On Monday morning, Hussein had insisted on coming with his wife Maryam to Lois Hole Hospital for Women, but she wanted to go alone. After five long years of trying, it was still “just them two.” Of course, everyone knew that she was the one lacking.

I mean, I’ve never seen two twelve-year-old girls look more different, like they’re not even the same species. For one, Carrington is slim. I’m talking slim slim. Shit, skinny. Even from this distance I can practically count every bone in the girl’s back when she moves her arms into fifth position. That ain’t natural. They must only be licking lettuce leaves for dinner at her house.

Esteban del Valle is an interdisciplinary artist born in Chicago, Illinois in 1984.  He completed his MFA in painting at the Rhode Island School of Design in 2009, where he received a Presidential Scholarship and the Toby Devan Lewis Fellowship. His work investigates the performance of leadership, the role of the artist as a public figure, and the effects of class and privilege on institutions in the form of paintings, murals, sculpture and video art.

You still in a funk over that picture? Now, who’s petty? I never met somebody so jealous of a measly picture they’d go this long holding a grudge.