Page 92 of Yumi and the Nightmare Painter

The table fell silent. Yumi could practicallyfeeltheir sense of betrayal. Their frustration, anger. Even hatred? And who could blame them?

She wanted to defend him. She couldn’t find the words. They were ephemeral, like a prayer she had heard only once.

“What I don’t get,” she eventually said, “is why you thought he would even make it into this Dreamwatch. You said they only take the best artists, right?”

“The best of the best,” Masaka whispered.

“So why would you think they’d take Nikaro?” Yumi said. “I mean, he’s capable, but…surely the Dreamwatch wants someone who can do something more than paint bamboo or the occasional face from a few quick lines.”

The others frowned, and Akane pulled back, looking at Yumi with a frown.

“Huh,” Izzy said. “I assumed his family would know. Something else he lied about, I guess.”

“What?” Yumi said.

“Yumi,” Akane replied, “Nikaro is the singlemost talentedartist I’ve ever met. He’s amazing.”

“The rest of us,” Tojin said, “we came to painter school on a whim. We showed some aptitude, took a class or two, and got selected. Nikaro? He’d dedicated hislifeto getting into that school—to doing this job. He showed us things he’d done as a child. He’d been painting from the day he could hold a brush.”

“I believed him,” Akane said. “After seeing what he could do…I absolutely believed, and still do. He said he’d given everything, every day of his life, to learning how to paint so he could join the Dreamwatch. That’s why we believed him. When we met him, it seemed inevitable he’d get in.”

“The Dreamwatch must have seen something we didn’t,” Tojin said. “Still seems strange they rejected him. But who knows. Maybe he didn’t even go to the audition? Wouldn’t be the biggest lie he’s told.”

“Yeah,” Izzy said, “or maybe they can just smell a liar. The Dreamwatch are about protecting people’s dreams—not crushing them. Nikaro would eventually have wandered off and let someone get eaten by a nightmare because he found a neat wall to stare at.”

Yumi took it all in, feeling overwhelmed. A stack of stones gone way too high, and teetering with every shift in the breeze. “Excuse me,” she said. “I…need some time.”

She fled, and they let her. Minutes later, she tore into Painter’s apartment and rushed to the trunk at the foot of his futon. She tossed aside the supplies and pulled out the portfolio at the bottom. She’d promised not to open it. But what was a promise made to someone like him?

She ripped it open.

And found wonder inside.

Gorgeous paintings of startling skill. She gasped, putting a hand to her lips. Dozens and dozens of amazing pieces, incredible in their variety. Streets that seemed to come alive. People with glittering eyes, smiling from the page. Architecture that made her feel small. Then intricately detailed pictures of flowers that made her feel she was a giant.

He could somehow make the ink flow through a thousand different shades to give afeelingof color. Animpressionof liveliness. Asemblanceof motion. Frozen pieces of time, committed to the page, with even the distant people in the background conveying emotion with the slope of their posture and the shades of the light around them.

Here, buried at the bottom of a trunk, weremasterpieces.

“I knew it would go poorly,” Painter’s voice said from behind.

Yumi jumped, spinning to find him standing in the doorway. She blushed, caught right in the act, but he didn’t say anything about her violation of his privacy. He merely leaned against the frame of the open door, his eyes distant.

“I was going to go walk the city tonight,” he said, “but then I realized where you’d come. So I thought it best to just get it over with, you know?”

“I…” What did she say? She didn’t know how to ask someone to pass the salt. She couldn’t handlethis.

“I knew it would go poorly with the others,” he repeated. “That it would blow up on me, back in school? I knew. I recognized the anger they’d feel when they found out. How my lies would ruin and break everything. I knew. Over the months, I’ve wondered: Is it better? Better that Iunderstoodwhat I was doing? Or would it have been better if I’d somehow done it by accident?”

“Why?” Yumi finally whispered. “Why didn’t you justtellthem that you didn’t get accepted to the Dreamwatch?”

“Why, why, why…” He slumped against the doorframe. “I’ve asked thatevery day. Why didn’t I justsaysomething?” He looked away, out the window, his gaze vacant. “When we first met and they saw my art, it was the first time anyone had ever beenexcitedby what I could do. My parents didn’t want a painter. It’s a low-class job. They hated that all I wanted was ink and a page…”

He shrugged. “I met Akane first; you know how she is. I soon had a whole group of friends, adopted right in. And they gushed over what I could do. Theycaredabout it. We spent that entire first year planning. Talking about what we’d do in the Dreamwatch—me as the central soldier, them as my companions. Everything was pinned on me getting in.”

He looked at her, his eyes glistening. “Then…I didn’t make it. Not good enough. Poor style. Bad grasp of perspective. Even still, I can’t see my flaws. I can’t understand why. I’m so bad at art that I can’t evenseewhy I got rejected. It crushed me, Yumi. Itdestroyedme.

“I went to the others. I knew I needed to tell them. Iknewit. Stupid, stupid,stupid! Everything would have been different if I’d simplysaid it. But I had just been ripped apart, and I saw the hope in their eyes, and I couldn’t crush it. I couldn’t do to them what had just been done to me. I…Icouldn’t.”

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