Tame My Heart... Or Else

Chapter 8

"I think I see the problem." I said, picking up a pencil that lay on the shelf attached to the easel. "May I?" I asked. She nodded, looking a little worried. I reached forward and carefully made two light lines on the house, showing where the walls should be so they were alligned. Instantly, her eyes lit up.

"Yes, that's it!" she exclaimed, clasping her hands by her chest. I smiled, you could see she was an art lover. "Thanks so much."

"You're welcome." I replied, still smiling. "It's a beautiful drawing."

She blushed a little. "What are you going to draw?" she asked me, tactfully taking the conversation away from her. Wow, she reminded me so much of myself.

I turned back towards my canvas, frowning a little. "I think... I think I'm going to draw something from a memory. From with my friend." Karla. I sighed sadly. Hailey nodded, as if understanding.

I started slowly outlining the scene that I could only remember hazily in my head. It had been so long ago. As I slowly start filling in more and more, I let my mind go blank, and while my pencil still brushed over the canvas, my thoughts drifted out of the room.

Brent Harris. Those horrible, cruel black eyes. That smirk he always wore. The aura of fear he held around him. Everything about him disgusted me. I hated him with every cell of my being. If this was hell, then he was the devil.

But the way he had looked at me this morning...

No Liza. Bad Liza. Don't think about how those burning eyes smoldered. Not about how hot he looked when he glared at you. Not about how you could see his muscles through his shirt yesterday. He hates you. He does not like you. He despises you.

He tried to kill you.

Right. That brought things back into painful reality. I don't know how I managed to beat those thugs. Luck, mostly. I was glad I learnt some of that self-defense yesterday, though. Without it, I would have been a lot worse than I was now. I only had a few bruises and scrapes.

I decided to ask my mom if she could enrol me in some kind of fighting class. I was sure I was going to need it. Knowing what kinds of things Brent would do now, I had to be prepared. He didn't seem like the kind of person to back down after one defeat.

This was gettting serious.

It was war.

Mrs. Gunn, or Claire, called attention to the class ten minutes before the bell rang to have a look at all the work. I put my pencil down, slowly, not satisfied with my drawing. I wasn't finished.

She walked around to each easel, making remarks on each piece. Some were encouraging, some were harsh, some were just plain mean. She reached Hailey's and nodded her approval, and I had to agree. The house had been perfectly drawn, with so much detail too, and the flowers and the grasss all swayed to an unseen wind.

Mrs. Gunn reached mine. She just gazed at it for a few moments, and then moved away.

"Umm... Mrs. Gunn?" I asked, hesitantly.

"Very good, Liza. Very good..." she muttered, before moving onto the next.

Hailey leaned in curiously, to look at what Mrs. Gunn had been talking about. Even I looked at my work, wondering what I had done wrong.

The scene was so innocent. Two children, girls in dresses, stood next to eachother, each holding a stick of cotton candy. They were laughing, some of the candy still stuck around their mouths. In the background you could see the fairground, all the stalls lined up. There was a man on stilts and another on a uni-cylce entertaining a group of children behind them. And, in the distance, you could see the ferris wheel.