“No one talks to the old folks,” he says.

“We’re invisible,” I say.

The solitary days slipped by one after the other after the other. I saw a mouse once in my apartment. It stopped halfway across the living room and stared at me. I looked down at the small creature. It wasn’t scared. We were just both there at the same time. I didn’t scream. I didn’t react at all. I didn’t care about it. If that mouse continued to live in my apartment, to thrive, to mate, scurrying around, eating my crumbs, shitting in the cupboards, or if it died and started to rot in the wall that same night, I didn’t care either way. It didn’t matter to me. Alive or dead, it was there, in the wall, and it felt the same way about me.

“Are you okay?” asks Hilbert.

“I’m sorry. I was just thinking.”

“About what?”

“That it’s different here. The food. And the company,” I say. “I like it. It’s nice.”

Jack helps Pete up and asks if I can get back to my room on my own.

“Of course,” I tell him.

I already know the route between my room and where we eat. I’m feeling invigorated from my chat with Hilbert. What a morning it’s been. So much has happened. Already. It feels like I just woke up. So much has changed for me in such a short time. I feel a connection forming to the others who live here. I’m part of a group now, a community.

I walk into my room to see the light from the window spilling onto my bed. I take another step, then stop.

Sitting on my desk is a brand-new set of paints and a tin of brushes.

I walk closer. All of my favorite colors: ultramarine blue, burnt umber, alizarin crimson, cadmium red. My chest tightens as I stand over them. Something clicks inside of me. A long-forgotten buzz of potential, the same feeling from long ago.

How did these paints get here?

I reach out, lightly running my fingers along the tin and then the brushes themselves. I’ve painted for most of my life. For most of that time, it filled me with the thrill of possibility. It was an excitement I kept chasing, a feeling I couldn’t find anywhere else. A longing.

I loved starting a new portrait. For each one, the process would begin long before I would get my paints out. I wouldn’t tell anyone about it. First, I would spend hours sitting outside in the park, sketching whatever I would see. Sometimes this stage would last for weeks. He didn’t understand and would ask why I was spending all my time in the park instead of painting.

“No matter what you tell yourself, sketching in the park isn’t portraiture,” he said.

But to me it was. It was a vital step. I couldn’t skip it, and I couldn’t rush it. I enjoyed each stage of a piece equally.