Fragments of Arcadia: You Are Strong

XI.

Evangeline rolled up her sleeves as she looked at the blank white wall in front of her. She opened her bag and started gridding off the wall with her painter's tape. She had sectioned her test painting off to match and her plan was to use it as a reference to scale it up on the wall. It was the first time she had tried something like this, but she thought it was her best bet for making sure the quality of the mural was high.

The wall was actually wider than she thought, but she figured she could compensate by extending the horizontal path in the painting to stretch further along the wall. The process of gridding everything off took a bit longer than expected so Evangeline only had a couple hours left to paint.

Evangeline wiped down the bottom left square just to make sure that it was clean. Mr. Everett said he had added primer before he left so it was good to go. Tonight her focus was the "beginning" of the mural. Her idea was to depict a journey.

The bottom corner of the painting was a whirlpool. Mr. Everett had asked her to incorporate the playground so she decided to make each thing an "obstacle" on the journey. The merry-go-round become a whirlpool in the ocean. She left some white space in the middle of the waves leaving a pseudo-merry-go-round in the white space of the waves. It was easy enough on paper and on canvas, but she was untested on this large a scale.

"Can you do it?"

"He trusts you."

"He'll be disappointed if it's not good."

"You've never done this before."

"I don't think you can do it."

Her hand was shaking as she picked up the brush.

"Can't paint like that."

"I bet you can't even paint a straight line."

"It's going to be terrible."

"You won't be able to do it."

"You can't do it."

"You can't—"

Evangeline closed her eyes and shook her head. She wouldn't let it win, not this time. She took a long deep breath in and exhaled. She continued to do this.
"I went to school for this."

"I graduated."

"I can do this."

"Black and white art is my specialty."

"People believe in me."

Evangeline let out one more long deep breath as she opened her eyes. Her hand had stopped shaking. Today, it had worked. She had about an hour left to get as much done as she could. It was time to start on the ocean and with one long stroke, she had finally started the mural.

School would be starting back in a few days so she knew she needed to get all the work done she could before then. Leaving straight from the library to come to the school wasn't the best schedule as far as sleep was concerned, but it was the only way to get this mural finished in a halfway decent timeframe.

As the timer on her phone rang, she packed up her stuff. She was about halfway done with the waves portion of the mural. Hopefully, she would have more time tomorrow to paint. She wouldn't have to waste time setting up and hopefully not have to fight herself. Evangeline figured that if she kept her current pace up, she could have it halfway done by the start of the school.

Mr. Everett had set the doors to automatically lock when Evangeline left so that all she had to do was walk out, but that also meant that if she left anything it was stuck there. She held her bag and things close to her as she walked down to her car. She hadn't seen the officer since that night, but that didn't mean he wasn't around. Mr. Everett had given Evangeline a decal for her car, which let security know that she was allowed there but that didn't help her nerves at all. Tonight she didn't have to deal with him though. It was a good night.