I lunge across the table and snatch my laptop back.
“Don’t cause a scene,” Mom says through a clenched jaw. She checks over her shoulder and offers a dazzling smile to no one in particular.
“I’mnotcausing a scene,” I hiss. I sniff back any wayward tears and sit up taller. “This is important to me.” I chew on my lip a moment, deciding whether or not I want this to be the exact moment I tell her about Paris. Dream scenario, I would wait until I had already received my acceptance letter. Or at least until I sent my application in next month. But there’s no point holding off any longer.
I clear my throat. “I’m using this as my portfolio for an art program in Paris.”
Mom blinks like a camera flash has just gone off in her face. “Art school? You want to go to…art school?”
“It’s just one year,” I say defensively. I pivot the laptop back to myself and slowly scroll down the document, lingering on all the little details it took hours to get right. “But if I get into the program, then, yeah. I want to go to art school.”
I wince and wait for Mom to launch into one of her lectures.Whatever the topic, I know my mother, and when it comes to anything regarding me or the choices I’m making, she always has plenty of opinions.
But for some strange reason, she doesn’t share any of those opinions right now.
She just keeps sitting there, wearing an expression I’m certain I’ve never seen on her before. Usually I can detect her mood in an instant. I know impatience by the shift of her mouth, pride in the angle of her chin. But the current crease down the top of her nose is all but foreign to me. If I didn’t know better, I would say she almost looks…pitying?
“What are you thinking?” I ask.
Mom doesn’t answer. She presses her fingers to her mouth, clearly working over a response. But here’s the thing about Mom: She always says what she thinks. She’s not afraid of being blunt or harsh. In her mind, measuring someone with lofty expectations is a compliment in and of itself, leaving her free to share as much detailed criticism as she wants. So something isup.
“Mom. What are you thinking?” I say it louder this time.
Mom’s fingers drop to her chin, and she parts her lips in a sigh. She false starts twice like this until, finally, she splays her hand toward my computer.
“This…isn’t art.”
My mouth fills with tar.
“What,” I say. My voice is so dead that I can’t even make the word into a question.
Mom sighs again. “It’s extreme competence,” she explainsgently. Damn it if her gentle voice isn’t the cruelest sound I’ve ever heard. “And, hey, look at me. Architects are masters of extreme competence. But we’re not artists either.”
I stare at her.
“I tried to do the artist thing, Ivy. I understand where you’re coming from. But you can’t just show off a little photo collage project and call it art. Art is more than skill, or even mastery, for that matter. Art is…bigger. It’s narrative.”
“I have a mission statement.” I murmur this so quietly that I’m not sure if I’m talking to Mom or just to myself. She hears me anyway.
“I’m sure you have some nicely written paragraphs on something like the past and the present intermingling, and that’s fine,” she says, even though it’s so obviouslynotfine that I would laugh if I weren’t so close to crying. “But there’s no real story in this,” she goes on. “You’renot even in this, Ivy. The problem is—”
Mom’s voice becomes a foghorn blaring somewhere over my head.
The problem is, my own mother has just taken a dump on everything I’ve worked on over the last seven months.
The problem is, she doesn’t even think it qualifies as art.
The problem is…she might actually be right.
Chapter Four
Me:EMERGENCY YEARBOOK MEETING.
I send the SOS text out to Sunny, Julia, and Gabriel early the next morning. Seconds later, my phone pings.
Gabriel:You do know it’s Sunday, yes?
Me:…and?
