Vanilla

Chapter Twenty-One

            An overwhelming urge was rising through me, folding in on itself and pressing against my throat. I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs – or maybe it’d be more satisfying to fall to my knees and sob. However, despite my trembling legs, I didn’t do either, staring instead into the melting eyes of the boy opposite me.

            “Yeah,” he whispered. “I mean, I know that you’d never have had the confidence to do anything like that yourself, and I don’t know… I thought you’d be happy once your incredible talent was recognised.”

            “Happy?” I repeated again, the word foreign on my tongue. “How can you…? I mean, how could I… I thought…” I was stumbling over myself now, the message malfunctioning somewhere on its journey from my head to the bitter evening air. “I thought you understood.”

            This shouldn’t be happening. Not here. Not now. Not on the street I’d walked up and down countless times, on so many occasions that even the intricate cracks of the pavement were familiar to me. Not on the night of Gram’s exhibition, when everything was meant to be about her.

            I shouldn’t have been crying, but I was way past the stage of being in control of my emotions.

            “You, of all people, should’ve known. You’ve been through this. I thought we got each other, or at least that’s what you said, wasn’t it?”

            The memory, once a gateway to feelings of such elation: it was now cruel to replay. Evidently, it was having a similar effect on Daniel; his mouth kept opening and closing, struggling to decide upon a suitable response to my cutting tone. But did anything count as suitable here? Could anything be right when everything had gone so, so wrong?

            “And now that freaking picture’s on display for the whole of Walden to see, I mean—”

            “What are you talking about? It was just a picture, Flo.”

            “They were my parents!”

            The ensuing silence was deafening. My throat felt raw and exposed as the words finally dislodged themselves, tunnelling out into the salty air. I didn’t know why I’d felt the compulsion to shout it so loudly, but it had certainly put a stop to the conversation. Daniel’s features were twisted with despair and painful realisation, ceasing all hope of speech. Even the waves, metres down from us on the beach, seemed spontaneously quieter, shrinking in volume to make room for the aftermath of my colossal confession.

            There’d been no way for Daniel to know, of course. Anybody who hadn’t known my mum and dad personally wouldn’t have had any means to recognise the personal features of each figure. Even for Gram, who had known them, the identities weren’t obvious; it was only when you got really close, close enough to take in each glowing feature aligned carefully on the angels’ faces, that you could really latch onto their symbolic meaning.

            To Daniel, they’d just been two faceless people: figments of a drawing from which only the quality of the work had been picked up on. He’d stumbled across it accidentally, been impressed, and formed one half of the heads that came together on the idea for Gram’s final showcase piece.

            But the pair were convinced I was merely embarrassed by my talent; they had no idea that the reservations about what transferred from my pencil to the page ran much, much deeper.

            “Flo…” His mouth was open, frozen in its small o shape. “I didn’t know.”

            “It doesn’t matter.” He took another step forward, but I mirrored his movement in reverse, as if his presence had a repulsive effect of its own. A humourless smile creased my crumpled expression. “It’s done now, isn’t it? It’s not like it matters.”