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Staring up at them was a younger version of Everly, decked out in Claymore University’s maroon-and-gray colors, squished on a small couch with her arms around her grandmother. She remembered taking this picture after the homecoming game sophomore year. Everly wore a football jersey knotted at her waist and those loose boyfriend jeans that had been all the rage. Under the right pocket and on both knees were big rips that exposed her pale white skin, and the pants were cuffed over heeled Mary Janes with three skinny ankle straps. Her hair had caramel highlights and hung loose around her shoulders in beachy waves, andher minimal makeup brought out her eyes and lips beneath the maroon numbers scrawled across both her cheeks.
Beside her, Grandma Helen beamed, her short blond hair threaded with gray and mussed from a long day outside, her high cheekbones and sharp nose ruddy from the sun. Their features could not be more different, but their smiles, their confidence were the same.
Seeing that tugged at Everly’s insides, and tears burned her eyelids. Back then, she’d known exactly how good she looked. She’d known exactly who she was. And she’d been proud to be that person. Loud voice, no filter, and all.
Just like her grandmother.
“What happened to this girl?” Jazzy asked quietly.
Everly turned her head away as a few tears slipped down her cheeks. The loss of her grandmother clung to her like a shadow, always looming. But staring at this former version of herself, remembering for a moment what it was like to have Grandma Helen at her side, gave that grief claws. They dug deep, tore at pieces of herself she’d thought had healed.
Brushing her knuckles under her eyes, she met Jazzy’s gaze. Logan moved a few steps closer, presumably to zoom in for the reveal. This was the good stuff, wasn’t it? The moments that kept people riveted to their screens.
It took her a second to realize that he wasn’t holding the camera. Instead, he offered her a box of tissues. Everly couldn’t make out the exact meaning of his tense expression, but his eyes were like ice, freezing her in place.
She took one, then let her gaze drop to her lap. For a second, she sat in silence, folding the tissue over and over on her knee. “My grandmother died. She was my person. And it was like she took a piece of me with her.”
Jazzy’s face fell. “Oh, honey.”
“My mom was always working, so Grandma Helen basically raised Ellis and me until junior high.” Her grandmother had been the one that explained periods to Everly. She’d given Everly her first sex talk. When Everly came sobbing to her that Becca had to move to New Hampshire, Grandma Helen had reminded her that there was more to being best friends than living across the street from each other. And the first time someone called Everly fat at school, it was her grandmother who’d taught her that this was their problem, not Everly’s.
Her throat tightened with emotion, and her next few words came out hoarse. “She was an amazing person. So generous and honest and so sure of herself. She didn’t care that you could hear her laughing from the neighbor’s house, or that people thought she was too blunt, or that only I found her jokes funny. That was who she was. Take it or leave it.”
Everly had known wardrobe day would be emotional, but she hadn’t been prepared for how much it would remind her of her grandmother. Her thoughts kept sliding back to the many times that she and Grandma Helen had hit online sales and thrift stores to help Everly keep up with the latest trends. They’d do fashion shows in her grandmother’s giant kitchen, pulling together outfits and commiserating about how hard it was to find good clothes at their size, the same as she and Jazzy were doing now. Grandma Helen always sent Everly home on those nights with arms full of new clothes and a heart full of pride. “We were a lot alike. She used to call us ‘two peas in a pod.’ It made it so easy for me to feel good about myself around her, because, even though our faces weren’t the same, she was my mirror.”
Jazzy nodded.
“It was her idea for me to do the Collective. I used to sketch reimaginings of book covers with plus-size characters. Like that.” Everly pointed at the reproduction ofWuthering Heightsover her bureau. “In typical grandmother fashion, she loved them and thought they were brilliant.She pushed me to consider applying for a booth. She was so sure that my art could change how people saw the world. How they saw themselves.” Everly smiled sadly. “She made me believe it, too. We spent the whole summer before my junior year in college preparing the application, gathering the pieces I would show, and brainstorming ideas for new ones. I was even planning to enter one of the art contests. I’d never done something like that before.”
“She sounds like she was an incredible lady,” Jazzy said.
Everly closed her eyes, swallowing hard against another wave of tears. She hated thinking about those last few months of her grandmother’s life. How quickly everything had changed. How fast and unexpectedly cancer had stolen Grandma Helen from her. “She got diagnosed with stomach cancer in September. By November, she was gone.”
The idea of doing the Collective without her had seemed unfathomable, but Everly knew how excited her grandmother had been, so she’d tried to push through the fog of grief and pain. She’d added a new sketch of her grandmother to her portfolio, flying in a cape, surrounded by goats and dogs and cats, like the true superhero she was. That was the best way Everly knew to communicate her love. To make visual representations of the people who filled her heart.
But as the art festival crept closer, Everly’s nerves had kicked in. It was hard to see her drawings in the same light without Grandma Helen there to remind her of their value. Suddenly, there were flaws everywhere: the designs looked too amateur, the shading was all wrong, the bodies lacked natural form. Who would care about these things anyway?
About two weeks before the Collective opened, Everly had come home to practice her presentation for the art contest. She’d thought she was alone, but her mother must have gotten out of work early. Everly had no idea how long she’d stood there listening, judging. She was just getting to her favorite part, where she explained why it was importantto reframe Juliet from Shakespeare’s play in a fat body, when her mother had broken in. “You’re talking too loud.”
Everly had jumped, her surprise becoming discomfort as she registered her mother’s presence. “The audience will need to hear me,” she insisted.
“Your voice carriesplentywithout you raising it.” The words landed in Everly’s gut like an arrow finding its target. She pressed a hand to her middle.
Her mother clutched her neck as she studied theRomeo and Julietcover Everly had propped up on the couch. “That’s really the one you’re going to enter?”
Everly’s heart pounded. “It’s my favorite.”
“But what about the Little Mermaid one? With the shell at the center? It’s beautiful.”
“There aren’t any people in that one.”
Her mother nodded. “Exactly. I think it might be better received.”
Everly had glanced at her drawing. All the flaws drifted to the surface. She could barely see the image through them. “You don’t think people will like it?”
“I just think they might not get it, sweetie.”
What her mother actually meant, of course, was that they were too much like Everly herself. Too out there. Too bold. Too loud.
