Freedom of Sketch

Detective Work

They send a sweaty man in a jumpsuit to snap the lock off my locker with a giant bolt cutter. He wipes his forehead with the back of his hand. "What do you expect to find?" he asks the trio of administrators fidgeting behind him.

Weed, they speculate, a bomb. Arsonist paraphernalia.

"A severed hand," I grumble.

The principal furrows his brows at me and tugs importantly on the lapels of his charcoal gray suit. "This is not a laughing matter."

Am I laughing?

My cheap combination lock splits cleanly under the bite of the bolt cutter and crashes to the floor. Principal Matheson reaches out and swings open the pockmarked door to display a column of clutter only a deranged high-schooler can tolerate. He surveys the mess with narrowed eyes, disappointed he can't immediately locate any contraband. He motions for his office assistant, a fresh-faced twentysomething with coffee breath and a bad case of hyperactivity. "Start removing her things," he orders.

The janitor sets the bolt cutter down with a grunt and shakes out a black trash bag.

I lick my dry lips. "Thanks, but I really wasn't planning on doing spring cleaning just yet," I quip.

"Enough of your smart mouth, young lady," Matheson barks, finger pointed at my nose. "You just keep digging yourself into a deeper and deeper hole."

I chew on my lip ring and pretend not to care.

Little miss office assistant withdraws an armful of papers - notes between me and my friends, a halfhearted essay, that one algebra assignment I thought I turned in last week - and pours them down the hungry mouth of the trash bag. She wrinkles her nose and brushes a gum wrapper from her bosom.

I sigh. "You want me to help?"

"You just stand there and be quiet." The principal grabs a black spiral-bound from the top of the book stack, flips it open, and begins leafing through the pages with rough, impatient hands.

"Please be careful," I say. "That's my sketchbook."

He comes to a page and hesitates.

An eerie hush falls over the hallway. A sharp pain travels up my spine and into my temples. My fingers and toes tingle as an anxious numbness creeps in. It feels like there's television static in my skin.

"What's this?" He shakes the book. "Is this supposed to be you?"

The assignment was to create a black and white illustration of some sort of current societal crisis. Some students chose to draw ice caps melting into rough seas, with helpless polar bears trapped in the waves. Others drew hate crimes, took advantage of the black and white color rule to portray racism. Lizzie sketched a dark image of an unhappy girl sitting cross-legged in a chaos of fitness and beauty magazines, a length of measuring tape roped around her neck like a tie. Or a noose.

I chose suicide.

Conclusion: Shiloh Mackenzie wants to kill herself, of course.

A rising surge of anger forces my throat open and I cry out. "This isn't any of your business! Why can't you just leave me alone?" I hug myself tightly around my ribs so I won't crack open.

"Shiloh." The principal gravely lowers his eyes. "This is very serious. Not only were you the last student to sign out of the art studio, but your possession - your creation - of an image like this...." his words vanish.

My voice tightens into a squeal. "It means nothing! It's not me!"

"You're going to have to come with me," he says flatly.

My insides twist in on themselves and I clap a hand over my mouth. "I'm going to be sick." My muffled voice is so pathetic. My leg muscles twitch; heat rises to my face. I bolt.

"Shiloh!"

Rows of lockers blur past me; I chase the smears of reflected light on the floor. Not me, not me, chants the voice in my head. I explode through the bathroom door and heave breakfast into the nearest sink. Not. Me. The old pipes creak as I turn on the water, ice cold. It smells heavily of metal but feels good on my face. I barely recognize myself in the freckled mirror: red-rimmed eyes, carrying the fatigue of too many late-night cramming sessions; black eyeliner bleeding down my face. When I woke up this morning, I expected the worst. But today is revealing itself to be much more horrible even than that.

I suck in a trembling breath and pound the faucet with my fist. Every single cell in my body quivers with intense frustration. It takes the rest of my remaining energy to keep from attacking the sink.

The door creaks open and a slender blonde woman walks in, the sounds of her high heels echoing off of the tile. She smiles encouragingly, revealing a very straight row of bleached teeth. "Shiloh? Are you okay?"

Great, they sent a school office slave in to check on me, I think, turning back to the faucet. I splash a few more handfuls of water on my face. "I'm alive," I sputter, lips dripping.

She laughs softly. "That's good. Can we talk?"

I cling to the sink, breathing heavily. The last thing I want to do is talk. "Is that necessary?" I say.

"Yes, I think so."

"Okay," I respond, vacantly staring down the drain, which gurgles on my vomit.

"Awesome, but not here." The woman pulls some paper towels from the dispenser and hands them to me. "I think my office would be a little more appropriate... and cleaner."

I dry my face and nod in agreement, even though this woman is a complete stranger who seems a hell of a lot more familiar with me than I am with her.

We retrace my steps back down the empty hallway. I expect to see a few feet of crime scene tape decorating my locker, but there is nothing. Our pace is slow; I have to keep one hand on the wall for balance, as the floor feels like it is trying to pitch me over. False accusations and locker searches give me vertigo.

The bell rings, and a surge of chatty, restless students fills the corridor to the walls. A stratum of exaggerated complaints about home life and test anxiety weighs down the soupy, lukewarm air. A strong smell of damp fleece and unwashed hair hits me in the face and I have to struggle not to puke again. As much as I don't want to, I keep close to the blonde woman as we navigate our way, single-file, past the open main doors. The outside air is so cold it burns, but it makes those few steps a bit more refreshing.

***

We finally reach a narrow door I never noticed before. Linda Fletcher, Psychologist, is engraved upon the metal nameplate. My face throbs with hot embarrassment. It's no real secret that I'm a head case, but it has always been one of those behind-your-back topics you can safely assume is being discussed without ever having to actually hear it for yourself. Now, in the land of camera phones and social media, there is official evidence of my nuttiness. Pictures of me entering the school headshrinker's office will be circulating the student body faster than the flu in no time. I keep my head low until I'm a safe distance inside the room.