Free Crazy for Cornelia by Chris Gilson

suit on,” his mentor grumbled without turning back. “I’ll give you twenty minutes.”
    Kevin first put Saint Sebastian in a safe place, the room where thestudents kept their large pieces. He left him between a green sign for Heineken whose red star was too big, making it look
     like an old sign for a Holiday Inn, and a respectable neon Fat Elvis in the Las Vegas lounge suit.
    He quickly put on one of the Mylar suits, and carried a black Pyrex face mask under his arm.
    “Look,” Max told Kevin when he arrived at his instructor’s work-table. “My new pieces. Look at the bends. Perfect bends.”
    Kevin studied them, but it wasn’t for the bends. As always, each piece revealed a technical perfection he couldn’t fault.
     Who could? They were critic-proof. A neon square. A neon circle. A neon cross.
    What dazzled Kevin was the shimmer of that subtle, elusive Max-glow that Kevin couldn’t bring to his own work. Compared to
     Max’s little pieces, the colors of Kevin’s saint still looked as crass as the logo for a massage parlor. He could shrug off
     the saint’s harshness, like Jessica Fernandez did, as “irony.” But that “irony” crap was for people who couldn’t do any better.
     His mom’s saint deserved more.
    “I have to make it glow like your pieces,” Kevin said before he strapped on his mask.
    “To make neon glow, you must be scalded.”
    “Scolded?” Kevin said. “I get scolded all the time.”
    “
Scalded
. Your heart feels scalded now, from your
mutter
dying, does it?”
    Mutter?
His mother, Kevin realized. “Yeah, that’s how it feels.”
    It was the first time Max had ever spoken to him in a personal way.
    “Good,” Max told him. “Today, maybe you become a better liar.”
    “What?”
    “Art is a lie that makes us see the truth,” Max intoned. “You were always a bad liar, so you make crooked halos.”
    Kevin felt outclassed in their exchange, as he always did. Max had gone to art school in Europe. He used words like “deconstruct.”
    Max motioned for Kevin to switch on the burner. Kevin tightened the mask over his face, pulled his silver hood up over his
     head, and zipped it around the mask. He picked up a length of glass tubing for a new, improved halo. Feet apart, he faced
     his fire ready to bombard the tube and bend it into shape.
    Kevin’s hands didn’t work.
    Normally, his hands took over from signals his brain fed them. Today, his fingers inside the gloves felt like fat, mushy sausages.
    He tried to focus his mind to send the signals. Place the tube in the fire. Move into it, using the gravity of his body. But
     his body seemed to produce no gravity.
    A critical light had expired somewhere in his brain. Kevin stepped back from the workstation.
    “What is the matter?” Max frowned.
    “I don’t know,” he mumbled through the mask.
    Then Kevin turned away from Max and walked out of the studio with his space suit on. He reached the freight elevator door,
     and as he closed it, he saw that Max hadn’t budged from his flameworking bench, his hands on his hips.
    “That suit is school property,” Max shouted in a surprisingly theatrical voice, full of fury.
    “I’ll be back,” Kevin mumbled into his Pyrex face mask.
    He knew it was a lie when he said it, but the fullness of that didn’t hit him until he stumbled onto the street. His space
     suit caused passersby to give him plenty of room. He felt his confusion like cement, hardening in his chest and setting into
     his brain. He needed to sit down at the curb.
    Inside the mask, Kevin began to cry because he just realized, in his heart, that he would never see his saint or his mom again.

Chapter Five
    I nteresting bunch of species. Colorful.”
    Sergeant DiBlasi tossed out microcomments as she peered into the fish tank in Cornelia’s room. But she never took her eyes
     off her, Cornelia noticed, and kept her feet fourteen inches apart at all times, ready in case Cornelia should attack.
    “Big tank, too,