Falling All The Way

Chapter 5.

Chapter 5

"You will do great Ms. Ba'Borique, am sure of it" Mr. Gilberts said to me when I had gone to pick up my acceptance letter for the competition; He had tried to persuade me to enter the competition with Stephanie as a duo because according to him we stood a higher chance at winning put together. His faith in me made me feel seen appreciated and accepted for everything that I am; it made me want to do my best, even if it was just for him.

"Thank you that means a lot coming from my infamous Art teacher" I said and everything he said did mean as much to me as he had implied, at least to me it did.

"You are a good kid, a little rude but good and I know talent when I see it, and lately you have been looking just like it" he said, i didn't exactly feel like i was as magical as he was implying but the imagination he put in my mind was a beautiful one, One i wasn't comfortable letting go of. So i let his sincerity patch all the pieces of me that would try to fault the person he made think that i was. i mumbled a thank you trying to conceal my glassy eyes.

He brushed it off saying something about modesty "If any of my students including you need any artistic help i am here to help so don't be shy to ask away, and I will be cheering for all of them" he said. "But you little girl_I will be cheering for you the most, if you tell Stephanie I said that, I will deny it" i thought of hugging him at that moment and asking him to adopt me. The noise coming from outside of the art studio that i had filtered out of my mind, started to sound like loud cheering of teenagers that loved my work, and i loved it. It's one of the imaginations i have always loved years after it occurrence.

***

The days that lead me all through from Monday to Friday afternoon were a mixture of terribly bad decisions like; giving some dumbass dude a blow job for no apparent reason. Nick being a baby about the syphilis and savannah looking beautiful at moments i wanted her to turn into a child eating beast like baba yaga so i could maybe not love her. The conversations between savannah and I were as civil as it could get, barely recognizing each other's presence and ignoring each other altogether. as for Nick, i had started to think that maybe using drugs was all that we had in common, because i barely saw him when we paused being pot-buddies.

The platinum jubilee happens to be a big deal in Tungsten Academy, all Friday afternoon classes had been scraped off for the next one month and that to me is remembered as the best time to have been in school, maybe not the most productive or even healthiest times of my life, but the teenager I was made those few hours count, It had felt like being liberated. I even had a vivid imagination of meeting up with the person who made that decision, just so i could give them a firm hand shake and an accolade like they do for the best performing students, and then I would say Bingo! To them and then encourage them to scrape off all classes on Friday for the rest of the school year.
And well, that's been a dream that could only remain a dream because the Dean of students of the school just like most of its stuff was and still is lethal. I doubted he knew anything about using his heart, that's if he even got a heart anyway. The sternness of the staff of Tungsten academy was literally an embodiment of the metaphor behind the Academy's Name.

And No, my mom didn't know that Friday afternoon classes had been scrapped off in my school, perks of not being so close to her. I and she never had those mother and daughter chitchat moments to talk about my personal life, and I liked it that way because I was quite horrible when it came to indulging in my feelings. In the end, she only knew what I told her (if savannah doesn't run her mouth), and well, I chose to not say shit about Friday afternoon classes which meant that she wouldn't throw a fit about my dependence burden. And so, I went tattoo shopping the first free Friday and Nick didn't come with despite his promise to.

The tattoo shop came into view as the clouds above me began to thicken into a sure sign of a heavy down pour. I began to think of taking my driving lessons a lot more seriously, just as i had been doing on my way to parlor under the scorching sun that paved way for the rain. The point at which the cub I took I had left me was slightly far enough to give uncomfortable drops of sweat from all the walking you would have to do to reach the mall housing the shop.
Good thing, I was only headed to the shop to leave a cash deposit and choose a tattoo design because I didn't think that sweaty bodies qualified for tattoo shopping. Plus, my ever suspicious mother was always making my brainy dad track most of my transactions, I wouldn't want them finding out that the credit card they had given me had been used to pay for a tattoo, because hell would break loose on me if that happened.