swapping out books. At the end, a girl slams the door shut on a giant spiral-bound sketchbook.

Corin stops walking. It's her. She looks different—wearing ripped overalls with her oil-dark hair caught up by a dirty blue handkerchief. There is, however, no mistaking the pull in his chest toward her, the flashbacks of rain and blood and relief, or the irritable cast of her face. It must be permanent.

Someone else bumps by him and says hello. He doesn't reply this time, already walking toward her.

"Hey, Maeva," he says.

She freezes, and her eyes widen. Very, very slowly, she turns and looks up at him. Then she looks down him. His long sleeved shirt is too much for the weather, he knows, and she must see the thin edge of gauze peeking out by his wrist. Her lips purse. She keeps looking.

Corin looks at her in return. The slender curve of her neck, where it meets her collarbone. The shirt under her overalls is cropped and clingy, showing a very pretty four inches of waist. There is a case in her right hand that must be paintbrushes. Her feminine hands are the dirtiest part of her—dry skin, gray nails, sticky gloss medium.