Page 19 of My Family

Harry, still recovering, mutters to the kid next to him, "She's like someone crossbred an art teacher with a punk rock babysitter." Which is, honestly, not wrong.

The room settles into a hum and a lot of talk, but she doesn't seem to mind. Some people are doing nothing but most start trying to do art. Brushes go into water, Jack starts fresh on a real piece of paper, Miles just keeps reading.

Vikki roams the room and eventually leans over Jack's shoulder after five minutes. "Holy hell," she says. "Did you do that from memory?"

"Yeah," Jack says, not looking up.

"That's a perfect Batman," she says.

He hesitates. "I just like superheroes." He points at his Batman tattoo on his neck. She looks genuinely amazed.

She crouches so she's eye-level with him. "I see the shading. You know how to blend with pencil already?"

Jack blinks, unsure if it's a trick question. "I guess? I watched YouTube videos before I got here. Been drawing since I was a little kid."

She whistles, impressed. "You have real talent, kid. When you're done, can I hang this on the wall?"

"Hell yeah," he says, flushing red.

Vikki nods, and she moves on.

She pauses by my side, scans my sketch, which is supposed to be Ethan but is more like a human-shaped blur at this point. "Who's that?"

I freeze. "It's not anyone. Just messing around."

She gives me a sly smile. "Okay, if you say so. The jawline is very specific. And the scowl. It's good, though. Try shading under the cheekbones. Give it some structure."

She shows me, just once, her hand guiding mine on the pencil, then gives it back. The contact is brief but I wasn't expecting it, and I'm not going to pretend I didn't love it.

She moves on to Miles.

He's got a blank page and is just staring at it. Vikki sits on the edge of the table.

"You drawing, or you just thinking really hard?" she asks.

Miles shrugs, eyes still on the page.

She tilts her head. "What do you like drawing?"

"Biology diagrams," he actually answers, surprising all of us.

She nods, then pulls her phone from her pocket and scrolls for a second. "Here," she says, and shows him a cross-section of a seed pod, so detailed it looks like an alien life form. "Want to try drawing it? You can make it big, abstract, whatever."

Miles nods, takes it, and starts sketching, still silent, but now focused. He's probably the only kid in this whole facility who'd touch a phone responsibly and she seems to know it somehow. Maybe it's his aura.

Ethan is the last stop.

He's got nothing on his desk except a closed notebook and a sharp pencil balanced on top. He watches her approach the way a lion might watch a zookeeper who is new to the job.

"You're not drawing," she says, not accusing, just stating a fact.

"If it's okay, miss, for a free period, I'd rather do something else," he replies. "Never saw the point in trying to do art."

"That's fair," she says, deadpan. "I never saw the point of trigonometry, but the world kept spinning anyway. If you want to use the time to do other homework, that's fine. Just don't distract anyone else."

Ethan nods. I'm not sure if he's impressed or he doesn't approve of that. In my opinion, she's impressive as fuck.

She goes to the whiteboard and starts writing, but before she gets two words up, one of the shittier residents, a guy named Nick who has a big, crooked nose and only one eyebrow, decides to make his move.