by Coco Simon
I don’t know what the storms and rainbows were about, but Lindsay’s mom was a lover of all flowers. Mrs. Cooper was an amazing artist, mostly known for her paintings. She’s the reason I fell in love with art.
At Lindsay’s house, on one wall of her art studio are paintings of the flowers that she so loved. On the opposite wall are my favorites, these black-and-white sketches of her family. There are some sketches of Lindsay and Sky, and there are also a couple of sketches of Lindsay’s dad, too, with a grin as wide as the horizon, as wide as Grandpa Coop’s.
I always thought it was so cool that Lindsay had a mom who could draw so beautifully, and how she could take a simple pencil and create such a realistic portrayal of someone she loved. She made it look so simple; with just a few strokes of her hand, she’d make a blank sheet of paper come to life.
Until I was about six, I was convinced it was magic. Sometimes her drawings looked so real I imagined that they could start talking or walking off pages. Lindsay’s amazing mom had a way of making someone’s personality and color lift off the page, without using a single drop of paint.
I would watch her make sketches, wishing I could do that one day. It’s a wish that has never quite faded like many things do over time.
There was a lull in traffic at the Donut Dreams counter. Grandpa Coop always wanted us to look busy so I straightened the already perfectly straight donuts.
“Who are your favorite teachers so far?” Lindsay asked, wiping invisible crumbs and sprinkles off the spotless counter.
“Ms. Reyes actually makes math fun,” I answered. “And our art teacher, Mr. Franklin, was really encouraging when I asked him about doing sketches from my photographs.”
“Wait. What sketches? What photographs?” Lindsay asked.
“Oh! I took a lot of photos while I was at summer camp. It was really beautiful there. The trees, the lake, the campfire at night.” Matt’s smile! “Then I started making sketches of the photographs. Now I’m trying to—”
“Oh. I didn’t realize you liked making art so much,” Lindsay said, cutting me off.
Her voice carried this strange tone that I’d never heard from her before.
“Well, I’m no Amy Cooper,” I said. “But your mom definitely inspired me to take up sketching. Then at camp I took a still-life class that taught me so much.”
I continued, “So when Mr. Franklin asked us what we’d like to sketch for our first assignment, I showed him my photos and asked if I could do a sketch based on one of my pictures, and he said definitely! He said my photography showed talent.”
“Hmm,” Lindsay said.
She looked genuinely confused. “I didn’t know it took talent to snap a photo. I just click and send.”
I wanted to say, Um, hello. Photography is a legit career. It takes knowledge, talent, and practice to become successful.
“Well, it’s more than snapping a photo, at least for me,” I said instead. “It takes creativity and attention to detail. You need to make sure the lighting is good, that your subject is in focus, that it’s visually appealing—”
“Visually appealing?” Lindsay repeated.
She rolled her eyes. “You’re starting to sound like Mr. Franklin!”
It made me uneasy being compared to our art teacher in such a mean way.
I mean, I wasn’t trying to sound like an expert or anything, I was just sharing what little I knew.
Besides with Lindsay being the daughter of an artist, I wasn’t sure why she was acting so clueless all of a sudden.
“You know… um, you need to make sure that your photo isn’t too busy—like, remember that time I took a photo of you in your new dress? You were standing in your room, and there were some books and clothes on the floor, and I pushed them out of the way? I just wanted the focus to be on you—so I simplified the photo,” I explained.
“Simplified the photo, wow. I never knew you were so… artsy,” Lindsay said.
She looked at me with a look I’d never seen before, like she felt betrayed or something, like she hardly knew me at all.
Then she shrugged. “Well, like I said, I just click and send.”
I didn’t have anything nice to say, so I bit my lip and quietly went on wiping the glass of the donut case. I forced down the lump that had formed in my throat. It actually made me sad that my best friend in the world wasn’t really relating to this new and exciting part of my life.
