“Yeah. Saylor was just telling me something. Your mom’s home, right? I gotta show her some stuff from the party.”
“In her office.”
“Cool, I’ll be back to kick Axel’s ass in a minute.”
“No, you won’t!” Axel yells from the living room.
I head down to their home office. Mr.Rick is in the corner sorting through the half-filled boxes of T-shirts they keep in the house. Miss Kelly is at her drafting table working on something on her tablet. I knock on the open door.
“Is now a good time?” I ask.
“Hey! Yeah, come in.” Miss Kelly pushes her chair back and puts up her pencil.
“Heaven, it’s been a whole two hours since I’ve seen you. How are you doing?” Mr.Rick says. He absolutely ate it at the skate park earlier but managed to walk away with just a scrape on his tattooed elbow. We’re all glad he survived.
“I’m good.” I laugh. “I wanted to show your wife the results from the party.”
“Oh, good. I was waiting. How was it?” she says, waving me over as she stands. I cross the room and join her.
“It was interesting. I was really nervous at first, but after the first three, I settled into it. The hard part was not rushing. Like making sure the lines were still good and the kittens looked like kittens and not sad blobs at the beach.”
“You hear that?” Miss Kelly says to her husband.
“Yup,” Mr.Rick says with a smile and a nod. “You’re learning all the tough stuff early. You sign up to do a convention and offer to do a hundred flash pieces in two days,and pray to God you remember how to move your fingers by the time you get to the last one.”
“And then you realize you should never do a hundred flash pieces back-to-back ever again,” Miss Kelly adds. “But the party was good? Mrs.Ford had everything you needed?”
“Yup, it went pretty smoothly. And she tagged me in her video too.”
“She sent it to me this morning.”
“I—I can’t imagine doing that much to promote my work,” I say, suddenly thinking about Saylor and how upset she is.
“I mean, you don’t have to,” Miss Kelly replies. “Not likethat. Her content is her job. That’s her product. She’s the product actually, but I didn’t tell you to get your socials up because I think you need to become an influencer.”
I don’t mean for my sigh of relief to be so loud, but I’m sure Axel and Jake hear it in the other room.
“You are an artist, full stop—unless you want to become an influencer,” she says.
“I do not.”
“Well, there you go. Leave that to people who want that life. You focus on what you love and improving your craft. All of this”—she gestures to my phone—“don’t worry about it.”
I am worried, though, I almost tell her. I’m nervous that this kind of intense posting will overwhelm me, like I will turn into a mega influencer just to prove how good of a tattoo artist I can be. Or maybe I’m worried that I’ll become the kind of person Saylor sees in her mom, where all that matters is the content. I almost tell Miss Kelly and Mr.Rick,who is still busy separating T-shirts, about everything. About me and Saylor and why I’m really feeling a little in over my head.
“Mrs.Ford tagged me, and I got a bunch of DMs asking me to do more parties for other kids.”
“Yeah, that was a possibility. Your flash was super cute. Do you want to do that? I mean, you can look at it like a face painting gig. There is a lot of money in that.”
“No,” I say confidently.
“Okay.” Miss Kelly laughs. “Well, just politely tell them this was a onetime thing and then I think you should tell Mrs.Ford it was a onetime thing, so she doesn’t start telling people to contact you for future gigs, if she hasn’t already.”
The idea of my inbox flooding with moms from around LA makes my stomach turn, but I’m glad I have Miss Kelly back up my hell no.
“I wanted to post the kitten series on my page, but now I’m not sure.”
“I think they are super cute, and there is a whole clientele for cute pieces. And they are yours. They aren’t the property of Cristine Ford.”