“Ooh, what’s this?”
Bitter made a half-hearted attempt to snatch it back. “None of your damn business.”
“He’s a keeper if he buying you gifts,” Blessing noted as she lifted the lid of the box and sniffed at the tamarind balls. “These smell good!”
“You can’t have any.”
“Girl, I don’t want your love candies.” She winked at Bitter and put the bag on a table. “Is this what you’re wearing for your portrait?”
Bitter glanced down at her pinstriped overalls and her paint-splattered sweater. “Yeah. Is that a problem? You said to dress like I would normally dress. I was supposed to change clothes?”
Blessing waved a hand and shook her head. “Nah, you good. You look like yourself. That’s what we want.” She had already set up the backdrop they’d designed together earlier that week, a terra-cotta sheet that Bitter had painted with liberal streaks of green and pink accented by a few touches of white. Blessing stepped behind her camera to adjust the lens, gesturing for Bitter to take her position, and a familiar warmth spread through Bitter’s chest.
When she’d first come to Eucalyptus, she hadn’t looked or felt like herself. In fact, she couldn’t have told anyone what that even meant. The man and woman who had housed her insisted that she wear her hair straight, and even when Bitter refused to relax it, they made her iron it until every curl was flat and dead. She tried to coax the curls back when she moved into Eucalyptus, but they were as hurt as her heart—wilted and folded—and so Bitter had ended up sobbing in front of a bathroom mirror and hacking away at her damaged hair with a pair of blunt scissors she’d borrowed from the reception desk. Blessing had walked in then, all holographic stickers and flawless eyeliner, and the two girls had stared at each other for a few seconds before Blessing said, “I can shave it off for you if you want.” As if it was no big deal. As if it wasn’t years of bad life caught up in there. Bitter hadn’t even trusted herself to speak, so she’d just nodded, and Blessing had burst into animated movement, and within an hour, Bitter was looking at someone new in her reflection, curls cut low to her head, her cheekbones high and proud.
“I gotta take a picture of you,” Blessing had said, darting out of the room and returning with her camera. That was the first portrait they’d made together, and it was one of the first times Bitter could look at an image of herself and feel like she wasn’t looking at a stranger formed by someone else’s hands. The two girls made it into a tradition, and now Bitter stood in Blessing’s studio surrounded by the images her best friend had made. Blessing had a gift for excavating a person’s spirit until it shone through their face and could be seized in her camera.
Bitter tugged at the neck of her sweater. “You sure you don’t want me in some earrings or something?” she asked.
Blessing rolled her eyes. “Since when do you wear earrings?”
“I does wear them sometimes!”
“Yeah, sure.” Blessing grinned at her. “Your makeup looks great—don’t even worry about jewelry. Plus, you already have your lip ring in.” She passed over a paintbrush tipped in yellow. “Just hold this up, please.”
“Really?” Bitter’s voice was colored in skepticism. “A painter holding a paintbrush?”
Blessing shot her a stern look. “Yes. You got a problem with holding a tool of your trade?”
Bitter shrugged. “It a little obvious, you don’t think?”
“Chile, you walk around literally covered in paint,” Blessing retorted. “I think we’re well past the point of obvious. Raise your arm some more.”
Bitter held back a retort and kept quiet as Blessing directed her for the next several shots. Her best friend wasn’t wrong—it was just that Bitter felt a little silly if she thought too hard about identifying as a painter. No one had told her until Eucalyptus that it was something she could do seriously, and Blessing was one of the loudest voices insisting that Bitter was a real artist, forcing her to hold a brush and stare into a camera and, for those minutes, not pretend she was something different or someone less. Would she be able to hold on to herself if she left the school and went back out into the world? Miss Virtue had made it sound like it was possible to build a safe place anywhere, as long as you had the right people, but Bitter wasn’t quite sure she believed that.
Blessing lifted up her camera and stepped around to show Bitter some of the shots. “You look amazing, sis,” she said, her voice gentle as she tilted the screen.
Bitter stared down, and her mouth curved into a small smile. There she was. Brush held up like a flag, eyes staring forward like there was nothing to be afraid of behind her, looking like herself.
A wave of gratitude flooded her, for everything: for Miss Virtue reminding her that this was a forever home, for Aloe and sweet little things he brought with his hands, for Blessing and the way she made sure Bitter remembered herself.
“Thank you,” she whispered, so softly that she wasn’t sure her friend could hear her, but then Blessing wrapped her arms tightly around Bitter and squeezed hard.
“I got you,” Blessing said, as if she could tell that Bitter had been scared, as if she wanted to drown out the fear. Bitter took a deep breath and hugged her best friend back, knowing that no matter what happened, at least she could count on being safe in Blessing’s eyes.
A week later, Bitter was pacing nervously in her room, watching the time slip past on her nightstand clock.
“Cyah believe I agree to this,” she grumbled to herself, worry fluttering in her stomach.
She desperately wanted to draw one of her little creatures, just so she could feel grounded, but she only had a few minutes before Aloe showed up with Eddie. He’d insisted on mediating a conversation between them—the peacemaker in him couldn’t sit still with two people he cared about hating each other that much. In the short time since their first date, Aloe had slipped into Bitter’s life so seamlessly, so easily, that it was terrifying for Bitter, who felt like she could barely remember a time when Aloe wasn’t there. Blessing and Alex loved him because although he was gentle, he wasn’t afraid to argue with Bitter. He pushed where anyone else would have stepped back, and inch by reluctant inch, Bitter found herself stretching into someone she didn’t quite know she could be. She didn’t get as defensive when debating with her friends, and she was learning how to stay and talk things through instead of shutting down and withdrawing. Aloe saw the world with such expansiveness that it widened her own field of vision. It softened her armor just seeing how soft he was. That was why she’d told him the truth about her and Eddie, after he kept asking why they got on each other’s nerves so much. Aloe wasn’t someone who deserved to be kept in the dark, but that didn’t make telling him the truth any easier.
“We hooked up, okay?” Bitter had finally yelled after he brought it up for what felt like the thousandth time. “God, you does keep asking and asking!” She pulled anger around her like a warm and spiky blanket. Eddie was his friend—he was probably going to take her side. “We hooked up and I ghosted her because she doh ever stop talking about the damn revolution, looking at me like I eh doing enough to change the world. I not into all that! I just want peace and quiet.” Bitter had slumped down on Aloe’s bed, keeping her head low because she didn’t want to meet his eyes. “Now yuh know. I was an asshole. Happy now?”