The Ticket That Stayed in My Drawer

The Ticket That Stayed in My Drawer

For the Summer That Wasn’t Challenge

By [waseem khan]

The ticket still sits in the top drawer of my desk. Folded in half, edges worn soft from the hundred times I’ve picked it up, stared at it, then put it back.

It was supposed to be the summer I’d never forget.

My summer of color, freedom, and finding my place.

A summer I had imagined for so long, it already felt like a memory even before it began.

The acceptance letter came in April—heavy cream cardstock with an embossed logo that read “Blue Pines Summer Art Academy.” It was a miracle, really. Full scholarship, three weeks of painting in the mountains, surrounded by other kids who spoke in colors and dreamed in charcoal sketches.

I told Dad first. He was standing in the garage, fixing the screen door that always stuck in the summer heat. I held the envelope against my chest like a secret. When I finally gave it to him, he opened it with grease-stained fingers, then looked at me like I had just told him I was going to the moon.

“You did this,” he said, his voice quiet and proud. “You really did this.”

We planned everything together. We printed the packing list, shopped for new brushes, and even found my old suitcase in the attic—the one with the faded sunflower sticker. Mom had used it on her last trip to see her sister. She smiled when she saw me holding it and said, “Now it’s yours to fill.”

And then—just a week before I was supposed to go—he was gone.

It was a heart attack. Sudden. Silent. Unfair.

I woke up to my mother’s scream, not the kind you hear in movies, but the kind that unzips your soul.

The days that followed were a blur of casseroles, tight hugs from people who smelled like perfume and pity, and the endless sound of my mother crying behind closed doors.

The ticket sat untouched on my nightstand.

I didn’t pack.

I didn’t reply to the final email from the camp director.

I didn’t go.

I couldn’t imagine walking into that forest of easels and introductions with a hole the size of my father carved into me. I couldn’t imagine standing in front of a blank canvas and pretending that my world hadn’t just tilted off its axis.

So instead, I stayed.

The house was quiet, heavy with the weight of absence. Every room was a reminder. His slippers by the back door. His favorite mug in the drying rack. The chair he never sat in again.

The first week, I didn’t paint at all. I couldn’t. Every time I lifted a pencil, my hand trembled. Every time I opened my sketchbook, it stared back at me like a dare I couldn’t meet.

But grief is strange. It doesn’t move in straight lines. It curls around you, stubborn and alive. It waits.

And then, one morning, it whispered.

It was a Tuesday. Hot. Quiet. The kind of summer day when the air feels sticky and slow. I sat in my room, watching dust dance in a beam of sunlight. I didn’t think. I just opened the drawer, took out my sketchpad, and started.

At first, it was just lines. Sharp, angry, aimless.

Then shadows. Then shapes.

Then something began to form—his eyes. Not exactly, but the way they crinkled at the corners when he smiled. Then the outline of his hands, always calloused, always gentle. Then the garage, the unfinished screen door, the sunflower sticker on the suitcase.

I painted like I was trying to stitch him back together with brushstrokes.

Every day, a new piece of memory poured out onto the page.

Some days I cried while I painted. Some days I smiled.

Some days I didn’t feel anything at all.

But I kept painting.

That summer became a gallery of grief—hung in my room, taped to the walls, stacked against the corners. I painted our last breakfast together. The porch swing he built. The way the sky looked the night before he died, bleeding pink and gold like it already knew.

My mother watched quietly. She didn’t say much, just brought me lemonade or left a bowl of peaches beside me. But one night, she sat beside me and ran her hand along one of the canvases.

“He would’ve loved this,” she said.

I nodded. I didn’t need to say anything.

I think he already knew.

Now, a year later, I’m finally going to camp. Not the same one—Blue Pines closed during the winter due to lack of funding—but another one, smaller, closer. They offered me a place after seeing some of my work online. They called it “emotionally mature.” I don’t know what that means. I only know I painted what hurt.

Still, before I go, I open the drawer.

The original ticket is still there—creased, faded, silent.

I don’t throw it away.

I smooth it out and place it in a frame beside my newest painting.

A father and a daughter, sitting on the porch, hands wrapped around mugs of tea.

The screen door in the background.

The sunflower suitcase at their feet.