The radio is playing a steady stream of commercials, and for a few seconds it’s all I hear until my sister speaks again.
“So is now the part where you tell me what you’re going to do about it?”
I don’t want to answer, but I still do. “I don’t know what I’m going to do. I guess I’ll try to come up with something salvageable for the competition so I don’t humiliate myself, and that’s it. I’m moving in with you, and hopefully I can still get that teaching job Mom keeps talking about.”
Daniella goes silent for several seconds. I think she’s still processing a minute later when out of the freaking blue, she swerves onto the shoulder of the road and slams on the brakes. I scream at the top of my lungs and brace myself for impact as she whips the car into Park with all the precision of a getaway driver.
“What the hell was that?” I then shout, frantically looking around the car to confirm that we are, in fact, still alive. “Are you out of your mind?”
She unbuckles her seat belt and twists her body to glare at me. “No, I’m not, but clearly you are. What are you talking about? Becoming an art teacher? Really, Violet? In what world? You would be a terrible art teacher.”
“And you couldn’t just tell me that on the highway?” I yell. “Don’t you have kids to live for?”
“Oh please,” she scoffs. “I drive more aggressively than that at the school pick-up line. And I wouldn’t have to take such drastic actions if you weren’t attempting to incinerate your entire life just because you had a bad week. I have a four-year-old boy and an infant girl, Violet, and I’m ninety-nine percent sure that they’re actively trying to kill me. If I tried to quit whenever the going got tough, I would quit every day of my life. But do I? No. I throw onCocomelon, I cry in the bathroom and I soldier on. Don’t be such a baby.”
“I’m not being a baby, Daniella. I’m being realistic. Do you know how hard it is to get a job in the fashion industry, let alone a job that pays anything? It’s freakishly difficult and it’s all about who you know, and I just blew the one opportunity I had to work in the field that I love.”
Daniella continues to look at me, unimpressed. “Well, if that’s the case, then you must not love it as much as you say. If you did, you wouldn’t be so ready to give up.”
Her words strike a chord in me. I know I should try harder. I know I should keep fighting. But I’m justso tired.
“I’m not good enough, Daniella. Lorenzo straight up told me that my designs were terrible.”
“Okay, great,” she coolly replies. “And does Lorenzo speak for the entire fashion industry?”
“He was my boss,” I tell her. “And his sincere opinion was that I don’t have what it takes.”
“Exactly, Violet.Hisopinion. Andhisopinion shouldn’t be the one that dictates the rest of your life. If you’re going to work in this industry, you need to develop a thicker skin. You’re going into a field that is entirely open to criticism and you need to be able to handle that. It’s not your job to make every person on earth love the clothes you make. All you need to worry about is designing clothes that you think are beautiful and that make you happy. That’s your job.”
I wish I could be as confident as she is. So sure. So unshaken. But I’m not.
“That’s easy for you to say. You’re not the one that has to put yourself out there only to get told you’re not good enough again and again. I have spent every cent and every ounce of energy chasing this dream for the past two years, and at the end of everything, it still might not even happen. Correction, itprobablywon’t even happen.”
“Of course it’s going to happen.”
“Maybe it’s not,” I say quietly. “And maybe that’s okay. Maybe I was meant to just try, and that’s it.”
Daniella looks forward, placing her hands on the wheel. She stays like that for a while before turning to me again.
“You know what? You’re right. I don’t have any idea what it’s like to put myself out there for the world to judge, but that’s because my dreams aren’t as big as yours and they’re nowhere near as scary. But it’s those kind of dreams—the nearly unreachable, crap-your-pants-petrifying kind of dreams—that are going to make your life different from the rest of us.
“Yes, you run the risk of someone telling you that they don’t like your work. But you also have the chance of someone telling you that your work spoke to them. That it changed them. So no, me working in a bank is never going to lead to the painful lows that you’re going through now, but it’s also never going to take me to the exceptional highs that you might still reach. You have to decide if you want the highs bad enough to make it through the lows.”
She stops speaking and I look down at my lap as her words hit their mark. They’re true, every last one, but they still don’t cancel out the sting and the fear that are coursing through me. That are wrapped around me and squeezing so tight that it feels like I’m straining for breath.
The minivan is quiet again, my head is throbbing and out of nowhere, I find myself thinking back to how I felt when I started fashion school for the second time—when I left Chicago and came back to New York. I had just gone through what I thought was the most difficult chapter in my life. I was embarrassed and wounded that I gave up on myself and my dream, but on that day I was determined that I would never do it again. I walked into school knowing that I had chosen me, that I would continue to choose me and there was nothing anyone could do to prevent me from going after what I wanted.
Two years later I’m ready to walk away again, and the only person making that decision is me. Not Lorenzo. Not Matt.
Me.
I think back to that girl once more and I try to think what she’d say to me if she were here. She’d tell me she knows it’s hard. She knows I’m tired.But please, don’t give up. We’re so close. We’ve come so far. Let the pain run its course, take a breath and keep going.
Daniella’s words flash through my mind next, and I really do wonder if I’m willing to withstand the lows to get to the highs. I think and I breathe, and soon enough, I know the answer.
I look to my sister with a peace and a calmness that I haven’t felt for quite a while. “Quick question,” I say. “Have you had this speech written and ready to go since I went back to school or was it purely a heat of the moment thing?”
Daniella smiles. “I keep a lot of speeches at the ready for you. Do you want to hear the one about your love life next?”
