TWO
I loathe the idea of art class. Something about the idea of ripping out part of my soul, translating it into colors and materials, and putting it on paper or canvas for everyone to gawk at and misinterpret is completely horrific to me. For self-expression, I’ve always loved my drums. Drumbeats dissolve on the air — they’re out in the world for a moment before they go away. No one knows whether there was anger or frustration or passion or excitement behind them. They don’t give anyone else the time to mess with them. Drumbeats are all mine — the only things I’ve ever had that are.
There are ten of us in the class: three jocks, a couple of girls in tight jeans and new shoes who reek of hairspray, a handful of others. There’s no orange-shirted adult coming in, though. When the bell rings, everyone scoots their seats to a place at one of the wide, black tables.
The sound of metal legs scraping against the floor makes me cringe. I whip my head around, and that blond boy from the hallway scoots his stool a little closer to my desk.
Well, “boy” isn’t an accurate term. It’s even clearer now — with him sitting right next to me outside of the hustle and confusion of the hallway — that he’s a giant. He’s easily six foot two, with a shadow of stubble running across his jaw. My feet barely reach the bottom rung of the art stool, while his slide comfortably on the floor.
“You’re a freshman?” he asks, and looks right into my eyes. For a second, I can’t look away.
He is 100 percent generic looking. He could be anyone. Except for those eyes. I see his irises right through the thick lenses of his glasses — light brown sparked with streaks of green and flecks of blue. I have never seen so many colors in someone’s eyes before.
Then I feel like an idiot because I have spent exactly two seconds too long thinking about the color of some guy’s eyes. I cast my gaze downward, trying to focus on anything but his face.
His jeans don’t have a single rip or fray, but they’re not pristine, either. His gray t-shirt hugs his waist, letting me see how thin he is. Even though he’s two heads taller than me at least, he probably doesn’t break 160 pounds.
“No. Sophomore. I transferred from Superior.” The words come out of my mouth almost before I can think them. “My parents — uh…I thought I’d try something new. They bought a house on the border when I was nine,” I explain, like he should care. Like he needs to know.
For an instant, he looks surprised, and then his eyes sparkle at me when he gives a little smile. “Well. For the electives — music, art, architecture, film, whatever — we just scan our cuffs into the tabletop and pick an assignment. Then it records whatever we do.” I raise an eyebrow. “It probably doesn’t teach us much, I know, but at least no one hassles us.”
“Yeah, okay.” I press my cuff into the input section of the tabletop and choose Option 1: Draw a picture of what you did this summer. Lame, but at least it’ll be over with soon. The blond guy chooses the same option on his half of the table.
“I didn’t get to introduce myself. I’m Elias — I’m a junior.” He sticks out his hand, and I stare at it. It’s so huge — strong but thin, tendons showing in the back of it. If I put my hand against his, palm to palm, my fingertips probably wouldn’t reach his first knuckle.
“I started out at Superior Public,” he says. “Parents took me out after first grade.”
My heart jumps. Is he another One? No, he can’t be. He wouldn’t have transferred away that early unless his parents were absolutely sure he wasn’t going to go Super, and six or seven years old is too young. He must be a Normal.
It would make sense for me to mumble some comment or even get up and walk away, but the space between us suddenly feels weird — charged or something. The fine hairs on my arm stand on end, and I can swear I feel my skin prick. It’s like a magnet, keeping me there, even though I know it’s probably not the best idea to keep talking to this guy because I will waste even more time thinking about his eyes.
I can’t speak to him, but I can’t make myself move away either.
He drops his hand, smiles that slight smile again, and looks down at the blank tabletop in front of him. He pulls a stylus out of his bag. In bold handwriting, all caps, he writes at the top of the screen: “What I Did Over Summer Vacation.” He draws a stick figure lying on a hill in the sunshine, staring up. Then he draws an arrow pointing at it and writes, “Bored,” beside it.
He draws a vertical line to make a new frame and then swipes the old one out of view. Next, he draws a stick figure with a backpack on and a massive building in the distance with a huge sign that says, “Normal High.” A dotted line with an arrow at the end shows him walking in. He motions for me to move my arms off the surface in front of me, and I lean back without thinking. In front of me, he draws a room with long rectangles for chairs and circles for stools and a handful of bodies filling them. He writes “Art Class” at the top, the quotation marks greatly exaggerated. I hold a giggle back in my throat.
I never giggle.
He sketches two stick figures sitting closer to each other than any of the other ones, one much smaller than the other. He labels one “Elias” and the other “Girl Who Won’t Tell Me Her Name.” Then he writes, “(Pretty blue eyes.)”
Well, that does it. This doesn’t feel like the only attention I got from a boy last year — the kind I definitely didn’t want — but I still can’t tell whether it’s good or bad. My stomach does flips, and I have to get out of there. Have to. I hoist my body off my perch on the stool with my left hand, hop down and grab my backpack with my right, and walk toward the door.
I scan my cuff at the door, mumbling, “Bathroom.” The door registers my exit, and I get the hell out of there as fast as I can, not even looking back at his — Elias’s — stupid lanky frame and ridiculous sparkling eyes.