I was glad for the next wave of donut lovers flowing in, since chatting it up with Lindsay at the workplace was not turning out to be as fun as I’d hoped.
Chapter Four Let Go, Let Flow
That night at the dinner table, my dad was in a super good mood.
As the town doctor, he often comes home from the clinic with deep creases in his forehead that not even an iron could smooth out. Here was a man with the weight of our town’s health and well-being on his shoulders.
But tonight he looked years younger. He beamed at Mom as she placed a large bowl of homemade pasta with marinara sauce and a bowl of shredded parm on the table.
I loved the way he looked in that moment, smiling like a boy with no cares in the world.
“Remember my John Doe?” Dad asked as he spooned out a mountain of pasta into his bowl to satisfy his huge appetite from skipping lunches.
He was talking about one of his recent patients, who’d been hit by a car. Dad’s been talking about this poor guy for days.
“We were able to save his leg after all,” he told us.
Dad took a confidentiality oath, so he can’t tell us who his patients actually are.
But between the vividness of his stories and the smallness of our town, it’s easy to put two and two together. Because inevitably, a week from now, “John Doe No Mo” will come hobbling up at the Park or the supermarket with a brand-spanking-new leg cast. A lot of these mystery patients actually come up to me and gush about how much my dad helped them.
I was starting to feel squeamish just thinking about lost limbs and tried to change the subject.
“Mom, this marinara sauce is on point,” I said.
“That’s great news!” Mom said. She wasn’t talking to me, though, but to our dad. “I know you’ve been worried sick.”
“Completely.” Dad sighed and then his eyes lit up. “But get this… the artery wasn’t completely severed, so we were able to connect the healthy tissue to—”
“DAD!” Gabby and I shrieked.
“What?” Dad asked, like he genuinely had no clue what our problem was.
“We’re eating pasta—” I started.
“With red sauce—” Gabby added.
“And you’re talking about severed arteries,” I said.
“It’s über-interesting, Pops, but not dinnertime conversation!” Gabby scolded.
Gabby and I are seven years apart and nothing alike, but we have definitely formed a united front when it comes to not hearing about Dad’s surgical adventures at the dinner table. Personally, the stories make me queasy, even when I’m not sending food down the hatch.
Gabby, an aspiring doctor, loves talking shop; she just doesn’t think that the table is the correct place for it. Gabby has this thing for polite dinnertime conversation.
As for the extremely gruesome tales of Dad’s emergency-room experiences, Mom loves his stories, all day, every day. Why they don’t just save the gore for when they are alone is a mystery to me.
“I find your surgeries fascinating,” Mom said to him. “And I’m so glad Mr. McKin—I mean, um, John Doe will be strutting out of the hospital on both legs. That’s the most important thing, that he’s getting a renewed lease on his life and limb. Bravo, Dr. Peters!”
By the look on Mom’s face, she wanted to kiss him, I could tell. Instead she took in another forkful of penne pasta.
But just before her face changed, I grinned at my assistant principal mom smiling like a high school girl crushing on my brainiac dad. I imagined it’s how she must have looked when they met at a party all
those years ago.
Soon enough, she slipped back into assistant principal mom mode and changed subjects almost as smoothly as Lindsay.
“Gabby, how was your day?” she asked.
“It was okay,” Gabby said, jumping right in. “I don’t think I stretched enough before dance. I trained hard today too. My legs feel kind of sore.”
I don’t know how Gabby balances her passion for dance with the demands of college. She was a straight A student all through high school.
On every report card, I usually get a B or two, but she gets mostly As.
Really and truly, my grades are still higher than most of my friends, but Gabby already set the bar in our household, so I always catch shade from Mom on report card day.
“Ice packs and a warm salt bath for sore muscles,” Dad suggested, between bites.
“I’ve told you a million times you need to warm up before class. You could strain something or pull a muscle—” Mom started.
“Don’t I know it,” Gabby agreed, cutting her off.
