The MagCon Ships III: Paper (Jolinsky)(BoyxBoy)

Chapter 12 - No Idea

[Photo: Campus.  Video: Please Don't Go - Joel Adams] 

"For today's work, I want you all to describe your Christmas or New Year's celebration with art." The professor says, pacing around the front of the lecture hall as he taps his pencil against the palm of his hand repeatedly.

Even though it has only been a few days after the new year started, the hall definitely feels as pressured and as concentrated as it was before. The atmosphere of the entire campus has not changed a bit, as students walk around catching up with work and projects, trying to graduate with a decent mark and find a stable job for the future. The professors and staff are already busy, with the incoming Junior's ball in everyone's mind, the staff know that when the first week of February hits, everything will be about the ball, since it's planned to be on the Saturday of the first week. 

The Junior's ball is just a simple party for the students, and it's just like any party of promenade out there. You get to ask a person out to take to the ball, have some drinks, party, dance, and probably make out at the end of it. Not many students attend though, as most use the time to catch up on stuff, but Adriana and I decide to make the most out of college and go to the ball together. We have one year more left until we'd have to part ways to live our lives professionally, and as much as I would love to spend my life connected to Adriana, our passions mark different paths in our lives, and we'd have to live with that. 

Johnson enters the room late, just after the professor has given us the time to work for the whole period. I flip through the pages of my sketchpad as I lock my eyes to his, but he refuses to meet mine. With his head down, he makes his way up the lecture hall, through the sea of students stationed by their seating assignments, and finally gets to his seat beside me. 

"What are we supposed to do?" He asks, looking down to grab his sketchpad out of his bag, still not meeting my eyes. 

I give up, and allow myself to focus on the blank page I've brought in front of me. I trail the pencil to an oval, proceeding to draw the outlines of a human face. "We have to draw a symbolic representation of our Christmas or New Year." 

He nods in response. 

As I'm satisfied with the oval outline, I proceed to start working with the border features of the face. I balance the right and left sides and make sure that the jaw seems correct, and then I outline the soft, squared chin of the individual. Darkening the lines, I can't help but think about the things that happened on New Year's eve, and how it gravely affected the relationship Johnson and I had. I wasn't thinking, I didn't mean to do it, and he knows that, but he doesn't understand. He doesn't want to be dishonest with me so he told me the truth, and as much as I expected it to come from him, it still hit me like a rocket. The truth, no matter how close two people can be, will always be painful. It could break bonds and ties like scissors cutting through a single thread. 

Now it feels like we're strangers again, like how we were before we met as kids. We only talk when necessary, and we don't even get into the topics like we used to. It still confuses me to this day. He called me his man, when we were getting dinner romantically for the first time. We kissed, and he let me lay on top of him on his bed. He got me a new phone for Christmas, and we made out all the time behind his parent's backs. And through all that, how could he do that to me? 

For the whole period, the both of us were as silent as the room was. It wasn't unnatural for us to sit beside each other completely quiet, because it was how it always was whenever we were in class together. Not because we weren't talking to each other, but because we were both busy and focused on our works. Now, there's tension between the space that's occupied our two seats, our legs don't lean on each other's, and we don't nudge each other's knee to purposely mess the other person's work up. And when that happens, the whole day will be spend getting their revenge, so the whole day is spend avoiding each other for fun, but as the end of the day comes, we would both come to an agreement to stop the nonsense.