Still

Chapter One

On a scale from one to ten (one being really creepy and disturbing, ten being that it was perfectly normal): How weird was it that I liked to watch the person in front of me draw?

Yes, we were supposed to be reading, and yes I totally would have, if I had something interesting to read. My three moving boxes worth of books hadn't arrived at my house yet, and I was afraid to visit the school's library, so I had been reading catalogs about Colorado for the past two weeks. Mrs. Criss didn't really care, so long as I was reading something, so I made it seem as if I was invested in What You Will Find in Wyoming! However, I would occasionally peer over at the guy in front of me to see what he was drawing.

I was no expert, but I felt like his stuff could get into museums. I would pay a good five dollars for the sketch he was working on, if he would ever sell it. There was a thick book on his desk, sure, but it was obvious he wasn't reading it. When our teacher walked around, he would scoot his drawing aside, only to keep working on it when she would leave.

Mrs. Criss came around my aisle again, and I stared down a page in my catalog about trees. Yes, trees are very good for the environment, and are very pretty to look at. I kept rereading the same sentence repeatedly, hoping the teacher would leave me alone. The blue spruce tree is only native in the Rocky Mountains. The blue spruce tree is only native in the Rocky Mountains. The blue spruce is only native in the Rocky--

Mrs. Criss rang the little bell in her hand, signalling that we could put away our books. She pushed the jeweled glasses up to the bridge of her long nose, and sniffed patiently as people began putting books away. I let my "book" fall into my bag, not really caring about its condition later on, since it wasn't something I was proud of reading. The student in front of me-- gah, I really needed to learn his name!-- just slid his massive book onto the floor, and its gold lettering on the front glittered in the classroom's lights.

"I'm hoping everyone enjoyed the homework this week," Mrs. Criss squeaked in her tiny voice. "You are all lucky that I don't work you as hard as I do with my other Honors classes..."

I began to zoom out of what she was saying as something caught my eye. The kid in front of me's desk was filled with drawings; not just the one I had seen earlier. He was still working on his current sketch, pushing black hair back from his eyes so he could see it better. His back was so hunched that I wondered if he just couldn't see his drawing at all, or if he was just really getting into his work. Either way, he was too focused on whatever he was doing to notice me staring at the watercolor landscape I had been staring at. It looked like it came right out of a dream with pink skies and knobbly trees galore. There were two tiny figures walking along a trail that lead them into the wooded area in front of him.

I really wanted to talk to the boy in front of me, but getting into trouble was the last thing I wanted to do, especially in a school where detention probably existed. (I had always thought that detention was something Hollywood made up so characters in movies could meet through shared trauma, but when I came to Colorado, I began to doubt that theory. When I would walk to the bathroom in the middle of a class period, I would see the vice principle come out of his den to hand out red slips to hiding students, which made me begin to think that it was a real thing. If it was, I wondered what else wasn't just Hollywood conspiracies. Was Area 51 a real place? Did high school dances actually exist?) Still, I wanted to let the student in front of me know that he was amazing. Sure I didn't know him at all, but still.... Was that weird?

I could write a note. The teacher had began talking about her love life, and how he had left her for a sex worker near the Mexico-America border, which meant Mrs. Criss probably wouldn't notice if I passed notes. Slowly, I reached down towards my binder that was conveniently placed just under my seat, and pulled out a sheet of lined paper. All I knew was that I wanted to just talk to him, maybe tell him that I loved his artwork. Would that be creepy?