Jamie is noticeably surprised when I don’t pull a face. To be honest, it surprises me, too.
“I like it,” I say honestly. I’m not looking at the camera. I’m looking somewhere over my shoulder, probably trying to find Jamie, who moves around so silently when he’s taking photos it sometimes feels like he’s not there at all.
But I look peaceful. Peaceful is good.
He nods a few times before he smirks. “Let’s see yours.”
I turn my sketchbook around, and this time I do make a face. “I’m trying to figure out what I want the woman in my painting to wear. I’m adding all the details onto her dress tomorrow.”
“Are those tentacles?” he asks with a quizzical brow.
I shut the book and laugh too loudly. “It’s stupid. Forget it.”
“No, it’s not,” he insists. “Is she some kind of sea creature?”
I shrug. I don’t know how to tell him she’s a human starfish without telling him everything. It’s a conversation I don’t know how to have without baring my entire soul. “They’re only sketches. I haven’t decided what I’m going to do yet.”
Jamie looks back at his computer screen, tapping his finger against the edge of the keyboard in time with the music. After a few minutes, he turns back to me, his eyes overflowing with blue concern. “Is the woman in your painting supposed to be your mom?”
It takes me a while to answer. When I do, my voice doesn’t waver. “No. The painting is about how she makes me feel. It’s not about my mom—it’s about me.”
There’s something hidden beneath his brow that tells me he wants to ask more, but he doesn’t. He goes eerily quiet, and I have no idea why.
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Hiroshi doesn’t stop smiling when he sees the clothing ideas for my painting.
“These are wonderful. The details are so thoughtful, so visually interesting.” He pauses before snapping his brown eyes to mine. “Kiko, have you ever considered going to school for drawing instead of painting?”
My throat catches. Maybe I’m not a good enough painter. Maybe Mom was right. Maybe—
Hiroshi interrupts my thoughts. “I’m only asking because you have an amazing style and a much stronger body of work with your sketches than with your canvases. You have a solid portfolio here already—have you ever thought about submitting it to Prism?”
I swallow what feels like a giant chunk of cardboard lodged in my throat. “Most of them are just doodles. They’re unfinished.”
“Artwork isn’t finished just because you’ve colored up to every corner on the page. Artwork is finished when you get to the end of your sentence.” He shakes the book in his grip. “You have a great many stories in here that are worth sharing.”
I take the sketchbook back and I feel like I’ve been wounded even though he’s trying to compliment me. Painting is my life—it’s what I want to do. I draw in order to paint. It’s the order of things.
Isn’t it?
Hiroshi shrugs. “Perhaps it’s something to think about.” He moves back to his desk in the corner, and I step closer to my borrowed easel.
I think about it. I don’t stop thinking about it, even after I finish painting the woman’s dress with burnt orange and crimson and topaz yellow. I paint because it’s the next step—what does it mean if there isn’t another step? Drawing feels so open and skeletal. My sketchbook is a collection of imprints from my soul. They aren’t finished—they need to be colored in, and decorated, and turned into something much prettier than what they are.
If I don’t have emerald greens and magentas and lilacs, I just have Kiko. Black-and-white. Bare and smudged.
I’m not confident enough to let my drawings speak for me. I need my paintings to say something else entirely.
Maybe this is my problem. Maybe this is what Hiroshi has been trying to tell me.
My paintings aren’t honest enough.
Cringing, I close my eyes and picture what the starfish woman will look like when she is finished. She’s vibrant and beautiful and commands the attention of the painting. But this isn’t her story.
And then my mind pictures the girl standing behind her, hidden behind the luminous splendor. She’s gray and plain, but she’s beautiful, too, in her own way. But the woman will never see it because she’s too busy being beautiful herself.
This painting isn’t about the starfish. It’s about the girl who wants to venture out into the ocean, away from the starfish, so she can feel like she matters.
Because the girl will never matter to the starfish.
In the finished painting in my head, the girl will finally know this.
It’s the honest story I want to tell.
I will make this painting the truest painting I’ve ever done. And after that . . .
I will swim into the ocean.
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I paint a crown of starfish and golden hair, all jumbled together because the body and the mind are all part of the same being.
CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
In the middle of the night, my phone rings. It takes me a while to wake up, and by the time my fingers fumble against the plastic, I’m hurrying to press the answer button without bothering to look at the caller ID.
“Hello?” My voice is raspy and quiet because I don’t want to wake up Jamie’s parents.
“Hi,” says a timid voice.
“Shoji?” I sit up, letting the quilt fall to my waist.
“Yeah,” he says. “Umm, I just wanted to know when you were coming home.”
I pause. Did Mom put him up to this? Does she think she can get to me through my brother? I wipe the sleep out of my eye with my finger. “Well, I’m not sure, to be honest. I’m sort of here on a trial basis.”
There’s a long pause. “But are you coming back?”
“Probably. Maybe. I mean, I don’t want to.”
Another long pause. “Okay.”
I frown, my eyes adjusting slowly to the shadows around the room. “Are you okay? Is everything . . . okay? At home?” My mind goes straight to Uncle Max.
He clears his throat into the phone. “Yeah. Mom’s kind of being worse than usual.” He forces a laugh. “It’s easier when you’re home. She notices me too much when you’re not around.”
It’s my turn to pause. I didn’t think about how Mom would be when I left. Maybe she can’t help herself. Maybe she has to be herself at all costs, no matter who is standing in her line of sight.
Did I leave Shoji to take my place on her target board? Because Taro’s too strong for Mom to break, and with me gone and Uncle Max gone and Dad gone, Shoji’s all that’s left?
“Okay, well, I’m going to go. Bye.” He hangs up the phone before I get a chance to say anything else.
I sit in the darkness for a long time, watching the shadows shift when the moon does, and I wonder if maybe Mom doesn’t really hate me—maybe she doesn’t hate any of us. Maybe she doesn’t know how to be any other way.
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