Playful Spirit

Playful Spirit [1] Getting out

Chapter One

Getting out

"She's a timid girl. Shy at first. Not someone you would expect to go out and live like a normal teenager. Every day, she sits in the same seat. The lonely table by the window, listening to the music playing above as the aroma of coffee beans fills her nose. Her straight long blonde hair falls carelessly across her back. She doesn't even try to look beautiful, it just comes naturally. Everyone will stop and stare at her like she is a foreign object they wish to learn more about. But she doesn't care. She's lost in her own world made of fantasies and broken dreams. Her pale complexion rarely has any form of color. She is never amused by anyone or anything. Bored with the life she once treasured so dearly. She sips her coffee and flips the page of a worn out book she has read more times than she can count. Glancing out the window with a sense of longing in her eyes, she wishes for that one person to walk by and make everything perfect again. And so, in the same seat she sits in every day in the same cafe, she waits for her knight in shining armor."

I smiled as I watched the red paint slide down the canvas from the brush. I loved the feeling of serenity that took over whenever I painted. That everything in the world came to a standstill and it was just me, my paints, my canvas, and my music.

Making art was something I treasured. Something I hoped to do for the rest of my life.

Sadly, that would never happen.

My parents didn't support my wish to become an artist. They thought it was a waste of my perfect little smart brain. They believed that every artist was just a high-school dropout who was dumb as shit and used their pain and drugs to make crappy strokes and lines on a canvas for money.

I really hated my parents for that.

My Uncle was an artist. A very good one. He's the reason I want to be one now, and if he was still alive, he would be proud of me. I would stay up all night when I was younger and watch him paint. Listen to him hum and sing songs as he made gentle strokes. I would fall asleep eventually; soothed by the atmosphere he was creating.

We were close. Closer than my parents and I. But he got cancer and eventually passed. It's been three years since then. When we went to clean out his house, my parents threw away all his art supplies in a heartbeat. I went back out that night and snuck his entire supplies home with me.

We had had a discussion with my guidance counselor one year to figure out what classes I needed to take to follow my career path. When she asked me what I wanted to be, I answered her with pride.

"An artist."

My parents laughed at that. Literally almost fell out of their seats laughing. They told my counselor I was mistaken and said I was becoming a lawyer instead. So, they all set up my classes for the rest of the school year, not with any of my consult.

But I'd be damned if I was going to spend the rest of my life fighting for other people's rights when I was denied my own.

So, for the last year or so, I have been finishing up my Uncles paintings and selling them. I plan to leave this town right after I get my diploma. I never want to come back and I never intend to either.

So far, I raised enough money to get me an apartment and have enough left over for food until I can get a job. Which reminds me, I have to call the real estate woman and ask her about the apartment I saw in the next town over.

I set down my paintbrush and wiped my hands on my pants. I had about two pairs of pants that were covered in paint and they were hidden in the far back of my closet. Nowhere close for my mother to see them when she did my laundry.