SUPPRESSION •Complete•

THANKSGIVING

THANKSGIVING

I was looking forward to Thanksgiving break. Not because of the family time or the great food. No, it's because I get to spend Thanksgiving alone.

Mom is doing a charity thing with church. Basically she's making Thanksgiving for the homeless and dad just orders pizza and watches the game. I grabbed a slice and went back to my room. Thanksgiving is usually like this, mom is always volunteering and dad can't cook. Plus he can't miss a minute of the football game. So meat lover's pizza it is.

In the past I'd go over to a friend's house for Thanksgiving, usually . . . Ainsley's. But those weren't possibilities now, especially Ainsley's.

I set the slice of pizza down on my bed and picked up a pad of paper. I had come to a decision. That I don't care, not about anything. So I'll stop avoiding Gavin, I'll go to art and I just won't cause anymore trouble. I'll nod along like a well trained dog and just sit in the back and be quiet. No one will miss me or notice.

So with all those decision made I figured out what to do with my bird. I decided that maybe the bird doesn't have to be the focus and on top of that I decided to not do photography. Matter of fact I took all my cameras and put them in a box in my closet. I wasn't going to use them anymore.

I took my pencil and began to trace the outline of a girl's shoulder and then the slope of her neck. Soon I was drawing the point of her chin. Then I traced backwards to draw the side of her head up to her hair line. I attempted to sketch her ear, but then I decided to just cover most of it with her hair. I started the flimsy strands of hair going down her shoulder and over her neck, cover the side profile of her face. I sketched the beginnings of her forehead then stopped, leaving her face empty. No nose, no eyes, and no mouth. I was tempted to erase her ear, but left it. I erased some strands of hair from her shoulder so I could start drawing the bird's fluffed out belly. I drew the slope of it's head so that it looked like it was hiding behind it's wings, hiding it's face. I detailed the feathers by darkening the shading and then finished my bird off with it's tail feathers.

I sat back and studied my drawing. It had a few too many eraser markers near the face, but I liked that. It made it look like someone erased the face. I actually liked the side profile of the faceless girl with a hiding bird on her shoulder.

Dad: "That's creepy, Frey-Frey, she's missing her face."

I hadn't even heard my father enter. I looked up at him from behind my shoulder to see his face all scrunched up in distaste at my drawing.

Dad: "Seriously morbid, Freya, give the girl a face. And look at this, your pizza is like a freaking stone. Nice waste of food, I could have eaten this. Go take Peanut out, he's standing by the door."

He grumbled the whole way back down stairs about the waste of pizza. I shrugged and looked back down at my drawing, I liked it. I thought this was a very productive Thanksgiving. I got my art project done just in time for the second marking period. Not that I even had to, considering I have an automatic A in the class.

I taped my drawing up on my wall then went back to re-sketching it. This time I was going to get the bird's wing just right and fix her ear.