By the time I got to school for day two at BWH, I was late. Not because I’d overslept or forgotten to set my alarm, but because it had taken an eternity to get Zac to agree to go to school. I ended up stepping in after watching my mother negotiate unsuccessfully with him for half an hour, getting more and more worked up as she went. In the end, I promised that if he went to school, when we got home we could go to the beach and build a giant sandcastle with five turrets, secret passages for all the mouse spies, as well as a deep moat to keep enemies out. I also promised I would take him to school, despite the fact I was due in class in ten minutes.

At least my mother had done one thing right when she’d rented the monstrosity we now called home: the house was exactly four blocks from my new school and five from my brother’s. But that was its only redeeming feature. Not to sound like an art snob here, but this house was an affront to just about every single one of my aesthetic sensibilities, with its shiny, silver colonnade entrance, blue mirrored glass frontage, and the large lion sculptures with wings that flanked the biggest front door known to humankind. I couldn’t help but wonder how we’d gone from cool, downtown industrial to . . . this? Whatever this was trying so hard to be. I guess it made sense that my mother would have chosen a house like this. Over the top, shiny facade. Screaming to be seen by everyone who drove past.

It was hot again today. The weather in Cape Town was different from Joburg. The air here was thick and sticky, like stepping into a steam room, whereas home was dry. You could move through the heat freely at home, but here it felt like it clung to you, weighing you down as the day went by.

I’d anticipated the heat today, though, and was wearing much cooler clothes and extra deodorant. I’d put on my favorite T-shirt, the one with the Andy Warhol pop art soup can print. This was my go-to shirt, and slipping it on felt like chatting to an old friend. You know why I love this shirt so much? Because it takes something so ordinary—a can of Campbell’s soup—and elevates it to art. I’ve often wondered if Warhol was able to see things in everyday objects that no one else could see. Could he look below the surface of something and find the thing inside it that made it beautiful and special?