Ezra had never thought of himself as a “math guy,” but after a summer of hands-on problem-solving at the job site, something had changed. Math wasn’t just numbers on a page anymore. It was angles, weight distribution, leverage—real, practical knowledge that made or broke the integrity of a structure.

  So when his teacher introduced trigonometry to the css and asked if anyone had an easy trick to remember common angles, Ezra grinned.

  “Yeah, actually,” he said, standing up. “You’ve got one built into your hands.”

  The css gave him the usual mix of half-curious, half-bored stares, but Ezra stepped up to the board confidently.

  “Alright,” he said, stretching his left hand out. “This right here? 90 degrees. Your thumb and pinky make a right angle. If you bring in the rest of your fingers, you can start breaking it down.” He folded in his middle and ring fingers, leaving his thumb and index finger at a smaller angle. “This is about 45 degrees. Open it a little wider, and you get 60.”

  The teacher, who had been leaning against his desk, suddenly straightened. “Wait… that actually makes sense.”

  Ezra held up both hands together, thumbs touching. “And if you use both hands, you’ve got 180 degrees—a straight line.”

  The css stirred with excitement, a few students testing it out, while the teacher stared at his own hands like he had just discovered a new w of physics.

  Ezra grinned. He had spent years thinking school was separate from the real world, but now?

  Now he saw how experience fed into knowledge, and knowledge back into experience.

  Despite his newfound appreciation for math, it wasn’t numbers that captivated Ezra this fall.

  It was art.

  It had started as an accident—he had been killing time after school, wandering the halls, when he stumbled upon the art club. At first, he had just watched from the doorway, intrigued by the smell of paint and the quiet intensity of students hunched over their work.

  Then, the teacher had noticed him.

  “You’re either lost,” the man said, gncing up from his sketchbook, “or curious.”

  Ezra had half a mind to leave, but something about the way the teacher said it—like he was inviting him in without actually inviting him—made him hesitate.

  “I guess I’m curious,” Ezra admitted.

  That was how it started.

  And that was how Ezra met the man who would change the way he saw the world.

  The art teacher was a different kind of person. He wasn’t like Mr. Harding, who saw the world through logic and precision. He wasn’t like Bubba and the crew, who viewed things in practical, problem-solving ways.

  He was something else entirely.

  His name was Mr. Whitaker, and he had once been a millionaire.

  “A lifetime ago,” he said casually one day, as he and Ezra sat at a long table covered in charcoal and paint tubes. “I sold paintings for tens of thousands of dolrs.” He smirked. “People thought I was brilliant.”

  Ezra raised an eyebrow. “And now you’re here?”

  Whitaker chuckled, scratching at his graying beard. “Life has a way of humbling you.”

  Ezra waited, sensing that there was more.

  Whitaker exhaled, gncing down at his hands. “There was a fire,” he said simply. “My studio. My work. Everything. Gone in one night.”

  Ezra’s stomach tightened. “Damn.”

  Whitaker shrugged. “That’s life, kid. You don’t own anything. You just get to borrow it for a while.” He tapped his charcoal against the paper. “But you know what’s funny? I thought losing all my paintings would destroy me. But it was the best thing that ever happened.”

  Ezra blinked. “How?”

  Whitaker leaned forward. "Because it reminded me that art isn’t about what you make—it’s about what you see."

  Ezra frowned. “I don’t get it.”

  Whitaker smirked. “You will.”

  Over the next few weeks, Whitaker became more than just a teacher. He became a guide, a philosopher, someone who saw art as a way of understanding the world. And with every sketch, every brushstroke, Ezra absorbed his wisdom.

  Lesson One: Art is About PerceptionOne afternoon, Whitaker handed Ezra a bnk canvas and told him to draw something he saw every day.

  Ezra stared at it, then shrugged and started sketching his father’s toolbox. He worked carefully, detailing the edges, the scuffs, the metal tch—focusing on technical accuracy.

  When he finished, Whitaker nodded. “Nice work. But you drew what you thought you saw. Not what’s really there.”

  Ezra frowned. “What does that mean?”

