15.

It's six-thirty in the morning. Gatz's body is sluggish and heavy as if they have just dragged it from the soft mushy silt at the bottom of a freshwater pond. Their mind, however, is wide-eyed, hyper. They remain beneath the heap of their comforter and blankets and hand-stitched quilts for a moment, trying, by sheer logic perhaps, to will themselves back to sleep. When this (as it nearly always does) proves futile, they shove all their shit in their leather backpack and pour instant coffee into a thermos and leave for the art studio, white headphones snug over their ears.

Proudley is dead this early in the morning, which perhaps is why this is Gatz's favorite time of day. Their only company as they march across the Commons with TV on the Radio chugging along in their eardrums is the dense, cool fog blanketing the dewy grass and obscuring the tops of the red brick buildings—that, and some kid smoking something that smells strongly of weed on a bench outside the dining hall. The soles of Gatz's boots squelch in the grass and leave dark imprints behind on the cobblestones. The air is sweet and earthy, cold and refreshing as a breath mint.

The studio's vacant, as Gatz expected. The clock on the wall tells them it's still just before seven. They're dropping their backpack to the floor and yanking the pockets open and pulling out all their supplies—paddle and detail brushes and charcoal pencils, two erasers worn down to amorphous nubs—and thinking, I should be asleep.

Gatz rolls out the easel to their favorite place by the window, where they can stand in the rising sun's light. I'm not going back to sleep.

The painting of Percy they've been working on is at the point where, thankfully, they no longer have to drag Percy to the studio to sit for it. It's still far from done; the background is droll which makes Percy—a very, very bright thing, in nearly every sense of the word—seem droll, and something about his jawline is off. Gatz closes their eyes. Loses themself in sound—the backbeat of the song in their ears, as the birds wake and sing their own contribution, the air conditioner rattling, unless that's a squirrel in the wall somewhere. Then they set to work.

In some ways painting to Gatz is like sleeping. It's a natural habit, a biologically-evolved system; they will always come back to it even if they delude themselves into believing they want to do anything else besides. Painting is a state of consciousness, semi-consciousness, unconsciousness. Sometimes Gatz steps into it and enters a world of dreams where nothing makes sense but this is the fun of it. Sometimes instead the world is built of nightmares. The sorts that are true, that try on the faces of things and people and moments they don't want to remember.

The brush scratches across the canvas, arcing a smooth shadow down Percy's neck, and Gatz shudders. The face that appears the most as they paint is their father's.

Jerome Gatley is everything Gatz is not, and at first, that was what Gatz loved about him. Growing up, Gatz was spontaneous and bad at planning and would agree to things they hated just to avoid conflict or responsibility. When things fell apart, they took the blame, even if it wasn't their fault. Even if they hadn't even been in the room.

Jerome was quiet. Quiet enough that he could sit amongst a crowd in the throes of a wild conversation, and never join in, never say a single word. But Jerome would say no when he wanted to, and without even a modicum of guilt. The only company he ever seemed to need was his family—his wife and Gatz and no one else.

Jerome was also an artist. Gatz remembers their mother cutting out every news clipping and magazine article and printing out every gallery review that mentioned Jerome's name; she kept them all in the middle drawer of the desk in her home office, and would show them off to anyone willing to listen to her brag. Gatz was proud of him, too. In quieter ways. Gatz remembers the countless mornings their father would take them out to a coffee shop to buy a pastry and a sweet drink, and then he'd take them to the studio, where Gatz would sit in the corner on a rickety stool as their father painted.

He liked to paint in monochrome. He would choose a color—blue or orange or maroon, depending on the scene he'd sketched—and craft a new world in that hue alone. Gatz loved watching him create, even if all of his paintings were in some way unsettling, the shapes warped slightly, as if trembling in the wake of a heat wave.

What haunts Gatz now is not their father's paintings. It's the fact there will be never be any more of them.

