Chapter Six #2
And so she tried. She tried and tried and tried, for the next two years.
Her mother took the sketchbook, and Daphne didn’t start a new one.
She painted, but only innocuous images like flowers and cats, oceans she’d never seen and cityscapes she wasn’t sure even existed.
She went to church, and she prayed and prayed and prayed.
She didn’t look twice at cute girls, and she even stopped talking to Gabe, her only other gay friend at school, whose parents supported him and loved him and championed him.
She fell in line.
She stuffed herself into a mold.
And she withered and dried, like a butterfly caught in a net, then pinned down for display.
“Daphne,” April said when Daphne paused. “That’s…that’s awful. I’m sorry.”
Daphne just shrugged. “Homophobia in a small town is nothing new, I know. Clover Lake is pretty small.”
April sighed. “It is. Though I definitely didn’t have Baptist parents and a whole conservative church community watching my every move. Still, I was one of three out queer kids in my high school. We stuck together, to say the least. Sounds like you didn’t have even that.”
“No,” Daphne said.
April nodded. “How did you…well…”
“Escape?”
April laughed a little. “That sounds like a horrible word for it, but yeah.”
“It is horrible,” Daphne said. “But that’s exactly what it was.
I had an art teacher at school. Ms. Hale.
She wore bright skirts and red lipstick and no ring on her left hand, a total aberration in Crestwater.
My senior year, she convinced me to join her advanced painting class, and that changed everything. ”
Over the next few months, Daphne slowly came back to life, painting an entire body of work during her time in Ms. Hale’s class.
She painted girls and rainbows. She painted drag queens and queer identity flags and self-portraits.
She painted everything in her heart, everything her family said was wrong, everything she’d been keeping inside since she’d lost her sketchbook.
Lost herself.
When the time came to think about life after graduation, applying for colleges, and the future, Daphne worked with Ms. Hale to apply to the best art schools in the country.
She didn’t tell her parents.
As far as they knew, she’d only applied to the state school in the next town, an option that would let her stay at home while she studied to be a teacher.
When she got into Boston University and Savannah College of Art and Design and UCLA and Bard, it felt like a dream, something she wasn’t sure would ever be real. But then Boston offered her a full scholarship, and she knew that was it.
Her lifeline.
Her chance.
And she took it.
The whole process felt gauzy and bright at the same time.
How she kept Boston a secret for months; how she sat through her graduation with a serene smile on her face, her mom snapping photos and waving from the school auditorium’s audience; how she never said a thing about her plans until the night before, when her mother walked into her room without knocking to find her packing.
How she told her mother she was leaving.
How her mother simply turned around and walked out of the room.
How her older sister, Amelia, had watched her pack from the hallway, her eyes red and watery, and never said a word.
How her father told her calmly that if she left like this, she would not be welcomed back.
How quiet it all was.
How final.
“And that’s how I ended up in Boston,” Daphne said. She felt the boat hit the dock, but April didn’t move. Neither did she.
“Do you talk to your family at all?” April asked.
Daphne’s throat went thick, just like it always did when she thought about her parents and Amelia. “No,” she said, and left it at that.
She hadn’t meant to leave and cut off all communication. But her father’s declaration paved the way for silence, and when months passed of her new life in Boston—a timid life, sure, but one filled with art and other people just like her—without any contact from her family, she let it happen.
She let the line break.
She missed her family—her sister especially; memories of when they were tiny girls making mud pies near the creek, fairy hunting in the woods, felt like a physical pain sometimes. But what she missed most was a family that loved her.
Loved her.
Not some image of her they’d created.
She sat up in the canoe, her skin cold and pebbling with goose bumps. She glanced at April, who was shivering, hair wet and slicked against her head, her makeup a mess.
“God,” April said, laughing a little. “Do I look as bad as you do right now?”
Daphne scoffed but couldn’t keep from smiling too. “How dare you.”
April smiled back. It was small, maybe a little sad, a little wary still, but it was there.
