CHAPTER 1: The Drawing Everyone Wanted

The sketch had been Hana’s secret for three months.
It was a portrait of her mother standing at a kitchen sink at dawn, steam rising around her face, one hand resting on a cracked mug. Hana had drawn it from memory after her mother’s night shift, when the apartment was quiet and the city outside still looked half asleep.
Ms. Carter called it the most honest piece Hana had ever made.
The school wanted to submit it to the statewide young artists showcase. The winner would receive a scholarship, a museum display, and the kind of attention that changed a student’s future.
Whitney wanted that future too.
She came from a family that treated awards like furniture. If there was an empty place on the wall, someone bought or borrowed something impressive to fill it.
But Hana did not have a wall full of trophies.
She had a mother who worked double shifts and a desk beside a window that stuck in winter.
She had talent, patience, and hands that turned grief into clean lines.
That was what Whitney could not forgive.
Not that Hana had less.
That she could still create more.