Jerome Gatley was at the peak of his career. A pending show in Vienna, in Paris, in Shanghai. All he had to do was paint. But one day when Gatz was fifteen and they'd been out too late with friends and decided to stop by the studio on the way home, they found jagged, gaping holes torn in all the canvases and paint bleeding all over the floor and their father, staring blankly at the window as if he had been considering something terrible moments before Gatz walked in.

Jerome Gatley stopped, and no one knows why.

Though their father has recovered from whatever happened that evening and they have conversations normal enough now for Gatz to forget about it all for a second or two at a time, the fear still exists, creeping along the back of Gatz's neck like the spectral limbs of a spider. Something broke in him. And it may one day break me too.

Gatz jolts a little at the sound of something very knock-like. They lift one of their headphones, half-turning towards the door, and the knock sounds again.

"Entrez."

For a foolish second they are expecting Percy, until they remember the earliest Percy has ever woken up is probably somewhere around ten-thirty. Needless to say, they have to disguise their shock when Dr. Clover appears in the doorway.

"Gatz," he greets with an awkward wave. "Hope I'm not disturbing you."

A little, Gatz thinks, though they'd never say it. "Not at all. What's up?"

It isn't necessarily rare for Dr. Clover to stop by the studio; he dips his toes in several departments within Proudley, and the campus's art scene is only one of them. If Gatz remembers correctly, he's part of a faculty committee that sets up all the art events around campus, from fashion shows to poetry readings to pottery workshops. It is rare, though, for him to show up so early. Had he shown up here to do something alone? Gatz pauses, suddenly self-conscious, wondering if they should pack up.

"No, no," Dr. Clover says, noticing their sudden hesitation. "Keep doing what you were doing; you're not in my way. I was actually hoping I might find you here."

Gatz picks up their brush again, but drops their headphones, letting them hang loosely around the back of their neck. "You were?" They think about it. "Oh, is it about the project? Sorry, I know I turned in the progress report late, but—"

"No, Gatz," Dr. Clover says with a hearty laugh, one that splinters a corner of Gatz's heart, because it sounds like their father's for a second. "I'm thinking of having a visual art showcase here on campus, maybe in the history museum? I've already had some meetings about it with the others. I was wondering if you'd be comfortable displaying some of your work?"

The brush hits the easel again with a twang that echoes in Gatz's ears. "What?" they say, whirling around, where Dr. Clover is leaned against one of the supply closets, quiet and content, as if he hasn't just said what he's just said. They know they sound foolish, so openly excited, but they can't get their own voice under control. "Really? When you said that, you know, I thought you meant like—professionals."

Dr. Clover just smiles easily. "Just because you haven't made a name for yourself yet doesn't mean you're not on par with professionals. Professional's just an adjective. A modifier. It doesn't really mean anything."

"I may have to disagree with you there, Professor," Gatz says, and rubs their thumb against their fingers. "It does mean something when it comes to the money."

"That'll come with time," Dr. Clover says. "And who knows. This may be the first step. So what do you say?"

He's a lunatic. He's a lunatic, to ask a question that clearly doesn't need to be asked, that both of them already know the answer to.

"Absolutely, Dr. Clover. Thank you. It'd be an honor."

Another smile spreads across the professor's kind, wrinkled face, and he stands up straight again, adjusting the fit of his fedora. Footsteps scuffing against the paint-stained tarp, he brings himself close enough to pat Gatz's shoulder. "The honor's mine," he says, then casts a brief look over the canvas in front of them both. Half-joking, he says, "Hey. This one looks oddly like another one of my students."

Gatz smirks. "Surely not one of your best ones."

Percy is sitting in the corner booth of Top Slice Pizzeria, the only place anywhere close to Proudley where you can get a decent pie—counting the on-campus dining halls—for some time before Gatz shows up. Their flannel is buttoned in the wrong slots and they are buzzing with the sort of energy that only comes from being really, clinically tired, but otherwise they seem whole.

