I don't even know why I'm writing this because if anyone from my school found it they'd know it was me in like two seconds since there's only fifty people in my grade and everyone talks, but I feel like I'm going to actually EXPLODE if I don't say it. I'm sitting on my floor right now and my mom keeps poking her head in because she thinks I'm "just overwhelmed by the success" or whatever but really I just want to crawl under my bed and never come out again. Tonight was the big art show at the community center which is really just the basement of the library where they do the church bake sales but everyone was there, even the mayor and my art teacher Mrs. Gable who has been like, my biggest fan since I was a little kid doing finger paints. So I spent like four months on this one big painting of the old grain silo near the creek, you know the one that's all rusted out and has those vines growing all over it? Mrs. Gable kept telling me she could see my "inner soul" in the brushstrokes and my parents actually spent money they don't really have on a real wood frame for it instead of the cheap plastic ones from the pharmacy. And the thing is... I used to love it, I think. I used to stay up late and my fingers would get all stained with the oils and I thought it meant something but then halfway through—I don't even know when it happened—it just stopped. It was like I was just moving a brush around because I didn't want to admit I didn't care anymore and I was just bored of looking at the same stupid grass. Everyone was standing around it tonight with those little plastic cups of punch and they kept coming up to me and saying stuff like "oh you can really feel the loneliness of the fields" and "you have such a gift for a seventeen year old" and I just had to smile and nod like a total liar. Mrs. Gable actually started crying a little bit which made me feel like the worst person on the planet because she thinks I'm some kind of prodigy but I was looking at that painting and it felt like I was looking at a stranger's homework or something. Like it wasn't mine at all.