Fractured Soul

The city was just like the movies, and in my mind, I was the star—mustard stain on my shirt and all. Shoving the last bite of a hot dog into my mouth, I turned to my mom with a grin. 

“Isn’t this amazing?” I asked through a mouthful of half-chewed food.

She quirked an eyebrow at me. “Incredible.” The sarcasm was real with this one. She dug a napkin out of her bag and passed it my way, pointing at a spot next to her lips. “You’ve got a little something.” 

I wiped the final evidence of street food from my mouth and sighed. With arms extended fully to both sides I looked up at the sky and spun in a circle. “I can’t believe we’re really here. Just a couple of gals in the Big Apple. Doin’ our thing. Living large.”

“Watch it!” A middle-aged man in an ill-fitting business suit barely dodged my swinging arms and scowled as he scurried past.

“Oh! Pardon me, sir. I’m so sorry!” 

He turned back over his shoulder with his eyebrows drawn even lower and hissed for good measure. I was mortified, but it elicited a giggle from my mother.

“Oh, Everly. Always a flair for the dramatics.” 

“I can’t help it. It just feels magical here. I don’t know what my future holds, but I’m glad New York is going to be a part of it for the next four to six years. It’s calling to me. I belong here.”

“You have a very vivid imagination if you think I’m paying for six years of out-of-state tuition. Four sounds good to me.” Mom’s smile faded and she turned to me with a serious expression, though her eyes still twinkled with humor. “And by the way, that’s not the sound of the city calling to you. It’s the sound of that cab honking for you to get out of the way.”

“Oh geez!” I hurried across the intersection with a squeal. 

I definitely had a few things to learn about life in the city. It was like a different planet from where I was raised. My backwards Oklahoma hometown had little more than a livestock feed shop and a gas station—neither of which had been updated since the early 1980s. We had more cows than people and all the visual appeal you’d expect from a north forty farmhouse in a field of red dirt, but it was home.

New York was a stimulus overload with flashing lights and blinking advertisements on every surface. The air was fragrant—sometimes leaving my mouth watering from the aroma of street foods and restaurants, and sometimes leaving my eyes watering from the intensity of its odors. Horns and shouts and laughter and music mixed together in a raucous symphony of noise. People brushed past in every direction, everyone in a hurry to get somewhere… or maybe nowhere, but hurrying nonetheless. Some were dressed in suits and ties like Mr. Grumpface who hissed at me, some wore sunglasses that cost more than my car, and some wore next to nothing at all. But I was definitely the only one who dressed like she was from Hibbard, Oklahoma. At least I had on my cute boots. 

But as out of place as I was, New York filled some kind of a void I’d never realized I had. It made my heart sing. The city was alive, and it made me feel more alive, as well. I was going to like it here.

“Everly?”

I snapped my gaze back toward my mother, who held a slight look of impatience. “Did you say something?”

“You have got to get your head of the clouds, girl.” She shook her head. “We have to get back to Millie’s place for dinner soon.”

“Why the rush? I just ate a hot dog the size of my forearm. I’ve got a full tank for a while.”

“She invited her friend, Claudia, over for dinner. I told her we’d be back by six.”

“Claudia with the son who goes to Columbia?”

“That’s the one.”

“I told her I’m not interested in going to Columbia. She can quit trying to lure me with cute boys.”

“Who said he was cute?”

“I just assumed. Otherwise, why would Millie bring him over to tempt me into switching schools?”

Mom pulled me behind her as we navigated through a dense crowd, and continued once it cleared out again. “Hey, I don’t blame you for choosing NYU over Columbia. I would probably do the same. But it is such an accomplishment to be accepted into an Ivy League school. I think she just wants you to be sure before you decline something like that.”

“Too late.” I shrugged. “It’s already been declined. So we can eat with Columbia Claudia and her probably cute son, but they can’t make me go there.”

Mom shook her head and laughed. “I don’t think New York is going to know how to handle you.”

“Well, they’ve got six years to figure it out.”

She shot a disapproving gaze from the corners of her eyes and held up four fingers in front of me. I took her hand and pushed three of them down, pointing her index finger at a window display up ahead. Then I swung her hand around to a copper sign with a light patina that read Rossel & Jude. Atop the sign, swinging gently with it in the breeze, sat a pure white owl. It looked a bit like the barn owls we had back home, but there wasn’t a speck of color on its snowy-white feathers.

“One more stop. I promise we’ll be quick.” I made puppy dog eyes at her. “Please? It looks so quirky and fun. It says it’s a small artist-run gallery, and that print in the window will look fabulous on my dorm room wall. Plus—that squatty little pigeon on the sign said it’s worth a look.”

I flashed a goofy grin at my mother. The color had drained completely from her face. She almost matched the bird.

“Are you joking? About the owl?” she whispered. She looked seriously disturbed.

“Of course!” I laughed. “I know it’s not a pigeon. Weird seeing it hanging out in the middle of the city though, huh? Are you lost, little guy?”

Mom turned me back to face her. “Don’t talk to it.”

“Okaaay… I was only kidding.”

“Let’s get back to Millie’s.”

“Hang on, I was being serious about that print. Can we pop in here for a second? Please? I would really like to see how much they’re charging for it. I’m sure it’s probably like five thousand bucks, because New Yorkers apparently think everyone’s as rich as Millie. But I just want to look real quick. I promise I won’t dilly-dally.”

She frowned and glanced back at the owl. It seemed to be watching us. It was honestly a little creepy, but in an intriguing way. I wondered if it was part of the exhibition inside the gallery.

“Fine. Ten minutes, tops.”

“Thank you!”

I grabbed her hand, which was frigid and clammy, and pulled her through the door. The gallery was wide open and sparse of furniture. Its tall ceilings revealed black ductwork suspended under a wooden ceiling, and the outer wall was exposed brick with enormous picture windows near the entrance. The rest of the walls were stark white, with no other distractions from the artwork inside. 

The space probably wasn’t large as far as art galleries went. It had just two main halls. One was essentially devoid of people other than my mom and me, but the other held a small crowd at the opposite end.

“Oooh, I wonder what’s over there,” I said, dragging my poor mother along behind me.

“I don’t like this,” she mumbled under her breath.

As we neared, I noticed a tall, broad-shouldered young man propped up against the wall next to the rest of the crowd. His skin was a sunkissed bronze, and his hair was tousled into messy perfection, the color of dark chocolate. But his eyes were what really caught my attention. They were an incredible amber, like honey flecked with gold leaf. And they were staring straight at me.

“I wonder if he goes to Columbia,” I snickered to my mom. But she gave no witty remark in response. Her eyes were deadlocked on the boy’s, and she was practically snarling at him. 

“Mom?” I asked. “Is something wrong?”

“We need to go, Everly. Now.”

Just then, the crowd parted ahead to reveal the art piece everyone was fawning over. A small girl tugged on her mother’s hand and pointed at me with a tiny finger. “It’s her, Mama.” 

The child’s mother turned to me with a broad smile. “It’s a remarkable piece. Truly breathtaking. The artist captured your essence beautifully.”

“Uh, thank you?” I glanced at my mom for help to get away from this crazy woman, but she was still too involved in the staredown with golden eyes to have noticed. The mother and child smiled warmly again as they moved toward the exit, and I stepped forward into their spot in the crowd. 

Finally, I saw the piece that had drawn everyone’s attention. Hanging on the wall in a gilded golden frame, illuminated by a small spotlight, was a four-foot-tall portrait of… me.