the kids are depressed

•JOHNNY

"Johnny woke up confused..."

Sade Adu's soulful voice filled the room as Johnny made illustrations of the singer's braided ponytail at 6 in the morning.

He didn't like to accept the fact that drawing was his therapy for confusion and that was fine. He didn't have to accept it, fact was fact anyway.

Johnson grew up in a family of doctors—like, literally everyone in his family was a doctor, including the ones who did some petty hustle on the side and he didn't realize how confining growing up had been for him until he was speaking in class one morning and his classmate Nneoma made a joke about how the only thing he ever knew were medical stuff. He hated her in that moment, not only because everyone laughed loud that morning and wouldn't stop calling him doctor, but because he knew she was absolutely correct—except, that wasn't all he truly wanted to talk about, he wanted to express his love for Sade Adu's music to his male friends without being tagged a faggot. He wanted to show his parents amazing pictures of them he'd drawn without being perceived a failure and he wanted to make so much money without being thought a yahoo boy (because honestly, he really didn't like the idea of fraud, he just loved the idea of being incredibly rich).

One day, he'd summoned the courage to walk up to his mother and told her that he was thinking of switching to art class for his Senior year and she'd stopped cutting the tomatoes with a mouth quivering from withheld laughter.

"Where's your father—he's hiding abi?" She'd laughed out while sticking her head towards the door as if she was expecting someone to come into the kitchen with an iPhone camera.

"Mummy I'm serious," he cleared his throat as he readied himself for the expected.

"You can't be serious," she said dismissively and resumed at chopping the tomatoes like he hadn't just expressed himself.

"But I —,"

"Look, Johnny, If you don't have anything reasonable to say, just go and sleep—art koh, art ni—which successful artists do you know?" She sneered and when he started making a list of highly successful artists, she yelled at him to get out of her sight if he didn't want her relaying his laughable suggestion to his father. Everyone knew that the fear of his father was the beginning of wisdom.

He was already done with his painting for the morning by the time Sade was singing Sweetest Taboo so he did what he usually did after making illustrations: he took pictures of them, saved them secretly on his phone and burnt them to ashes with a candle. Watching his drawings burst to flames was gradually becoming one of his favorite parts of drawing because they helped to calm him down with the thought of watching his father burning like the masterpiece he was burning. His thoughts and not mine. He started developing a certain level of hatred for his dad the day he got back from school and his dad had all his art supplies and sketchbooks all packed outside. There was dirty gallon of kerosine and a box of matches next to his art stuff and he knew where this was going, he just wasn't prepared for it.

"I didn't give birth to a failure." His father boldly said to him as soon as he shut the gate behind him. "If you're a bastard, that's for you and your mum to figure out, but as long as you're under my roof! I refuse to tolerate your act of mediocrity."

"But I've been coming home with excellent results, Dad!"he yelled in protest and he was absolutely correct.

"The more reason why I think you can do more if you channel the time you use in creating this...this..RUBBISH!, in doing something more productive like, take studying more for example.

Johnny was speechless. He just stood there without knowing what to say or do.

"Pour the kerosene on your rubbish and burn it yourself." His father told him what to do and Johnny didn't contend with him—maybe he stood there staring at his passion eye to eye for a second or two as he made a promise to be so rich that he'd do and study whatever he really wanted to do and not what someone else thought right for him to do, before he picked the gallon up, poured the kerosene on it and watched his father hand him the matches that he finally used to light it all up. That day, Johnny squatted in front of the fire until the last of his artwork was burnt to ashes. He told himself that the artwork was his love for his father and that as soon as he turned 18 he would run away from home and ever look back.

As soon as the gaslighter was done burning his pencil drawing of Sade's braids he took a deep breath and started planning for his school outing. He was excited about it because a few of his classmates offered to pose for him to sketch them. He selected a worn out hoodie and a black jeans before reaching for his acrylic stained towel and headed for the bathroom while whistling to Sade. He was one step from stepping into the bathroom when the sound of his phone notification lowered Sade's voice, causing him to step back to grab the device which had a bold message from his good friend, Temi plastered on his phone screen.

TEMI: GUY! YOU BETTER COME WITH ENOUGH A4 PAPER! I'VE TOLD EVERYONE OF YOUR AMAZING SKILLS AND THEY ALL WANT AN ILLUSTRATION—DON'T WORRY, THEY WILL PAY.

JOHNNY: EVEN IF THEY DON'T PAY, IT'S ALL GOOD. I JUST WANT TO DRAW...I JUST WANT TO CREATE ART.

He hit send and glanced at his message and the realization of how much he meant his words he'd just typed  hit him for hard. He really just wanted to draw and he really just wanted to create art.

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