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over one of our family’s renovation sites had been the cause of me rushing into the art seminar late tonight.
    I couldn’t let my anger go. Whether it was with myself or the professor, I really wasn’t sure. Well, that wasn’t true, now, was it? I was both tired and pissed at being dressed down byhim. I wanted to kick him in the teeth with my purple Docs—my only remaining nod to my own fashion style—but I worried too much about the possibility of ruining the expensive dark gray suit I wore with them. I let my mind wander off onto that dark, gory tangent. Maybe the long white smock covering most of my jacket and skirt would catch the blood—
    Jesus.
Perhaps Rory had been right in giving me this gift. Maybe the real estate-ing day job
was
stressing me out more than just a little bit.
    I pushed the artist-in-residence out of my thoughts and stared at my sketch on the easel before me. The rest of the Y’s art studio faded into the distance as I concentrated on the mismatch of charcoal lines before me. I stared at them, hoping they would resolve into something meaningful, but the longer I stared, the less sense there seemed to be in them. I swore under my breath, running my hands through my long, dark curls of hair, not caring about the charcoal that coated the tips of my fingers. They had left gray smudges all over the Y-logoed smock, but I wasn’t worried about my hair so much as I was my sketch.
    Fighting against my own artistic instincts, I gave up, relaxed, and tried to focus on applying his damned rules. Letting creativity be harnessed felt so counterintuitive to me when my heart screamed that it
had
to be free-form, but for now I forced myself to let go of that mentality.
    I snatched up another stick of charcoal in my hand and began adding strokes, focusing on the rules of perspective, all lines leading off into one distant point on the horizon. My mind opened as pieces of the world within the sketch began to form. I smiled when I recognized what was unfolding—a picture I must have remembered from one of my great-great-grandfather’s architectural sketchbooks up in the family library.
    Over time, the image resolved in front of me, the arch of a church rooftop fading into the background as I continued. In the foreground, I added a figure, the new lines forming a twisted face and muscular body, all in stone, terrifying bat wings rising up behind it. A gargoyle, like the one on top ofour very building, just one of many of the architectural details Alexander had been known for. My heart raced as the elements of it all came together, becoming clearer with each stroke. It was all starting to make some kind of sense, even though I was loath to admit that perhaps a little application of rules had been the right call. I was so lost in the drawing that I hadn’t realized class was officially over.
    “Hey, Lexi!” a familiar voice called out. I jumped, losing my concentration on my work and looking over to find Rory standing at the art studio’s door, her short sometimes-blond hair now dyed Cookie Monster blue. Her striking eyes of a lighter version of that color were partly hidden behind her black-rimmed cat’s-eye glasses, but they showed concern. At her side stood Marshall in all his tallness and sporting an
Avengers
T-shirt, black scruffy hair and a similar look of concern in his brown, gentle eyes.
    “Hey, guys,” I said.
    Rory started over, her five-inch Frankenstein boots clopping loudly across the art studio floor, before stopping and looking me up and down.
    “Nice suit,” she said. “The white coat makes you look a bit Muppet Labs, though, and I’d peg you as Beaker, judging by your twitchiness.” Her eyes met mine. “You okay, doll?”
    “Yeah,” I said with a slim smile, and pointed to the easel. “Was having a little bit of a breakthrough, actually. Well, first a fight with the teacher, then everyone staring at me, but
then
a bit of a breakthrough.”
    Rory looked around the art space. To my