Crossed Worlds

Chapter 1: The Little Rebel

"There is so much more to see than this bland little town," Luke sighed, squeezing a blob of blue paint onto his tray.

Jade turned to his piece – a beautiful painting of their town's beach. The sea was dotted with little golden, glittering sun rays and the sand was so gloriously textured it felt as though if you skimmed your finger along the canvas, you'd feel each grain.

"Well, you paint it very nicely considering you hate it," Jade nudged him and smiled.

"I don't hate it," he corrected her. "I just don't understand why our art project has to be on local scenery. We live in a small seaside town, where all the days are identical as the previous ones. Aren't we already suffocated enough by it without having to spend two hours painting it?"

"At least it's not sketching a naked old lady this week," Jade joked and Luke laughed, getting back to work.

Jade's own piece was a forest. They lined the outskirts of the town but were usually off limits due to being surrounded by farmland and private fields. Therefore, she'd only seen pictures of the town's woodland, but she knew she loved it, and had memorised them well enough to create tall trunks topped with deep green leaves under the ever-cloudy skies. Art wasn't her strongest subject, but she pursued it because she loved it.

"Yours looks awesome!" Luke interrupted her thoughts. "I wish I had gone for something other than the beach, which literally everyone is doing in this classroom."

"Thanks, Luke. Everyone may be doing it, but I know for a fact yours is the best one."

They smiled at one another and spent the last ten minutes of class painting in silence, Jade's right arm bumping into Luke's left occasionally, earning a giggle from them both. She realized in that moment that she'd happily spend forever in art class on a Friday morning next to her best friend painting.

"Okay, year twelve, well done. Time to pack up," Mrs Blaire dismissed the class with a wave of her dainty hands, and forever was over.

Jade and Luke packed up their equipment and strolled down the stairs to the courtyard where they spent lunch.

The group of friends dedicated this time of the day to all crowding around a picnic bench that was slightly isolated from the others, underneath a couple of trees that were almost as tall as the surrounding buildings but not quite. They all seemed to like this spot, on the patch of slowly wearing grass in the shadows of light that seeped between the branches. It was calming and it felt like nobody could see or hear them; a hiding place in definite plain sight, but a hiding place nonetheless.

Lily was sat in the middle of the chattering group, glasses slipping down the bridge of her nose and her head deep in a textbook.

"How's it going?" Jade asked.

"Good. Just going over things."

Lily had a level of intelligence Jade both admired and hated. It was of course amazing to be so smart in such complex fields like science and maths, yet it was also irritating how condescending she could be about it. Asking Lily for help usually ended in annoyance rather than any newfound knowledge.

"Can we ensure we talk about anything other than what Lily is reading about? Science makes me ill," Hunter frowned, picking out tomato from his sandwich.

"How about the fact that it is endlessly freezing in this town?" Zoe shivered, pulling her jumper sleeves past her red finger nails.

"I've got something!" Lily shut her book with an eager snap.

"Right, here we go," Hunter spoke with his mouth full.

"You are so gross. It's not about my textbook, anyway, it's about Wild Ones."