My Nightmare in Shining Armor

Trapped with the Psychopath

The next day during my study hall a paper airplane hit me in the back of the head. I looked around, ready to yell at the culprit, but found no one. I opened the airplane ready to demolish the thing when instead I found handwriting on it and opened the note. Can you help me yet? Look behind you. I turned around and saw Harker happily waving at me from outside the library. I was busy and more worried about my homework than helping him commit a homicide, I had my priorities. I wrote a reply on the note then crunched the plane into a ball and threw it at the door.

He looked back and forth quickly, probably for the librarian when he didn't see her he entered the library. He stealthily opened the door and ran to the paper. He picked it up, sped back to the door and opened it. He read the note and I sat there casually watching his reaction. His face morphed into one that resembled a sad clown, minus the makeup. I saw him start mouthing "please" over and over again while pulling out the puppy dog face.

It was becoming really difficult to say no to him when he looked at me like that. I knew that I was going to say yes sometime really soon, even if a part of me didn't want to. Y'know that little voice in your head that tells you when things are a bad idea? Well, the majority of my intelligence was joining together in a protest against agreeing to his plan. I wish I would have said no, or been able to resist the puppy dog face. Lord knows that if I didn't make the deal or say I would help him that day I wouldn't be writing this in such a morbid place. But of course my life never worked out in the way I hoped. So I regrettably looked up opened my mouth and whispered "fine".

His face lit up with joy, I was sure if I looked away he would break into a dance. I grabbed my things and grudgingly walked to the door. He opened it for me, if I didn't know any better I'd say he was trying to be a gentleman, too bad I knew better. I waited for him to tell me where we were going. It took him about two minutes before I finally asked the question aloud "Where are we going?"

"Oh, well the art room probably. It's the safest place to plot and I'm kind of failing the subject. The F makes it kind of hard to do what we need to." My nod was quick and sensible. The silence between us as we walked down the hallway was awkward and deafening. I wanted to escape as soon as possible. Ten sincerely long minutes later we finally got there. I opened the door and was greeted with a smile by my all-time favorite teacher Miss Decker. She frowned when she saw who was behind me.

Her voice was loud and stern, but somehow she wasn't yelling. "Mr. Millings, just because your father is the superintendent of the school district, that does not mean you are allowed to be lazy with your work and spend no time trying to improve your grade." Harker hunched in on himself and looked like a wounded puppy as she scolded him. "Now Janie what are you doing in here? I enjoy your presence but you're caught up on everything."

"Oh I know Miss Decker; I'm here to tutor Harker." Her eyes narrowed and she became skeptical. She was trying to decipher whether or not I was forced into this, I mean I was, but she didn't need to know that.

"Well don't be too loud kids, the class next door is watching a movie and I'd hate for them to be interrupted." After she left I looked at Harker.

"So what are we working on first?" I rubbed my hands together and pulled up my sleeves, ready to work. He laughed at this and was still chuckling when he answered.

"Well I do have a painting of some sort that's weeks behind." He nervously rubbed the back of his neck, notifying me he had no clue what it was about or how to do it. I cursed my luck for being an honor student as this happened.

"Well then what is it about? What's the subject of the artwork? Is there any type of rubric or something?" I spit questions at him quick as I could.

"Whoa, calm down there lady I'll answer your questions but one at a time. I don't know the subject or what it's about but I think there's a rubric over there." He pointed at Miss Decker's desk( try saying that five times fast) which was cluttered with papers and other various artworks. Lord knows where a rubric would be in that mess. I looked over it once more before groaning in frustration.

"How is it even possible for something to be this messy?" I myself was a bit of a neat freak, everything had its place and everything was in it. I had never understood the term organized chaos, it was one or the other there was no way something could be both.

"I'm assuming you're not a person who likes messes, huh?" My nod was frantic. "Well then there might be a rubric on her website but I don't have my computer, do you?" I didn't, mine was being repaired after my little brother tried using it as a tent for our cat. Neither the cat nor laptop liked his idea. One didn't make it out alive, it almost would have been comical watching the faces of the repairmen as I explained to them what happened, if the damages hadn't been so expensive. "I guess we had better start looking then."

Nearly half an hour later, we finally found a copy of the rubric. It took forever because: it was at the bottom of the pile, we had to replace everything we found after we moved it, and Harker has the attention span of a two year old. All I'm going to say to try and put how bad he is in perspective is say that Miss Becker has a pet hamster she keeps in her room, in the half hour I spent looking, with him helping for two or three minute intervals, he renamed it fifteen times. Yes I realize that every time he wasn't helping me he was naming that dang hamster, whom had a legitimate title listed on a watercolor sign at the top of his cage. Picasso was written in white crayon then painted over in and explosion of rainbow colors.

On the rubric the project was titled life through painting. A short explanation was listed beneath explaining the dimensions of the project. In summary we had to create something of any paint medium we chose that somehow encompassed what we found important or found to be the meaning of life, easy right? Wrong, somehow in the last forty five minutes of the hour I needed to make a plan with the psychopath. This involved asking him about his life: yikes, what he deemed important: double yikes, and if he ever thought about the meaning of life: kill me now.

The awkward conversation began like many of the others we had, I started it (nervous as could be) and he would give me short, curt answers that ended the conversation in its tracks before it went anywhere remotely useful. "So," I began, stomach in throat, "It looks like for this project we need to find out what you deem important or think the meaning of life is." He looked at me as if I had grown another head, for all I knew I could have; that is if nervousness caused heads to sprout.

"Well I guess I find my sculptures important it's kind of like how you use your art to put how you feel and see the world down on paper, I do that with my sculptures. As for the meaning of life, I guess it's to find the people who will stay with you through your worse and best times. Friends who will help you with anything you ask." He looked at his feet as he said the last part, as if he was ashamed in past choices he made. I knew what that looked like as I had done the same thing many times after I lost my sister.

"I'd love to see your sculptures sometime." I told him, gently putting my hand on his arm. We shared one of those rare small smiles that you know can only happen a few times with someone who will become someone important to you. Though neither of us had a clue what a major role we'd play in each other's lives at that moment. "Do you think you could sketch them out or perhaps get a picture of them so we can use them in the painting?" I asked pushing the notepad towards him. He nodded to answer my question.

"I can get a picture but I suck at drawing, do you wanna just head to my house? I mean school is almost over and we can get started on it tomorrow if we have the picture." I looked at the clock, forty minutes had passed since we found the rubric, and it felt like only a few minutes. "Besides I promise not to kill you or anything like that." He said with a genuine laugh afterwards while mine was just nervous. For some reason hearing someone you agreed to commit a homicide with saying that was not reassuring.

"Sure let's go then." We walked to the door about five minutes after the bell rang as we had to get all our stuff together and the room cleaned up. 

I tried the handle and... nothing. It wouldn't budge no matter what effort I tried putting in it. "Uh oh."

"What do you mean?"

"The handle won't move."

"Here let me try." Harker said and took hold of the knob, it wouldn't move for him either. "Um, I hate to say this but I think we're locked in." That's right, I was locked in the art room with the psychopath, I really hoped he didn't resort to survival of the fittest anytime soon. If he did I knew for a fact that I wouldn't make it out.