April laughed a little. “That sounds like a horrible word for it, but yeah.”
“It is horrible,” Daphne said. “But that’s exactly what it was. I had an art teacher at school. Ms.Hale. She wore bright skirts and red lipstick and no ring on her left hand, a total aberration in Crestwater. My senior year, she convinced me to join her advanced painting class, and that changed everything.”
Over the next few months, Daphne slowly came back to life, painting an entire body of work during her time in Ms.Hale’s class. She painted girls and rainbows. She painted drag queens and queer identity flags and self-portraits. She painted everything in her heart, everything her family said was wrong, everything she’d been keeping inside since she’d lost her sketchbook.
Lostherself.
When the time came to think about life after graduation, applying for colleges, and the future, Daphne worked with Ms.Hale to apply to the best art schools in the country.
She didn’t tell her parents.
As far as they knew, she’d only applied to the state school in the next town, an option that would let her stay at home while she studied to be a teacher.
When she got into Boston University and Savannah College of Art and Design and UCLA and Bard, it felt like a dream, something she wasn’t sure would ever be real. But then Boston offered her a full scholarship, and she knew that was it.
Her lifeline.
Her chance.
And she took it.
The whole process felt gauzy and bright at the same time. How she kept Boston a secret for months; how she sat through her graduation with a serene smile on her face, her mom snapping photos and waving from the school auditorium’s audience; how she never said a thing about her plans until the night before, when her mother walked into her room without knocking to find her packing.
How she told her mother she was leaving.
How her mother simply turned around and walked out of the room.
How her older sister, Amelia, had watched her pack from the hallway, her eyes red and watery, and never said a word.
How her father told her calmly that if she left like this, she would not be welcomed back.
Howquietit all was.
How final.
“And that’s how I ended up in Boston,” Daphne said. She felt the boat hit the dock, but April didn’t move. Neither did she.
“Do you talk to your family at all?” April asked.
Daphne’s throat went thick, just like it always did when she thought about her parents and Amelia. “No,” she said, and left it at that.
She hadn’t meant to leave and cut off all communication. Buther father’s declaration paved the way for silence, and when months passed of her new life in Boston—a timid life, sure, but one filled with art and other people just like her—without any contact from her family, she let it happen.
She let the line break.
She missed her family—her sister especially; memories of when they were tiny girls making mud pies near the creek, fairy hunting in the woods, felt like a physical pain sometimes. But what she missed most was a family that loved her.
Lovedher.
Not some image of her they’d created.
She sat up in the canoe, her skin cold and pebbling with goose bumps. She glanced at April, who was shivering, hair wet and slicked against her head, her makeup a mess.
“God,” April said, laughing a little. “Do I look as bad as you do right now?”
Daphne scoffed but couldn’t keep from smiling too. “How dare you.”
April smiled back. It was small, maybe a little sad, a little wary still, but it was there.
