The Sketch that Wasn't

The gallery smelled of fresh paint and potential. White walls stretched high, polished concrete floors echoing the clicks of careful footsteps. It felt sterile and alive all at once.

Harsh gallery lights shone like interrogators, illuminating every imperfection on the canvas, every decision made by trembling hands. A lot of art appraisers were in flocks judging the best murals to be displayed. Talia watched by the window, anxious to hear their response.

Talia had submitted to the Halewood Spring Exhibition. Not because she wanted fame—she hated attention—but because her late mother had once whispered, “Your work deserves walls.”

She spent months on it, her masterpiece. Dedicating times out of her daily life not that she had one. She wasn’t expecting for her sketch to be the best but maybe-maybe it might be the thing that gets her out of this…funk.

She walked past the gallery twice before daring to go in.

Her name wasn’t on the wall. Her sketch wasn’t there.

The curator had smiled, kindly but dismissively, and said, “We’re leaning toward bolder work this year. More color. More... impact.”

Talia nodded like it didn’t hurt.

But when she stepped back into the gray-blue of early evening, it did. Quietly. Like a bruise under the skin.

That night, she didn’t speak to anyone. Didn’t eat. Just sat on the floor of her studio apartment, her mother’s old cardigan wrapped around her like armor. She drew until her hand cramped, sketching Sunny’s face from memory. Gentle eyes. Laugh lines. The ghost of a song in his smile.

The sketch wasn’t perfect. Neither was she.

But it was honest.

Impactful to her.