us.
“You’re blinded by your faith in me,” I said, shaking my head. “You want to preach at me about how I can help myself. You want me to let it all out so I can move on. But I can’t move on. I can’t let it go. I have to live with this. And that’s something you could never understand. I’m on my own. Quit trying to help me.”
Silence filled the space as I headed for the dark, my admission breaking me down.
I was the one responsible for my fate. Now I had to live with it.
17
Flawed
The next morning, Grant wasn’t on the porch.
He wasn’t at breakfast.
He wasn’t at lunch.
I crossed in front of cabin two, headed for a duty shift at arts and crafts. I needed to paint like I needed to breathe. It was the only way to channel these emotions into something beautiful. It was my first step in burying my grief.
Inside arts and crafts, campers clustered around each of the rectangular tables. Jess was at one of them, working on a bracelet. She glanced my way as I crossed the room, her attention returning to her bracelet as I approached the counselor on shift.
“Now that you’re here, could I possibly…” The girl jabbed her finger toward the back where the bathrooms was.
“Absolutely,” I said with a nod.
She scurried off and I turned toward the paint products. I was carefully putting paint supplies on the countertop when Jess crossed the room, long pieces of string clutched between her finger and her thumb.
“All right,” she said, dropping onto one of the bar stools. “Will you please explain to me what I’m doing wrong? I’m alternating the strings and everything, but this bracelet looks like crap.”
“It doesn’t look that bad,” I said, surveying the knotted pieces of string that looked more like a chaotic heap than a bracelet.
“Yeah. You’re a terrible liar.”
“Only sometimes.” I finished gathering supplies and stared at her. “That isn’t really my thing anyway. I’m a painter, not a weaver.”
“I’m neither, and Brie will rag me about it if I don’t make her a bracelet after she spent all that time working on mine.”
“Brie made you a bracelet?”
“She made four,” Jess said. “One for her, and one for each of the girls in our cabin.”
Surprised, I grabbed a canvas and laid it flat on the counter. For Brie to do anything selfless must have meant hell froze over. Or pigs flew. No telling which.
“I’ll try,” I said. “Step one would be to get you some fresh string. Pick out the colors you want. I’ll give them to you for free.”
“Thank you,” Jess said, sliding off the stool.
I started sketching while she snipped pieces of yarn from the spools. When she returned, she plopped right onto the same bar stool and knotted the ends.
“What are you working on?” she asked after a second. “You haven’t sketched enough to really make it out.”
“I’m not sure,” I said, tapping the pencil against my jaw. “Whatever the canvas wants to give me, I guess. Usually the picture creates itself. It never does what I want it to do.”
“That’s weird.”
“That’s me,” I said.
I dragged the pencil across the canvas again, the charcoal tip marring its clean surface. If this ended up being any reflection of my state of mind, the final product would be dark and gloomy.
“I wish I could do that,” Jess said after a moment. “I’ve got all this street cred and zero usable abilities. It’s a shame, since talents like yours are the talents people actually appreciate.”
The words stole my attention from the canvas, the disappointment in her tone making me pause. “Not everyone’s talent is artistic,” I said. “You, for example, could probably talk your way out of a paper bag. That’s a talent, Jess.”
“Meh. Anyone with half the experience I have could do the same.”
“Doubt it.”
She quirked an eyebrow and I set down my pencil, realizing I had unknowingly walked into a conversation.
“Okay,” I said, leaning forward. “Remember when I told you about my tiny brush with the law?”
“You crashed a cop car into a lake,” Jess said. “That isn’t tiny.”
“That doesn’t matter. Point is, you could’ve talked your way out of that in five seconds flat. All I could do was sit in the back of a deputy’s squad car, claiming I had nothing to do with it when my cell phone and purse were still inside the vehicle.”
“Still not a talent. All my bullshitting has ever done is land me in a new group