I should go in. I’d promised I’d come for Friday dinner, and showing up late would just give my mom more ammunition. But something kept me frozen in place, my breathing shallow and my stomach churning.
Ever since that night with the texts and Cam and the complete breakdown where I’d spilled everything about my childhood, about my mother, about feeling fundamentally unlovable, I’d been seeing everything differently.
The way he’d held me and told me I was allowed to grieve the mother I deserved had cracked something open inside me. Like someone had handed me a new pair of glasses and suddenly all the blurry bits came into sharp, painful focus, and it was so. Fucking. Exhausting.
I dragged in a breath and reached for my phone, buying myself a few more minutes before I had to face whatever waited inside that house.
Maybe there’d be something from work, or one of the girls, or literally anything that would give me an excuse to sit here a little longer.
I tapped open my email app and my heart stuttered. Right there at the top of my inbox:Appalachian State University Art Scholarship Committee.
My fingers went numb and the phone nearly slipped from my hand. This was it. The email I’d been simultaneously desperate for and terrified of since I’d submitted my application. The thing I’d been trying not to think about every single day because thinking about it made my chest hurt and my hands shake.
I stared at the subject line, my thumb hovering over the screen. Re: Graduate Scholarship Application. Just open it and know, I told myself.
But I couldn’t make my thumb move because once I opened it, everything would change.
Either I’d have a future, or I wouldn’t.
Either my art was good enough, or it wasn’t.
Either I was worth something, or I wasn’t.
“Just fucking open it!”
I tapped the email. The message loaded and I scanned the first line, my heart in my throat.
Dear Ms. McIntyre, Thank you for your application to the Appalachian State University Graduate Art Scholarship program...My eyes jumped ahead, looking for the word that mattered, and there it was.Unfortunately...
...your application was unsuccessful at this time. The competition was extremely strong, and while your portfolio showed promise, the committee has decided to award the scholarship to another candidate whose work more closely aligned with the program’s current focus...
The rest of the email blurred together. Something about encouraging me to apply again in the future. Something about wishing me all the best in my artistic endeavors.
I set my phone down carefully in the cup holder, my hands steady, my heart calm. I wasn’t crying. I just sat there, staring at those stupid hanging baskets, feeling absolutely nothing.
Of course I didn’t get it.
Of course my work wasn’t good enough.
Of course I was just showing promise instead of actual talent.
The numbness spread through my chest, down my arms, into my fingers.
It was almost peaceful in a horrible sort of way, like my body had finally accepted what some part of me had always known.
My mother had been right all along.
I should get out of the car and go inside, paste on a smile and make it through dinner, but I couldn’t move. The rejection sat in my chest like a stone. Exactly what I deserved.
My phone buzzed. Bile rose to my throat when I saw the text.
Are you coming in or not? Dinner is getting cold.
Of course she’d been watching for me, and of course her first concern was the temperature of the fucking food.
I finally dragged myself from the car and up the walkway, my legs moving automatically even though my brain felt like it was wrapped in cotton. The rejection email played on repeat in my head:Unfortunately... not successful... showed promise... other candidates...
Something was building under the numbness, something hot and jagged andmean.
