The Picture

The Picture: Chapter 1

 

“So you’re telling me that I can’t be in the musical because I wasn’t here five minutes ago?” I asked again.  Just to make sure that I understood her correctly.

            “Correct,” Mrs. Simon repeated.

            “Even though I was detained in Mr. Dreiser’s class and my being late is in no way my fault?” I insisted.

            She shook her head.  “Ms. Vargez, I stick to the rules I make.  To have an audition you had to be here at three o’clock on the dot.  It is currently three oh six and you are therefore, late. Try next year.”  Then she turned away from me and began talking to the twenty-four other auditioners standing on stage.

            “That is just ridiculous.  Five freaking minutes? What the hell?” Starr said as we began walking to the parking lot.

            “Whydid Sarah have to glue Mr. Dreiser’s butt to the chair today?” I begged.  “And why, did the one teacher in the school who doesn’t love me have to be the one in charge of the musical?!”

            “Your luck sucks this week, Les,” she insisted.  “But it’ll be back up next week.”

            “This week?” I repeated incredulously.  “Try the last six months!”

            Finally we arrived in the parking lot where Margaret waited for us in her beautiful red Mustang.  “Over already?” she asked. “That was quick.”

            Starr answered for me.  “Mrs. Simon wouldn’t let her audition because she was late.”

            “By five minutes?!” Margaret shrieked.  I nodded.  “Bummer.  Oh well.  Everything happens for a reason, right?”

            “I guess so,” I answered as I began to walk around the car to the passenger’s side.  When I rounded the hood of the car Starr asked, “You want to see a movie?  Maybe it’ll take your mind off of the musical.”

            I turned my head and kept walking forward as I answered yes, but somehow, as my right foot hit the floor, I slipped and fell face forward into a pile of mud.  I managed to block my face from landing in the mush, but my white shirt had no such luck. 

            “This is getting ridiculous!” I gritted through my teeth as I pushed myself up.  “I must be cursed.”

             Then I heard someone laughing on the opposite side of the parking lot.  I was not in the mood.  So I turned toward the laughter, prepared to let out all my anger by yelling at that person, and froze.  Mainly because when I turned, I found myself staring at Caleb, the mystery boy from my sweet sixteen last year.  I was vaguely aware of my jaw falling open and my eyes widening in shock because I hadn’t seen or thought of him since I watched him walk away from my party.

            He smiled at me, tipped his head, and disappeared into nothing.  One second I was staring at him and the next he was gone.

            My head turned to face Starr so quickly I almost gave myself whiplash.  Her shocked expression told me all I needed to know…she’d seen him too.

            Two weeks passed and my bad luck just seemed to get worse.  On top of that, every time something bad happened to me, Caleb would appear and then disappear again.  It was just so frustrating and embarrassing and not to mention confusing.  Why would and how could he keep turning up at the exact moments I seemed to show my klutziness?

            But the most embarrassing incident happened while I was in art class months after my face plant in the mud.  We were finishing up our project of the week which was abstract watercolor, and I spilled an entire canister of red paint all over my white uniform shirt.  I looked around, just waiting for him to bear witness to my bad luck yet again, but he didn’t show.  Instead, Mrs. Lourdes (the art teacher) tried to keep the class under control by beginning our next art project.  We each got a different painting and had to recreate the painting in our own image, which basically meant we could paint it with paint, color it with crayons, use oil pastels, or anything else we could think of.

            Each painting was strange in its own right.  There was one of a horse on a bicycle, another of an old man running up stairs, and a picture of an amazingly fictional movie theater with wings and floating doors.  All of these pictures looked completely new to me, except for the one she gave to me.  I didn’t think I’d ever seen the picture itself before, but I’d definitely seen the person in the picture many times in the past six months.  It was the portrait of a handsome young man with black hair and dark eyes, who was wearing all black… Caleb.

As completely shocking as it was, ignoring the weirdness of the picture wasn’t too difficult.  I spent most of my energy just trying to get through the day without a new incident threatening to kill me.  And getting through the day unscathed was becoming more difficult as the months went on.  I was losing things, getting bad lunch (food poisoning is not fun), falling into disgusting situations, hurting myself by some means or another, and failing tests I’d studied my ass off for; it was all getting to be too much!

            By the time I sat down for lunch with my friends, I was almost too exhausted to listen to Starr complain about the recent bout of bad weather…yet again.

            “I just don’t see why it has to thunder and rain every day!  It’s like…one or two days I can totally handle, but it’s thundered nonstop twelve weeks straight!” she exclaimed.  “It’s got to be a sign of the apocalypse or something.”

            “You might be going a little overboard, but I see your point,” agreed Margaret.  When she sat next to me, we looked about the same height; but when we stood, she had at least three inches on me.  Playing with a piece of her raven-colored hair she continued, “Even the weather people don’t know what’s going on.”

            “But it really stinks for the plant-life around here.  The shrubs and bushes are all being drowned in the rain and the trees are being struck down by lightning,” Starr replied.

            “First of all, this is New York City, Starr, there is hardly any plant-life here to begin with.  Secondly, forget about the trees being struck by lightning, I’m too afraid to go outside because I’m afraid of being struck by lightning!” I countered. 

            “You shouldn’t be afraid.  Think of it this way, if you get struck once and live, you won’t ever get struck again.  Lightening never hits the same place twice,” Starr declared.

            “That’s not even true,” I protested.  “Lightening can hit the same place lots of times.  And with my luck lately, it wouldn’t even be a stretch for me to get struck three times in a row.” 

            Starr looked at me sympathetically.  “You’re luck has to turn around soon just like the weather has to.”

            “You know you don’t even believe that.”

            “Well, look on the bright side.  The rain can’t last too much longer,” Margaret said encouragingly.  “The clouds have to run out of wetness eventually.”

            “I hope your right,” I answered staring out the window at the dark sky and pouring rain.  But I knew two things for sure:  One, this rain wasn’t going to stop anytime soon, and two, I knew something wasn’t right about this weather.  I could feel that it wasn’t supposed to be this way… it was too unnatural.