“Just look how talented you are,” she said.

The paintings looked nearly real. But wasn’t that Mr. Wallace’s point? They weren’t unique. They weren’t my own. They were based off pictures. But what did I feel when I looked at them? I just thought they looked like nice places to visit. I couldn’t feel the wind on my face or taste the air. Is that what was supposed to happen when looking at really good art?

Maybe Mr. Wallace was right. But maybe there was something I could do about it. “I need experience.”

“You’ve been painting for as long as I can remember,” Mom said.

“No, I mean experiences. What experiences will help me find depth—find my heart?” I needed to find inspiration from life, not from pictures. And not just inspiration, but emotion too.

“I think you have a perfect heart,” Mom said.

I rolled my eyes. “You’re my mom, you have to say that. I’m being serious. I need to do something. Lots of somethings, apparently. But what?”

“What kind of qualities are you looking to develop?” Grandpa asked.

I thought about that as I tapped my finger over and over again on the arm of the couch. My gaze drifted to my grandpa, one of my favorite people in the world. What were my favorite qualities about him?

“Courage. Like you,” I decided.

“Me?” Grandpa asked.

“Yes, you say what you’re feeling no matter what the people around you think. You know how to stand your ground. How did you learn that?”

“A really mean drill sergeant in boot camp.”

“So I should join the army? Follow in yours and Dad’s footsteps?”

He nodded. “Sure, when you’re eighteen, you should. It made me a man.”

“You want me to join the army and become a man?”

He let out a growl. “Stop pretending to take me so literally.”

“You’re not joining the army, Abby,” Mom said. “Grandpa was saying that he gained courage by standing up to someone even when it was hard.”

“Right. I have no idea how to do that.”

“You’ll figure it out,” Grandpa said.

“What else?” Mom asked. “What other traits do you admire?”

“I like how you know something about everything, Mom.”

She laughed. “I’m pretty sure you hate that.”

“Well, I’m not a fan of the brown recluse stories.”

“She means she’s not a fan of your paranoid reading,” Grandpa said.

I swatted my hand through the air in his direction. “That’s not what I said.”

My mom patted my leg. “Well, whatever the case, reading is right. I’d say that books can give you a new perspective on things. I know you already read, so may I suggest reading something out of your comfort zone? Like a classic.”

“Hold on.” I jumped up. “Let me go get paper. I need to write these down.” I went to the junk drawer in the kitchen and found a pen, then plucked a piece of paper from the printer on the counter. I grabbed a magazine off the coffee table and sat back down, positioning the paper on top of the magazine. At the top of the page I wrote The Heart List and underlined it two times. “Okay, so, stand up to someone and read a really old book.”

Mom rolled her eyes but didn’t protest. “What other traits are important to you?”

“Dad is always somewhere new and doing something different. I think that made him who he is. The kind of person who is flexible and adventurous.”

“So try something new?” my grandpa said.

“And he doesn’t mean drugs,” Mom added.

“Because that was the first thing I thought of.”

“Try more than one new thing. Make it five. Try five things you’ve never done before,” Grandpa said.

“Five? What do you think I am? A newly minted person? Five is a lot. Are there five things I haven’t tried?”

My mom rolled her eyes. “Please. There are a hundred things you haven’t done.”

“Okay, fine. You’re right.” I wrote it down. Three things were on my list. That wasn’t enough. If I had to drastically change the way I saw the world, which would hopefully change the way I painted, I needed more experiences. I thought of my friends and things I admired in them. “Rachel is kind to everyone. I think everyone likes her. What experience could I possibly have that will grant me that quality?”

“What about learning a stranger’s story?” Mom said.

“What do you mean? Just walk up to a random person and ask what their deal is?”

“No, care enough about something you see someone do to want to know more about that person. To let what you hear change you in some way.”

“So, learn a story.” I added that to my list. “What else?” My pen was poised, eager to soak up their wisdom, which I was sure was going to transform me into the best painter in the universe by the time the deadline for the showcase came around.

“You tell us,” Grandpa said.

“My friend Justin is on a service mission in South America right now. I bet that experience will give him more depth than anything I could dream up.”

Grandpa grunted. “You don’t have to go to South America to do service. There’s plenty here.”

“Like what?”

“I have complete faith that you’ll find something,” Mom said.

I added service to my list, with Justin’s name next to it. Then I added names next to the other items on the list they had inspired. I had Grandpa, Mom, Dad, Rachel, Justin . . . “Cooper,” I said aloud.

“What about him?”

“I don’t have a Cooper-inspired experience.”

“What do you like best about Cooper?” Mom asked.

I closed my eyes for a moment. What didn’t I like about him? Every laugh and story we shared raced through my mind. I stopped myself from saying everything. “He’s fearless. Nothing scares him. Maybe I need to overcome some of my fears.”

“How?” Grandpa asked.

“By facing one.”

“I don’t like the sound of that one,” Mom said.

“Nothing dangerous.”

“It’s a good one,” Grandpa said as I wrote it down.

“How about, quit a bad habit,” my grandpa said. “That’s always character-building.”

“I don’t drink or smoke, Gramps.”

“Are those the only bad habits in the world? What about that horrible sarcasm of yours? That would be a good one to nip in the bud.”

“Nobody says nip in the bud. And I’ll quit being sarcastic once you do.”

He curled his lip. “Or you can pick another thing.”

“That’s what I thought.” I added quit a bad habit to my list.

“If you’re looking for character-building, you should add fall in love to your list,” my mom said.

As I wrote it down, Grandpa asked, “Didn’t she already do that one?”

I gasped. “Did you tell him?”

Mom narrowed her eyes at Grandpa and I rolled mine. “So I guess I can check that one off.”

“Fall in love with someone who loves you back,” she said.

“Ouch. Now you’re just being mean.”

She patted my leg. “It will change you.”

“Okay, so I’m going to add have my heart broken to the list, because I can already check that one off.”