Hanna was entering her Blue Period.

This is not to say that she'd pulled a Picasso and gone full monochromatic with her work—just that she had drawn, for nearly a week straight, nothing but hands. Lopsided fists and gnarled, crooked fingers were strewn about the apartment, which Hanna hadn't left in several days.

She'd become a recluse. She ate nothing but instant pho and fruit-shaped gummies, and she turned down every attempt I made at dragging her out of the apartment for some fresh air.

"We could do the drive-through at McDonald's?" I offered as I sat on our bedroom floor with her. "I'll buy you nuggets and a McFlurry to dip them in."

Hanna didn't even look up from her sketchbook.

"Not hungry," she monotoned.

She drew another line, stared at it for a moment, then roared with frustration and flipped to the next blank page to start again.

I wasn't sure how bad her artistic suffering would get.

Vincent van Gogh had cut off his own ear, so the bar appeared to be set alarmingly high.

I was about to suggest we go on a run together (really, I was desperate to get her out in the fresh air, my own wellbeing be damned) when my phone buzzed on the floor beside my knee.

It was a text from Bodie.

They talk so fast though. How do you not need subtitles???

I blushed and turned my phone over. I don't know why. Hanna was too agonized by her creative process to care that I'd been spending the afternoon texting Bodie about my telenovelas.

I'd only mentioned Gran Hotel in passing. I hadn't expected him to go home and binge-watch the entire first season.

And I definitely hadn't expected him to suggest we watch a few episodes from season two together.

I glanced up at Hanna.

She sort of resembled a miniature storm cloud in the oversized grey sweatshirt she'd stolen from Andre. She'd been wearing it for more than twenty-four hours now. I was starting to wonder if this was the new normal for us: Hanna, a tiny lump of grey, fixed in the center of our bedroom floor amongst a sea of art supplies and emotional distress.

"Don't you have class in, like, two minutes?" I asked, tugging at the threads at the knee of my ripped mom jeans.

"Skipping," she replied, and traced out the curve of a knuckle.

"Are you sure that's a good idea?"

"It's art history. I can just look at the slides later."

"But don't you want to—"

My phone buzzed again.

I flipped it like a poker player checking her hand.

Another text from Bodie.

I'm outside.

"Hey, Han?" I said tentatively, clearing my throat to get her attention. "Bodie's coming over. Just for a little while. To work on our project. Is that cool?"

"Sure, whatever, fine," she grumbled.

She wasn't even going to give me shit for having a boy over.

That's how I knew she wasn't alright.

I pushed myself up off the floor, knees cracking, and padded out into the kitchen to grab my keys off the counter and slip on my plastic Old Navy flip-flops.

"Wait!" Hanna bellowed from our room.

She came thundering after me.

"What?" I asked, already inching towards the door.

"Is this a date?" she demanded. "Am I cockblocking?"

"Absolutely not," I said, as a blanket answer.

"I could go to class," Hanna said.

I winced. There was really no nice way to tell her that her hair was greasier that a McDonald's deep frier and that her face, while still very pretty, looked gaunt and grey.

"You can hang out with us," I insisted.

"Won't you be working on your project, though?"

"Um."

"Have you told him about the note yet?"

"I gotta go, Han, he's at the—"

I darted out of the apartment and thundered down the stairs to the front door of our building.

I tugged it open, and in poured the sunshine and the smell of fresh-cut grass and men's deodorant. Bodie stood on the front stoop, thumbs hooked under the straps of his backpack.

"Hey," he said, face splitting with a grin.

"Hi," I said, suddenly shy. "Um, Hanna's skipping class, so she's working on some stuff in our room, but we can have the kitchen. The WiFi's faster in there. Is that—is that cool?"

The corner of Bodie's lips twitched.

Like he was charmed that I was so bad at this whole having a boy over thing.

"Very cool," he said.

We found Hanna in the kitchen, staring down our scuffed-up electric kettle as she waited for the water to boil. She turned to watch as I held open the door and let Bodie shuffle into the apartment first.