She’s a master at shutting Mom down before she can go too far.
It would probably take me another few years to develop that superpower.
“I just get so impatient with stretching. It’s like I can’t wait to get out there on the dance floor. But I’ve learned my lesson… again. Okay, enough about me! How was your day, Casey?”
“It was decent,” I said. “My highlight was getting to work at Donut Dreams after school, which means I made more money to put toward a new camera lens and some art supplies.”
“What happened to the lens that came with the camera?” Dad asked.
“It didn’t break, did it?” asked Mom.
“Nothing happened to the stock lens,” I assured them. “Most photographers have several. Some lenses are better for shooting up close, and others, like the wide-angle, are great for capturing more scenic pictures.”
Dad nodded, looking sort of impressed.
Mom narrowed her eyes.
“Ooh, big-shot photographer!” Gabby cheered.
I shushed her and kicked her foot under the table, trying not to smile through chews.
When it comes to art, I guess I’m what you would call a perfectionist, which is not a characteristic of mine in other areas of my life.
For years, I’ve been pretty private with my artwork because I didn’t think it was really good enough to show anyone. But since we’ve grown up in the same house and everything, Gabby has caught more glimpses of my failed artwork than anyone.
Over the years, she would come visit my room randomly and see one of my clumsy drawings, which I would later feed to the paper shredder in Mom’s office downstairs.
I wasn’t one for leaving a paper trail of my failures. The only ones I kept were the ones that didn’t make me cringe, but even some of those weren’t very good.
I guess I could see why Lindsay was surprised by my passion for art.
My camp’s art class was life-changing. I mean, don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t like I turned into Claude Monet overnight or anything like that (he was Lindsay’s mom’s fave), but that class made me see how good I already was with no formal training.
With a few weeks of practicing every day, my sketches began to take on a whole new life.
Okay, I don’t want to brag, but they went through the roof! Since then, I’ve been focused on getting better and better.
Even though Dad and Gabby were concentrating on their food, I could tell that Mom hadn’t had her full say yet.
Until I started getting straight As like Gabby, she would not be satisfied with a single one of my report cards.
“I’ve never heard you sound this knowledgeable about your core subjects,” Mom said.
Core subjects. Gosh.
These days, Lindsay and my mom were starting to have more in common than I ever thought possible, with these jabs at my inner artist. Couldn’t they just be happy that I was finding myself?
“I’m doing good in all my classes, Mom,” I assured her, keeping my tone light.
“But I’m sure you already know that.”
Seriously. Surely Mom was behind the scenes, checking in with my teachers on the regular. Not in an overbearing way like she was here at home, but in brief exchanges by the coffee machine in the staff lounge, casually asking about me between sips.
“Well, I just want to make sure you’re doing well in what you’re supposed to be studying, that is, your academics, and not just… recreational subjects.” Mom stressed this with a casual brush of her hand.
“I heard that!” said Dad, who never goes against Mom.
“Low blow, Mom,” murmured Gabby.
When Mom shot her a look, she zipped her lips, but not her innocent grin.
Leave it to Gabby to tell it like it is, and somehow make it out intact without a five-point lecture from our mom. Meanwhile, Mom and I always managed to lock horns, especially these days. And I was struggling to fix a problem of mine. It had to do with my emotions, which tend to overheat and cause me to either blow up or shut down.
When someone gets me heated—usually Mom, who lives under my skin—I don’t say anything at first, and I let my feelings pile up until one day they all topple out of my mouth in one irreversible mess.
Up until the last year or so, I was much worse off because there was no buildup; I would just turn weepy or go defensive. I was like a time bomb that went off before it even started ticking.
Good thing “ugly-cry-face Casey” hardly shows up, thanks in part to Gabby’s coaching. Gabby’s helped me get to this point where I can sometimes respond to our mother by just keeping quiet, rather than fighting with her about everything.
