On a bright, clear morning, our art class gets permission from the principal to embark on a trip to the park. It’s an exciting prospect to us students, a trek all the way across the road from school, totaling a distance of one hundred metres from the back gates. It feels every bit as exciting as our fourth year school tour to Rome.
It’s cold, but there is the slightest tinge of spring in the air, and though the grass and the earth is damp I find a place to sit nestled among the newly sprouted wild flowers because I think it might be nice to try and draw them, but also because Michelle and Evan were sitting here first and Jen still has me on a mission to befriend them.
“Pay attention to the colours when you’re doing your drawings today,” Ms. O’Reilly says, “Oftentimes things aren’t as they seem when you really look at them. Yes, the grass is green, but can’t you see yellow there too? Blue in the shade? There’s a whole range of values and hues that you don’t see at first glance, nor will you unless you take the time to really observe and take it all in.”
“That’s how you should think of me,” I nudge Michelle, “Like the grass. I’m not just green, I’m shades of blue and yellow too.”
She rolls her eyes, “Oh wow, so now you’re a poet.”
“I knew you’d think that, and you know what? It comes naturally to me, I’m just that kind of person.”
I catch her smirking before she turns her face away and pretends to be interested in what Evan is drawing in his sketchbook. “What’s that?” She asks him, and he flips his hair out of his eyes, “the drain. I think it’s more interesting than the trees and shit, you know? Like, that juxtaposition of the man made in the middle of nature.”
I snort, “I take it back, I’m not the poetic one after all. Wow, that’s deep. I never thought of a drain into the sewer in those terms before.”
His shoulders stiffen, “Hey, what are you getting smart for? Didn’t you get detention a few weeks ago for vomiting on the floor in Mr. Doherty’s class?”
I won’t give him the satisfaction of acknowledging his rudeness as such, so I laugh, “Nah, man, rumour. I did throw up, but not on the floor. I was hungover,” A shrug, “What can you do, huh?”
Michelle huffs out a laugh, “Surprised you didn’t see each other in detention. Jude is the only person I know who has to go more often than you, Evan.”
“I’ve got detention again yesterday” he boasts, and I indulge him, “For what?”
There’s a satisfied glint in his eye, “Fireworks.”
“Where?”
“Just in my locker.”
“No way,” I let out a squawk of a laugh, “I got caught for that once too.”
He glances around awkwardly, unable to decide if I’m engaging genuinely with him or taking the piss again, “Really?” He says with cautious interest, “When?”
“Oh, like a few years ago. Second year I think, sometime around Halloween, but someone ratted me out,” I jokingly jab my thumb at Michelle who gasps in outrage, “It wasn’t me! Jen and I knew about it but we didn’t say anything! I don’t know who it was.”
Evan rests his pencil on the page, “What were you going to do with them?”
“I hadn’t decided yet.”
“Me neither,” he says, actually smiling, “I was just storing them. Actually, I turned myself in once they made that announcement that someone was seen with them. I didn’t want them going through my locker or anything, like, doing the whole search operation thing.”
“Yeah, who knows what might be in there.”
“For sure,” he goes back to drawing his drain and I begin to sketch in the petals of a crocus flower next to my shoe. After another short moment his curiosity gets the better of him, “Hey, what’s the worst thing you ever got detention for?”
I chuckle, “When I was twelve I set a fire in the boy’s bathroom.”
An incredulous pause, “That was you?”
“Yeah, like, it was an accident though. I’m not an arsonist.”
“Yeah that was wild,” Michelle muses, “I remember having to keep it a secret, because Jen and I knew but nobody else did. We weren’t even supposed to know it. You remember how the school made us all go to an assembly about it and they brought that fireman in?”
Evan nudges her with his elbow, “You knew who it was the whole time? You never said!”
“I’m a good secret keeper!”
He looks at me with intrigue, “What happened? What’s the real story?”
