Chapter 2

Contains spoilers

Summary

  • Yara is abruptly awakened by her alarm at 6:20 AM and notices she has several notifications on her phone.
  • After a hot shower, she prepares her daughters, Mira and Jude, for school, making sure they have their breakfast and packed lunches with notes inside.
  • On the drive to work, Yara operates automatically and realizes upon arrival that she doesn't remember the drive or dropping her daughters at school.
  • She reflects on how her days have become a blur and worries about her tendency to forget chunks of time.
  • Yara arrives at Pinewood College campus, admires its autumn beauty and heads to her office in the Humanities Building where she plans her day, feeling isolated.
  • Her job is mostly repetitive graphic design work, despite her qualifications and desire to teach art full-time.
  • She recalls how her request to teach additional art courses has been continually deferred by Jonathan, the director, due to "budget cuts".
  • Yara remembers past tension with Jonathan, who once criticized her for highlighting non-white artists in her art class.
  • She follows her daily routine of preparing course materials and feels disconnected from the carefree students outside.
  • Her journey to the college involved overcoming her conservative upbringing and an arranged marriage that quickly transplanted her to North Carolina.
  • In college, Yara felt out of place among her more experienced and confident peers while grappling with her own insecurities and immigrant background.
  • Despite her academic achievements, Yara continues to feel inadequate and limited by her past.
  • However, she finds solace and freedom in painting quietly at home, a stark contrast to her usual state of mind overwhelmed by self-doubt and life's pressures.
  • She works on taking photos of various campus activities, feeling momentarily at peace and purposeful, as she did while painting.
  • Yara captures images that reveal the intimate and mundane aspects of campus life, sharing them on the college's social media.
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