"Oh hey, Hanna!" he said with all the unabashed joy of a golden retriever greeting his human.

"St. James," she said, bowing her head in acknowledgement.

"What's up?" he asked.

"She's got this project that's really stressing her out," I answered for her as I tugged the door shut behind us and bolted it.

Ever since the note, I'd been a little paranoid.

"Can I help at all?" Bodie asked, because of course he did.

Hanna stared at him for a long moment.

Bodie shifted his weight between his feet, blushing under the intensity of her unwavering gaze, and lifted his hand to fiddle with the zipper of his matte black football jacket.

Hanna's eyes tracked his hand.

"Yes," she blurted. "Yes, you can absolutely—hold on."

Hanna darted into the bedroom.

When she returned, she was carrying a drawing pad two-thirds of her own height.

"So the prompt was," she said, grunting as she maneuvered around furniture, "we had to pick a Greek or Italian statue to base our drawing off of. And I chose this statue from the Loggia dei Lanzi—it's this, like, outdoor gallery in Florence—and now I have to do a contemporary reimagining of it."

She handed me a sheet of paper with a black and white photo printed on it. Bodie examined it over my shoulder.

"Cool," he commented.

"It's called the Rape of Polyxena."

Bodie cleared his throat uncomfortably, as if to rescind his previous appraisal of the statue.

"Rape like rapture," Hanna clarified. "She was a princess of Troy. Achilles kidnapped her, but then he made her his confidant, and he told her about all his secret shit. Like his heel. You know. The heel."

"I'm familiar with it, yes," Bodie said.

"And then, according to some accounts, she lured him to his death."

"Oof," I supplied.

"Some other sources say they fell madly in love, though. I don't know. He seemed pretty gay for Patroclus. It's all about the narratives, I guess. Anyway. This is what I have so far."

Hanna flipped over the jumbo drawing pad to reveal a large graphite depiction of a heroic Greek warrior with a sword in one hand and a fainting woman tucked in the other. Achilles wore a plumed and intricately detailed helmet. Polyxena's legs were draped in fabric. Both her boobs were out.

"That's amazing, Han," I breathed.

"I know," she said, not one to fish for compliments or pretend she didn't realize the measure of her own talents, "but, as you can tell from this gaping blank space right here—" she tapped a finger to a stretch of empty paper, "—I'm having trouble with the hands."

That explained the sketches littered all over our apartment.

Hanna versus hands. The eternal duel.

"So you need hand models?" Bodie guessed.

"Could you?" Hanna asked. "Just for, like, fifteen minutes! I've been working off these pics from Google images, and the lighting is always a little weird on the fingers because the statue's in the shade. I can't get a sense of the dimensions. And you have the hands of Achilles."

"But don't let it go to your head," I added sternly.

Bodie bumped his hip against mine.

"We'd love to help," he said for both of us.

Hanna beamed at him.

"Okay, here's the picture I'm working off."

Sure enough, the image on Hanna's phone was nearly identical to her drawing: a heroic Greek warrior with a sword in one hand and a fainting woman tucked in the other.

Bodie examined the picture closely, then glanced the practice sketches scattered over our kitchen table.

"You're missing the abductor digiti minimi," he said.

"Bless you?"

"The abductor digiti—" he began again, then huffed impatiently.

I held out my hand. Bodie grabbed it, looking pleased he hadn't even had to ask me to borrow it for a demonstration.

"Make a claw," he told me.

He ran a finger over the back of my flexed hand.

"So, you've got the tendons perfect," he told Hanna. "I mean, those are spot on. You're good at those. But it looks like her toga-skirt-thing is pressing on the abductor digiti minimi—" he flipped my hand over and traced a fingertip from my wrist to the base of my pinky finger, "—so it bumps out more. The back of the hand isn't so flat."

He turned my hand over again and pressed his thumb against the muscle to demonstrate.

Hanna blinked at him.

