Free So Damn Beautiful (A New Adult Romance) by L.J. Kennedy Page B

high-school art
books. Nobody was having civil discussions about beauty and the
Muses, from what I could see. Everything was way more intense than
I’d expected. The business of making and showing art was full of
complicated politics and voices vying to be heard. I knew I had my
own opinions, but they seemed embarrassingly simplistic compared
with everyone else’s.
    I looked over at the wastepaper basket next
to my bed; in it was the dress I’d worn that night, a sad and
crumpled reminder of my hopes and dreams . . . which seemed to be
fading as fast as those wine stains were setting in.
    I frowned. Get it together, Annie—quit
with the melodrama , I scolded myself. You’re just as urbane
and smart as all those art-school dropouts, especially Chase
Adams .
    All I had to do was figure out where I fit in
the midst of it all. What made me special?
    I had a sudden flashback to the time my
mother bought our current house in Apple Creek. I was only twelve,
and after years of shabby apartment living and my mom’s storing up
all the money that didn’t go into my college fund, we bought a
fixer-upper on the outskirts of town, close to a small wooded area
with a creek and little trails that went into out-of-the-way
gullies and secret picnic spots. I loved that we were so close to
nature, but the house itself needed a lot of TLC. When we first
moved in, there was no insulation in the walls, and the windows and
floors had to be completely redone. I even remember finding a small
family of raccoons in the musty basement our first week there. The
entire situation was a rude awakening about what it meant to make a
home livable.
    I immediately took responsibility for
decorating. I went to the library and looked up color swatches in Martha Stewart Living , scouted flea markets and estate sales
for handmade pottery and one-of-a-kind antiques, found exotic
tchotchkes at the local Tibetan store, convinced my mom to splurge
on the occasional giclée print by Chagall or Monet, knitted
colorful throws cobbled together from yarn I’d found in the bargain
bins at Marshalls, and even learned how to make mosaics and stained
glass to add a little oomph to boring desk lamps and shabby-looking
windows. We didn’t have a lot of money, but I was committed to the
task of making our home beautiful, warm, and inspiring.
    “Where other people saw a dump, Annie saw
possibility,” my mom proudly told her friends, who always remarked
on how unique and lively our home felt.
    I widened my eyes. That was exactly what New
York needed and was sorely lacking. There was art all over the
place, but it felt mostly like a bunch of showpieces meant to
impress a small, select group of tastemakers. The thing that was so
awesome about art at museums like the Louvre was that most people
could come to a consensus on the fact that the work was beautiful.
Here, beauty didn’t seem to matter as much as the spectacle. And as
much as the big city enthralled me and lit up my eyes with stars, I
was damn near over the spectacle.
    Good art was about making people, even those
of us who lived in concrete jungles, stop to meditate on it. It
would create not just an intellectual response but a felt sense
that here was something special, something to be revered and awed
by. My ideal art wouldn’t just catch the eye; it would also capture
a viewer’s soul.
    That’s when I got my burst of
inspiration.
    “I know where I fit in this world! I’m the
beautifier!” I said out loud. Kendra snored a little bit louder,
and this time, it was music to my ears.
    Beauty was such a retro concept in art that
it simply had to come back around sometime soon. And I would
be just the person to resurrect it. I thought of all the public
beautification projects in cities around the world, which were
meant to transform urban eyesores into spaces of contemplation—what
if we could do something like that with Quentin’s exhibit?
    “My name is Annie Green, and I believe that
the best kind of art has