The house was still wrapped in the kind of deep quiet that only came with early mornings. My steps were soft as I climbed the stairs, careful not to wake anyone. The mug of tea I carried had gone lukewarm, the faint scent of chamomile drifting up as I reached the landing.

The conversation with Graham lingered in my chest, heavier than I expected. His words played over and over in my mind, nudging at something I had tried to bury.

“You deserve to give yourself a chance.”

I turned the knob to my door and nudged it open with my shoulder. The first thing I noticed was the soft glow of the morning light spilling across my bed. It stretched in long streaks over the quilt, touching something that hadn’t been there when I left the room.

The mug in my hand wobbled slightly as I froze.

Sitting in the center of the bed, as neatly placed as a gift, was the application package for the Toronto School of Art.

My heart gave a thud as I set the mug down on my desk, the faint clink of ceramic breaking the silence. I crossed the room slowly, my socks catching on the old hardwood floor, until I was standing at the edge of the bed.

The glossy cover of the folder gleamed faintly in the morning light. I brushed my fingers across the edge of it, tracing the embossed logo.

It had to be my mom. She must have found it buried in the drawer where I had stashed it months ago, hidden under receipts and unopened sketchbooks. I hadn’t wanted to think about it then. It had felt easier to shove it aside than to face what it represented.

But here it was again, bright and undeniable, staring up at me like a challenge.

I sat down beside it, my hands resting in my lap.

The weight of the folder seemed to grow as I stared at it. I could almost hear my mom’s voice in the back of my mind. She had always encouraged me to draw, her enthusiasm as steady and unshakable as the tides. I pictured her beaming as she handed me a box of new pencils for Christmas when I was twelve, her delight far outweighing my shy thanks.

She must have found the folder and decided I needed a nudge. Or maybe it wasn’t even her—maybe she’d mentioned it to Evelyn, who had taken matters into her own clipboard-clutching hands.

Either way, the reminder sat there, unignorable.

I let out a shaky breath and picked it up. The surface was cool under my fingertips as I flipped it open, revealing the crisp papers inside. The application checklist was still perfectly stapled to the front, untouched and pristine, like it was waiting for me.

The first thing I noticed was how heavy it felt, even though it was just paper. The second was how real it suddenly seemed, the possibility of art school rushing back into focus in a way that made my stomach tighten.

I thought about Noah, his gap-toothed smile lighting up when I showed him a sketch. I thought about my mom, juggling work and bills and a million other little things while I tried not to add another burden.

And then I thought about myself.

I thought about the way it felt to lose myself in a drawing, the world blurring at the edges until there was only the movement of the pencil, the lines coming alive under my hand. I thought about what it might be like to study art for real, to walk through Toronto’s streets with a sketchbook in my bag and ideas buzzing in my head.

It was terrifying to want something that much. Terrifying to risk failing at it.

His words echoed in my mind, steady and certain. “You’re good enough, Isla. Trust me.”

I grabbed a pen from my desk and returned to the bed, my knees curled under me. The application felt heavier as I spread it out across the quilt, my hands trembling slightly as I uncapped the pen.

For a moment, I hesitated, the first blank line staring up at me. Name.

This was it. The moment where it would all begin or end.

But Graham’s voice was there again, softer this time. You deserve to give yourself a chance.

I pressed the pen to the paper and wrote my name.

Each section came slowly at first, my fingers gripping the pen like it might slip away if I wasn’t careful. But as I moved through the forms, something in me began to relax. The fear was still there, but so was something else.

Determination.

When I reached the personal statement, my tea had gone cold, but I didn’t care.

I thought about what Graham had said about figuring out what makes you happy. I thought about the way drawing had always felt like breathing to me, as natural and necessary as anything else.

The words didn’t come easily, but when they did, they came from a place that felt true. I wrote about growing up in Twillingate, about finding inspiration in the colors of the harbour and the way the light hit the cliffs at sunset, about how much I loved creating something from nothing, and how I wanted to learn to make it better.

When I finished, I set the pen down and leaned back, staring at the papers in front of me. They weren’t perfect. My handwriting was messy in places, and I had second-guessed almost every word.

But it was done.

I folded the papers back into the folder carefully, smoothing down the edges. The weight in my chest was still there, but it felt lighter now, as if I had taken the first step onto a path I had been too afraid to follow.

My phone buzzed on the desk, and I reached for it automatically. My thumb hovered over Graham’s name in my recent messages.

I wanted to tell him what I had done. To let him know that his words had meant something. But as I stared at his name, I realized I didn’t need to.

This was my dream, my decision.

Instead, I set the phone down and smiled to myself, a quiet, private kind of smile. For the first time in a long time, I had done something just for me.