Chapter 3

Marc parked his car in one of the visitor parking spots outside the school. He debated just waiting for Ariel to get out, but decided he would check in anyways. He got his visitor badge at the front desk and went back to the art rooms.

Brendan’s class was actually working for once, so Marc almost felt bad about stepping in. Brendan was working on his own piece up on his desk until Marc was at his side. “Nice painting,” Marc commented. “But you should roll up your sleeves so you don’t get paint on them.” Marc gestured to them.

“I can’t. Dress code,” Brendan admitted with a sigh. “But I have paint or ink on nearly all of my clothes anymore so I don’t think I care. What’s been up with you?”

“Nothing much. Just admiring how they’re actually all working.” Marc glanced out over the class again. People were still having conversations, and there was music playing from somewhere in the classroom, but it was still settled down.

“Well something’s due tomorrow, so it’s crunch time. I’m staying an hour and a half after school too for anyone who wants to stay working in the art room, or doesn’t want to go home.” Brendan shrugged and put his brush into a cup of milky blue water.

“Doesn’t want to go home?” Marc echoed.

“I would have preferred to stay in the art room all night back in high school,” Brendan laughed. “it was comfortable and a cool place to hang out, without actually getting in trouble.”

“Were you a troublemaker?” Marc half teased. He could almost see it—Brendan getting caught doing something he wasn’t supposed to be doing.

“Well, I only ever got in trouble if I got caught,” Brendan stressed. “But even then, not really. Stole some food out of the vending machines, skipped some classes, that was about it. Are you a delinquent turned ultra-business man?”

Marc chuckled. “No, I didn’t cause trouble. Trust me, I wouldn’t dare step foot back in this school if I did.” He paused. “I graduated from here, actually.”

“Oh,” Brendan smiled impishly. “When?”

“About…” Marc stopped to do some math in his head. “Fourteen years ago?” It sounded so far off now that he said it, but he was only in his early thirties at that. “Why?”

“Because there are copies of every yearbook up in the teachers lounge, and I now plan to find your awkward high school pictures,” Brendan boasted.

Marc swore under his breath. “Oh, don’t. Don’t be that kind of terrible person.”

“What? Did you look super geeky?” Brendan questioned. “And now all the girls of your graduating class will want you at the reunion?”

“No, not really, just… I don’t think anyone likes looking back on high school,” Marc admitted. “Though I guess I did like actually going to school. But no one ever looks good on picture day.”

Brendan huffed in agreement. The end of the day bell rang, jolting them both. Brendan stood up quickly. “Have a good day, and remember I’ll be here for a while after school if you need to work on more projects,” he announced. “This is due tomorrow at the beginning of class!”

Most of the students left, but there were at least four that didn’t even move from their spots as they were working.

“I should go get Ariel from her class,” Marc said. “I told her I was picking her up today so she’ll be waiting.”

“Okay. What are we doing about the yearbook then?” Brendan asked.

Marc had really hoped he would forget about that. “Just… let me go get Ariel,” he gave in. “I’ll be right back.”

“And I’ll go get it. If I can figure out what fourteen years ago was.” Brendan frowned as he tried to think it over. “I am not a math man,” he added. He told the students he would be right back, and Marc went to go get Ariel from her class.

At least she was doing better with her homework too, and had been getting that turned in. “We have to go back and meet up with Brendan for a minute,” Marc explained. If Brendan was going to be laughing at his high school pictures, Marc would at least be there to defend himself.

Ariel had no protest in going back to the art room. She pulled out a sketch pad and set up at one of the desks in the front. Brendan came back with four years worth of yearbooks and Marc groaned. “All of them?”

“If I got the years right, yeah.” Brendan set them out on the desk next to Ariel, since his still had a painting on it. Brendan started flipping through the pages, trying to find Marc by last name.

Marc ended up having to guide them through the book; organized by seniors first, and then going down from there. They found him in freshman year, forcing a smile for the camera. “Oh, yeah, awkward,” Brendan commented but moved on.

They went through each book, though there wasn’t really much change. Marc had kept most of the same haircut through all of high school, and the uniform didn’t give for any exciting picture-day wardrobe malfunctions. Brendan hummed though, not seeming quite pleased with what he’d found.

“What?” Marc questioned suspiciously.

“Nothing. You just don’t look happy,” he commented.

“Well it was high school,” Marc defended himself. Of course even now he didn’t want to go back, even though it hadn’t seemed too bad at the time.

“That’s where he met mom,” Ariel chimed in, glancing up from her drawing.

That brought on a stiff silence, until Brendan closed the last yearbook with a loud thud. “These still look a lot better than my high school pictures,” he informed, much to Marc’s relief. “I was one of those dark, brooding types.” He narrowed his eyes and put on a scowl. “The ones most kids picked on.”

Marc nodded sympathetically, though he wasn’t sure he could relate to that. No one bothered him in high school and he returned the favor. “I should get us home so we can figure out dinner,” Marc said.

Ariel let out a groan of complaint then. “The school lunches are better than anything at home!” she whined.

“That’s why we’re going out,” Marc consoled her.

“I’m tried of chicken,” Ariel added. “Can’t we go somewhere else? I don’t want noodles either.”

Brendan raised an eyebrow. “Sounds like you need to go shopping.”

