West Ark High

Count on You

"Okay, open your eyes."

Jasper obliged, opening his eyes once her hands were removed from his face. He was standing directly in front of a painting that he couldn't quite interpret; it could have been candles against a dark room or it could have been souls of the condemned trying to escape from hell.

The second one seemed more poetic to him.

Maya smiled nervously off to the side. "So," she picked at her nail, "what's your verdict?"

Jasper ran his hand through his freshly trimmed curls—she had somehow convinced him to finally take care of his ill maintained mop of hair. "It's not bad," he admitted after a moment. For some reason, he felt compelled to run his fingertips along the canvas.

Maya visibly beamed, and then covered it up with her palm as she turned away. When she faced him again, her smile was more controlled. "It seemed to fit you better than most of the other mosaics in here."

Jasper crossed his arms, nodding slightly. This was only the second time that they had gone to the art institution, but he found a lot more solace in the quiet halls than he cared to admit. The building was huge, fostering numerous types of art pieces ranging from sculptures to portraits to abstracts. Aside from Maya, there were rarely any other people in the same room with him at a time.

Six days ago, he had made the decision to wait for some dumb girl to finish her shift at the liquor store he frequently shoplifted at. His intentions had mostly been to shut her down once and for all, to let it be known that he wasn't some project to fix or whatever bullshit she might have been thinking. He hadn't expected to meet her again, nor had he dare thought their meetings would turn into something that he looked forward too.

Maya patted his arm gently, but when he looked down at her, she was focused on the painting again. "This one is my favorite too; it's showing a darker side of the world. I mean, it's nice to focus on the color, but sometimes you need to acknowledge the darkness in order to heal it."

Jasper knew that it was a therapeutic tactic and he refused to give in. "Sometimes healing is out of the question." He pulled his arm out of her grasp and retreated to a bench setting in the center of the room.

"What's your favorite painting we've seen so far, Jasper?" Maya's voice was patient and sweet.

Jasper swallowed, avoiding her eyes. He didn't like how nice Maya was to him because it was going to make everything harder when he betrayed her. But instead of blowing up, he murmured, "There was one with some birds in it that wasn't terrible."

Maya slid onto the bench beside him. "Listen, Jasper," Maya picked at her fingernails again, a habit that Jasper had quickly learned about her, "there's something I've been thinking about."

Well, here it was—the moment he had been anticipating from the beginning. Maya was officially put up with his cynical attitude and poor behavior and was leaving him on his own, just like his own family did. And it took only what? A week? He deserved a medal for how quickly he was capable of chasing people out of his life.

Jasper rolled his shoulders, turning his back to her slightly as they sat. Suddenly he wished he hadn't cut his hair so he could use the long locks to screen his face from her view.

"It's about Thanksgiving, Jasper." Maya's hand curled around his shoulder, startling him slightly. Those...were not the words he had been bracing himself for. "It's tomorrow and I just want to know what your plans were for that?"

Jasper tensed, still slightly shook from the switch of conversation topic. In fact, he wished that she had dropped him from her life. Anything to keep him from having an uncomfortable discussion about Thanksgiving and what he was going to do on a day like that.