Wish We Could Turn Back Time m.c

Chapter 5

I pushed the nervous feeling in the pit of my stomach to the  back of my mind as I gathered up the courage to not only start a conversation with Al but also to show him my art binder. Look at me, showing my art off to a boy and texting my best friend who I met online. A few weeks ago I would have curled up into a fetal position and died if someone asked me to show my drawings to someone of the opposite sex and I'd never have the balls to reply to someone's Twitter DM. Thank God Jasmine was so nice or I would have never even become acquainted with my best friend in the whole world.

You might wonder what the big deal was about showing my art to Al. Under normal person circumstances, it wouldn't be a big deal at all. However, me being the oddity that I am, I'm really into horror drawings so a lot of my creations were quite creepy. I remember the first time I had shown my pictures to my little brother and sister a couple years ago.

"Darren, will you tell me if this is any good?" His face fell when I showed him the drawing.

"If you were going for mentally scarring and childhood ruining then it's amazing," the snarky sixth grader (at the time) went back to playing his Xbox while I frowned. I thought maybe my sister would like it.

"Wendy, do you like sissy's picture?" The then five year old screeched and ran away from me screaming for my mum. I got in trouble later and my mother told me I wasn't to show pictures of girls gouging out their own eyes to my younger siblings ever again.

"You know what, you can stop drawing them all together too if you don't mind. That would be great," my mum finished reprimanding me and went to go sooth a still crying Wendy. I guessed I'd just have to keep my creativity to myself from then on and had been doing so ever since. Al was about to break the streak.

"Hey, Al?" I asked him timidly. We were sitting across from each other at the picnic tables in the school yard. He was munching on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich while I didn't eat anything. I figured I could give Wendy the lunch money I'd saved today when I got home.

"Yeah?" His voice was muffled from the peanut butter making his mouth stick together and I giggled.

"I'm thinking of entering this art competition and was wondering if you'd take a look at my potential entry?" I rushed when I'd said it and even ran my words together a bit but Al seemed to understand.

"Well I'm no art critic but sure," he wiped his hands on a napkin and reached across the table for my blue art binder which I nudged towards him. His expression turned serious as he began to flip through the sheet protectors filled with drawings. I didn't know whether to take it s a good sign or a bad one.

"Well?" I became impatient and finally addressed him when he was flipping through the final pages. I needed some sort of verbal reaction from him or I was going to die of suspense.

"Oh Lacey, these are beautiful. Just look at the meaning behind these! It looks like you were drawing your soul. And so relate-able!" He flipped the book around to me to show me my drawing a girl sitting Indian style with her hands over her ears while several monsters attacked her and knives and other weapons were thrown at her. I was utterly impressed that Al recognized the symbolism of the pressure the world put on you as a person. However, I wasn't sure how he found that relate-able.  Al was confident, handsome, organized, funny and charismatic. In fact, the only quality that we shared was that we were both good students.

"Wow, thanks Al. No one's ever given me such an incredible comment before," I meant it too.

"Well, they should. You're amazing, Lacey," he kept a face of awe as he continued flipping through my binder. I felt blush creep up from behind my ears and onto my cheeks. I'm glad he was too infatuated with the sketches to notice me.