  Whitaker grabbed a pencil, flipping the page. “You saw a toolbox. But did you see the way the light hits the metal? The tiny dents from years of use? The way the tch is slightly off-center?” He started adding details Ezra had missed—small scratches, a soft reflection, a nearly invisible mark on the handle.

  Ezra stared. It was the same toolbox. But now, it looked alive.

  Whitaker smiled. “Art isn’t about skill. It’s about paying attention.”

  Lesson Two: Creativity Thrives in AdversityAnother day, Ezra had been frustrated with a drawing. Nothing looked right. He was ready to scrap it entirely.

  Whitaker just chuckled. “Good. That means you’re about to do something great.”

  Ezra gred. “How do you figure?”

  Whitaker dipped his brush in bck ink, then spttered it right across Ezra’s half-finished sketch.

  Ezra gasped. “Dude!”

  Whitaker smirked. “Now, fix it.”

  Ezra opened his mouth to argue, but then… he saw it. The ink bled into the page in an interesting way. Instead of ruining the drawing, it gave him a new starting point.

  Slowly, Ezra picked up his brush and leaned into the mistake.

  And suddenly?

  It wasn’t a mistake anymore.

  Lesson Three: Mastery Takes Time and PatienceEzra wanted to be good at art. Fast.

  But Whitaker? He made him slow down.

  “You want to rush through it,” he said one evening, watching Ezra scribble a sketch. “But real mastery takes time. Every single expert you admire sucked at the start.”

  Ezra groaned. “So what, I just keep drawing the same thing until it looks right?”

  Whitaker chuckled. “No. You draw until you stop caring about getting it perfect. Then, and only then, do you actually get good.”

  By the end of the semester, Ezra had learned more than how to draw.

  He had learned to see.

  Not just art, but the world.

  He saw patterns where he hadn’t before. How shadows pyed on metal, how people’s faces told stories even when they weren’t speaking.

  And maybe—just maybe—he was starting to understand what Whitaker had meant all along.

  Art wasn’t about creating.

  It was about noticing.

  Ezra never expected Bruiser to set foot in the art room.

  Not because he thought Bruiser was too rough for it—hell, half the construction workers they had worked with over the summer probably had a better sense of geometry and proportion than most painters. No, Ezra just assumed Bruiser wouldn’t see the point.

  “Art?” Bruiser had scoffed when Ezra first brought it up. “That’s for people who sit in cafés and pretend they understand wine.”

  Ezra had snorted. “You drink root beer out of a gss bottle and act like it’s a fine ale. What’s the difference?”

  That was how he tricked him into showing up. And now? Now Bruiser was standing in the middle of Whitaker’s art css, a pencil in his massive hands, staring at a bnk page like it had personally offended him.

  “This is dumb,” Bruiser muttered.

  Whitaker, standing at the front of the css, gnced over. “Only if you think too much about it.”

  Bruiser frowned. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  Whitaker smirked, folding his arms. “You ever get in your own way, Michaels?”

  Bruiser stiffened slightly. Ezra saw it—the old instinct to push back, to throw up a wall. But Bruiser wasn’t the same kid he used to be. He just sighed and rubbed the back of his head.

  “Yeah,” he muttered.

  Whitaker nodded, walking over. “Then let’s fix that.”

  Ezra expected Whitaker to tell Bruiser how to hold a pencil, how to sketch lightly, something technical—but instead, he pulled a stool over and sat in front of them, resting his forearms on his knees.

  “You two ever heard of Bloom’s Taxonomy?”

  Ezra squinted. “The education pyramid thing?”

  Whitaker smiled. “Exactly. It’s got six levels. The base? Memorization. That’s what most schools focus on—facts, formus, regurgitating information.”

  Bruiser smirked. “Yeah, that sounds about right.”

  Whitaker chuckled. “Next is understanding—actually knowing what the information means. After that, it’s applying—taking what you know and using it in real life.”

  Ezra nodded. “Like construction. I learned more math over the summer than I did in a cssroom.”

