I Don't Know You

The Night Cafe

One lone student meandered from the bubbler back to her open classroom door, behind her it slammed shut causing Vincent to flinch slightly at the noise. In front of him stood his teacher silently, Vincent had no clue what he was waiting for considering the both of them were pretty resigned to the upcoming conversation. Eventually, the teacher sighed and looked away for a moment, adjusting his sleeves.

"You're a smart kid," he started, Van Gogh already knew what was coming next, "and I know you could easily pass my class, when you do turn in essays they are exemplary. So why are you not doing your work? If there is something happening at home-" he shook his head quickly not wanting his mom to get in trouble for his stupidity, "ok so if there's nothing going on what's wrong? Why aren't you passing this class at the very least? You've turned in less than half of the assignments thus far and it's already the 3rd term. You're going to fail don't you realize that?"

Vincent curled into himself further and nodded, a sense of shame falling over him.

"Well don't you care?" Vincent again nodded, fingers gripping the sleeves of his paint-stained sweater. The yellow fabric was torn from him biting it when especially nervous.

"Listen, you are a seriously intelligent kid but if you are just lazy with your schoolwork I can't help you. You need to shape up or else the consequences are going to catch up." again he nodded along with the teacher, just wanting to get back into the classroom and sleep for the rest of the block. His teacher seemed unsatisfied with the answer, or lack thereof, but still nodded back at him and turned to go into the classroom once more.

Van Gogh reluctantly shuffled in after keeping his head down. His classmates' eyes seemed to be glued to van Gogh's small frame, following him as he walked to his seat in the back corner of the room. They probably knew he was in trouble somehow and now they all probably think he's some delinquent kid, or maybe that he did something to himself again considering the whole school already assume he's crazy. After the ear incident, he had no chance at redemption, not in the eyes of his peers, his teachers, or his mom.

The teacher began his lecture on the current chapter of Macbeth they were on and the students eventually turned back to focus, although reluctantly, on him. Vincent felt so worked up by confrontation in the hallways and the horror of waking back in front of all his classmates, his body was on fire with shame and frustration. He didn't necessarily not care about his grades, he felt that certain dread every kid felt about college and graduation. Yet there was still not much motivation at the same time, he had sat in front of his open Chromebook and stared at the keyboard knowing exactly what to do and how important it was for him to do it but still, he would eventually just get caught up in the negative self-talk. The only thing he could count on for himself was painting and still, when he was at his very worst he couldn't even drag himself from this slump to do that. The one thing he loved.

So yeah, he wasn't exactly a lazy student. There was probably something severely wrong with him considering the patterns of his clone original. The class moved on without him, the teacher was assigning new pages to read individually for the last 15 minutes of class which Van Gogh took as a chance to sleep. The silence around him made it harder to calm down but at the very least everyone else was busy, he was less noticeable when they were not in a position to look.

The rest of his school day went by fairly similarly. Each class he zoned out or slept except for his algebra two-class, he skipped that block and instead sat in the least used bathroom which was situated by their ROTC classrooms in the basement. There was no one down there to even check if the stalls were empty.

Once the final bell rang he gathered what little supplies he had into his backpack and quickly made his way out a back exit of the school, planning on avoiding the rest of the student body as best as possible. Vincent wasn't necessarily hated in the school, sure he wasn't well-liked by any means but generally, the other kids just made sure to not speak to him. He's a ticking time bomb anyhow, they all figure sooner or later he will kill himself (no matter how many times he tries to bring up that the original Van Gogh probably didn't take his own life). If anything he's meaner than they are, sure they ignore him but he's plain rude to a lot of students. He was rash at times, a short temper, and shorter impulse control.