My chest tightened. The urge to apologize, to say something important, rushed in too fast. I reached forward, brushing my fingers against her arm. Words stacked up in my throat—too many, all trying to get out at once.
Kira flinched and pulled back like she’d just remembered where she was. Or who she was talking to.
Then the classroom door swung open, and a stampede of kids poured in.
“If you want to help,” Kira said, “be a good partner and help me make sure the kids stay on task. We’re using watercolors today, so tell them to keep their paints on the paper and not on the table. We want to encourage them, so just be kind.”
“I can do kindness.”
She pursed her lips for a second before getting trampled by a pair of kids hugging her legs.
Paint. Encourage. Be kind.
How hard could it be?
Famous last words. These kids were terrors. One of them pulled me to the floor and insisted on painting a pink butterfly on my face. Fortunately, Kira saved me and politely encouraged the six-year-old girl to take her energy to the paper.
I had taken on the easier role between the two of us: watching the class for any off behavior and making sure the paintbrushes stayed where they should. If I looked away when the little girl painted the butterfly onto the arm of the boy next to her, well, no one would know.
There was a surprising amount of structure to the class. Kira had explained that they’d be painting interpretations of the night sky—whatever that meant to each kid. She managed to sneak in a few strokes of a constellation on her own paper when she had a free moment, but she never got far before someone called her over for help.
As I walked around the room, I took in the chaos and creativity unfolding on each page. Some were just swirling blobs of black and white. Others exploded with color—bright purples, electric blues, a few scattered stars. One kid painted a neon green sun, bold and unapologetic.
I crouched beside him and said, “You know the sun isn’t green, right?”
Without missing a beat, he yanked the paper away from my view and deadpanned, “You just don’t get it.”
I had no response. The kid might’ve been onto something.
Sitting at the edge of the last desk was a girl of eight or nine, hunched over her paper, long paintbrush in between her fingers.
“What have you got there?” I asked.
“It’s a pond,” she said. “But at night.”
“So it is.” I watched as she colored in the pond. Technically, it was a lake, but did kids know the difference at this age? Hell if I knew. “How many stars do you think are in the sky?”
Her eyes widened, and she used her thumb, nail painted hot pink, to count the stars in her picture. There were only three, and yet she answered, “Probably an infinity. My mom once said an infinity lasts forever.”
Just then, Kira paused her round around the room. She stood rigid in front of us, arms crossed, observing silently.
I spoke to the pond-loving girl, but my eyes were trained on Kira when I said, “That’s right. Infinity does last forever.”
Kira took a tiny step back, like my comment had winded her. It took me back to all our years growing up together. Trapped inour own little infinity. It started as a joke, a way that people in the hall made fun of us—Landon and Kira, trapped in their own infinity—but we turned it into something just for us.
We thought we had an infinity together.
But when she stepped back, not a word said, we couldn’t have been farther apart.
“Great job.” I gave the girl a high five and resumed my post at the back of the class.
For the next few minutes, we worked in silence, minus the frequent questions from the kids.
To anyone else, Kira would look sturdy painting her night sky. But I recognized the tremble in her hand. She was overthinking. Nervous. Somewhere on the constellation, though, it steadied again. When Kira painted, she couldn’t stop the joy that poured out of her.
It was a privilege to see that joy.
Life imitated art, I’d heard it said. That seemed like a blatant lie because any art I would ever create would imitate her.
