Summer Apart Read Free

triangle and closes the flaps on the end, then he holds it up to me.
    “It’s a perfect way to ship your art work and it’s not expensive. The cardboard is really strong and won’t bend or damage the canvas.”
    I take a deep breath and gnaw on my bottom lip while I try to figure out the mystery that is Nolan Park. Should I be pissed off that he went behind my back to find a way for me to sell my art? Or should I think it’s pretty sweet of him to go out of his way for something that only benefits me?
    My emotions fall somewhere in the middle. When I said there wasn’t an easy way to ship my artwork, I meant it. It was a real obstacle I faced when trying to decide if I should set up an Etsy shop online and sell my work. But the real obstacle I worry about is the fear that even if I did everything I could to become a professional artist and sell my work online, I might still fail.
    Something simple like packing materials doesn’t really matter on the whole scale of things. My deep-rooted fear of all things involving my epic and embarrassing failure does matter. Park fixed one of my problems. But he can’t fix my fear.
    “Oh yeah, I also have this,” Park says, leaning back into his truck and taking out an envelope with a Hilton hotel logo on the outside. He hands it to me and I find two checks inside, both of them made out to me, and both of them for a whopping one hundred dollars.
    “What is the hell is this for?” I ask, taking out the checks to examine them closer. The first one is from Park’s mom, Debra Park and the second one is from a woman I’ve never heard of. “Who is Nancy Garcia and why is she writing me a check?”
    He rocks back on his heels. “Okay so, don’t kill me. You can tear up the checks if you want to. But I was home last week and you were texting me pictures of your newest creations, I showed them to my mom and my Aunt Nancy. They absolutely loved them. My mom wants the one that says ‘You were born an original, don’t die a copy.” And Aunt Nancy wants the one about hearing the quiet?”
    “Only those who care about you can hear when you’re quiet,” I say, filling in the gaps of his memory.
    He nods. “Yeah, that one. That is if you’re open to selling them. If not, that’s fine. They’ll understand.”
    “Wow,” I say more to myself than to him. “I can’t believe you showed them those pictures.”
    “Of course I did,” he says. “I’m proud of you and your work.” He takes out his phone and presses the bottom button, lighting up the screen and showing me the wallpaper. It’s an image of my artwork, specifically the canvas I created on the last time he visited. It’s a cream colored canvas that’s coated in fine silver glitter. In black curly lettering, I’ve added the words leave a little sparkle wherever you go . It’s one of my favorites because of the sparkle.
    It’s interesting that Park has this image as his phone background, because I never sent him a photo of it. In fact, I never even took a photo of that canvas. It went straight into a frame and was hung on my wall for me to keep.
    “Where did you get this photo?” I ask.
    He shrugs as if it’s totally not a big deal. “I took the picture myself.”
    “When?”
    “Last time I was with you. Why does it matter?”
    I narrow my eyebrows. “How often do you take pictures of my stuff without me knowing?”
    He laughs and I can’t help but think that the confidence rolling off of him is just a façade to mask the fact that he’s been caught. “Not very often…”
    “Ugh,” I groan. “I hope you haven’t shown the whole world my artwork. That’s just embarrassing.”
    “I haven’t.” He doesn’t sound very trustworthy at the moment. “So what do you say? Are you going to sell them?”
    I look at the envelope in my hands. “A hundred dollars is a lot of money,” I say as a knot forms in my stomach. “I can’t take this much money from them. It feels wrong.”
    “No way. A hundred