Positively Negative [Rewrite]

Jun21: On the way to Reconcile

Chapter Two: On the way to Reconcile

JOEY

Replacing Art with Spanish meant that I no longer had a free period first thing Monday morning, so after registration (where Chou welcomed us all back to "What I'm sure will be a great term of hard work") I headed up to the studios.

I wasn't sure what to expect from Art. I'd taken it for my GCSEs and, while I'd thought I'd been pretty shit at it, Mrs Cann had loved my work. Had to be better at it than Spanish, then. As soon as I walked in, Abby caught sight of me. She hurried over and grabbed my hand to lead me over to Mr Brown. I was given an A1 folder, an A3 sketchbook and a sheet of instructions for the current project; The Coast.

Abby's table was in the centre of the room. I missed my Spanish window as she introduced me to the two others sat with her; Luke Bradley and Maddie Pearce. They both looked alright. I'd seen Maddie around before at least.

"If you need any help with ideas, let me know, okay?"

"Yeah, I will," I told her, looking down at my blank page. The first task was to come up with a bunch of ideas—things that linked to the coast and could be the foundation of my project. Sounded easy enough but my first thought was surfing, and that lead to kissing Freddie in the sea. Wetsuit to wetsuit. I shook my head as I bent a little over the desk and pencilled in summer barbeques at the beach. That had me remembering the days Courtney and I began, and how I could have never imagined it would end up like this.

Waves. Tides. Washing things anew. Standing at the edge of the shore and allowing wet sand to filter through toes as the ocean embraced ankles. Lights of a pier blinking lead to shoulder to shoulder with Freddie. Stormy nights at the beach. I drew an arrow from beach huts to watching the sea, to chilling with friends. The horizon; swimming towards it, even if you never reach. Sunset. Solitary at the beach—it was where I'd gone to be alone and think, but Freddie—

Holy fuck.

Suddenly there was Freddie cold; Freddie's shoulder; Freddie's hands around my own. Freddie's lips tasting of cider, salt and tongue, and my eyes were closed. Why the hell had my eyes been closed? And that slow heat grew again, butterflies returning.

Something inside me wanted to return to that moment—over and over. Again and again, and –Abby leaned over to look at my scribbles.

"Whoa," she murmured. "You've got quite a lot, there."

"I guess so," I offered weakly. I hadn't written Freddie's name anywhere, but what I had written on the page still felt too personal to be shared. I lifted my chin towards her work. "What have you got?"

Abby looked happy enough to have her attention diverted as she pushed her sketchbook a little towards me. There was a photo of a little boy licking at an ice cream cone, and a half finished drawing beneath it.

"This is my little brother," she said, picking up her pencil to twirl it around her fingers. "His favourite thing about the beach has always been the fact that we pretty much always get ice cream when we go, so I'm doing a series of paintings and studies of him eating cones and shit." She grinned sheepishly. "It's pretty dull, though."

"No," I replied softly. The pencil drawing was really good. Her lines were sketchy and light, giving the image an airy feel to it. "That's pretty accurate."

"Yeah, well. The hard part is going to be painting it. Might go for watercolours. But let's have a look at yours, I'll help you pick a focus—"

"N-no, I'm good," I insisted, pulling my sketchbook away from her and elbowing a passer-by in the process. Used paint water was spilt down my arm and onto my thigh as I shot into the air, causing the whole room to tune into the show.