Camryn Quinn is finally getting what she wants...sort of. Moving into a dorm and away from her not so supportive father is a good first step, but like everything with him, it comes with strings. She must attend the college of his choosing for at lea...
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We all stand on the sidewalk and watch him leave. Me, Gabi, and her mom, before starting to unload all of my things from their car. My dad couldn't be bothered to have someone cover him at football camp long enough to move me into my dorm, but honestly I prefer this anyway. Gabi's family is the closest thing I've had to a real family for years now. They've taken me in and called me one of their own. It only feels right for Gabi and Jill to be the ones to do this with me.
"Oh Ryn!" Jill says, fumbling for her phone that's tucked into her back pocket. "I was looking through some of my old pictures from when I moved into my first dorm and I found this one."
Jill hands her phone to me, and Gabi slings an arm over my shoulder to get closer. The screen is filled with a picture of a picture. The original with its grainy clarity and a time stamp for August of ninety one.
I don't need a clearer image to know exactly who it is. A young girl around my age sits on a lofted twin bed, her back against the wall and a book covering her face. Her hair is poofed into a horrendous style, but the shade and curls match my own.
"I begged her to put the book down and go to a kegger with me, but she just kept saying one more chapter," Jill chides.
I can't help the smile that covers my face. Although art was our thing, reading was where my mom and I first bonded. When she wasn't painting, her home studio doubled as a reading fortress. A real reader's pinterest dream.
I can still picture her curled similarly into the cushions of an eccentric green chair. For hours on end I would watch as she would finger through the pages of countless novels.
Pages and pages filled with the story of two star crossed lovers on the verge of breaking down, or finding one another even when all the fates were so misaligned it would never work in reality. She could devour a book like a cold drink on a hot summer day. Her thirst for the fairytale, the trope, was always too much. Within a few big gulps it would be gone.
We spent years like that before I finally asked her why she spent so much time on something that seemingly produced nothing. It wasn't like her art. As the sand would slip through the glass she would have something to show for it. Even after reading her hand-me-down books, I didn't get it. I was always left with more questions than any story line offered to answer.
She had dropped her book into her lap, but only after finishing the page she was on and carefully placing her bookmark to keep her spot. She adjusted her position in my bed, the mattress shifting from her weight.
"Do you know why I started painting?" She leaned forward so her elbows were resting on her thighs, bringing her face closer to mine as I lay with my stomach against the mattress. She could never just answer a question. It was her most infuriating quality and the one I miss the most.