“So I was skipping class. I used to get really bored in Mr. White's History so I hid in the toilets and then when I was there I guess I realised I didn’t have anything to do. I had this lighter in my bag that I’d found in the yard, so I started lighting little pieces of toilet paper on fire, you know, just to watch them burn up and turn into nothing, but if it got too crazy I’d just extinguish them in the toilet. Anyway, I got carried away and decided to light the whole toilet roll on fire and then,” I shrug, “you know the rest, I suppose.”
“I remember that day so well, do you-” he cackles, “-do you remember how they didn’t replace the toilet paper dispenser for the whole year? It was just this big hunk of melted plastic stuck to the wall of the stall.”
“Really? Nah, man, I didn't go back into that stall ever again. That’s hilarious.”
“You mean to this day? Five years later?”
“Yeah, seriously! I can’t face it, it just brings me right back there, to getting screamed at in the principal's office and then them calling my parents and all…” the jovial spirit in me falters and this memory, “...who, um, weren’t happy about it and all. Uh, but the main thing was that we talked the principal out of expelling me. I got suspended for a week and then a month straight of detention instead, so it worked out okay.”
“And you talked them out of expulsion…?” Evan prompts.
“Oh, you know, I’m just good at bullshitting,” I say vaguely, though the reality was that I sat at the principal’s desk, my body racked with breathless, terrified sobs until I almost puked, snot pouring down my face, swearing on my pre-teen life that it was an accident until they let me off easy out of pure pity alone.
I concentrate on my crocuses for a while while Michelle and Evan draw too, the three of us in content silence while Ms. O'Reilly walks around the group to look at our work. “Beautiful,” She says of mine, and the compliment fills my insides with such joy and acceptance that I can’t hide it from my face.
“Who’s the teacher’s pet now?” Michelle mutters as Ms. O’Reilly moves on.
“Jealous?”
“No.”
“Can I see yours?”
“Why, so you can gloat?”
“No, c’mon, I’m curious.”
She sighs and tilts her sketchbook to me so that I can see the trees she has drawn. She has a soft line, feminine, cautious and a little shaky, but she’s captured the scene nicely, how the spindly, bare branches of the chestnut tree cut through the clouds and frame a hazy February sky.
“That’s lovely,” I say. “Not that I’m surprised, you’ve always been a good drawer.”
She looks at her work doubtfully, “I’m not sure, I think I fucked up the scale of some things.”
“Nah, you’d hardly notice.”
“Hm.”
“When did you change your mind about art school?”
“Huh?”
“I thought you wanted to pursue it. I remember you saying that a while back.”
She scoffs, “Oh yeah, years ago. It’s not a practical choice though. What am I going to do with an art degree? Work in McDonalds? I think it’s better that I go for something with more prospects like, um, law or business or medicine.”
I smile, “Yeah. Okay. I think that’s your dad talking.”
“That’s what I think,” Evan pipes up, “Don’t I always say it, Michelle? They’re all boring choices, and you are so not boring. You’re a creative soul.”
“Aw, thanks baby.”
It takes all of my willpower to resist pulling a face. Baby? I almost say something about how horrendous it is for me to be subjected to their emo love before I remember that my task is to be nice to them. It’s going so well, I shouldn’t jeopardise it no matter how tempting.
“Hey,” she spins back to me, “Can I see that drawing you did of me in class? You never showed me in the end.”
“Well, you didn’t ask,” I flip a few pages back and hold it up to her, her own face, a direct, impatient gaze and mouth slightly pursed in concentration. She stares at it like she’s gazing into a mirror.
“You made me look very pretty,” She decides after several moments.
I steal a glance at her. It’s not difficult to, because she is very pretty, she’s always been that way as long as I've known her with those deep, dark brown eyes and heart shaped face. It is her personality and attitude in the last couple of years that's the real pity. I smirk, “Well, you know, I appreciate you saying that, because it really wasn’t easy for me…”
“God, you’re insufferable,” she complains, rolls her eyes and turns away.
I go back to my crocuses.
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