Narelle

Puzzle Pieces

Chapter five of 'Narelle'! Enjoy!

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*CHASE'S POINT OF VIEW*

I woke up, took Lizzy to school and went to school myself, just like I did every weekday. But this time, instead of being my usual defensive, sarcastic and incredibly charming self, I was going to try and be a tad nicer than usual. Well, to one person anyway- Narelle. Not because I care about her or anything soppy like that, but to find out why she's a female clone of me. Without the charm, obviously, and a darker kind of personality. I just wanted to prove to myself that I'm the only one with an awful past. The only way for me to know for sure if she says so herself, so I have to get closer to her and get her to open up to me. Like an undercover detective kind of thing.

I watched her closely in maths- to see how hard she paid attention. Maths was by far the hardest class of the lot for everyone, so if she wasn't paying attention, she was distracted. I could see she was trying hard to focus, but her eyes kept drifting off the board and onto the nearest window. Any normal person would have skipped over this, as her attempts to hide it were good. But unfortunately for her, I'm great, so I noticed. There was my first puzzle piece- she was distracted, but tried to hide it because clearly she didn't want anyone to know why she was distracted. I had my first clue, so I stopped studying her and studied my maths instead.

*NARELLE'S POINT OF VIEW*

In maths today, I kept getting distracted. The cloud was taking up all my attention span, whispering awful things to me as I tried my hardest to write down difficult information. I always get distracted, but I need to keep on hiding it. NO ONE can notice, because how could I tell them I had a gigantic, black, gloomy cloud in my head, that only I could see and hear, that whispered horrible things to me? Simple; I couldn't. I would sound like I belonged in a mental hospital. I'm pretty sure no one noticed I was distracted- but when I looked behind me, Mr Jawline's eyes were fixated on me, like they were closely examining me. My heart sped up, and I tried to keep myself composed as he raised one of his eyebrows at me. I rolled my eyes and made sure I kept my eyes on the board for the rest of the lesson. But when I looked from the corner of my eye, I could see his attention was on his work. I let out a deep sigh. I had got away with it.

*CHASE'S POINT OF VIEW*

In art class, we had a free painting lesson. In my painting, I only painted with dark colours, because I didn't see the need for bright colours, so I painted a dark night. With a black sky, and gold and white stars, my painting was a masterpiece. After I finished, I realised that I had another opportunity to get another clue from Narelle's mystery. I stealthily strolled past Narelle, and took the slightest peek at her painting. Even though I looked at it for a millisecond, I remembered what it looked like. The entire canvas was painted black. It looked extremely bland at first glance, but if you broke the barrier and dove deeper, you could see different types of black. Some were darker than others, there were different paintbrushes stroked in different ways and it went from boring to detailed. Narelle's painting looked like it represented something- only I didn't know what exactly. I was pretty sure it had something to do with her personality, like my painting, so I had my second puzzle piece. Her personality or something in her life was dark. And I wanted to know why. She was hiding something that caught her off guard, that was dark and mysterious, that clearly she didn't want anyone to know about. Well, unluckily for her, I had my second clue.

*NARELLE'S POINT OF VIEW*

In art class today, we had a free session of painting. I decided to paint the one thing in my life that hasn't left my side- the cloud. I made it fully black, adding different tones, textures and swiping different brushes in different directions. Bland at first glance, but only someone with a dark mind or bad past could look past it. So obviously I saw the detail clearly. While I was painting, I had a little look at Mr Jawline's painting, and it made me freeze all over. It was also identical to mine, but with tiny gold and white specks. It made me stop and think things over a little. Did he analyse me to see if we were similar? Or if we had anything like that in common? No. Surely not, it's all clearly in my head. We aren't similar at all. He's arrogant, mysterious, closed up....