The Last One(17)

“I ran into Mrs. Norcross, her teacher, the next day. We started talking about how Bridge has a talent for drawing. And painting. She was saying that it killed her that the kids don’t get art in school any more, at least not beyond what she does with them.”

“When did they stop having art class? What happened to ...” I wracked my brain. “What was her name? Mrs. Downey?”

“Sam, Mrs. Downey was ancient when you had her, and that’s been twenty years. They had an art teacher in the elementary school until two years ago, and then they had to cut the program. Not enough money.”

“Huh.” I rinsed off my plate and put it in the dishwasher. “That sucks.”

“Yeah, it does, especially when you consider none of the sports programs were touched.”

“Sports have value, too.” I thought about my football coach from high school. Coach Trank had been the first person to show up at the house the morning after my parents had been killed. He’d stayed by my side through all the terrible decisions I’d had to make over the next few days—caskets, burial plots and church services—and even now, though he was retired and lived in Arizona, he called me every few months just to check in.

“Well, sure, but nobody’s trying to get rid of them. But they stop funding an entire program and not one of us blinks. That’s not cool.”

“Isn’t there an art teacher in town who could teach Bridget?”

Ali poured powdered soap into the detergent compartment of the dishwasher and closed it up with a click, pushing the start button. “Not that I know of. And even if there were, private lessons aren’t in our budget. You know that.”

I winced. The family farm and food stand, plus rent for the land we’d leased out to neighboring farms, paid most of the bills and kept us fed, but extra money wasn’t something we ever had to worry about. I wished I could’ve afforded to give my sister and her daughter every advantage, but it wasn’t realistic. Not yet.

“But no worries. Because I think I found the solution today.” Ali walked over to the desk, slid up the roll top, pulled out a glossy red brochure and handed it to me.

“ArtCorps.” I flipped it over. “What is this, some kind of military school?”

“No, silly.” She pointed to a list of bulleted points. “It’s a really cool volunteer program. Art students are sent into under-served communities to teach the kids. Right now, it’s new, and they’re just offering a summer course, but if it ends up taking off, Burton could apply for a year-round teacher.”

“Okay.” I gave her back the brochure. “So do you have to apply? Or I guess the school does.”

“Any member of the community can request a student artist. We had a meeting of the home and school association today, and we voted unanimously to apply.” She brought her thumb up to her mouth and bit the side of it, and instantly I was on guard. Biting her thumb was Ali’s tell. I didn’t have the whole story yet.

“And ... ?” I prompted.

She sighed and then spoke in one long sentence without coming up for a breath. “And the one condition is that room and board has to be covered by the community, meaning that the student artist has to live with someone in town for the summer. And I volunteered us.”

I groaned. “Aw, Ali, why us? We don’t even live close to the school.”

She pulled out one of the chairs from the table and sat down. “For two reasons. One, if someone didn’t volunteer, we couldn’t send in the application, and no one else was stepping up. Two, and this is key, if the art teacher lives with someone else, Bridget will get to learn in class, with other kids, and that’s great. But if the teacher lives here, with us ...” She smiled, wide and wicked. “Then Bridge gets the class and she has access to that teacher on off-hours. It’s like getting free private lessons.”

“But a stranger living with us all summer?” I flipped a chair around and straddled it, leaning my hands on the back. “What if it’s someone ... weird?”

“Sam, seriously. Why would you assume that? And the program is world-wide, so we could actually get a student from France or Spain ... wouldn’t that be amazing?”

All I could picture was trying to talk to some Goth-looking chick who couldn’t understand me. “And just how are we suppose to communicate with an art student from France? Neither of us speaks anything but English. Georgia English.”

“All the student volunteers are English-speaking. And maybe you’d learn something, too. Imagine that.”

I pushed back the chair. “I don’t need to learn anything else. I’m fine like I am.”