Now Gabby’s “cope with Mom” techniques are starting to become a little more second nature to me. Like in this case, where Mom ruffled my feathers during polite dinner conversation, the best tool was to focus on my breathing and nothing else.
I took a deep breath and counted to four on the inhale, four on the exhale. It really did kind of help. I let Mom have the last word and just concentrated on breathing and digging into my pasta, which now unfortunately was cold and tasted like cardboard, by the way.
I glanced at Gabby, who was beaming at me like a proud parent as she mouthed, Woo-sah.
If I wasn’t so annoyed at Mom, I would have had a laugh attack just remembering how Gabby liked to sit on her bed, cross-legged and eyes closed, pinching together her thumbs and index fingers on each hand in a “calm yogi” stance as she exhaled, “Woo-sah!”
I repeated Gabby’s mantra in my head, Let go, let flow. I was still heated, but I guess you could call it taming my dragon.
Next, Gabby is going to teach me techniques for expressing my hurt or sadness or whatever without getting all tongue-tied and emotional. Like Gabby says, I could be saying something completely valid, but if I’m ugly crying then all the other person will hear is my sadness instead of what I’m actually saying. She has a point there.
I loved watching Gabby, Ms. “It’s Not What You Say, But How You Say It” play our parents. She was always showing me that you can say basically anything with the right tone and word choice and actually come out on top!
I told Gabby she needed to write a book with her expertise. Whether she ends up becoming a bestselling author, a prima ballerina, a doctor, or all three, the world is Gabby’s oyster. Whatever she decides to do with her life, our parents will be proud.
I was secretly hoping to make art my career, but maybe it was best to keep that on the hush for just a while longer.
Ugh. First Lindsay and now Mom doesn’t understand or appreciate what I want to do with my life.
Chapter Five Boundaries
The next day at school, I hustled into the cafeteria and plopped down into my usual space at the lunch table next to Lindsay. I was a little late after talking with Mr. Franklin after art class.
Our friend Michelle sat across from us in her wheelchair. I waved at Lindsay’s cousin Kelsey, who sat at the next t
able over with her field hockey and soccer friends.
I glanced over at Michelle’s food. She was already scarfing down her ever mysterious vegan lunch.
Lindsay waited for me as usual to unveil hers in our game of lunch telepathy.
“What took you so long?” Lindsay said when I sat down.
I shrugged.
“Fine. You guess first,” she said.
“Fine,” I said, looking at her wrapped meal and then deeply into her eyes. “Turkey and dijonnaise mustard on whole wheat?”
Lindsay unwrapped her sandwich to reveal… turkey dijonnaise on whole wheat!
“Yes!” I air-guitared. “Your turn.”
“Hmm… it’s a Tuesday, so, let’s say… your mom’s amazing chicken salad on rye?” she guessed.
“Ding ding ding!”
We giggled like dorks as I unwrapped my lunch and we swapped sandwich halves.
I could see Kelsey grinning and rolling her eyes at this pastime we’ve managed to keep up since kindergarten.
“So did you ever hear back from Matt?” Lindsay asked.
I nodded. “LOL,” I said.
“LOL?” Lindsay repeated, confused.
“Yep. ‘LOL’—that’s all he texted back,” I said.
Lindsay shrugged and took a bite of her turkey sandwich. She always liked to save my mom’s chicken salad sandwich for last.
“What?” I asked.
“Well, you said you sent him a funny text. So… LOL is a perfectly legit response.”
“I guess,” I said, a little dejected.
Then why did I feel rejected? Lindsay didn’t know Matt, so I didn’t expect her to get it.
But after getting to be such good friends with this cool boy at camp, I just wished he texted more than three letters at a time. Not that I was expecting a whole paragraph or anything, but I wanted at least some tiny window into his life.
Instead I hadn’t been able to inspire a full sentence out of him since we left camp. He wasn’t exactly ignoring me; he was just being so super casual. Almost like I meant nothing to him, even though I knew that wasn’t true.