Art Boy

The small town of Greening, South Dakota was a bland old town. The streets were antique and the buildings were run down due to the frequent snow storms that whipped the town over and over again until they were pleased with the shambles that they left behind. The weather was always cold here, but the people's warm hearts and warmness seemed to melt away the frozen, icy tundra over piling the place where I was born and raised in.

I left my rustic, red bricked condo with an ironic red sweatshirt over two long-sleeved shirts, a beanie over my head, dark washed jeans, and a scarf. That was basically what i wore everyday, and what everyone in the town wore everyday.

Even in summers, the weather stayed cold but more bearable than these frost biting winters. Summer was my mom's favorite season, and since my mom had me by accident in a drunken hookup; therefore, she didn't know who my father was which led to her naming me after her favorite season. She gave birth to a healthy 6 pound baby and gave him the name, Hayden Summers.

I may be named after the warmest season of the year, but my life was always winter. The people of the town may be warm to others, but they definitely weren't warm towards me. I was an outcast at my school. Kids picked on me for my lack of a father due to adult's mistakes. Being fatherless, allowed kids to push me around and throw me about without me knowing how to land a punch back. I was incapable of fighting back, so I just sat there and took their punches and kicks. If I was lucky, I could shield myself from them, but on days that I was not, I would come home with bruises and scars that were tattooed on my skin for weeks.

One of my biggest bullies was Leo Hartland. We were the greatest friends when we were younger. I would run to his house everyday, and his parents loved me. He loved me, as a friend of course. But one day, we were playing on the playground, and he decided he didn't want our friendship to exist anymore. He ignored me and hung out with the cooler kids. As time went on, he started picking at me just like the other kids had. Him bullying me hurt me the most because he was the only friend I'd ever had.

Ever since then, I've let an emotional wall build around my heart. I was scared of being left behind again and I was scared of being forgotten. I didn't allow myself to make friends with anyone anymore which gave people an even stronger motive to pick at me. I had no one to defend me, and I definitely couldn't defend myself. I was weak, I was pathetic.

Leo moved on to being the quarterback of the school with perfect grades, and I moved on to eating alone at lunch and barely passing my classes. We were sophomores now, and that meant I could soon drop out if school got way too hard for me to handle. Though my heart was severely broken and shattered, I tried my best not to break my mom's heart so even through every ounce of pain, I tried to keep going. I kept trying to push through these barriers that my ex-bestfriend created for me.

However, disappointing and dissatisfying my own mom seemed to be the only thing I would pass at in life. Deep down I couldn't get my sexuality straight. I was gay which meant that I was never gonna bare my mom the grandkids that she always wanted. I really ruined her life. I was an offspring of a hookup, I was an outcast from school and possibly society, I was nothing but a teenager failing at life, but I was also gay to make things much worse for her. I couldn't seem to do anything right.

Pushing myself and trying to handle harder things only made life so much more unbearable while allowing my life to be one fail after another made it extremely easier. I didn't know what to do or where to go with my life, and I was even more scared to come out to my mom. I was scared she was gonna disown me or kick me out of the house, for she was the only person who still cared about me. She was the only one left who loved me. No one else did.

~During School~
I walked with my head down to my next class, the easiest one of all to handle, art. I kept a great A average in this class because art was the only thing I seemed to be good at. I could spend hours painting and hours drawing without realizing the amount of time that had passed by. Art was a captivating subject, and my art teacher, Mrs.Frances loved my artwork. She's put so many of my pieces on display in art shows and exhibits.

Painting and drawing seemed to be the only things capable of taking my mind away from the darkness. It filled my life with the littlest bits of color.

I had taken this class during my Freshmen year due to the fact that to graduate, I needed to have a fine arts credit. I initially thought that the class would be boring, but it eventually became the only class I looked forward to every day of school. Art was the only class I had that didn't include cheerleaders or football players that were great friends with Leo. Art didn't include drama or bullies because the cool kids thought that art was lame, so it was never going to be a class they took.

Well that's what I thought until I walked in and saw a new student who looked athletic and like he was on the football team. I kept my head low, and my breathing continue to gradually get slower and slower. I felt my throat get dry. I was scared that he was going to bully me. I didn't want to have a target on my back in the only class I actually enjoyed.

Since I was the best art student in Mrs. Frances's class, she sat me right next to him. He stayed quiet and didn't bother looking up when I moved the stool right next to him to sit down. Mrs.Frances instructed the class to take out our art notebooks and a pencil because we were going to work on sketching today. He obeyed her request by grabbing his book bag and pulling out a black notebook with a picture of what seemed like a paw print on it. It looked like something you could buy off the school merchandise store.

He finally looked up when our art teacher told him to introduce himself to the class. "I'm Sawyer Kingston," was all that he said.
"Mr.Kingston, may you please tell the class about one of your hobbies." Mrs.Frances announced sternly, probably due to his extremely short and shallow example of introducing himself to the class.
"I play football. I'm a football player." He answered with a voice that sounded somewhat like ear candy. His voice was deep and raspy which made him sound like he just woke up, but art was third period which gave a bit of sensing to the annunciation of his voice.

After saying that, he sat back down and started playing with his pencil. Man, he sure was mysterious, and shallow like extremely shallow, but mostly mysterious. At the sound of his voice though, I saw a bunch of art girls practically melt and gave him winks and flirtatious smiles, but he just completely blocked them off.

Mrs.Frances told us to start working on flower sketches, so I started sketching out my favorite flower, a rose. I liked roses due to the their beauty and how even the prettiest of flowers could still have its flaws. That being, the rose's thorns. The flower was so pretty, but the fact that it had thorns was a huge drawback for some people.

I looked over at Sawyer's notebook and saw that he still hadn't begin, so I mumbled, "Would you like me to give you an idea?"

At the sound of my voice, he snapped out of the daze he was in and raised his eyebrows. "What?" He asked.
"Um, I was wondering if you needed help to begin your sketch." I practically said in a whisper.
"Nope, I'm fine." He responded.

I went back to sketching out my rose and thought about the mysterious football player that just made art strangely more interesting than it already was.