Page 84 of Roommate
“Okay. And the work in your portfolio was mostly done at the ad agency?” she asks.
“Exactly. I made a lot of notes so you could tell what was mine and what I’d been given to work with.” God, it’s probably the weirdest portfolio she’s ever received. But I only had ten days to pull something together.
“I read your notes,” she said slowly. “But maybe you can talk me through how you put one of your pieces together. I like to hear how artists think.”
“Well, I’ll try.” I let out a nervous laugh. I’m sweating, and I hope she can’t tell.
The dean opens my portfolio—which is really just a binder from Staples—to a poster I did for the Farmers’ Market Association. “This is my favorite piece. Can you tell me where you got the inspiration?”
“Well, sure.” I clear my throat. “As I wrote in my note, this was the one time they barely gave me any instructions. The boss basically said, ‘You come from a family of farmers. Just see what you can come up with.’”
She smiles. “Are you related to the Shipleys who make cider? That’s your family, too?”
My body flashes hot and then cold again, the way it often does when I get this question. “That’s one side of the family. They raise apples and dairy. We raise beef. So I’ve spent a lot of time at farmers’ markets.”
“And how did you choose this design?”
I look down at my drawing of a red, vintage pickup truck carrying produce. “Well, the first design I made had a purple beet filling the page, with stylized text stacked inside it. It was very bright and contemporary, and I loved it. But the boss said he wanted more variety. It can’t represent just one farmer, you know?”
“Sure,” she says mildly.
“My grandpa once drove a truck just like this one,” I say, pointing at the drawing. “His was black, but it had those curvy vintage wheel wells. I used to sit on the tailgate with him while my grandma sold apples. The truck had a lot of farmers’ market cred. And, in the drawing, the truck bed gave me a place to stack some more imagery.” There’s lots of produce in back, but the sizes aren’t true-to-life. There’s an enormous melon, a freakishly large ear of corn, an elephantine tomato, and a towering carrot. “I was thinking about those colorful French posters while I drew it. So I gave it a vintage text treatment, too.”
“Lovely,” she says. “And the logo? I like how the spade and the pitchfork are crossed, like a knife and fork.”
“Yeah, I like it too. But that’s not my work. I said so in my note.”
“Mmh,” she says. “So I have another question for you, and it’s a little difficult. But just bear with me a second, okay? I received another portfolio, with some overlapping elements.” She pulls out a leather folio and flips it open to a page that’s marked with a sticky note. Then she turns it toward me.
For a moment, I’m super confused. It’s a drawing of a hot-air balloon I did for a festival in Quechee last June. But someone added textured effects to each of the balloon segments. The result is hideous. “What the—?”
But even as the words are leaving my mouth, I realize that I already know who did this. And I’m so aggravated that I stand up suddenly, causing my chair to jerk back a few inches. Feeling like a brute, I sit down just as quickly. Then I take a deep breath and try to speak through my anger. “I sure hope there was a note in that portfolio, too, explaining who drew the balloon before it was attacked by clipart patterns.”
Slowly, the dean shakes her head.
I tilt my head back and let out a heavy sigh. I can’t believe Deacon Pratt took that balloon, gave it a nasty makeover and submitted it as his own. I can’t believe he even wants to go to art school.
Working for the Pratts really is a dead-end job. And—insult to injury—this means my asshole father was right.
“Kieran,” the dean says. “Why don’t you tell me about the version in your portfolio.”
“Sure,” I say woodenly. “I drew the version in my portfolio. It’s in there because I wanted to include something I’d done in ink on paper. They wanted it to look handmade, so I freehanded it. But you can see it’s not the best.” I feel deflated, though. This woman is probably suspicious of everything coming out of the Pratt Agency now.
I hate my life.
“I liked your version better,” she says gently. “I suppose you can guess where this other one came from.”
“Sure.” My voice is flat. “There aren’t that many suspects.”
“Well, I’m sorry to have brought it up. But I needed to know why I received two very similar portfolios.”
I sit up a little straighter in my chair. “Are there more like this?”
She nabs the other portfolio off the table and sets it on the floor on her side of the desk. “Yes. But I’m not going to show you. It will only make you angry. It’s obvious who is coming up with the ideas, and who is just tarting them up.”
A wave of nausea rolls through me. “Crap. This isn’t how I wanted this interview to go,” I say in a rare burst of candidness.
“I bet. But take a deep breath, okay? You did a nice job explaining your process to me. And I’ve been admiring that farmers’ market poster for two years now.”