“I only know how to cook bachelor meals,” Marc admitted. “Ramen, beef, cheese… mixing that all together.” It had been one of the few life lessons he’d picked up in college.

Brendan sighed. “Do you still need one of those college-help books of how to take care of yourself or something?”

“Probably, or I could just use the internet, but then it’s always so much easier to eat out.” And it wasn’t like Marc really worried about the cost of it all either.

“I can e-mail you some basic recipes,” Brendan offered. “Pasta and stuff, or at least something that’s not eating out. Go grocery shopping every once and a while and see what looks good.”

Marc wouldn’t admit he wasn’t quite sure where the grocery store was in relation to where they lived. Usually he could just get the basics from a corner shop. It had been another reason he had been debating hiring a housekeeper now, but then he wanted to keep his private life private, without paid help.

The long pause seemed to make Brendan even more suspicious. “How do you even take care of yourself, much less Ariel,” Brendan groaned, rolling his eyes. “I’m so sending you some recipes, just please don’t burn the house down in the process.”

“Who taught you to cook?” Marc challenged.

“My aunt, and my college roommates,” Brendan answered easily. “And then from there it’s a lot of experimentation before it’s actually any good. Or I guess at this point, ask your mom for some help.”

Marc shuffled on his feet, clearing his throat. “She passed when I was eight.”

“Oh, shit. Sorry,” Brendan corrected himself, glancing towards Ariel. “And sorry again for cussing.”

Marc shrugged. Ariel at least knew better on that even if she heard the occasional bad word.

“If you ever come by the printmaking studio,” Brendan began. “I can take you on a grand tour of a grocery store afterwards. I could use some time with someone over the age of eighteen.” He glanced back with mock disdain at some of his students, though no one had heard him.

“You’re not much older than them, it can’t be too bad,” Marc teased, though he was curious about how old Brendan actually was.

“Not really. I’m twenty-six,” Brendan said thoughtfully. “Old enough to be a parent of one of the younger kids.”

Marc had thought he was at least slightly younger than that. “Are you going to be there this weekend?” Marc asked. “I mean, at the studio.”

Brendan brightened up immediately. “Yeah, Saturday. If you come by around two or three, I can finish up around then.”

Marc nodded, giving into making plans with Brendan.

***

Marc had to park along the curb two blocks down since there was no actual parking outside of the studio. It was fronted on a busy street and looked like some warehouse. Marc took Ariel’s hand as they walked from the car to the front of the studio, which only had a small sign reading ‘Mad Squirrel Studio’.

Marc chuckled at the odd name and read it off for Ariel. “This is where Mr. Brendan works?” she wondered.

“It’s where he does his own art, yeah. Like you have your art room, he just doesn’t have space for some of the things he needs,” Marc explained as he took her inside.

The place was huge and seemed to have different sections to it. There were a few pottery wheels along the wall and shelves filled with ceramics. He could hear a saw in some distant part of the studio. Marc only recognized Brendan in the distance by his dark hair and shirt, and took Ariel over.

“Oh hey, you found it. Was parking a problem?” Brendan asked, using a roller covered in black ink over some sort of wood block.

“We had to park down the street. What is this you’re doing?” Marc dragged over a stool and helped Ariel up onto it so that she could see better.

“This is going to be a woodblock print.” Brendan pushed up the sleeves of his shirt, revealing two detailed sleeve tattoos. He grinned sheepishly at Marc. “So see, I can’t show these off at school, the board wouldn’t like it.” He stuck his arms out briefly for Marc to see them.

One forearm was covered by swirling smoke and pink butterflies, stretching up and into what looked like cherry blossoms. The other forearm was covered in a flurry of snowflakes with a slight glow around them, transforming upwards into a curling wave of water. Some of it was still covered by his sleeves, though.

“Anyways,” Brendan said, clearing his throat. “I’ve done most of the actual printing; otherwise we’d all be here for like four hours more. I was just going to pull a quick print and then I can show you around the studio.”

Brendan put a piece of paper down over the woodblock and used a piece of rounded would to press it all down. He pulled the paper back after a while and showed off the print to Ariel and Marc.

“Isn’t it backwards?” Ariel commented, pointing out the difference between the print and the initial woodblock.

“I carve it one way, and then it gets flipped when I print it. If I want something on the left it has to be on the right,” Brendan explained, sliding the paper into a metal drying rack.

He cleaned up the mess around the printing area that he’d made, and then started touring them around the studio. “For printing, we’ve got a couple of presses, for the couple of different types of printing there is… I like woodblock, but there’s intaglio and lithography as well.”

Brendan went into some detail of explaining the difference between them all, most of which just went over Marc’s head anyways. Ariel was the one asking all of the questions and trying to touch things, and Brendan had to stop her a few times. “No, don’t touch that, you’ll hurt yourself,” Brendan had to remind her a few times.

He pointed around the studio for the other types of art that were there—pottery, metals, fibers, drawing and painting.

Marc could just picture all of the things that Ariel would be saying she wanted as soon as they walked out. Most of it wouldn’t happen until she was older.

“I want to do stuff like that,” Ariel said outside the studio.

Marc just chuckled nervously. “Maybe when you’re older you’ll have a lot more supplies,” Brendan chimed in, patting her on the head. “But I’ll see you Monday, Ariel. Good luck to both of you on fending for food.”

Marc rolled his eyes at the teasing and took Ariel back to the car so that they could figure out dinner.