"Are you pre-med, or something?"

Bodie laughed. "No. International relations."

"How do you know anatomy, then?" Hanna pressed, clearly curious. "Is it just, like, an athlete thing?"

"Sort of," Bodie said with a shrug. "I mean, you learn a lot of anatomy just from picking up injuries over the years."

"He's thinking of doing physical therapy," I supplied.

Hanna nodded.

"I could see it," she said.

I glanced up at Bodie, to check if I'd overstepped a line by supplying the information. The tips of his ears were pink, but otherwise, he seemed unbothered.

"Alright," Hanna said, clapping her hands. "Let's do it."

While Bodie and I stood around without the first clue what the artist required of her models, Hanna positioned her drawing pad and dragged one of our little IKEA dining chairs into the center of the room. It groaned against the hardwood floors.

"You," she said, pointing to Bodie, "sit here."

He started to lower himself.

"Wait!" she cried.

Bodie shot back up.

Hanna hustled into the bedroom, then returned a moment later with three enormous textbooks stacked in her arms. She set them onto the seat of the chair.

"Okay, try now."

Bodie sat hesitantly, looking to Hanna for approval.

"Perfect. And you," Hanna said, grabbing me by the hips and twisting me around, "sit on his knee."

"Is that really necessary—" I began in protest.

"Completely," Hanna said as she set her hands on my shoulders and guided me down, until I was perched delicately on one of Bodie's thighs.

"We can't hold this for fifteen minutes," I argued.

I probably couldn't hold it for fifteen seconds. Hanna knew I didn't have the core strength.

And Bodie's leg was going to fall asleep.

"You don't have to do the whole pose," she said. "I just need these two hands, look—his—" she circled around me to grab Bodie's hand, "—on your waist. You gotta, like, twist your body. Like in the picture."

Hanna nudged my arms out of the way and placed Bodie's hand on my stomach.

I sat with my arms suspended like a puppet on strings.

"And then your arm, Laurel, I need it hanging all limp and shit, this way. Palm out."

"What about the other arm?" I asked.

Hanna shrugged.

"Just keep it out of the way."

I wondered, vaguely, if Bodie and I looked like one of those hideously cheesy couples photoshoots where they both wore turtleneck sweaters and had perms.

Hanna sat in front of her drawing pad and popped open her case of pencils.

"Son of a bitch," she cried. "Where's my 6B?"

"Your what?" Bodie asked.

Hanna groaned in outraged.

"Don't move," she commanded. "I know I saw it somewhere."

Hanna fled back into the bedroom. I heard her shaking out her duvet, then riffling through the mess of papers and knick-knacks on her desk.

Bodie's hand was still on my stomach.

"Kind of a dark story, isn't it?" he commented suddenly.

"Please stop twitching," I begged.

"I can't help it."

"Well, at least stop bouncing your knee."

Bodie stilled.

It didn't help.

"Laurel?" Hanna shouted from the bedroom.

"What's up?" I called, my throat drier than I'd realized.

Hanna stomped back into the kitchen carrying the little wastebasket we kept under my desk. Perched atop candy wrappers, used tissues, and padded Amazon envelopes sat a hot pink box with the words The Casanova V4 across it in virtually illegible cursive.

"You're throwing it out?" Hanna demanded. "You should at least let me sell it to somebody in the Art House—"

"Hanna, I'm not—"

But she'd already plucked the box out of the trashcan.

She gasped and turned it upside down.

It was empty.

"You're keeping it?" Hanna cried, delighted.

Whoever the Greek god of embarrassment was, he could go fuck himself.

_________________

Ladies and gentleman, I have an outline. My next book is officially in the works. And, as anticipated, I'm already missing Whistleblower like crazy and can't wait to dive into editing. Gentle reminder to nominate this story in The Fiction Awards 2019 (if you haven't already) by June 3! Feels like a longshot, but it'd be nice to make it to round two. Thank you!

Your friendly author,

Kate