Ember finished feeding the bird, and we continued to school. She’d been quiet around me lately, and I thought I knew why. I’d been so preoccupied with finding my siblings that I’d neglected our friendship. And Ember was the only friend I had.
“How’s your song coming along?” I asked. “I’d love to hear it.”
“My song?”
“You said your band had to write an original song for Battle of the Bands.”
“Oh.” She looked off into the trees. “I don’t know if we’re doing Battle of the Bands anymore. The keyboardist and the drummer quit. I can’t find anyone to replace them.”
“Did they quit because of me?” I asked as my blood started to burn. “Because I live in your house?”
“No,” she said, but she wouldn’t meet my eyes.
* * *
The warning bell rang as Ember and I climbed the front steps to the school. She rushed inside, but I stalled before entering the building. I filled my lungs with the cold February air and balanced the fog. The last time I was here, I’d lost control of the visions, then the fog, and passed out. I had to be extra careful to keep the fog balanced from now on. I had to show Tristan that he didn’t need to protect me so much. I took another deep breath, nudging the fog a little higher, then a little lower.
“Are you okay?” a sweet voice said beside me: Melanie, her black hair tumbling from under her black beret.
“Yeah,” I said, a bit surprised that she’d asked. “Thanks.”
“I heard you fainted in the hall the other day,” she said with genuine concern in her voice. “I just wanted to make sure it wasn’t happening again.”
“I’m fine,” I said, now really surprised. “Thanks, Melanie.”
Melanie Brunswick truly was kind. And sweet. I could understand why Tristan had loved her.
She would make a good friend.
I gave her a smile, a real smile.
She started to smile back, but then she cleared her throat and looked down at her Doc Martens. “I feel bad for everything you’re going through, Tessa. I really do,” she said. “But... my dad...and Tristan...” Her gaze flitted to my hand—to my promise ring. “I’ve lost so much. I’m sorry, but I can never be friends with you.”
She rushed into the building without looking back.
* * *
In art class that morning, Mr. Vargas returned everyone’s fruit bowl paintings we’d made last week. Except for mine. All I got was a slip of paper that read, See me after school.
I shoved the note into my pocket. What had I done wrong? I’d liked my painting, how I’d divided the canvas into six squares and painted just a part of each fruit. But maybe he’d wanted us to paint the fruit as he’d presented it. Realistic, not abstract.
After last period I went to the art studio. Mr. Vargas was bent over the counter, cleaning paintbrushes in the sink and wearing a ratty cardigan splattered, as all of his clothes were, with dried paint. “No one realizes how expensive these brushes are,” he mumbled to me. “You have to take care of your brushes.”
That was why he called me in after school? I’d been concentrating so hard on keeping the fog balanced that it was entirely possible that I’d neglected to clean my brushes. “I’m sorry, Mr. Vargas,” I said. “I forgot. I won’t do it again.”
“Oh, it wasn’t you, Tessa.” He wiped his hands on his sweater to dry them, then went to his desk. He picked up my abstract fruit painting and tucked it under his arm. “Come with me,” he said, and sauntered from the room.
I followed him to the cafeteria. He stopped at the back wall and held his arms out wide, facing it, my canvas still in one hand. I had to step out of the way so he wouldn’t hit me with it.
“Tell me what you see,” he said.
Was I supposed to see something? If I didn’t have the fog balanced, I’d see dozens of visions, but Mr. Vargas wasn’t asking about visions. He was neutral. “Um, a wall?” I said.
“I know you can do better than that. Try again. What do you see?”
“Um...” Oh! “A giant canvas?”
“Yes!” he said. “Excellent. Now what do you see on this giant canvas?”
I stared up at the wall for a minute. We were in the cafeteria, so that meant food. He couldn’t mean... “My painting? My bowl of fruit?”
“Yes. Your bowl of fruit.” He held my painting in both hands, arms straight out. “I want you to recreate this same piece, on a much larger scale, on this wall.”
“But everyone will see it,” I said.
“Everyone should see it. It’s brilliant.”
He couldn’t be serious. “It’s just fruit.”
With one eye closed, he tilted his head, then tilted the canvas the opposite way. “I’ve been teaching for twenty-seven years, and every year, I present that same bowl of fruit and tell my students to paint it. Do you know what I get? I get paintings of the same bowl of fruit, from every student, every year. Some are truly awful, most are decent, and a few are excellent. Yours is one of the excellent. You took it in a new direction.”
“I thought you were going to fail me for not following instructions,” I said. This was incredible. I had to raise the fog a little to make sure I was hearing him correctly.
“I didn’t give any instructions to follow,” Mr. Vargas said. “You’ve only been here a few weeks, and you’re unpracticed. Undeveloped. However, you have a raw talent, Tessa. You are a very gifted artist.”
Gifted.
Jillian was a gifted dancer. Logan was a gifted musician. All the talent in the family had gone to them, I’d always assumed.
I’d painted before, sure. As a hobby. I was decent. Maybe good. Never excellent. Never gifted. But I was psionic now, when I’d never been psionic before. Maybe my retrocognition wasn’t the only thing the fog had suppressed all those years.
I could envision my painting, super-sized, on the wall. The bright yellow-green pear, stretching from the floor halfway up the wall. The shiny crimson apple. The plump purple blueberry. Greedily, I eyed the white cinder blocks. The strawberry would go right there, in the upper corner. The wall’s bumpy texture would be perfect for the orange.
I was stuck in Lilybrook because of Deirdre’s dream. But when Tristan brought my brother and sister to me, I would bring them to this school and lead them to the cafeteria. Then I would stand them in front of the mural, spread my arms, and announce I painted this. They would be so proud.
Breathless, I appraised the blank white wall, a wall that wouldn’t be blank or white much longer. “When can I start?”
