“So...what did you want to be in your life?”
I rubbed my hand on my thigh and twisted my lips to the side. This time I allowed myself to dream. “Doctor sounded good, but we all know that ain’t gonna happen.”
“Why not?”
“Because I didn’t go to college,” I said with a ‘duh’ in my tone.
“What’s stopping you now?” he asked.
“I’m twenty-seven,” I reminded him. “Way too old for all that now.”
“There’s no age limit on when you can go to college,” he said.
I furrowed my brows. This was new information for me. I’d never heard of a twenty-seven year old person going to college for the first time. When I saw students on TV at college football games, they all looked like they’d just finished high school a week earlier. Nineteen, twenty-one years old at the most. Schools wouldn’t let a 10-year old sit in kindergarten so why would they allow me to attend college at age 27?
I asked the question in a roundabout way. “What would I look like sitting in a classroom with 18-year-olds?”
“I think you’d look smart. Wise. And pretty.”
His words made my insides shiver all the way down to my toes.Smart. Wise. And pretty.
The instructor interrupted my thoughts. “Let the picture speak to you,” she said. Then she turned on classical music. I stopped looking at Sean’s work and the work of my classmates and did my own thing. My brain took me from Sean and even from the room as I decided my owl would not be black. He would be purple because purple was my favorite color. And I made his eyes gold because that particular paint was metallic. I wanted his eyes to shine.
Smart. Wise. And pretty.
I stuck my tongue between my teeth. If I were smart, wise, and pretty, then painting this picture was going to be my first glimpse into that prophecy.
I tuned into the instructor’s guidance, watching everything from the colors she chose to the way she flicked her brush as she ended the branch strokes. All I had to do was do what she did. And when I messed up, I followed her advice.
“Just keep going. Let it dry for a little bit, use white if you need to cover something, or you can make something new out of the mistake—another branch, another feather. Those imperfections are what make ityours.”
When I raised my hand for help, she came over and asked permission to show me how to put the reflection in one of the owl’s eyes. I tried the trick on the other eye, and it worked. “You got this,” she encouraged me.
Sean smiled and it took everything in me not to dive into him with a big kiss.
He took me straight home after the class and set my painting on the front porch so it could continue to dry in the hot night air.
“Thanks again for inviting me to the class. I really enjoyed myself.”
“It was my pleasure. Your painting turned out good,” he complimented me.
My chest puffed. “Thanks. Yours was aiiight.”
He held a fist up to his mouth. “Oh, you wanna get fly about it now?”
We laughed.
“Seriously, though, think about college. You can apply and probably be able to start next semester,” he said.
I gave a little nod. “I’ll think about it.”
“You should. You’ve got what it takes to be whatever you want to be. Just like you learned to paint listening to that lady and following directions, you can do the same thing with school. Just listen, practice, learn from your mistakes. That’s all anyone who’s ever done anything with their lives did. No magic to it.”
“Stop.” I waved him off. “That’s what they tell us when we’re five. But if it’s true, why is everybody so miserable?”
“Everybody’s not miserable. Just the people who want to be.”
Sean hugged me, but it felt like a ‘you’re-my-friend’s-little-sister’ hug. My mouth yearned to feel those full lips against mine, but maybe we weren’t ready for all that yet.
