Afterward I feel much better, almost normal, hungry, even, like I’m ready to eat some pig. When I return to the table, Mom has shifted our plates around, moved me over one so she can attend to cutting Abby’s meat, I think.

Which means I’m now sitting between Mom and Billy Wong. And talking to Billy is slightly (and only slightly) less nauseating than watching my mom talk to Billy.

He’s super chatty, too. He keeps asking all these questions about school and my art stuff and how I’m enjoying the trip so far.

“It’s been enlightening,” I say through clenched teeth.

“I know exactly what you mean,” he says.

Somehow, I doubt that.

“I love all of these representations of East Asian art at this hotel,” he says. “I feel like I’m bumping into Buddha at every turn. Speaking of which, I’ve been meaning to ask something.”

Speaking of Buddha? “Yeah?” I say.

“I’d like to hire you.”

“Hire me?” I’ve done some babysitting for Peter and Josie over the years, but not for a while.

“To do a piece for us,” he clarifies. “I’d like to have a big painting of our family for over our fireplace. I know you can fake it these days, use Photoshop to doctor a photo to look like a painting and print it on canvas and so on, but I want the real deal. An artist. I think an artist can see beyond the physical sometimes, capture the essence of a person better than a photograph ever could. Don’t you think?”

“I don’t do portraits,” I say briskly. This isn’t at all true. Portraits are the main thing I do. I’m drawing and painting people in my sketchbook all the time. I did like three of them today.

“You don’t?” He sounds surprised.

“I only do landscapes,” I lie. “Watercolor, mostly.”

I did do one landscape today. But I snuck in people at the end. Possibly Billy himself.

Billy is undeterred by my reluctance. “Maybe you can do a landscape for us, then. Of Hawaii, so we can remember our trip.”

“Maybe,” I say.

But it’ll be a cold day in hell before I paint something for Billy Wong. Especially something to commemorate this particular vacation.

“That’d be awesome.” Then he finally seems satisfied that he and I have “caught up” with each other, and he turns to talk to the other person sitting next to him, who happens to be Marjorie Pearson.

“Hello, dearie,” she says.

I finish my meal in seething silence. How dare he? I keep thinking. The sheer nerve he has, that he would ask me to do something for him.

When he’s endangering my entire world. Right now, Afton is back at the room going through what I went through, Monday night. Coming to understand that life as we’ve known it is over.