But getting words out of my brother is like getting acrylic paint out of a dried tube: kind of impossible.
“Anyway,” Mom is saying, “I should go get ready. Some of us have actual jobs.” She stands, stretching her arms above her head. “Carter, you’re picking up groceries later, right?”
“Yup. Text me the list.”
Mom passes behind my brother. “Aeron, honey, do you have class this morning?”
Aeron turns around, almost startled to be addressed directly. “Yeah. Ten o’clock.”
“Make sure you eat something before you go.” She gestures vaguely at the eggs growing cold on the counter. “There’s plenty.”
“Okay.”
And that’s it. Mom gives my shoulder a squeeze as she passes, drops a kiss on Carter’s head (which he pretends to hate and secretly loves), and disappears down the hallway toward her room. The kitchen feels slightly less warm without her in it.
Carter checks his phone and makes a face. “I should head out too. Got a kinesiology lecture at nine that I should probably actually attend.”
“Wow,” I say. “Commitment to youractualschool. Who are you and what have you done with my cousin?”
“Ha ha.” He stands. “Some of us are trying to maintain the illusion of being functional adults.”
“Illusion being the key word.”
“Obviously.” He ruffles my hair as he passes, and I swat his hand. “Good luck with your morning classes, artists.” That lastpart is aimed at both me and Aeron, who gives a half-nod of acknowledgment.
Then Carter’s gone too, and it’s just me and my brother in the golden kitchen.
Aeron is still sitting at the edge of the island, his orange juice untouched now, his gaze fixed on something beyond the window. He looks smaller than he should, folded in on himself. The morning light that makes everything else feel warm seems to slide right past him.
“Um, how’d you sleep?” I ask, trying to fill the silence.
“Fine,” he says with a shrug. “Kinda crappy, but I guess that’s normal now.”
I open my mouth to respond, but he stands up quickly. “I gotta work on a few things before class,” he says. Then he grabs a plate of eggs and leaves.
I enjoy the colors outside the window for a few minutes, then set my plate in the sink and head upstairs to grab my bag. The stairs creak in a song this old Victorian has been singing for over a century. Upstairs, the hallway is lined with framed photos. There’s also the finger-painted artwork Aeron and I made in elementary school that Mom swore was too precious to throw out. Fifteen years later, my lopsided rainbow and Aeron’s abstract blob still hang next to her framed counseling certification. I stopped being embarrassed about it sometime around middle school.
My room is at the end of the hall, the door covered in paint-splatter stickers I put there around age fifteen and never bothered removing.
I like to call my bedroom “carefully curated chaos.” My desk is buried under art history textbooks and scattered supplies with string lights I hung ironically—and now actually love—draped above. The bedspread is dusky rose, almost mauve, and there’s a print of a Klimt painting above my headboard I bought at amuseum gift shop. A few canvases lean against the wall, pieces I’m still deciding whether to keep or paint over. The real work happens upstairs in the converted attic, my actual studio, where the light pours in from skylights and I can spread out without worrying about dripping paint on my bedspread. But my room is where I sleep, where I think, where I keep the work that’s too personal to leave in a space anyone might wander into.
I sit on the edge of my bed and pull my diary from between the mattress and the headboard. The leather cover is soft from repeated use. I have other diaries stored in the closet, and I used to write pages and pages about my day. Now I prefer little glimpses into my world, little memories I can look back on when I’m older.
I flip to the next blank page and write fast, barely legible:This morning, Mom said I make something beautiful out of what I feel. Carter almost fell off his stool. The kitchen was gold. I want to remember the golden color.
I close it and shove it back into its hiding spot.
I grab my messenger bag from where I dropped it last night, check that my sketchbook and laptop are inside, and shove in a granola bar for later. My phone has a text from Cinna asking if I want to get coffee before class, and I type back a quick,Yes meet you at Bean Therebefore pocketing it.
On my way back down the hall, I pass by Aeron’s room. His door is open. I pause in the doorway.
His room is the opposite of mine, neat in a way that feels defensive. His bed is made with purpose, the sheets pulled tight, and the single pillow centered exactly. There’s nothing on the walls except a corkboard covered in sketches, most of them half-finished faces with haunting eyes. His desk is organized into careful quadrants: pencils here, erasers there, reference books stacked by size. It’s the room of someone who has decided thatif he can control the space around him, maybe the space inside him will follow.
I’ve found it… unnerving. He can be complete chaos in other ways, especially with how eclectic he is about art, dabbling in anything and everything. And yet, his room is so… military, I guess? It doesn’t feel like the room of an artist.
But every artist is different. I think my brother has such a rich, vibrant inner world that he doesn’t care much about the external one.
Maybe that’s a better way to live; he doesn’t care about what others think. I need more of that attitude.
