The next morning Sarah called Milo’s art teacher and told her the competition drawing had been damaged. She did not say Milo had lost it. She did not soften the truth to protect Jake.
The teacher asked whether any part remained.
“One corner,” Sarah said.
“Then bring the corner.”
Milo frowned when Sarah relayed the message. “What can she do with a corner?”
It turned out the teacher had photographed the drawing when Milo showed it to her the previous week. The competition required the original for final judging, but the organizers agreed to display a high-resolution print and allow Milo to submit a replacement original if he wanted.
Milo did not want to redraw it.
Not at first.
Every time he looked at the photograph, he saw Jake’s mattress and the pale strip of paper sticking out beneath it. He told his teacher he wanted to withdraw.
She did not argue. “Then withdraw. The competition is optional. Your art is not.”
That sentence stayed with him.
Meanwhile, Sarah and David did something Jake had not expected. They did not demand an apology and declare the family healed. They made him tell them exactly what had happened, piece by piece. He admitted hiding pencils, moving Milo’s homework, tearing the first sketchbook, and taking the competition drawing. He had ripped it after hearing Sarah and David’s conversation, then hidden the pieces in a trash bag in the garage because he panicked when everyone started searching.
David found the bag before collection day. Most of the drawing was still there, torn into six large pieces.
Milo sat at the kitchen table when David brought it in. He stared for a long time.
“Do you want me to throw it away?” David asked.
Milo shook his head. “No.”
“Tape it?”
“No.”
He spread the pieces across the table and arranged them like a puzzle. The picture was a train station at dusk, crowded with people under a huge clock. One small boy stood in the center holding a suitcase while everyone around him blurred into motion. Milo had called it Between Places.
Sarah looked at the title on the back of one torn piece and covered her mouth.
Milo noticed. “What?”
“Nothing. I just understand it differently now.”
He did too. When he had drawn it, the boy in the center was waiting to be taken somewhere else. Looking at the torn version, Milo suddenly imagined the boy refusing to move.
That afternoon, he took out fresh paper.
He did not redraw the same picture. He drew the station again from a lower angle. This time the small boy’s suitcase was open on the floor. People still blurred around him, but two figures stood beside him instead of passing by. A third figure stood farther away, facing them but uncertain whether to come closer.
Milo worked until midnight. Sarah left cocoa outside his door and did not interrupt.
He called the new drawing Still Here.
His teacher submitted it.
Jake saw it the next morning. He stood in the doorway but did not enter.
“Is that me?” he asked, looking at the distant figure.
