Fitting in

Chapter 16

   Simon walked into the art room at a slow deliberate pace with his head facing forward. He wouldn’t look in Brett’s direction, even when she pretended to have a coughing fit. She knew she had angered him at the grocery store, but not this badly. Brett was fixing to apologize when Ms. Tammy walked in.

            “People!” she shouted from the front of the room, banging her tin lunchbox onto her desk. The class straightened up and stared at their teacher curiously.

            “People!” she shouted again, tapping her lunch box once again to the table.

            “Yes?” Charlie, a confident punk who sat in the back of the class asked.

            “People!” she bellowed again ignoring Charilie’s question.

            “What?” Amaranth snapped waiting impatiently for the women to begin class.

            “Precisely Amaranth. What? What are people?” She said pointing towards the girl with her tin container in hand. She turned swiftly to search for something on her desk, then held up a painting of an old man. She showed it across the room, and put it down to pick up a picture of a young child.

            “What are people?”

            The class waited for her to continue talking, so she gestured to them to give her answers.

            “Flesh and bones?” Vashti, a smart girl in the class answered.  

            “Yes, give me more.”

            “Pain and love?” someone else answered.

            “Joy and sadness?”

            “Insensitive and caring?”

            “Yes, Yes, Yes all of those words describe humans,” she yelled, “but how do you portray that in art? How do you take someone neither smiling nor frowning, and show the emotions in their face.” She said lifting the picture of the man and child up again. Both subjects had almost stolid faces, yet the old man looked angry and bitter, and the child looked innocent and happy.

            “That’s the next project you must all work on. Paint someone, they can’t smile, but show all the emotions they bare inside.” She said taking a seat at her table. That was the classes cue to find their partners and get to work, but Simon still wouldn’t look at Brett.

            “Simon.” Brett called to him. Simon got up and began to walk out of the classroom not saying a word to her. Brett quickly picked up her things and followed him out.

            “Simon wait!” She yelled grabbing his hand. He turned around and motioned for her to let go, but Brett wouldn’t. They played a game of tug of war with his arm, until Brett linked their arms together and dragged him into the dark room for photography. No one would probably be using it today, but just to make sure Brett pushed the button on the handle to lock the door.

            Simon stared at her uninterested, and Brett wondered how someone’s feelings for another could change so drastically.

            “You’re not leaving until you tell me what’s wrong.”

            Simon sighed and leaned back comfortably against a table; he ran a frustrated hand through his tangled hair and Brett almost lost all self-control right there. They stared at each other uncomfortably from across the room, until Simon chuckled at the awkwardness. That laugh was all it took for Brett to crack. In three quick steps, she was across the room and upon him like the common cold. He tasted like a deep rich latte, and Brett wanted to drink all of him in. She kissed his lips, his chin, his neck anything to keep the sweet scent and flavor of him on her tongue. Simon seemed to have forgotten his anger towards her, for once their lips connected he took over as the conductor of this orchestra. She followed his lead in body movements, and gasped when she found his hands were planted on her stomach. It wasn’t in the same way Jason had groped her weeks ago. Jason did it to get in her pants, but Simon did it as if he couldn’t stand the space between them. He grabbed her bare waist and pulled her closer towards him, shuddering when Brett began to kiss his neck and run her hands through his tangled mess. Simon seemed to slip out of the lust filled delirium when Brett’s hands slowly made his way down to his pants. Pushing Brett back, he held her at a distance to catch his breath. A flood of emotions ripped through Simon’s eyes, and Brett didn’t know what to say. He looked in love, happy, then guilty, betrayed, and finally disappointed—with himself.