I drag the paintbrush across the canvas, adding pink to his lips. Next to my painting, I can practically hear Chloe pulling my strings so her little puppet can return to the task at hand. Tapping my fingers against the easel, I swap my unfinished painting with another incomplete portrait.
After I aired out most of my dirty laundry, Chloe decided it was time for a reset, so she asked me to meet her in art class. She spends her free period helping the teacher, Mrs. Fench, with her seventh-period students when she's not painting a masterpiece of her own. Of course, I protested because who wants to waste a study hall nap, but she can be very persuasive in a threatening kind of way.
Chloe nudges my shoulder. "Stop drooling over his lips. You have to focus on your emotions for this painting, and the one you insist on hiding."
"You realize all my trust for you is gone, blondie." I adjust the easel so no one can see my work.
"Do you think I should give your knight in shining armor a call or a text when I tell him his ninja princess just called him a frog?" Chloe pauses, staring directly at me.
"Touché."
I focus on the canvas until I can envision the moment she unknowingly posed for this painting. Once it's finished, maybe I won't feel like I'm still letting her down. This picture will remain hidden for obvious reasons, but if I want to torture myself all I have to do is take a look.
I remember the day I started painting the portrait of her that hung in the living room of our house. She couldn't sit still because her loving husband couldn't move fast enough to kill a spider. It took five hours to paint her entire face, and even then, her spider senses could feel the critter walking up her back.
Whenever she felt her imagination crawling on her colorful sweater, she hopped out of the chair and danced all over the room. We found out eight hours later that not only did my dad catch the spider, but he also killed it. Yeah, we decided not to speak to him for the rest of the weekend, and we meant it.
Last time, it took months to capture my mother on a blank canvas, but luckily, I kept all the scribbles in my bookbag. If it were inside 1701 Easy Boulevard, then it would be lost forever. Luckily, because of my obsession with Brandon I had tons of drawings in my notebook of him. Those are Chloe's words, not mine because I've decided I'm not in love with him anymore.
Yeah, Chloe laughed too.
"And that's the bell," Mrs. Fench announces as the bell rings, "Okay, class, carefully put your paintings in the closest in your assigned section."
"Mrs. Finch, is it still okay for me to keep the easel?" I ask, throwing my bookbag over my shoulder.
"Yes, it's all yours, but only if youâ" Mrs. Finch waits for me to finish her sentence.
"Stop by to visit." I agree, acknowledging a commitment to skip my favorite period.
I grab both paintings, facing each one towards the other until I'm outside the classroom. Chloe takes the underdeveloped portrait of Brandon, checking the lines to make sure the proportions of his face are right. A genuine smile forms, and it stays longer than when I ranted to her about my game plan of being a ninja and running directly into Brandon five seconds later.
Chloe sends daggers at the side of my head. "Such wasted potential if all we're getting is an unending series of Brandon Lockwood portraits."
"Hey, a never-ending series of Brandon Lockwood paintings AND some that feature me," I add.
"Why don't you just cut out the middleman and insult Brandon on Instagram? Then, this time tomorrow, get a detailed face tattoo of him on your forehead." Chloe pats my head as if she's imagining Brandon on there.
I blink hard, desperately trying not to imagine 'thug life' Ebony. "Keep your delusions to yourself, blondie."
"Oh, I'm delusional," Chloe says, knocking on the door of my Learning Strategies class. "here's your boy toy."
Chloe left the outline of Brandon leaning against the wall. I raise an eyebrow at her as she stands perfectly still on the wall on the left side of Mrs. Hubbard's classroom. She gives a knowing smile before the door finally opens, and my jaw nearly drops to the floor.
Chloe looks into my betrayed eyes and screams from the other side of the hallway. "Mrs. Lockwood, don't forget to tell your husband about your painting."
My unlucky streak must've thought I was getting too cocky because I just caught its fade, and it sent Dorothy straight back to reality. Here I am worried about Donovan appearing today until I found out he ditched school. I thanked my lucky stars. I never had to explain to the incredible-haired tyrant how he got his ass handed to him in a fight he rigid.
Something tells me he wouldn't have agreed with my input. Besides, I don't want my last words to be not the face, the boobs either, and my stomach is definitely off-limits. Anyway, the Incredible Haired Hulk never showed up, and I knew Wonder Boy wasn't here today. So imagine finally being ready to do the walk of shame to Learning Strategies only to find Brandon blocking the entrance with an irresistible smile. How am I going to come up with a game plan of sneaking past him when he's directly in front of me? Nothing good ever lasts.
Rest in peace, Chloe.
His cerulean blue eyes observe my anxiety with amusement. I grab the painting, making sure to hide both. On one hand, he can never see the unfinished portrait of my mother. Although I'm sure, he won't be necessarily flattered about his likeness drawn on the canvas of his crazy stalker.
