Young and Foolish

Chapter 22: Don't Ask for an Artist's Statement. I Don't Know it, Either.

Sarah's POV: 

Annie offered to hang out together after school, but after that confession I wanted some alone time. I kept on a fake smile long enough that no one thought anything was amiss. The moment I reached my room, where I was finally alone, I let my grin fall. 

My room was bright with afternoon sunlight, but I couldn't help but feel cold. 

My fingers twitched. I needed a paintbrush in hand. I had Vivian help me set up my easel in the attic earlier, so all I needed to do now was grab my paints. 

Luckily, I hadn't hurt my dominant hand when I fell out of that tree the day I met Ryder. I think I would've gone insane had I not been able to paint for a few weeks because of an injury. 

I sat before an empty canvas. I didn't yet know what I wanted to do with it, but I started mixing colours anyways. Before I could put my brush to the canvas, my phone rang. 

I picked it up and grinned when I saw Danny's name. I put it on speaker and placed my phone on the floor so I could paint while talking with him. 

His voice was calming to me. Our conversations were hardly important, but I needed to hear him. He was the only constant in my life. I really missed him terribly. 

I could hear it in his voice too, that he also missed me. We didn't say it outright, but it was still painfully clear. I didn't have to maintain the pretence with Danny. I didn't have to hide that I wasn't happy. 

I stayed mostly quiet, listening to whatever nonsense he could come up with while I painted. The reason I felt so comfortable being upset around him was that he never pried. He waited on me to tell him what I wanted to say at my own pace. 

I had teared up a bit when telling Annie about Jessica's passing. But as I went over it with Danny, I didn't feel the need to cry. 

I had almost finished painting by the time I heard a knock on my bedroom door. 

"Sarah, it's time for dinner," Vivian's voice rang through as she opened the door. I immediately grinned wide as I turned to her. 

"I'll be down in a moment!" I replied. I gave a quick goodbye to Danny as I took a step back to see my painting as a whole. 

It was the upper half of a familiar, but still foreign, face. It had Jessica's eyes, and Theo's messy, lilac hair. The bottom of the face was covered up by flowers which bled into a marbled background. 

I dropped my paintbrushes in a cup of water and left the canvas to dry. Vivian was waiting for me by the door, so I quickly wiped off my hands and followed her down to the dining room. 

I blinked in surprise when I saw Ryder sitting there, between Nicky and my dad. Regardless, I smiled and waved. I had hardly started eating before my dad went off on lecturing me about being more proactive with my schoolwork, but thankfully, Vivian stepped in to my defence. 

I did shoot Ryder a mini glare when my dad used him as a model example, but he avoided eye contact with an expression that looked as if he was about to choke on his carrots, and I couldn't stay mad at him long. 

The rest of dinner went by pretty amicably, and I volunteered to help out with the dishes, just so that my dad wouldn't have another reason to lecture me. And maybe also because I wanted to prove to Ryder that I wasn't totally irresponsible, though I guess he wouldn't even really care about that all that much. 

I usually did my homework in my room, but Ryder had already set his textbooks out in the living room, so I grabbed my backpack and headed down to work there with him. I found him awkwardly nodding at Nicky, and I nearly giggled at how obviously out of place he looked. She was showing him her colouring book, and by his expression she might as well have grown another head. 

I gently shooed her away and plopped my stuff down next to him. 

"So, Ryder-babe," I joked, to which he rolled his eyes, "help me out with History." 

"Uh, you can try to make sense of my notes, but I don't really pay attention in that class," he sheepishly scratched the back of his head as he pointed to one of his notebooks. I raised an eyebrow as I picked it up, but could only laugh as I flipped through it. 

It was mostly empty, save for a few doodles and random dates that I was sure he didn't even know the significance of. 

Honestly, it was kind of adorable. My dad wouldn't bother comparing me to Ryder if he caught a glimpse of this, but I had no plans of exposing him. At least I knew that he wasn't too much of a goody two shoes.