You Can Run To Me

Two

The end of the day brought with it the haven of art enrichment. Natalie had signed up to it pretty much as soon as her place had been confirmed. Someone had told her spaces went fast, and she was taking no chances when it came to her art.

She shucked off her burdensome sack and abandoned her laptop to her desk. Her room was small, but she had decided that space was a perfectly good compromise when it meant she got the room all to herself. If she couldn't share with Penryn, she wouldn't share with anyone.

She dashed around the room, pulling out drawer after drawer until she finally uncovered her art satchel. Twenty perfectly shaped brushes that guaranteed never left those annoying hairs in your paint. A set of fifty acrylic paints in way more colors than the rainbow, all pristine but definitely used.

At the top of the satchel was a full set of graphite pencils. That was the top of the pyramid for her. Sure, she wrought magnum opuses from paint and brush, but pencils... Pencils were her forté. Give her pencils and she was at home. She, out of the corner of the dreariest textbook page, would weave a tapestry of invisible color that attested to her skill.

She glanced at her watch, snapping out of her reverie. Late. Again. Today she had given practically every teacher the worst impression ever. She wondered distractedly if she should get a pair of those glasses that have a little screen in the corner so that she couldn't lose track of the time. Then she remembered that she would just forget them. Or ignore them.

And now she was running even later. She swung on her art bag and slammed out the dorm door. She grinned self-consciously at her own impressive foresight in checking where the art room was at lunch. Grinning, that is, until she realised that she was lost once again.

A quiet swear word slipped loose and she whirled around in the middle of the shiny corridor. One of those useless black panel signs hung above one of the turnoffs from two metal hooks in the ceiling. She quickly read it and breathed out s l o w l y. She was in the right place.

She walked briskly, painfully aware of the creeping time and her shoes rubbing away at her heels. In minutes that felt like eons, she found herself stood at the door. She checked her schedule and the room numbers matched. Thank God.

Deep breath, step inside. She remembered this room. It was one of the ones that she had dragged her parents into that night so long ago before she had been sure this was the Next Step. She thought back to the beautiful artwork that had mesmerized her the last time she had passed through this doorway. As she looked around her, she noticed that most of these canvases were the same ones from before, and the familiarity ached.

The room had a high ceiling, a bit like a church, and it smelt like life to Nat (which meant that the room reeked of drying paint and solvent). Large white cuboid sinks were scattered absent-mindedly throughout the room. The walls were plastered with past and present students' efforts, creating a magnificent collage of thoughts and feelings in full color or piercing sepia.

Today the room was lined with dozens of upright wooden easels, arranged in a haphazard ring around some mysterious centerpiece. Natalie yearned to know what it was. Maybe it was a nude model. Although if it was some obese old woman...

Natalie had to walk all the way around the circle to find the one empty canvas in the room. Except it was really just a sheet of cartridge paper pinned to the wooden central bar of the easel. Natalie was almost relieved; at least they weren't expecting miracles of this freshman club.

From her new angle, Nat could see the enigmatic central object. It was a young woman – not nude, of course – talking passionately, presumably about her subject. She looked too young to be a professor, but as Natalie listened, she decided that this girl must really be her new teacher.

"This class," she said, "is not for fun. Anyone who's here just for fun, can you please walk back out again."

A pause, then the teacher continued.

"This class is for those of you who are truly passionate about art. Those of you who truly live and breathe and sleep in its hues and spectrums and strokes and sweeps. I ask again for anyone who doesn't exist for art alone to leave now."

Another patient, pregnant pause.

"Alright then, I'm going to presume that you all walked in here on purpose then," she continued, prompting a bubble of nervous laughter.

Natalie soon decided that she liked this strange lady. She clearly really cared about the artwork, unlike some teachers she could mention. She could already see her afternoons sprawling out luxuriously before her - filled with paint and graphite stains that just wouldn't come out – and she smiled.

"For today, I would just like you all to start something. Anything you like, in any medium, using any subject, here or imagined. I don't expect it to be finished – I'd really rather it wasn't – but I definitely expect its lovely little bones to be on your page."

Natalie liked this teacher even more. (She really ought to find out this lady's name.) Never before had a teacher given her such free reign. She could use pencil, for once. And she could draw whatever she wanted.

Ten painful minutes later and Natalie realised she had a problem. Her pencils were arranged in one straight row in front of her. The cartridge paper was perfectly parallel to it, stood to the attention. Trouble was, the paper was perfectly blank, too.

It wasn't that she couldn't think of anything. In fact, that was the exact problem. She could think of plenty of things. Too many things.

She would settle on this one idea, and then panic, sure that it wouldn't be impressive enough, that it wasn't right, that it wouldn't look good. And so she was sat there, arranging and rearranging her tools into their places, fleeting on the moment.

Her eyes roamed around the room experimentally for inspiration. No. She was not going to draw the walls. Bad idea. She tried to subtly crane her neck to see what her neighbor was doing, receiving in return a foul glare. She consoled herself by giving a full mental critique of their paltry offering. A fruit bowl; really?

So she couldn't pick an idea, she couldn't copy, and her page was staring back at her, white and unyielding. She kicked her legs like a little girl in the high chair, feeling every non-uniformity in the seat, wincing at every sniffle and rustle the room made.

Suddenly.

Inspiration.

Her hand blindly found the HB and began to flit furiously over the paper. A shape began to form before her delirious eyes. This was it; magnificent, impressive, perfect. Okay, so maybe it wasn't on the level of Galileo or Van Gogh, but it was beautiful.

Black and white. In front of her were a thousand different shades sprawling in their combined efforts to span the length and breadth of their confining rectangle. It was nowhere near finished, of course, but the framework was there. Natalie's hand was cramping madly, but she forced it on. This section here – yes, this one – it had to be just right. One tiny little patch here needed another layer. The lighting there wasn't right yet, but it would be. The corner of his eye only wanted-

Clap. Clap. Clap. Clap.

Natalie froze momentarily, her hand poised impatiently to complete its never-ending task.

"I'm afraid it's time for you to go now. Your hour is up. I really can't wait to see what you've got for me. I can see you all desperately fighting the urge to stay and just-do-this. But it really is time to go now. If you could please leave your work on your easel, then I can go around and see each of them individually. You can go now."

Natalie wasn't ready. She wanted to stay and finish him so badly it was practically a physical pain. Her hand crept contrarily closer to the page once more.