"It's not going to get any easier?" Brandon says, tapping his foot against the tiled floor.
The late bell rings before I utter a single word, but Brandon flares his nostrils in frustration. He's upset, but like an idiot, I watch him attempt to dive deep into my irises to uncover some hint of sincerity. I should be apologizing for kissing his lips without a justified reason. But I'd be lying if I said I was sorry.
"Come back with a late slip," Brandon says, shutting the door, but it feels like he closed more than a door.
"You couldn't even say hi?" Chloe shakes her head.
"He never gave me a chance," I whisper in defeat.
"That's where you went wrong," Chloe hands me a late slip, "he gave you plenty of chances."
"How did you get this hall pass?" I say, ignoring the sudden pressure inflating inside my stomach.
"Nirvana," Chloe adjusts my black sequin top.
I wink at her, hiding my secondhand embarrassment. "The hall closet."
Chloe walks to the opposite side of the wall, and stares at me. "No one wakes up one morning and decides today I'm falling in love with Ebony. And definitely not when you're being shipped off to the army in nine months."
This time, Chloe disappears down the next hallway, leaving the one girl who's always been the last to blossom in social behavior to talk to her crush. Frankly, I'm being set up for failure by even standing outside this classroom. I get it. Brandon can wake up one morning and fall madly in love with Alexis. But it'll never happen when it comes to an awkward reject like me.
Brandon clears his throat, closing the door behind him. "Anything new to say?"
"This is a painting of you." My arm shakes while my fingers lose their grip.
"Ebony, I didn't mean to make things bad between us, but when we kissed yesterday â" Brandon lets out a small laugh, his gaze lingering on the picture.
"Just let me finish," I pause, "When I drew this, I thought about you a lot. Sometimes, when you smile, your eyes twinkle, and for a second it's like heaven on earth."
"Was that your first kiss?" Brandon raises my chin to meet his intense gaze.
"Yeah," I inhale a deep breath, "when I was repainting this portrait of someone I knew, I didn't understand why Chloe asked me to paint two paintings. A recent moment I loved and one I lost forever. Now that I'm standing right here I understand now."
The whole picture is in Brandon's portrait. It isn't only Brandon's likeness on the canvas; mine is there, too. It's hard to forget when Brandon rescued me in the school parking lot. Truthfully, he thought I was insane while I wanted nothing more than to crash and burn in his illusive arms. I may have harbored an imaginary version of him, but I always thought some part of him was real.
"After everything happened, I kept daydreaming of a world where everything was the same. So when you rejected me, I dragged myself back to that place because I wanted someone to see me with clarity, even if it was fake." A gut-wrenching feeling consumes my heart.
"Maybe with time, you can turn this painting into something more." Brandon hands the canvas to me.
What does he mean by something more?
You're overreaching! He's probably talking about turning his painting into a studio filled with art.
I can't afford to fall deeper with Brandon
not when I'm so close to waking up.
Brandon opens the door so I can walk through first; a few glances is all it takes to notice all the students are gathered in a circle reading The Great Gatsby. I raise an eyebrow at an empty chair beside Roxie, as in The Roxane Banks. Is the wild child aware she's going full frontal in front of Brandon Lockwood?
She's not even wearing a scarf that's wrapped cleverly around her hair and most of her face. I'd like to know if Mrs. Hubbard told her about her government name being on the roster. I would have killed the chihuahua sitting in her lap to see her cheeks as fiery red as her hair.
"Why don't you start us off, Ebony?" Mrs. Hubbard asks, sitting on the opposite end of the circle.
I leave my paintings behind her desk before I sprint to an empty desk next to Dalton. Clearing my throat, I turn to the first chapter of The Great Gatsby. The desk scrapes on the floor beside mine; I look up to find Brandon swapped seats with Dalton.
I watch him flipping through the pages of the book until he finds the chapter then his gaze flickers to mine. I quickly return my attention to the book.
Was that a sign, or am I crazy?
Across the circle, I can sense Dalton gazing in my direction with a smirk tucked far away from prying eyes. The brown-skinned boy has never noticed me for more than five seconds, but now he's practically burning holes in the side of my head. I could further analyze him if Brandon wasn't so close to my desk.
If I move a centimeter, then I'm already fondling his large biceps, and I can't afford to daydream about him, so I avert my eyes. Then his cologne infiltrates my nostrils with potent sandalwood notes and a hint of cinnamon infused into a heavenly scent. My legs buckle under the weight of the grey shirt clinging to his chest. I could write hypnotic stories about those abs.
"Any day now." Mrs. Hubbard adds.
I blush, finally reading past the first line of the book. "Whenever you feel like criticizing anyone, he told me, just remember that all the people in this world haven't had the advantages that you've had."
