For Every Missing Shade

Entry 23

I woke up on Christmas Eve to the sound of holiday music playing over the speakers downstairs. The night before, we had a little kickback with Emma, Stew, and some other people Emma had contact with while at school. Nothing too eventful happened. People needed to be home and so did Emma. We just figured that there should be one more normal event before things get too, for lack of a better word,

busy.

I walked downstairs to my parents making all the food they were bringing to dinner at my grandpa's. My mom was preparing some stuffing as my dad was baking some pie. They both had on their best horrendous-yet-amazing tacky Christmas sweaters on.

"Oh hey there honey!" my mom said with her best Christmas Cheer Voice on.

"Hey guys, how's the cooking going?" I asked.

My dad chimed in, "Great, the cookies are almost done!"

They both looked like they had either mistaken cocaine for flour while baking, or they were hiding something.

"You guys are awfully chipper this morning," I commented.

"Well how couldn't you be?" cooed my mom. "It's Christmas Eve and it looks like we might just get some snow tonight. We have music playing, cookies in the oven, and another batch on the way."

She snuck my dad a little smile as she wiped some cookie batter off of his arm. They were definitely hiding something.

"Okay then, I'll believe you," I said without a hint of belief.

My mom shot up from her bowl full of stuffing. "Here, I intercepted this from the mail this morning." She unsheathed an envelope that bore an official-looking insignia in the top right corner. "I wanted to be there when you opened it, it's the first of many I assume."

I looked at the envelope quizzically before realizing with a start what it was. I hadn't applied to a college since the beginning of the school year. I spent the entire summer touring different ones from Iowa, Minnesota, Chicago, Colorado, and really anywhere else but Missouri.

In the end, I only ended up applying to three. Not the best way to increase my chances of good news, but I didn't care. If I didn't get into where I wanted then I didn't know if I really wanted to go to college that bad after all. Not yet at least. But this seemed to be my first letter back from the early application deadline.

I rubbed my hand over the raised ink in the corner. It bore the official crest of Pragma University. It was a Jesuit University in midtown Denver who had high-quality programs in almost every subject I was interested in except for poetry. I figured that didn't matter though because the only poetry I imagined I needed was 10,000-18,000 feet high, rocky, covered in snow, and nothing more than a bus ride away from campus.

I edged at the flaps of the envelope. I didn't want to open it, but I was dying to know. I hadn't even thought about college in months. It was some subplot the author should have forgotten about.

I pulled the paper out of the envelope while trying to act like I didn't care. I opened up the tri-folded paper and glanced down at the words.

Direct Admission, scholarship package, congratulations, and admitted students' day all stood out to me like they were written in a different language. A flood of nervous electricity pumped through me from my chest to every limb. I looked up from the letter with my best keep-it-together face. I felt like dancing, crying, doing anything other than standing still. I was getting the feeling that I finally won something. I felt a small twitch of something I didn't know I lost: hope.

"So, what did it say?" My mom said, making the same face she always makes when she pretends to not know something. My dad stood back, wiping his hands on a towel. A broad smile crossed his face for a small second before he forced it away.

"Well... I got accepted," I said. It came out almost monotone. Color burst through my veins as I said it.

"I KNOW!" She screamed as she ran out of the kitchen.

I tried to look at where she went, but before I could move out of my seat she came barreling back in with an opened package the size of a border collie.

"They sent a whole box with that letter," she explained. "You must have really wowed them. There are more letters in here, a shirt, a plaque, and some other things."

I looked into the box and slowly took out the contents. I put the other letter in one pile along with the shirt, the plaque in another pile, and emptied out everything else onto the table. There was a cookie, a rally towel, something that looked like a pack of coasters, and a pack of pens. I reached over to look at the letter first.

It was from a professor at the university. It looked like a generic letter, probably the one they send from the department that you apply to. I opened it to another Dear Mr. Taylor and started reading.

It got harder to believe it the further I read. It was from the dean of the arts program, and he offered me a fellowship with him. I was going to get private instruction with a few other recipients and full access to the university's supplies and spaces. What's more, I was in the running for another scholarship.

It was for a full-ride. All I had to do was paint one more thing. I was competing against the entire fine and performing arts department. That meant writers, actors, singers, instrumentalists, poets, the list went on. And I was entered straight into the pool of finalists.

I read over the letter once, twice, and three times more. I tried to make it make sense. I barely remembered my application, but I certainly remembered the painstaking steps I took to get the lighting just right on my easel.

I looked over the rest of the items in the box. The scholarship I already received was going to make a significant dent in the tuition, but that didn't mean I couldn't make use of not having tuition at all. I ran through what I might do for it.

I had neglected art for the past month. It felt odd to even think about it.

My mom wanted to celebrate, so we looked for a place to eat. The only restaurant we knew of that was open was sushi, so we went there and ate until we couldn't anymore. I could feel the cobwebbed gears turning in my mind, trying to come up with a masterpiece.

It turned out too convenient that Emma wasn't able to talk because I didn't have a clue what to say to her. Do I tell her at all? It seemed like a twist of the knife to brag about my college opportunity when she won't even be able to experience it. Once again, the hope of a miracle cure circled through my head, but I pushed it away. Instead, I enjoyed a lovely Christmas Eve while enjoying a small break in the fog covering the road ahead.