Page 6 of The Heartbreakers
This conversation was familiar. I’d had similar experiences with every member of my family in the past, times when I’d shown them new Bianca pieces that I was obsessing over. Nobody ever appreciated the photos, and I’d learn to shrug off their lack of interest. Mom liked to blame her sister, my aunt Dawn, for what she referred to as my “artistic arrogance,” which was when I got all snobby about a certain photograph and tried explain the vision behind it.
My aunt Dawn was one of those posh, East Coast ladies who drank martinis like water and only bought art if the price tag had enough zeros. One time, when I was twelve, she took me to an art auction in New York. We spent three hours meandering through rows of artwork, and Dawn taught me which paintings were quality and which were not, a skill no twelve-year-old should be caught without. Of course, her definition of quality was vastly different than mine. Dawn’s choice of favorites hinged on who the artist was, not the subject, while I preferred the black-and-white photographs tucked away in the back of the gallery. There were different people in each image, which made me wonder who they were and what they were thinking.
“But they were pictures that mean something,” I said, turning to look at Drew. I knew he wouldn’t understand, but that didn’t stop me from hoping he would. I wasn’t snobby about art the way Dawn was or the way my mom thought I was; I was just passionate about photography. And my mom could only blame that on one thing—my not-so-typical high-school experience.
When Cara first got sick, our mom made an effort to try to keep my and Drew’s lives as normal as possible. But Cara’s treatment was long and grueling, so she started homeschooling. The three of us didn’t like being apart, not when things were so serious, so Drew and I begged our mom to let us be homeschooled too. That way, we could be with Cara and still receive an education. She finally agreed, and we never went back.
Until freshman year, I’d loved being a triplet. It set us apart and made the other kids our age think we were cool. It was like we were exotic animals at the zoo that everyone wanted to see, and we always got asked questions like whether we could read each other’s thoughts or feel when one another got hurt. We always responded by putting on a show. Drew would pinch himself, and Cara and I would grab our sides and grimace as if we had felt his fingers too.
It wasn’t until high school that I realized people only knew me as one of the Samuel triplets. During English class on my first day, the girl sitting next to me asked, “Are you Cara or the other girl?” as if I could only be defined by the fact that I was one of three. That was when I decided I needed to stand out from my siblings, to declare who I was and all that independent stuff. The problem was that I didn’t really know how to go about doing it.
I thought about the girl from my English class. She had one of those scary nose rings that made her look like a bull, and her dreadlocks were dyed purple. I was willing to bet that nobody forgot who she was—not when she looked like that. But I wasn’t as daring as her.
Although my ears were already pierced, getting a nose ring scared me. On top of that, I was nervous that the maintenance required to keep all of my chestnut hair a solid blue—my favorite color—would be too much work. In the end, I settled for a single streak of aqua in my bangs and a small, sparkly stud in my left nostril to start my metamorphosis from Stella the triplet to Stella the individual.
High school was going to be my chance to break away and discover who I was, and during those first few months of freshman year, I started to. Drew, who was built like our dad, tall and thick, easily made the football team. Cara had always been the most outgoing of the three of us, so it made sense when she joined the cheerleading squad and yearbook committee. But even though we normally did everything together, I decided not to try out for the squad.
Instead, I signed up for as many clubs as I had time for—from student council, which I hated, to academic decathlon, which I also hated. Art club became my fast favorite. Not only did I love the quirky cast of kids, but there was something about imagining and shaping and creating that I found intriguing.
I packed my schedule so tightly that, during those two months, it was as if I didn’t have siblings anymore because I saw so little of them.
But when Cara got sick, all of our individual growth folded in on itself, and we just became the triplets again. Sometimes I would catch a glimpse of who we could’ve been from those few high-school fragments that stayed with us. Cara never went anywhere without at least three different lip gloss options, and Drew always tried to make a competition out of things, whether it was beating me in a game of Scrabble or seeing who could get a better test score.
That’s why I held on to photography so tightly. It was my only takeaway from a time that was supposed to be mine but never really was. One of my art friends introduced me to it, and even though I wasn’t a natural, I enjoyed it enough to make an effort to improve. So while every other teenager was blundering their way through high school, experimenting and making mistakes, I was at home staying how I always had been, whatever that was—but at least I had one thing that was all my own.
Before I could dive into the details of why Bianca’s work was so meaningful, I spotted a great shot farther up the sidewalk. “Oooh, look!” I said, and rushed ahead to snap a picture.
“Stella,” Drew said when he caught up to me. “That’s a fire hydrant. We have those back in Minnesota.”
“Yeah, but look at the way the sunlight is hitting it,” I said and adjusted my lens.
Drew scoffed. “Please don’t tell me there’s some symbolic meaning in the contrast between the light and the shadows or some artsy bull like that.”
“No,” I said and crouched down to get a closer picture. “I just think it’s pretty.”
“But it’s a fire hydrant,” Drew repeated, and crease lines—something my mom always warned us would become permanent if we frowned too much—formed on his forehead.
Knowing there had to be at least one good picture out of the ten I took, I straightened up and poked Drew in the side. “Sure, but it’s a verysymbolicfire hydrant.”
At this, Drew opened his mouth to argue, but then decided against it and shook his head. “Come on, expert photographer,” he said. “We’re going to be late for the signing.” He turned and continued up the sidewalk, expecting me to follow.
“All right, all right,” I said, laughing before jogging to catch up with him. “I’m coming.”
• • •
It only took us ten minutes to walk to the radio station, but Drew was right. We were late.
“I don’t get it,” I said as we took a spot at the end of a long line. “The signing isn’t supposed to start for another hour.”
Crossing his arms, Drew shot me a look. “Really, Stella? You’re surprised that a ton of people are waiting to see a world-famous band?”
“Okay, maybe not,” I admitted. “We probably should have gotten here earlier, but I didn’t want to leave the gallery.”
“I know,” Drew said, his tone lighter. “Hopefully this won’t take too long.”
“Hopefully,” I responded, but as I gauged the line in front of us, I had serious doubts.
Ninety-nine percent of the crowd was female—a few moms with little girls, but mainly teenagers dressed up in floral sundresses or cute tops. They made kissy faces as they posed with friends for Instagram pictures and squealed over each other’s Heartbreaker merchandise.
