“It’s important,” I said.

“Whatever,” she said, and put her earbud back in.

Art Show

I did some research on Samoa. Guess what I found out?

Government officials from different areas in Samoa are called matais. There are twenty-five thousand matais in Samoa, and only five percent are girls. One of the coolest people I’ve found is a woman who was once the Minister of Communication and Technology in Samoa. Her name is Safuneitu’uga Pa’aga Neri.

There’s pretty much not a more spectacular name on the planet.

Other things I found out?

The Samoan islands were made from volcanoes. That means volcanoes under the ocean erupted in huge explosions and then boom, Samoa. How marvelous is that? There are places on the islands that are big fields of hard, dried lava.

That night we piled into the car for the high school art show, where Dad’s students present their work. They do an opening show and closing show each school year, and it’s pretty much a holiday in our family, where we go out to dinner and get ice cream and everything. So on the way to the show I told Dad about someone I’d discovered in my research, a Samoan painter named Fatu Feu’u. He’s from a village in Samoa and has paintings in collections all around the world.

Dad showed us around the halls, giving us a tour of his students’ artwork like he was a curator at a museum. The students had done a shadow-hands assignment, Dad explained, with charcoal and conté crayon. The works looked almost like cave paintings. Dad took us down the row one by one, talking about how they’d been studying positive and negative space, how the lines weren’t drawn, only implied. He called the students his kids, like he always did, and since my dad had so much awesome I didn’t mind sharing. He looked as proud as if they’d discovered a new species or conquered Everest.

After the show we went out for our traditional ice cream excursion. I sent Thomas a Marco Polo of some pictures I’d taken of the artwork, and he responded with a message showing himself holding up a totally terrible stick figure drawing and I laughed so hard I almost choked on my rocky road. Nonny also kept saying thanks to Mom and Dad for taking care of her and buying her ice cream, and I’m pretty sure that financial black hole is always sucking at her thoughts.

I showed Dad some paintings by Fatu Feu’u on my phone. They’re colorful patterns like a quilt, with flowers and shapes and sometimes wide-eyed faces popping out. I wondered if Talia had ever heard of the village he was from. Or if, just maybe, her ancestors were from around the same place.

Dad liked the paintings, and thought he could maybe even show them in his art class. Do a pattern assignment, maybe. I told Dad about an art organization that Fatu Feu’u started with some of his friends. Dad said he seemed really cool.