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“Not yet.” She didn’t budge a millimeter, her eyes landing on my Kobe statue. She inched closer to it.
“Is this like some famous basketball player?” She ran her manicured fingers along his backside.
“Get your hands off it! Now!”
Ignoring me, she defiantly lifted the statue off the table and examined it, flipping it around and on its sides. I wanted to grab it from her but feared there would be a tug-of-war. The fragile statue could get caught in the crossfire and be destroyed.
“Please, Tanya. Put it down!”
She fired me a smug smirk. “No worries.”
To my utter horror, she let go of the statue. With an ear-splitting crash, it fell to the cement floor and shattered into smithereens.
“Oh my God! What did you just do?”
“Duh! You told me to let go of the statue and put it down. So I did.”
Tears choking my throat, I jumped off my stool and crouched down on the floor. I looked up at Tanya. “Go. Please go!”
“No problemo. Night-night. And sweet dreams!”
So distraught, I didn’t watch her leave. My eyes flooding, I stared at the scattered fragments of my Kobe masterpiece. It was as shattered as my heart had been when he’d left our planet.
Ashes to ashes. Dust to dust.
Beyond repair.
Holding a jagged piece between my fingers, I collapsed onto the floor and lost it. Sobbing uncontrollably. My shoulders heaving, my nose running, I was totally, utterly, positively defeated. Tanya was destroying my life and now she had destroyed my precious statue.
Remarkably, the only part that wasn’t destroyed was Kobe’s head. Detached from his body, it was miraculously intact and in one piece. Carefully, I picked it up and held it in the palm of my hand. I stared at it, tears blurring my vision and coating the clay.
Then suddenly, I remembered Kobe’s credo: The very moment you give up is the very moment you let someone else win. More or less his words, I absorbed them like osmosis. They sank under my skin and flooded my being. Like a sad drooping flower perked up by water, I stood up.
My sobs subsided. I placed a damp cloth over my mother’s bust, put my materials away, and turned off the lights. With resolve, I strode out of my studio. Each step stronger. More determined.
I wasn’t going to give up.
I wasn’t going to let Tanya win.
NINETEEN
PAIGE
Taking down Tanya was proving harder than I’d thought. Each day, she grew more popular at school and ingratiated herself further with my parents. I swear, if my mother had to pick a favorite, she’d pick Tanya and she wasn’t even her child.
Tanya had gotten involved with all Mom’s charities; they went shopping together, often coming home with matching outfits; they got their nails done together; they tried out new recipes together, and I’d more than once caught them sharing a bottle of wine. Natanya, my new nickname for them, was also planning our annual holiday trip to Hawaii, a place I had no interest in going back to. Been there; done that. I wasn’t someone who liked to veg out on a beach, sunbathe, or catch waves. Though I must say the possibility of a tsunami wave taking out our bikini-clad exchange student was quite enticing.
I really wanted to go to Mexico—specifically to Mexico City to see Frida Kahlo’s Blue House and the outlying pyramids and then to nearby San Miguel de Allende, an artists’ colony that was supposed to be as beautiful as it was inspirational. Will thought that would be cool too, but no one listened to what we wanted. My father berated us, saying how stupid it would be to go to a dangerous country where we could get kidnapped by a Mexican cartel. That only fueled a new evil fantasy—a Mexican drug lord kidnapping Tanya, torturing her, and threatening to cut off her pretty little head if my father didn’t pay the ransom.
Too bad the latter wasn’t likely because Tanya had my father wrapped around her pretty little finger. She was a total kiss-up, always complimenting him on everything, from his attire to his cologne. She took up jogging and went running with him in the mornings before school (which made her already enviably long, toned legs even more toned), and took an extreme interest in his business dealings. One weekday when we had no school, she’d accompanied him to his office and spent the entire day there.
That night, my dad came home with boundless energy. At the dinner table, he couldn’t stop raving about how helpful Tanya had been. How smart she was! She had a huge career in finance ahead of her and was half-serious when he said he was going to make her his business partner after she graduated Stanford. I swear he was treating her like she was his flesh and blood.
If you asked me, the only talent she had with numbers was gaining new Instagram followers, now close to ten thousand. It was seriously hard to believe she was so smart. For over a month, she’d begged me to help her with her Stanford application. Especially her personal statement essay with the prompt: “What Will Make You Stand Out at Stanford?” I’d practically spat in her face and told her if she was Stanford material, she could do it herself.
To appease my father, I applied to his alma mater early action, which, unlike early decision, allowed me to apply to other colleges and hold off until May to commit if I was accepted. My heart set on RISD, it took me forever to write the last personal statement essay. I must have tossed a hundred different versions into the garbage. Finally, I settled on one and submitted it just before the deadline. Tanya had submitted hers a few weeks before me. Part of me wanted to see what she’d written and have a good laugh. I will stand out at Stanford because I’ll be the dumbest blonde on campus. That’s what I would have written.
The time I spent on my Stanford application paled compared to the time I spent putting together a portfolio of my work for RISD. I poured everything I had into it because I wanted it to be outstanding. RISD was as hard as Stanford to get into, with only twelve percent of applicants accepted. My father was still adamantly opposed to me becoming a sculptor. He felt it was not only a waste of time, but a waste of my life and a waste of his money. He continued to threaten that he wouldn’t pay a dime of my tuition if I went there. Maybe I’d get a scholarship.