  “Exactly. Then comes analyzing—breaking things apart, seeing why they work. After that, it’s evaluating—deciding what matters, what’s valuable, what’s worth keeping.” Whitaker tapped the bnk canvas in front of them. “But the top level of learning? That’s creation.”

  Bruiser raised an eyebrow. “How’s that different from all the others?”

  Whitaker leaned back. “Memorization, understanding, applying, analyzing, evaluating? That’s all reactive. You’re working with what already exists. But creation?” He gestured broadly. “That’s bringing something new into the world. Something that wasn’t there before. Something only you could make.”

  Ezra sat up straighter. “So you’re saying art is the highest level of intelligence?”

  Whitaker grinned. “I’m saying creation is. Doesn’t have to be art—it could be inventions, ideas, blueprints, writing, music, theories. It’s all creation.”

  Bruiser tapped the pencil against the desk, frowning. “So why don’t they teach it in school?”

  Whitaker’s smile faded just slightly. He exhaled through his nose. “Because the world doesn’t reward creators. It rewards people who can fit into a system. If you’re busy memorizing, analyzing, and evaluating, you’re useful. You can work in someone else’s machine.”

  Ezra narrowed his eyes. “But if you’re creating?”

  Whitaker met his gaze. “Then you’re dangerous.”

  Bruiser snorted. “That’s the most badass way anyone’s ever described finger-painting.”

  Whitaker ughed, shaking his head. “It’s not about paint, Michaels. It’s about control. The world doesn’t want people who think for themselves. It wants people who can follow orders, repeat what they’re told, and never ask if things could be different.”

  Ezra swallowed. It made too much sense.

  Bruiser, seemingly satisfied with that answer, looked back at his bnk page. “Alright, so creation’s important. Got it. But what if you’re just… bad at it?”

  Whitaker smiled, but it was a sad smile. “Lemme tell you a story,” he said, leaning forward.

  Ezra and Bruiser exchanged gnces but listened as Whitaker stared at the bnk canvas in front of him, as if seeing something else entirely.

  “I used to have a life people envied,” he said quietly. “Sold paintings for tens of thousands of dolrs. I had a studio, clients, everything I ever wanted.”

  Ezra felt the shift in the room—like the weight of the past had settled in with them.

  “Then,” Whitaker continued, “I lost it all.”

  Ezra tensed. “The fire?”

  Whitaker nodded. “One night. One electrical fault. Everything burned.”

  Bruiser shifted uncomfortably. “Damn.”

  Whitaker smiled wryly. “Yeah. Damn.” He tapped his fingers against the table. “At first, I thought it was over. My career, my work—gone. And you know what the worst part was?”

  Ezra shook his head.

  “It wasn’t the paintings I lost,” Whitaker said. “It was who I thought I was. I had built my whole identity on what I had already created. So when I lost it, I thought I had nothing left.”

  He let the words hang in the air.

  Then, softly, he said, “That’s when I realized I’d been thinking about it all wrong.”

  Ezra and Bruiser stilled.

  Whitaker looked at them, eyes sharp. “You don’t create because you have something. You create because you can.”

  Ezra’s breath caught.

  “If you’re always focused on just surviving, you’ll never notice the opportunities to create. If you think who you are is tied to what you’ve already done, you’ll never realize who you could be.”

  Ezra felt something in him shift.

  For years, he had been focused on proving himself, being remembered, making his mark. But Whitaker was right—creation wasn’t about proving something.

  It was about becoming.

  For the first time, Bruiser didn’t roll his eyes or crack a joke. He just stared at his bnk page, then—without a word—put pencil to paper.

  Ezra watched as the lines started to take shape. They weren’t perfect. They weren’t even good. But they were his.

  He turned back to his own canvas, the weight of Whitaker’s words still settling.

  Creation wasn’t about talent.

  It wasn’t about success.

  It was about allowing yourself to build something new, without fear of failure.

  And for the first time, Ezra understood—art wasn’t just in paintings.

  It was everywhere.

  It was in the angles of a perfectly cut beam.It was in the problem-solving of an engineer.It was in the small moments when you chose to make something instead of staying silent.

  Whitaker was right.

  The world didn’t reward creators.

  But maybe… that was why they were so important.