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.I spent weeks researching and sketching endangered animals, and ultimately, designed a scene with marine life indigenous to the warmer areas of the Atlantic off the coast of Florida.I spent the entire month of April penciling it on the wall, perfecting the curves, choosing each fill pattern with extra care.Around Joy’s graduation from high school, I finished the painting.I sighed, remembering that feeling of accomplishment.I was done.Or so I thought.My mom squeezed my shoulder.“It’s so beautiful, Grace.And I know how hard you’ve been working.with everything.here, home, and with the rain garden.It’s so gorgeous.I want more.What do you think about adding something to the mural?”“Huh?”“Right here.” She pointed to a spot on the horizon under the hazy, southern sun, an area that took me hours of mixing colors to get the right balance of sun, sky, and sea.“Right there?” I asked, hearing confusion, and possibly a little desperation in my voice.“Well, I was in yoga class this morning, and I got to thinking how you really captured peace in your painting, but it needs one more little thing.” She put a hand on my forearm.“Um.okay, but won’t it be a bit crowded?”My mom shook her head.“I know just the thing.”She ran behind the counter and disappeared into her office.I stood there, examining my mural.It wasn’t missing anything.The mural turned out exactly how I’d pictured it in my head and in my sketch.I was proud I managed to capture all the colors from the photographs I’d found.Maybe it wasn’t the most original mural (although, I had added my signature doodle flair), and maybe it wasn’t abstract like the kind in the book my dad sent, but unless I was purposefully going for something abstract, a manatee needed to look like a manatee.Besides, I didn’t want to add something else.My mom returned and handed me a printout from an endangered species website.“I’d love to see this little guy floating right here under your gorgeous yellow sun.”The caption under the photo noted the animal was a ribbon seal.Admittedly, the animal’s white circular fur patterns intrigued me, and I found myself mentally making a note to buy more black paint, until I noticed something else in the picture.“Um, cute seal, Mom, but isn’t she sitting on a big block of ice?”My mom draped her arm around my shoulder and some flour from her apron sprinkled onto mine.“Yes, she lives in the Arctic.” She faked a shiver.“Brrr.”I studied my mom’s smiling face.As usual, she was hardly wearing any makeup.Her smile lines might’ve been a tad bit deeper, but still, she managed to appear young and carefree.“That doesn’t really make sense.The mural is a tropical scene.You know, south of the equator?” I resisted the urge to smooth back the stray hairs that escaped from her ponytail.“Well…”“Maybe I could add a baby northern right whale?” I asked, considering one of the other animals I’d learned about in my research.One that was more naturally suited to the warmer climate.“A whale might take over your whole painting.It’s simpler to put the little seal on an ice floe or something.”Like that made sense.An arctic seal floating on a chunk of ice in the middle of the warm tropical sea? My carefully researched mural would be a joke.I frowned.Was this snafu something all artists experienced at some point? Maybe it was this sort of confusion that started the whole surreal artistic movement.I scratched my nose and sighed, a tiny growl followed my exhale.“But, the whole mural is based on animals in the Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Florida.”“And you did a great job, but since we’re not writing an encyclopedia, we have the freedom to improvise.”Improvise.That summed up my mom’s easygoing philosophy on life.She handled my sister, Joy, and her crazy behavior calmly—although, my dad ranted enough for the both of them—and now, with my dad working and living three hours away, my mom still managed to exude a stress free impression.Okay, so we were only talking about a mural, but it seemed like her carefree ways were suddenly not so carefree for me.She made me feel the same way I did a few months ago, after I painted the entire house only for my dad to not even care.Why was it that no matter what I did, it wasn’t quite right?“Besides, honey,” my mom said, “a mural depicting endangered animals from all over really portrays global harmony, right?”I guessed in my mom’s world, global harmony trumped everything.She kissed my cheek, but before she turned to go back to her office, she added, “We all live on the same planet after all.”“And what planet is that?”She didn’t respond to my comment.Either she didn’t hear me or she’d returned to Planet Clueless, where everything was happy-go-lucky.I dropped my rag on the counter and scrubbed vigorously.Global harmony my ass.Every time I glanced at my mural, I fumed a little.Adding the arctic ribbon seal would be stupid, because the only time tropical and arctic animals were even remotely near each other was in an aquarium.Confined.Something some animal lovers might call a prison.Yeah, real harmonious.Why wasn’t she worried about Callahan harmony? She’s professing peace but not making any effort to move forward for the sake of our family.Other than hiring neighbors to pitch in to mow the lawn.She didn’t say a word about my dad’s birthday or the turkey.We looked every bit as endangered as her ribbon seal.Maybe I needed to paint my family on our own ice floe for her to see.* * *Later, when I couldn’t sleep again, I pulled out the art book my dad sent and flipped to my favorite print.It really was a messy kind of beautiful.A section of the piece dripped with paint, leaving me with the feeling that it was unfinished but not in a negative way.The art wasn’t perfect or defined even, but still, I found it inspiring.Flawless in its own way.I smiled.The picture made me happy every time I saw it.It would be awesome if I could paint like that.Then I could clearly call myself an artist.There would be no question.Right now, the best I could say was, master doodler.Because I was pretty good at filling a page with whimsical drawings.I practiced.A lot.The proof was in the margins of my math notebook.And history, and physics, and so on.Because no matter how much I tried at school, A’s eluded me (except in the comments where I almost always got an A for effort).Drawing curves, swirls, repeating bubble patterns, and caricatures of my teachers? That was my thing.In a way, it was like I never left my two years of kindergarten behind.But when had anyone ever said, when I grow up I want to be a master doodler? Sounded hilarious and creepy all at once.Zac and Chloe had it easy.He wanted to be a journalist, she a psychiatrist.Done and done.I considered the wall in my room.My middle of the night painting made no sense, an insomniac fantasy fairy scene with white streaks down the center.My muddled, freaky reaction to the Lord of the Cringe Kiss.I needed to paint over the whole thing.My eyes skimmed my wall again, taking in the shimmering sunlight I’d painted that managed to find its way to the clearing in the thick forest.If there were anything salvageable there, I couldn’t see it.Chapter 10Close encounters and other alien thingsChloe was back.I was practically numb with relief.I needed Chloe and her advice desperately, before I messed up my life further.Her flight got in after midnight on Labor Day, and we planned on meeting at the Founder’s Day carnival.We hadn’t missed a carnival since Chloe moved to Hickory Bend, and we had a tradition of riding the Ferris wheel to uphold.I practically had to physically restrain myself from knocking on her door at three in the morning [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]