Chapter 6
CHAPTER SIX
Anna’s car smelled like turpentine and optimism.
“Sorry about the smell,” Bea said from the back seat, leaning forward between the front seats. “Mom left her painting supplies in here yesterday. We opened the windows but it’s kind of... lingering.”
“It’s fine.” Stella glanced at Anna, who was navigating out of the Beach Shack parking lot with the distracted air of someone whose mind was on seventeen other things. “Thanks for driving us.”
“Happy to help. I need to pick up some canvases anyway—there’s an art supply place near the school.” Anna took a corner slightly too fast, and Stella grabbed the door handle. “Besides, Bea’s been talking about this tour all week. I want to see what all the fuss is about.”
“You’re not coming in with us,” Bea said quickly.
“Why not?”
“Because you’ll start talking to the art teachers and we’ll never leave.”
“I would not—”
“You absolutely would. Remember the ceramics studio incident?”
“That just took a minute.”
“It was three hours, Mom. Three hours talking about glaze techniques.”
Anna sighed. “Fine. I’ll wait in the car. Or go get my canvases. Or get coffee. There’s coffee near here, right?”
“There’s coffee everywhere. This is California.”
Stella’s phone buzzed in her pocket. She didn’t have to look to know who it was. Fiona had called twice this morning already, plus a voicemail Stella still hadn’t played.
She silenced it without checking.
“You okay?” Bea asked.
“Fine. Just... not ready yet.”
The school appeared around the corner—familiar now after the visit with Tyler. Same beige buildings, same palm trees, same outdoor walkways. But today felt different. Today she wasn’t here for paperwork and requirements. Today she was here to see what her life might actually look like.
Anna pulled into the visitors’ lot. “Text me when you’re done. I’ll be at the coffee place on the corner.”
“The good one or the bad one?”
“There’s a bad one?”
“Mom. We’ve discussed this.”
“Just text me.” Anna waved them out. “Go. Have your formative educational experience.”
Bea grabbed Stella’s arm and pulled her toward campus. “Come on. Before she changes her mind about the art teachers.”
Bea pulled Stella through the campus gates. “Are you excited?” she asked.
“I’m not— okay, maybe I’m a little excited.” Bea slowed down marginally. “You saw the guidance office. Very boring. Very administrative. Now I’m showing you the parts that actually matter.”
“The parts with art supplies?”
“The parts with darkrooms and photography labs and teachers who actually care about what you’re making.” Bea grinned sideways at her. “This is the real tour.”
Bea led her through campus on a different route than before—past the library and the amphitheater, through the senior courtyard with its painted mural.
“Class of 2019 did dolphins,” Bea explained. “Class of 2020 did a sunset. We get to design ours this year.”
“Let me guess. You have ideas.”
“I have a vision. There’s a difference.”
The campus wasn’t as empty as Stella had expected it to be.
Bea explained that they were there to change classes or meet with teachers early.
They passed students sprawled on benches, athletes heading to practice, a group clustered around someone’s phone watching something that made them laugh.
A few waved at Bea. She waved back without breaking stride.
“Everyone knows you,” Stella observed.
“Small school. Plus I’m memorable.” Bea steered her toward a building marked CREATIVE ARTS WING. “Also I may have been involved in a few... incidents.”
“What kind of incidents?”
“The kind that build character and are no longer discussed in polite company.” She pushed open the door. “Photography lab’s this way. Come on.”
The lab was better than Stella had imagined.
Corner room, north-facing windows, walls covered in student work from what looked like years of accumulated images. Landscapes, portraits, abstract compositions—ambitious and messy and real.
“Told you,” Bea said, watching her face.
Stella walked along the walls, studying the photographs. Some were technically excellent. Some were reaching for something they hadn’t quite grasped. All of them showed evidence of trying. Learning. Getting better.
“And look—” Bea pulled open a door at the back of the room. “Actual darkroom. With actual developing equipment.”
The smell hit Stella first — sharp chemicals, familiar and somehow comforting. Enlargers, developing trays, drying racks. Everything you needed to watch an image emerge from nothing.
“Students can use this?” Stella asked.
“During lab hours. And Mr. Reeves gives keys to serious students.” Bea’s grin widened. “He’d definitely gonna give you one.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I know your work. I’ve seen what you can do.”
“That’s different. You’re family. You have to say nice things.”
“I absolutely do not have to say nice things. Ask anyone.” Bea pulled her back into the main room. “Mr. Reeves is probably around here somewhere. He basically lives in the art wing during summer. Let me see if I can find him—”
“Bea, you don’t have to—”
But Bea was already gone, disappeared through a side door with the determination of someone on a mission. Stella stood alone in the photography lab, surrounded by other people’s images, trying to imagine her own work on these walls.
It felt presumptuous. It felt terrifying. It felt like something she wanted more than she’d let herself admit.
“You must be the cousin.”
