Glow In The Dark

Chapter One

Dani’s pencil move swiftly over the once clean white paper making scribbles that only her mind knew would look like in the end. Her mind was cut off from everything around her especially to whatever it was her art teacher was trying to teach. She had zoned out as soon as she had sat down while the rest of the class had busied themselves with talking about things that would never hold any importance to her. Dani didn’t care who was dating who or who had done what in what class. It was all just so pointless.

            Silence fell over the class and that was what it took for her to lift her gaze up to find her teacher standing over her. She had her arms crossed over her chest and was tapping her foot in a impatient manner. Her plucked eyebrows were slightly furrowed and her lips were pursed together making her look like a duck. If it had been anyone else looking at her like this she would have laughed at them, but knew for her to do that know would get her into trouble.

            “Dani, is my class so boring to where you have to do things on your own?” Her eyebrow rose with her question.

            Dani directed her gaze to her picture, hopping that the loss of eye contact would make her disappear. But this was reality and reality doesn’t work like that, “No ma’am…  It’s just that…. This is an art class and we haven’t done anything artistic all year, we just sit here and listen to you talk…”

            “I cannot trust a bunch of teenagers with my supplies; you would all do nothing but eat the glue and stab each other with the scissors.” A couple of boys cheered at that and started to pretend to stab each other with imaginary tools, the teacher ignored them, “It’s much safer for me to just teach you about the history of art. Now if you want to draw do it on your own time and not mine. Do you understand or do I need to go over this with you again in detention after school.”        

            “No!” Dani looked at her slight panic, “I understand, please don’t give me detention, I have some where to go after school and can’t be late.”

            “We all have some where to go Dani. Just because you have somewhere to go doesn’t make you any more special, it just gives you a life.” Saying no more, she turned on her heal and walked back to the front of the class to continue on with her lesson.

            Dani let her head drop so that her would hide her face and closed her eyes tightly. She hadn’t wanted to go to school today but her father had made her. He had told her that she would just be in the way and he needed to handle something at work. Slowly she opened her eyes and looked down at her drawing. It was of a field of flowers with a single has and a large tree providing the only shade.

            Whispering to her side made her look out of the corner of her towards two girls that were whispering to each other and would glance her way every few seconds just for them to quickly look away and giggle, “She is such a freak.” One of them whispered, “All she does is draw, she never talks to anyone.” The other whispered, “I heard she has some disease and that’s why she has no friends.” The first girl said with a smirk.

            Tears brimmed in her eyes bringing her close to just running from the room until the bell rang just a few seconds before she could. She could fell the stress and the pain slowly slip off her shoulders as she stood up and rushed from the room with her bag on her back. She ran down the hall ignoring the protests from the teachers on duty and ran straight out of the school. Other students will filling out behind her and would stop to find their friends so they could talk before going home. Dani didn’t, she just kept running down the sidewalk.  She had somewhere to be and wanted to get there as soon as she could.