Chương 5
“I don’t have a portfolio like professionals.”
Julian looked at the folder.
“You have one.”
“It’s just drawings.”
“No.”
His answer was immediate.
“That is what you have been telling yourself.”
I looked at the pages.
For years, I had kept them hidden because I was afraid someone would confirm what my parents believed.
That they were just pictures.
That I was just pretending.
My phone buzzed.
I looked down.
My mother.
This time she was not blocked.
The message appeared.
“Your father is worried.”
I stared at it.
Julian noticed.
“Are you going to answer?”
“I don’t know.”
“What do you want to say?”
That question was harder.
Not what should I say.
Not what would make things easier.
What do I want?
I typed a response.
Deleted it.
Typed another.
Deleted that too.
Finally, I wrote one sentence.
“I’m safe.”
I did not add anything else.
My mother replied almost immediately.
“Call me.”
I locked the phone.
Julian did not comment.
He did not tell me whether I was right or wrong.
That was becoming one of the strangest things about him.
He allowed me to make choices.
A week later, I stood outside the office of the architectural company that had agreed to review my work.
I nearly turned around twice before entering.
The receptionist looked up.
“Can I help you?”
“My name is Amelie Berger.”
She checked the schedule.
“Yes.
They’re expecting you.”
Those words should not have mattered.
But they did.
They were expecting me.
Not my father.
Not a recommendation.
Not someone explaining why I belonged there.
Me.
The meeting lasted forty minutes.
The first ten were uncomfortable.
The director, a woman named Claire, asked questions I was not prepared for.
“Why do you choose these angles?”
“I don’t know.”
She raised an eyebrow.
I quickly corrected myself.
“I mean, I know when I see it.
I just don’t always know how to explain it.”
“That is honest.”
“I’m sorry.”
She smiled slightly.
“Stop apologizing.”
I realized I had said it automatically.
Again.
After the meeting, Claire asked to keep the portfolio for another week.
That was not a yes.
It was not a no.
It was something in between.
And somehow, that felt more frightening.
When I returned home, I found an envelope under my apartment door.
No stamp.
No name.
Just my handwriting on the front.
My old sketchbook.
The one I thought I had lost years ago.
I opened it carefully.
Inside the first page was a drawing I had forgotten about.
A small apartment building.
A family standing in the window.
I had drawn it when I was seventeen.
On the bottom corner, there was a sentence I had written to myself.
“I want to make places where people feel like they belong.”
I sat on the floor for a long time holding that page.
Because I finally understood why my parents’ words had hurt so much.
They had never just criticized my drawings.
They had convinced me that the person who made them was the problem.
The next morning, I placed the sketchbook beside my coffee and stared at it until the coffee went cold.
I had spent years treating my own work like something I needed to defend.
Now I had to decide whether I was willing to treat it like something that deserved effort.
That difference sounded small.
It was not.
For the first time, I opened my laptop and created a folder with my name on it.
Not “practice.”
Not “random drawings.”
Not “maybe someday.”
Just Amelie Berger.
The simple act made me uncomfortable.
It felt almost arrogant.
I deleted the folder name twice before putting it back.
That was how deep the habit went.
Even claiming ownership over my own work felt like I was taking something that did not belong to me.
Three days later, Claire from the architecture firm called.
I almost let it go to voicemail.
I watched the phone vibrate on the table while my heart started beating faster.
Old instincts told me not to answer unless I knew the outcome.
If I answered, I could be rejected.
If I ignored it, I could pretend the possibility still existed.
Then I remembered the restaurant.
The bill.
The message from my father.
The chair beneath me while everyone else kept eating.
I picked up.
“Hello?”
“Amelie?”
“Yes.”
“This is Claire.”
“I know.”
There was a short silence.
Then she laughed softly.
“I appreciate the confidence.”
My face became warm.
“Sorry.”
“There it is.”
“What?”
“The apology.”
I smiled despite myself.
“I’m working on that.”
“I hope you are.”
She paused.
“We would like you to come back tomorrow.”
My fingers tightened around the phone.
“For another interview?”
“No.”
My stomach dropped.
Not because I thought it was bad news.
Because I had no idea what came next.
“We would like to discuss a project.”
I sat down slowly.
“What kind of project?”
“The tower.”
I looked toward the window.
The same building I had drawn without knowing why.
“The one Julian mentioned?”
“Yes.”
The fact that she knew his name made me nervous.
“How involved is he?”
“Enough to connect people.”
“That sounds like a complicated answer.”
“It is.”
Claire’s voice became more serious.
“Amelie, I want you to understand something before you come in.”
“Okay.”
“We are not offering this because someone powerful asked us to.”
“Then why?”
“Because when we reviewed your drawings, the entire team had the same reaction.”
“What reaction?”
“We wanted to know what you would draw next.”
I did not know how to respond.
Nobody had ever asked that question before.
People had asked what I planned to do.
What career I wanted.
What my backup plan was.
No one had asked what came next from my imagination.
The following day, I sat in a conference room with six people who knew more about architecture than I ever would.
May you like
At first, I felt like I had accidentally walked into the wrong building.
One person discussed budgets.