Stella turned. A man stood in the doorway, paint-stained jeans, reading glasses pushed up on his forehead. His coffee mug said “I TEACH ART. WHAT’S YOUR SUPERPOWER?”
“I’m Mr. Reeves.” He crossed to her, not rushing. “Stella Walsh, right? Tyler’s daughter?”
“Yes.”
“I haven’t seen that man since the day he walked across the stage, but I’ve followed his work in the journals. I always wondered if he’d ever come back to show these kids how it’s done.” Mr. Reeves paused for a moment. “And I saw your display at the festival.”
Stella’s stomach tightened. “You did?”
“‘The Shack Breathes.’” He said the title like he was tasting it. “That was yours.”
“Yes.”
“The Bernie triptych—horror, panic, victory. That was yours.”
“Yes.”
“And the dining room composition. The lunch rush. Everyone in motion but somehow it all held together like a painting.”
Stella didn’t know what to say. She nodded.
Mr. Reeves was quiet for a moment, looking at her the way she imagined he looked at student work when he was deciding what to say. Not judging. Evaluating.
“There was one shot,” he said finally. “Your great-grandmother at the grill. She wasn’t looking at the camera—she was watching the dining room like it was a show only she could see. And you caught something in her expression that most people would have missed entirely.”
“Quiet amusement,” Stella said softly. “That’s what I called it.”
“That’s what it was.” He nodded slowly. “Documentary photography is about seeing the story underneath the routine. Most students take years to understand that. You already do.”
Stella felt heat rise to her cheeks. “Thank you.”
“When you enroll—” He paused. “You are enrolling? Bea made it sound like a certainty.”
“I want to. It’s... complicated.”
“It usually is.” He picked up his coffee mug, turning toward the door. “When you do enroll, come find me first day. I want you in Advanced Photography, not the intro class. You’d be bored, and bored students make everyone miserable.”
He wandered off before she could respond, leaving her standing alone in the photography lab.
Bea materialized at her elbow. “Wow.”
“What?”
“Do you know who he IS? Besides a teacher?” Bea grabbed her arm, voice dropping to an urgent whisper. “He won the California Documentary Prize. Three years in a row. He doesn’t just SAY things like that. To anyone. Ever.”
“He was probably just being nice.”
“Mr. Reeves is never just nice. He once told a kid his portfolio looked like ‘a cry for help from someone who’d never seen natural light.’ To his face.” Bea was practically bouncing. “He saw your festival work. He remembered specific pieces. He wants you in Advanced.”
“If I enroll.”
“When you enroll.” Bea squeezed her arm. “Stella. This is huge. This is validation from someone who actually knows what he’s talking about.”
Stella looked around the photography lab—the student work on the walls, the darkroom waiting to be used, the north-facing windows letting in that perfect even light.
Mr. Reeves had seen her work. Not because she was Tyler’s daughter. Not because Bea had talked her up. He’d gone to the festival and looked at “The Shack Breathes” and remembered the Bernie triptych and the dining room composition and the shot of Margo at the grill.
He’d seen what she was trying to do. And he thought she was good enough for Advanced Photography.
Someone outside her family believed she belonged here.
“We should go,” Stella said, her voice strange in her own ears. “Dad’s probably wondering where we are.”
“He’ll be fine. I told him we were having a formative educational experience.” Bea steered her toward the door. “Come on. Let’s go find Mom.”
They walked back through the art wing, past the ceramics studio and the painting rooms. Students called out goodbyes to Bea. Curious glances followed Stella—the new girl, the cousin from Australia, the one Mr. Reeves had pulled aside.
Bea had texted Anna, and by the time they got into the visitors’ lot she was waiting for them. At the car, Stella paused with her hand on the door.
Her phone buzzed again. Three missed calls from Fiona now. A voicemail. Two texts she could see on the lock screen without opening.
Call me please. We need to talk about your flight.
Her flight. The one scheduled for not long from now. The one that would take her back to Sydney, back to the life Fiona had planned for her, away from darkrooms and photography labs and teachers who remembered specific shots from festival exhibitions.
“You okay?” Bea asked.
“Yeah.” Stella got in the car. “Just thinking.”
“About Mr. Reeves?”
“About everything.”
Anna pulled out of the parking lot. The turpentine smell had faded, or maybe Stella had just gotten used to it.
“You know what you have to do,” Bea said quietly. “Right?”
“Call her.”
“Soon.”
“I know.”
Anna didn’t ask any questions, and Stella was relieved.
They drove in silence for a while, past the galleries and the coffee shops and the streets that were becoming familiar now.
Stella watched Laguna Beach scroll past the window and thought about the photography lab, the darkroom, the student work on the walls.
She thought about Mr. Reeves saying when you enroll like it was already decided.
She thought about Margo painting something she wouldn’t show anyone, Tyler checking on her every afternoon, the family meeting where everyone had looked at her like she already belonged.
And she thought about Fiona, thousands of miles away, waiting for a phone call that she was definitely not expecting.
The decision was made. Now came the hard part—telling the one person who could still take it all away.