A Book of Short Stories

Pencil and Paint

It was an impossible problem. A problem so difficult that no person has ever been able to solve it without help. It seemed so simple, and yet so difficult at the same time. So rational, yet devoid of any logic. It can bring suffering, or it can bring pleasure beyond imagining. But just this once, someone was able to solve it faster than any teacher was able to teach it.

"Maya, how ON EARTH are we supposed to solve that problem?" Someone shouted from the other side of the room.

The kid was referring to the math problem that Maya had just written on the board, the math problem that had earned the title, "impossible," for its difficulty. To most people, it just looked like a bunch of numbers and letters, but to the Math Club, it looked like an undefeatable monster, one that could melt a person's brain with just a cursory glance.

Without answering the random person on the other side of the room, the club president took a small piece of chalk and began writing on the small blackboard in the art room. He didn't stop to think as he wrote the numbers and letters, effortlessly solving the problem piece by piece.

"Maya slow down, I don't understand what you're doing at all!" Another voice called from somewhere in the room.

Maya let out a sigh and turned around to face the other club members. "Do I need to explain this to you?"

"Yes," yet another voice shouted as quite literally all of the heads in the room nodded, including the head of the faculty advisor.

The small, brown-haired and eyed, high school senior let out another exasperated sigh, already knowing that explaining it to the teenagers in the room will have no effect. "It's all about logic," he began to explain.

"You say that about everything," one of the teenagers complained, cutting Maya off.

Maya turned to the girl who had cut him off, "Because logic can be used to explain everything," he stated simply. "Wait, has anyone signed in yet?"

He waited for the wave of shaking heads to crash across the room before giving a piece of paper to the nearest person to him. "Sign in before you leave today," Maya told the kids in the room.

"Anyway, you can use logic to solve any problem you have . . ." Maya continued but was once again cut off, this time by the sound of someone banging on the window.

Every head turned toward the window, assuming that they were just hearing things, seeing as it would be difficult, not to mention dangerous, to reach the window of the room, which is on the third story of the school. But not a single one of them was expecting to find a green haired, green-eyed teenager staring at them.

Everyone in the room froze, confused and surprised by the sight before them. Maya almost didn't know what to do, and his jaw was on the floor, so he walked over to the window with a quickened pace and slid it open.

"Thanks," the green haired kid said quietly and swung into the room.

After regaining his composure, Maya glared up at the kid, both annoyed and somewhat interested to hear his excuse for climbing on the building's exterior. "What were you doing out there?"

Before the other could answer, the door swung open, hitting the wall with a thud. In from the hallway marched fourteen students and one teacher, the art teacher. They all wore smocks and held paint brushes in hand, a sure sign that this was the Art Club.

"Why are you in here?" One of the Art Club students asked to no one in particular.

"We booked this room," Maya walked up to the boy that had asked. "What about you?"