THE BIG CATCH (AND I DON’T MEAN FISH)

Except, of course, it wasn’t exactly that simple. (It never is, right?)

After the tour, Mrs. Ling sat us all down in one of the art rooms and gave us a big talk.

It started off with the usual stuff about rules, and classes, and I’m not sure what else, because I wasn’t exactly listening. I was still too excited about everything else.

But then, right near the end, she threw in the big catch.

“Boys and girls, I believe every one of you can do extremely well here,” she said. “However—

“—not every student is invited back to Cathedral at the end of the year.”

Now she had my attention. And there was more too.

“As some of you already know, all visual arts students at Cathedral are required to reapply for the program after our Spring Art Show in March,” Mrs. Ling said. “In the meantime, if you can’t keep up with your academic classes and your art assignments, and show us that you really want to be here, you might find yourself somewhere else next fall.”

In other words, if I couldn’t figure out a way to do this…

… then at the end of the year, I was going to be doing this:

To be honest, up until then I kind of thought it was a big deal that I had gotten into Cathedral at all. But it turned out that was the easy part.

Getting in was one thing.

Now I had to figure out how to stay in.