Hello, and good morning. It’s so good to hear from you, Ms. Palmero. 

Congratulations again on winning The Precioso Veggera Award! We all truly loved your piece, and were dying for a chance to get to work with you again.

If you can just fill out and send the form linked below along with a few (5 to 10) samples of your artwork (in a separate file) I can arrange an application for you. We’ll distribute it amongst our affiliated agents, and get back to you within a week, or 5 business days-

My phone buzzes and a text from Mrs. Moon appears on the screen blocking out the email.

“Buen dia mi corazon. You remember that Kattar’s ‘welcome home’ party is this afternoon, at 2 o’clock. You’ll be able to make it, right?”

“Of course.” I swirl the cold coffee but don’t drink it.

“Would you like me to pick you up, dear?”

“No thank you. I’ll walk.”

A letter of recommendation is nice, but not necessary. That can be sent in the same file as the art samples should you choose to include it.

I’m uncomfortably reminded of junior high school days - being asked to provide a parent's signature for one activity or another. Ten times out of ten they went unsigned. 

Most days my mother didn’t even know her own name and the rare moments when she did, she was out looking for a way to forget, again.

I set the mug down and its soft clink seems too loud in the silence.

I’ll ask Mrs. Moon for a letter of recommendation.

One loose cannon from that family of chickadees lands on the windowsill and begins pecking cruelly at the glass, strutting back and forth across the yellowed-white paint like it wants to start a fight.

“Go away,” I mutter under my breath.

I should have closed the curtains.

It’s almost eleven a.m. My unfinished coffee turns to ice on the kitchen counter. I don’t even like coffee, but I’m all out of tea - all out of milk. Out of cold cereal and granola. Out of fresh fruit and dried. I haven’t gone shopping in ages, but lucky for me, I’m all out of appetite most of the time.

The alarm goes off on my phone with a rapid high-pitched beeping, setting my nerves on edge - reminding me that I should start getting ready for the party. 

It’s going to be a long walk, and too sunny. I allow myself a heavy sigh - reverberating through the stillness of my lonely living room where nobody can hear me. I don’t wanna go. I don’t wanna talk and be talked to, be expected to carry a conversation, and questioned incessantly about the accident and my injuries, my alleged “recovery,” today of all days especially, when everything around me seems to be chipper, just to spite me. Too much like the morning we left for the award ceremony. 

Anxiety bristles in my skin, and I’m tempted to text quickly and say I’m sick. It would barely be a lie at this point, but I already said I was coming, and matter over mind drags me out of the kitchen leading my feet toward the stairs, because I WILL go to that party, like it or not.

Kattar will be hurt if I don’t, and he’s already in enough pain, thanks to me.

The world glows outside the bay windows like Christmas tree ornaments in silver and gold, lined with glitter, so much warmer than it has any right to be at this time of the year, and so bright it looks like spring, though everything is still coated in snow.

I make my way up the narrow staircase and to my room. It’s so dark I can’t see an inch in front of my face with the door closed, and the black-out curtains blocking the window, but I feel my way about in the dark and flip the light on rather than open up my comfy hole to the sunshine.

Into the farthest corner, I toss my balled-up pajama pants, hearing them smack against the wall with a loud, snapping sound, like a whip. They slide down the paint in slow motion and settle in a wounded little pile next to the dingy, gray, white tee shirt and jeans that I’ve been wearing for the last week and a half. I think for a minute, that I should go over and fold them, then decide not to care a little bit longer, if the room looks a mess. So am I.

From the small selection of clean laundry left in my closet, I pick a sweater in a poisonous, hemlock, shade of green, and cross my fingers that it’s dark enough to mask any sweat stains I might acquire during the hour-long walk to Kattar's apartment.

I don’t have any clean pants, so on go the week-old jeans. Sometime soon, I’ll work up the motivation to do some cleaning, but today is not that day. And I don’t even want it to be.

In a morbid sort of dark, dreary cloud I make my way to the bathroom and yank my hair out of its tangled ponytail, glaring at the long-faced girl in the mirror. I take a brush to the matted mass which frizzes and crinkles under the friction like an ugly, neglected dress-up doll. The eyes meeting mine have that same plastic expression, but it’s too solemn, for a doll’s face. Those little magicians were forever smiling, no matter how long they’d been left collecting dust in a corner. But that thought just makes me want to cry more. I tear the comb through my curls with a violence that turns my face beet-red. And I don’t care that it hurts. All I want is to be miserable for as long as I can before I have to go back to pretending.

I should put on some makeup, but I don’t have the energy, to apply myself to applying that liquid lie. I think of how many people there will probably be at any party Mrs. Moon arranged, but I still can’t force myself to do anything more than a swipe of red lipstick. I look Christmassy but feel gross, like the week after New Year's, when life continues forward in monotony, though nobody really wants it to.

I remove the excess tint on a tissue and clean up the corners of my mouth where my smile should be. On other days, I’d draw just the smallest hint of a line on either side, to give my lips that full, cheerful expression Kattar’s mother taught me how to fake.

It was Mrs. Moon who taught me how to do my makeup and took me shopping for all the necessary products and tools, the first time, at the Uptown Mall’s two thousand and one different Korean-owned beauty supply stores. There were too many pieces in the mix - too many steps - but to her, it was all fun and exciting, so I tried to smile along, for her sake. 

I was fifteen then, and there was some dumb event going on at my school, a fall formal which I definitely would have avoided if she hadn’t seemed so set on me going.

Maybe if she’d thought about it at the time she would have stayed married for two years, so she could have had a daughter too. As it was, she poured all of her feminine attention on me, preparing me for my big ‘moment’ - determined that I be the prettiest girl in the room.

I’ll never forget her dragging me through store after store until we found ‘the perfect’ dress, ‘the perfect’ heels, ‘the perfect’ earrings, and bangles, and eyeshadow, and eyeliner, and blush, and lip tint to go with it all. And then she dragged me, bags and all, back home and into her glamorous, cinnamon-scented bathroom, to teach me how to paint my face up.

I was so embarrassed when it was all said and done, blushing through the layers - happy and shy at the same time. I wasn’t used to so much attention, to attention at all, honestly.

I just wanted to bury my face in my hands or hide, but THAT she would not allow.

Marching me out of the bathroom, and into the living room, she held me out at arm's length, (so I couldn’t hide behind her) and presented me to Kattar, for all the world like a trophy or a gold medal, saying firmly, “Tell ‘Licia how pretty she looks…”

Remembering Kattar I leave the bathroom and make my way to the closet, to grab his peonies.

I had prints of the painting made yesterday, but the original rests wrapped up in pink tissue and buried in the largest gift bag I could find. 

Even so, it sticks out of the top like a tiny Mount Everest all crinkles and ruffles in rosy paper, one corner, raised high above the rest, and two of the others, making the bag poke out at the sides, like a street sign.

I close the closet and make my way toward the bedroom door. The plastic bag eyes me from the shadows.

I don’t want to touch it, but I don’t want to leave it here either.

Before I can change my mind, I pick it up, and shove it way down into the bag, with the peonies, hidden amongst the tissue.

I’ll tell him he can have it too - throw it away or keep it - listen to him tell me that I shouldn’t get rid of it - that it’s beautiful and valuable - that I shouldn’t throw it away so quickly-

And imagine he’s talking about me.