Chapter 8 (continued once more)

Life didn't have to be a series of failed, tragic relationships, did it? Sedgewick wouldn't have to walk around seeing so many glimmers of hope, but knowing that each one would crash and burn, would he? He hoped not. He seriously hoped not.

Later that day he sat in a quiet corner of one of the university's art galleries, killing time before his art history class, letting his mind wander in the room lined with pseudo-realistic paintings.

Not all of Sedgewick's romantic leanings had crashed and burned in a pile of emotionally drained wreckage. Early in high school, long before Beth, there was Constance. She had been a positive experience, a ray of hope in Sedgewick's dating history. Dating history; you could hardly call a single dance and a failed Rash Dangerously outing a history.

But there had been something with Constance. It was his freshman year of high school and there were phone calls and notes exchanged, even a single flower at one point. They walked down the hall together and may have even held hands. She liked to talk to Sedgewick, more than most girls did, liked to ask him questions and peer into his quiet little head. They told stories and laughed together, so innocent and free.

When it ended neither of them were really sure what had happened. Looking back on it, Sedgewick chalked it up to the tumultuous times of high school. They were both changing rapidly, growing away from one another. It may not have been so much change in one another as it was trying to find their place. And the places they found didn't have room for each other. At least that's how she felt. Sedgewick didn't quite understand, but he could see the anxiety on her face, could see an uneasiness that hadn't been there before and he didn't know what else to do. So he let her go.

It was amiable, and they still talked and smiled in the hallways. There wasn't a crushing awkwardness that would follow them everywhere. Their relationship just fizzled away. Perhaps it was still tragic. But Sedgewick could at least look back with fondness.

Sedgewick stood up and meandered throughout the gallery. A quiet peacefulness filled the gallery, something he didn't always find in the university library. Sound echoed off the hardwood floors, so even when people did come through they tried to be especially quiet.

One of the paintings hung in an enormous, gaudy frame, which was probably part of the artist's statement, featured a person, stretched and pulled in several directions. It was pseudo-realistic, a person that looked real in a way, but was also stretched and caricatured. The bright yellowish orange of their skin popped out against the darker, hazier background.

Sedgewick thought about the painter, the artist who had created this. He wondered what it took to go from an idea in their head to paint on canvas. Did they have the finished product in mind when they began, or did it come about through hours and hours of work? Was there a dumpster somewhere filled with half way approximations of this work that didn't quite cut it: maybe a redish person on a green background, maybe a yellow person on a red background, maybe less pop, maybe more realistic, maybe less realistic and more stylized?

He wondered, and missed his father. And he missed Allison.