“Thank you for telling me,” Daphne said as April stood to tie the canoe to the dock. “About Elena.”
April’s shoulders went a little tight, and she looked out toward the water. “Thank you,” she said quietly.
And that was the end of it as they secured the canoe, then climbed onto the dock and walked toward the lodge side by side, garnering curious looks from the guests as they went.
Daphne couldn’t sleep.
After they’d gotten back to their cabin, she’d stood under the hot spray of the shower for half an hour, warming her skin and bones and blood.
She’d washed her hair, finally, and even taken care to slide some gel through her curls.
She’d brushed her teeth, gone through all the motions of getting ready for bed, all the while trying to slow down her brain.
Trying not to stare at April.
Trying not to wonder about April and Elena.
Trying not to ask questions.
But she had so many, most of which she wasn’t even sure April could answer.
Or would answer.
April hadn’t said much since they’d returned to their cabin.
She let Daphne shower first, then stayed in the bathroom so long during her own turn, Daphne nearly knocked on the door to check on her.
Daphne had no idea how to act, so she’d lain in bed with Bob curled up by her side, staring at the ceiling fan going around and around.
Now, a couple hours later, the cabin dark and quiet, nothing but the sound of cicadas and April’s deep breathing, Daphne tried to keep her eyes closed, go through the lyrics of her favorite songs. She even resorted to counting sheep, watching fluffy white animals jump over fences in her head.
Finally, she sat up, drawing a soft mew from Bob as she grabbed her phone off her nightstand and tapped the screen. Then she stared down at the name of the only person she wanted to talk to right now.
Elena.
It was two in the morning. Elena wouldn’t be awake anyway. In fact, Daphne knew her phone would be in sleep mode. And besides the impracticalities of a middle-of-the-night call, Daphne really, really shouldn’t.
She knew that.
God, she knew that. She already felt pathetic.
Stupid and silly and naive and young—how could she not have known?
How was she the other woman and didn’t even know?
Talking to Elena right now would only make her feel more ridiculous, because Elena always had an explanation for everything, which just made her want to talk to Elena even more.
Because maybe there was an explanation.
She shook her head, then opened her nightstand drawer and threw her phone inside.
It clattered loudly, startling Bob so much he jumped off the bed.
Daphne froze, waiting for April to wake up too, but she simply murmured something that sounded weirdly like “None of your business, Penny,” then rolled over.
Before she could scramble for her phone again, Daphne threw off her covers, grabbed her bag, and slid on her shoes, then stepped out the door and into the cool night.
She ended up in the art studio.
She sat at the desk and clicked through the slides featuring tomorrow’s class plan on the computer, but she couldn’t focus, her mind whirling fast in every direction.
She hadn’t felt this way in a long time.
This unsettled and helpless. This desperate for something.
Anything. She didn’t even know what. Maybe it was because she’d just told her entire story to April, but she felt exposed and alone, just like she had when she was fifteen and her mom found her sketchbook.
Like she was still letting someone else define the kind of life she was going to live.
She looked around at all the blank canvases waiting for stories to fill them, then stood up abruptly and went to the back cabinet, flinging it open.
It was full of extra supplies—paints and brushes and charcoal and watercolors, as well as a few larger canvases for instructor modeling.
She grabbed one—a huge 24x30—carried it up to the front of the room, and set it on the instructor easel.
After that, she didn’t think. She simply did, followed the spark in her stomach and let it lead the way.
She gathered paints and brushes and pencils, a palette and a palette knife, cups of water, an apron.
She tied her still-damp hair back, picked up a pencil, and started sketching on the canvas.
She never erased, never stepped back to think.
She felt like she was seventeen, standing in Ms. Hale’s classroom and sketching out two girls kissing for the first time, driven by pure fury and fear and hope.
Except in this image, there was only one girl.
And Daphne drew and drew until the girl took shape. After that, she mixed paints, color and texture and shading bringing the girl to life.
Bringing her back from the dead.