"I got us the one with sausage and peppers because you took too long," Percy says once they slide into the booth's red seat, patched in random places with sheafs of fraying duct tape. He slides a tall, fizzling glass of cola across the table to them. "What were you doing?"

"Fighting a bear."

Percy is supposed to laugh at this. He doesn't.

"Fighting my brain," Gatz amends, taking a long sip from their straw and drumming their fingers along the table. "Dr. Clover's having an art showcase, and he wants to display some of my art for it."

"Yo, what? Gatz, that's great news!"

"It is, but it's like now the creative part of my brain—which, in hindsight, I think is most of my brain—has shut off," Gatz laments. They lay their head down on the table, like the Italian opera playing fuzzily over the tacky tomato-shaped overhead speakers has lulled them to a pre-pizza nap. "I need to paint anywhere between three and six pieces for this thing, which wouldn't be that bad, except it's at the end of this semester and suddenly I can't think of anything. I can't even sketch."

"Look alive, Gatz. It'll come to you."

Gatz looks up at him, the dark smudge of eyeliner beneath each of their eyes underlining their disgust. "You're so helpful, Percy. Really."

Out of the corner of his eye, Percy catches a waiter carrying something that looks like a sausage and pepper pizza in their direction. "Here comes pizza," Percy offers. "Maybe this will inspire you."

A few slices in, they don't look all that inspired, but they do at least look more alive. This is a good thing, Percy thinks at first, until Gatz looks at him squarely and says, "If we weren't there yesterday, Indy probably would have gotten arrested."

Percy wants to say something to dispute this, but he can't. The truth sinks in his gut, where it mingles with a dozen other hard-to-swallow realities and calcifies, heavy as a stone. "It's no use, Gatz. She's going to do what she wants to do. She always has."

Gatz folds another pizza slice as it drips molten cheese onto the paper towel beneath them. "You're worried, though."

Percy narrows his eyes. "So are you."

"Duh. The fucking police is involved now and how many times is that little, yippee, I'm Percy Mitchell, the Percy Mitchell going to work, honestly?"

Percy groans and hides his face in his hands. "I don't know, Gatz. But it's all I have right now, okay? If I can't stop her I can at least watch her back. That's it. That's all I can do."

Percy lowers his hands for a moment, but the look on Gatz's face startles him: there is pity in it, and confusion, but also something that looks like respect, and instead of facing all of these things Percy turns his gaze towards the black night beyond the window.

The scene outside is normal for a random Tuesday night: scattered groups of students walking to and from the convenient store, old cars rumbling into the dilapidated parking lot of the sports bar across the street, two or three shadowy figures in a cluster of cigarette and weed smoke on the corner.

It's the figure slowly ambling up to this cluster that catches Percy's attention; he has seen this walk before somewhere, the smooth, nearly feline rhythm to it, moving like a predator does toward its prey. The shadow turns its head for a second, just a second, but it's enough to catch the long red hair arcing across his familiar face.

"Holy shit," Percy says. "It's Jude."

"Jude?" Gatz repeats, perplexed, before it computes in their brain. "Oh. That Jude. What do you mean? Where?"

"On the corner over there," Percy answers, expertly pulling his hood up over his head, just in case Jude decides to take a longer look this time. Jude's met up with the throng of people on the corner and appears to be talking to them now, and though he's stepped out of the light and his face is obscured, the line of his shoulders is alert and tense. "What's he doing? Are those his bandmates or something?"

"You're nosy as hell," Gatz says. "Who cares?"

"It's not—it's just because—"

Percy forgets what he was going to say. Jude holds out his hand towards one of the men, who clasps it in a handshake that lingers just a second too long. Jude gives what looks like a nod of thanks and turns the opposite way, that same hand slipping something into his pocket.

"Percy," Gatz says. "Seriously?"

It doesn't matter, Percy tells himself. It doesn't matter if we never see him again anyway.

Percy takes the last slice of pizza, to Gatz's chagrin. "You're right," he says. "Who cares?"