A Life On The Edge

Elephants

  “Riley.” I looked up at Mr. Kramer surprised to see him sober for once. “Come here.” I got up from my stool and made my way up to his desk. I could feel everyone’s eyes on me as I walked up. This school was getting more and more unbearable by the second. “Why aren’t you working on a project?”

“Our project is to show you who we were 7 years ago using the theme you made us pick out of that ridiculous hat.”

“Yeah but that doesn’t answer my question.”

“I was eleven years old seven years ago and my theme is death.”

“I’m sure you can think of something.” He smiled. I glared at him not in the mood to put up with his hippy antics.

“I’m not doing this project.”

“Chill out.” He chuckled putting his hands up. “I’m not going to give up on you.” I rolled my eyes. “All of the projects you have handed in so far have been with paper and marker.” I shrugged. “Here let’s try something. Let’s forget about the theme idea for a minute.” He held out his hands over the desk with his palms up. I raised my brow at him. “Give me your hands.”

“No.”

“Riley please give me your hands,” I just stared at him. “It’s educational.”

“Hell no.” he sighed and hung his head.

“Alright, give me your hands and I’ll let you smoke some of my pot with me out of this new bowl I got the other day after school.” I bit my lip. “I’ll let you get the first hit.” I gave him my hands. He smiled at me and sat up. I was only doing this for the weed. “What makes you happy Riley?”

“Marijuana.” He smiled.

“Good answer, something school appropriate.”

“My boyfriend.” He may piss me off but I still love him.

“Simpler than that.”

“Elephants.”

“Great!” he squeezed my hand and let go. “For the next couple of days I’m going to give you various assignments and I want you to work as hard as you can on each one. You can’t move on until you’re satisfied and I’ll give you an A in this class.”

“Deal.”

“I want you to draw an elephant using charcoal and paper, then I want you to draw an elephant and color it in with colored pencils. After that paint an elephant using water color, and then acrylics, then watercolor and acrylics. After that I want you to scalp an elephant out of clay and then so on and so forth until you’ve used every method we can both think of. Then well compare them all and see which medium best suits us. Which one you liked the best and which one you were the best at.” I bit my lip not sure if this was something I wanted to do. “Anyone can be good at art Riley. You just have to find something you enjoy making.” He passed me a piece of paper and this weird cardboard pencil stick. “That’s a shading stick. Now go find a picture of an elephant an start drawing.” I groaned and walked over to his book shelf. It was filled with binders filled with pictures of a whole lot of shit. Hands, babies, flowers, waterfalls, I’m sure he’s got some fucking elephants in here somewhere. I picked up the binder that said animals on the front and carried it back to my seat. Ryder sat next to me quietly sculpting his clay with foreign tools.