I have a confession: whenever I'm reading something, I imitate what the narrator's voice sounds like in my mind. Nick Carraway's personality seems would fit a reserved man, so I figured he has a lighter but slightly deep register. I picked up his voice when I read this book last summer, so I performed the first three chapters of our English assignment in the proper tone.
The problem is when I make it to Gatsby or Tom Buchanan's sophisticated, upper class tone, Roxane stomps her feet then Dalton laughs to himself. Then, like a spoiled toddler, Roxie kicks my leg in frustration, and the teacher threatens the redhead menace to stop. Every time she gets caught, she folds her legs and glares at me like she's ready to send my soul to hell.
"Can you make her stop reading like she's part of the 1750s, or give her a blunt bob and send her back?" Roxane snaps, frowning directly in my face.
"Boi, Ebony reading like she mean it." Dalton laughs, collapsing on his desk in tears.
"Mrs. Hubbard, would you rather I pop in some gum, smack my lips, and bring the 2000 booty shakers into the 1920s!" I giggle, imitating Roxane's bubbly voice.
These people are the bain of my existence; I'm so tired of settling for scraps because there are no diamonds in the rough. Don't be confused by Roxane's thousand-dollar Chanel outfit. I'm all alone in here. And by Brandon's bewildered expression, I'd say my reading sent Wonder Boy back to the roaring twenties. He shrinks further into himself as he travels deeper into a daze.
Is he thinking about Alexis?
"No, that's alright, Ebony." Mrs. Hubbard says, hiding a smile.
"Now, Mrs. Hubbard, you know she did too much," Dalton says, over annunciating the end of the sentence.
"Roxane, read where she left off." Mrs. Hubbard instructs her.
"What page did you stop?" Roxane questions, popping her dark pink lips.
"Roxane, I'm not doing this for my benefit. You have a pop quiz, an essay, and a test on The Great Gatsby this semester. You have to pay attention." Mr. Hubbard demands.
"There are so many pages in this thing," Roxane exclaims, "listening was less traumatizing than following along."
"Roxane spell traumatizing." Dalton taunts her.
"Turn to Page 66." Mrs. Hubbard yells.
Roxane silently flips to the fourth chapter of the book. Dalton laughs so hard Mrs. Hubbard hits him with her yardstick. Brandon returns from his blank space long enough to study all the students sitting down. When he's done overanalyzing us, he monitors the teacher's frustration.
"Do you mind if I work with Ebony?" Brandon asks.
I tug at a curl absentmindedly until Mrs. Hubbard nods in approval. Without another word, Brandon grabs all the material and walks to the furthest corner of the room. Since I had no choice, I grabbed my copy of The Great Gatsby and stopped in front of the wannabe Barbie.
"Okay, Sunday morning while church bells rang in the vvv-iii-lll-agesâ," Roxane sighs and snuggles closer to Princess.
"Villages," I point to the sentence, "and remember to sound each word out with flavor. It's not the roaring twenties if you don't shake things up a bit, old sport."
Roxane bites back a smile before she continues reading. "Villages along the shore the world and its mmm-iii-sss-tress mistress returned to Gatsby's house..."
I walk to the two desks in front of the classroom, still thinking how Roxie has countless pages left before another word makes her crack. Usually, she tries to avoid reading out loud like it's the bubonic plague. If anyone in Ravenwood knew about her learning disability, then all the envy she receives outside this circle would turn into hatred.
Even though Roxane humiliated me last night, I would despise myself if I gave away any of her secrets. For years, my only concern was reading dozens of books, hoping to breathe romantic gestures into the invisible Wonder Boy.
I became each protagonist, and Brandon was always my leading man. And now I'm sitting in front of a guy I will always see whenever I close my eyes.
"Hey, how did you get my answers," I prob, taking the paper from his desk, "if I already got a perfect score, do we still need to read this?"
Brandon leans forward. "What are you doing in here?"
"Do you mind changing the subject?" I ignore his question and place my algebra homework on the desk.
Brandon pulls my desk closer, betraying every ounce of my body as his skin brushes against mine. "Before I leave, I'm going to figure out your secret. Then I'm getting you the hell out of this classroom."
Within a few minutes, Brandon manages to uncover a trail leading to the truth behind the memory I'm still painting. I didn't go numb at first because when it happened, my rage was unimaginable. I hid the painting from Brandon and Chloe because few people know that Rose Delilah Philips spent her last night in fear.
AUTHORS NOTE
This character reminded me of the reason I started writing this story in the first place. The second half of it is when Ebony corrects her archenemy, Roxie is a beautiful moment. That's the best scene I've ever written, and I'm glad I can share it with you guys. Thank you all so much for reading!