“You’ve been doing your homework, I see.”

I slid my portfolio closer to him. “I’m just asking for a chance.”

He sighed and reached for my portfolio. I sunk into the chair opposite him in relief. I’d accomplished the hard part. My art spoke for itself. He began slowly flipping through the folder. I’d blown up most of the pictures to at least ten by twenty. He studied each one closely. After what felt like forever, he closed the cover and looked up at me.

I gave him my winning smile.

“Abby, you will be perfect for the show when you meet the age requirement. Is that next summer?”

“Wait . . . what?”

“You’ll be the right age next summer.” He patted the closed folder. “Bring me some more samples then.”

The smile slid off my face. “Yes. But why? I’ve seen the art you’ve had in here for amateur exhibits. Mine is just as good. Are you really going to hold me back because I’m not eighteen yet?”

“It’s not just about your age.”

“Then what?”

“We have limited space and I need every sale I can get to keep this place going. This is my one and only fundraiser for the year. We’re a museum, not a gallery, so I don’t get to do this just anytime I feel like it.”

I moved to the edge of the hard chair. “But what if I sell a few of my allowed paintings? That would help you, right?”

He pushed my portfolio back toward me. “You won’t.”

“Why not?”

“Because you’re not ready. Your paintings aren’t good enough yet.”

The air went out of my lungs so fast it felt like someone had punched me in the gut.

When I didn’t say anything, he went on. “I have every reason to believe that they will be. But you’re not quite there.”

“What do you mean? What are my paintings missing?”

He stared at my closed book. “Experience . . . heart.”

“Heart?”

“They’re technically good, but they look like you copied a picture. I want to feel something when I look at your paintings. They’re missing a layer, and that’s understandable. You’re young. You haven’t experienced enough in life to add that depth to a painting. But you will. You are exactly where you should be in your progression as an artist. Just keep moving forward. You’ll get there.”

I nodded numbly. After years of art teachers, my parents, my grandpa telling me I had talent far beyond my years, this was hard to hear. I stood and tucked the book under my arm.

“I’m sorry,” he said as I walked away.

I went through the back to avoid Ralph. I didn’t want him to ask me about the huge folder I held. I didn’t want to have to explain to him what I was doing with it.

The museum had a courtyard, and right now, outside, a recycling exhibit was on display. The artist had taken trash and turned it into art. I passed a tree made of shaped iron for branches and green tinted bottles for leaves, then I wound around two old bicycles that were fused together. They seemed to defy gravity by balancing on a single wheel. The last piece I flew by before reaching the side gate was the rusty hood of a Volkswagen Beetle. On the domed section was carved a lopsided heart. I slid to a halt.

These were all pieces in a traveling exhibit that we only had for two weeks. Next week we’d pack it up in wooden crates with shredded paper and ship it up the coast, to Pismo or Santa Cruz or some other artsy beach community like ours. I’d spent some time out here admiring the pieces. I loved art. All different kinds. But now, this rusty old hood with its uninspiring heart seemed ridiculous. Mr. Wallace considered this art, but not my paintings? Was this really that much better than what I had shown him? Maybe I had no idea what art was after all. And maybe I had nothing to offer anyone.

FOUR

“Has anyone seen my angled brush?” I called down the hall. I was lucky. I knew that. My parents, fully supporting my art, had turned one of the spare bedrooms into a studio for me in our house. It had easels and canvases and a hutch full of paints and brushes and the best lighting in the house.

My mom came to the door holding my brush. “It was in your washing jar by the sink.”

“Thank you.” I hadn’t told anyone what Mr. Wallace had said to me Saturday night. I had expertly avoided the questions with answers like: he’s considering me. Leaving off the second part of that sentence: for next year. I was pretending he hadn’t said it. I was going to ignore it. I didn’t need his show. There were others I could apply to. I couldn’t think of any at the moment, but I’d research it.

“What are you painting? Something amazing . . .” She stared at the poster board that I’d set up on the easel. “Or something not so amazing.”

“I think it’s a pretty awesome poster.”

“Do you have to make Cooper a new poster for every single race? What’s wrong with recycling?”

“That’s the beauty of this, Mom. It is the old poster. I just add another layer every time.”

“It is a pretty cool poster,” she admitted. “But the paint is what I was talking about. So much paint.”

I had painted over the bottom half of the orange backdrop from before, and it was now various shades of blue, melding together to create the effect of movement. Then I had painted encouraging words over the top.

I snatched the angled brush out of her hand. “A painter has to paint, Mom.”

She went to the window and opened it. “I thought we talked about airflow when you’re painting. You need better ventilation in here. The fumes aren’t good for your lungs.”

“I don’t smell anything.”

“That’s because you’ve desensitized yourself to them.”

“Mom, painters have been painting for centuries without good ventilation.”

“And they probably all got lung cancer.”

It was useless to argue with her sometimes. “Okay, I’ll open windows. But then what if I get hypothermia?”

She smacked my back playfully, then looked at her watch. “I thought the race started at two.”

“It does. Wait. What time is it?”

“One forty-five.”

“What? Crap.” I added the final black words under what I’d already written and yanked the board off the easel. “I can take the car, right? You don’t have big plans for this afternoon?”

She gave me a little shove instead of responding to my sarcasm. “Text me right when you get there. And when you’re leaving.”

“How about I text you if there’s an emergency.”

She leveled a stare at me.

“Fine, I’ll text you.”

“Thank you.”

“I’ll clean up when I get home,” I called over my shoulder as I rushed for the door.

“Sunscreen!” she yelled after me.

I wheeled back around, made a pit stop in the kitchen at our drawer of sunscreen, grabbed one of the twenty bottles there, and left.

I carefully placed the poster flat in the trunk, hoping that the heat from the day would help it dry on the way over, then climbed into the car.

I was still wearing my painting shirt, a long-sleeved plaid button-down covered in old splatters of every color, over a tank top and shorts. I wiped my hands on the shirt and started the car. Hopefully Cooper’s race wasn’t the first one.

I cheered wildly from my spot toward the finish line. I had arrived just as he started, so I hadn’t had time to find his parents or sister, but I was sure they were there somewhere. I held my sign up nice and high. Cooper wore a bright-green helmet, and he took the dunes at breakneck speed. I always worried about him when he raced, but he always told me that he was born on the dunes so I had no need to worry. To which I would always reply, gross, and no you weren’t. But I knew what he meant—he’d been riding since he was little. And it showed. He won nearly every race, and this one was no different.