The fluorescent lights of the admissions office hummed like angry wasps as Cole Mercer clutched his portfolio to his chest. His fingers left damp prints on the leather cover - he'd been wiping his palms on his slacks all morning, but the sweat kept coming.  "Mr. Mercer?" A secretary poked her head through the doorway. "Professor Whitlock will see you now."  Cole stood so fast his chair screeched. The sound made him flinch. His father hated loud noises almost as much as he hated Cole's "scribbling."  

The office smelled of oil paint and expensive coffee. Professor Whitlock, a wiry man with paint-stained sleeves, didn't look up from the sketchbook he was examining. Cole recognized his own work - the twisted metal sculpture study from junior year.  "Tell me about this piece," Whitlock said suddenly, tapping a page.  Cole's throat tightened. The drawing showed a dinner table with three figures - two shouting, one shrinking. "It's... about perspective," he lied.  Whitlock's sharp eyes flicked up. "Bullshit."  A beat of silence. Then, to Cole's shock, the professor smiled.  "Finally," Whitlock said, "someone who understands that art should hurt." He flipped to another page - Cole's charcoal study of a locked door. "Thirty-seven locks. That's oddly specific."  Cole's pulse thundered in his ears. He hadn't meant to include the real number.  

Outside, a car backfired. Cole jerked so hard he knocked his portfolio to the floor. Papers scattered across the polished wood - every one a piece of his soul laid bare.  Whitlock knelt to help gather them. His fingers paused on a sketch of a man's silhouette, the features blurred as if seen through tears. "Your father?"  

Cole couldn't speak. He nodded once, sharply.  When Whitlock stood, he held out a cream-colored envelope. "Full scholarship. Housing included." His voice softened. "Our dorms have excellent locks, Mr. Mercer." The acceptance letter trembled in Cole's hands. Freedom tasted like ink and possibility.  Until he stepped outside and saw the familiar pickup truck idling at the curb.  "Get in," his father said through the open window. A beer can crumpled in his fist. "We need to talk about this... nonsense."  

"Cole Alexander Mercer!" His father's voice boomed across the quad. A group of touring freshmen scattered like startled birds. Somewhere behind him, a girl whispered, "Holy shit  

Three Hours Later

The apartment reeked of stale beer and defeat. Cole stood in the doorway of what had never truly been a home, his still-packed duffel bag heavy on his shoulder. His father paced the stained linoleum, the letter crumpled in his grease-stained hand.  "Art school." He spat the words like a curse. "You wanna waste your life drawing pictures when you could be making real money at the shop?"  Cole focused on the crack in the wall behind the TV—the one shaped like Florida where he'd hidden his sketchbooks for years. "They're giving me a full ride. Housing."  

His father's laugh was sharp enough to draw blood. "So what? You gonna be one of those fairy boys prancing around with paint in your hair?" The old fear coiled in Cole's gut. But then he remembered the weight of Professor Whitlock's gaze—someone who understands that art should hurt and something inside him "cracked".  

"I'm going." His voice didn't shake. "In September."  

Silence.  

His father crushed the letter in his fist. For one terrible moment, Cole braced for the familiar sting of knuckles against his cheekbone. Then the man threw the balled-up paper at Cole's feet. "Fine. But when you come crawling back?" He grabbed his keys off the counter. "Don't expect the door to be open."  

The slam of the door shook the walls. Cole waited until the truck's roar faded before picking up the letter. He smoothed the creases carefully, his thumb brushing the embossed university seal. Outside, the first fireflies of summer blinked to life in the gathering dark.   Cole's bedroom door clicked shut with the quiet finality of a coffin lid.  He dropped his duffel bag where his mother's reading chair used to sit, now just a depression in the carpet stained with cigarette burns. The bag slumped like a dead thing, spitting out crumpled sketches and a single bent tube of cadmium red.  

The mattress groaned as he face-planted into pillows that still smelled faintly of her lavender detergent, six years gone. Through the thin wall, his father's TV blared a baseball game, the crowd's roar muffling the sound of Cole's shuddering breath.  

She would've framed the acceptance letter. 

The thought came unbidden, sharp as a palette knife between the ribs. His mother would've tacked it to the fridge with one of those stupid fruit magnets. Would've run her chipped-nail-polish finger over the Blackthorne University crest and whispered "My brilliant boy" in that voice like sun-warmed honey. A beer bottle shattered against the kitchen sink downstairs. Cole flinched so hard his elbow knocked over the framed photo on his nightstand—the last family picture before the pills and the paramedics and the "accident" no one called suicide.  

Glass cracked across the photo's surface, splitting his mother's smile in two.  

Cole didn't move to pick it up.  

Outside his window, the neighbor's sprinklers kicked on with a rhythmic *hiss-hiss-hiss* that almost sounded like weeping. He pressed his face deeper into the pillow, inhaling the ghost of lavender as the room blurred at the edges.  Sleep came like a thief, stealing him away to dreams of a woman with paint under her fingernails humming off-key in a sunlit kitchen ,while downstairs the flickering TV light glinted off the crumpled letter in the trash.