The Story of How Flynn Wolfhart Found his Muse

Chapter 2

It had been almost a week since Flynn received his rejection letter. His time was being consumed by nothingness. Do you ever get like that? Go through periods of nothing, periods where you don't do anything. You just sit, maybe listen to music, do a little homework, but that's it. Flynn was having one of those episodes, except all he did was sleep. He'd get up go to school, get home and sleep. He slept so much that his body was exhausted and his sleeping pattern was set so that he would fall asleep by 9pm and rise at 7am. Flynn often went through moments like this, never anything serious of course, just a few days where his brain would numb down.

Flynn was sat on a bench outside school. He held a notebook firmly in his lap, slowly making his way through the homework he had neglected. The breeze outside was warm and gentle. Most of the first year kids were sat on the field, some enveloped by the shade of the oaks lining the sides of the grass. It was almost summer, just this last term, one more month. Flynn liked summer a lot. He'd see his mother more often and his father didn't drink as much, they'd sometimes barbecue and go camping. Although as the years passed the barbecues did become less frequent and the two weeks in the small caravan slowly became a long weekend, and his father drunk almost the same amount he did the rest of the year. Flynn chose to ignore these, he pushed them to the back of his mind, the same thing he did with most negative feelings, he pretended they didn't exist.

On a different note, Flynn had not yet been to see Mr. Auden about the class, he never had the energy before, but today he would. So Flynn's ambition to carry on pushed him towards the direction of the classroom, with a harsh grip it forced him to walk towards the small group. Mr. Auden had arranged the seats into a crescent shape in front of him, few seats were left empty.

"Hi, Sir-" Flynn began but was interrupted.

"Flynn! I'm glad you decided to come, swallowed your pride! Good lad. I hope you learn something!" Mr. Auden nodded firmly at Flynn, his thick eyebrows overtaking his face and nodding on their own.

His teacher's enthusiasm slapped Flynn and left him with a shaded smile. He continued into the room and sat between a small boy in first year who owned a backpack the same size as him, and a girl who was eating her own hair. Flynn wiped his palms, which were slightly clammy, into his trousers. There were many different types of people in the English room, he knew mostly every face, knew a few names, but knew no one there.

Mr. Auden waited for a couple of minutes then began teaching. The class had already been running for a few months so Flynn was a few lessons behind, not that it mattered. As I previously stated, Flynn knew almost every technique known to man, he was smart and was able to think of a long synonym for almost every word he wrote. Flynn knew how to structure a story, knew the effect of different sentence lengths. You name it, Flynn knew it and applied it to every piece of writing he created. He had always seemed to have the perfect formula for a beautiful story, and always got lost while he was adding them up. But after all it wasn't Maths, what did Flynn expect? You cannot formulate art.

The teacher continued, picking apart an extract from a book. Highlighting metaphors, underlining similes, telling the class the importance of tripling, how they could use punctuation for effect. It all seemed so simple to Flynn.

The teacher then moved on to talk about context, motivation. The feelings the writer buries in their words, hides in their descriptions. Flynn almost felt targeted, shameful even. Ashamed that he lacked the one thing Mr. Auden said made a piece of writing more than just words.

Crashing his train of thought, the classroom door open and closed. A girl with silver hair stumbled into the room with grace and destruction laced onto her movements. The energy in the room changed when she entered and sat. No one rolled their eyes at the interruption, no one was angry, they felt the energy change too. Flynn just stared at the chaos that took its seat opposite from him. He was taught not to stare because it was rude, but I promise you even the most polite would find looking away hard. It was like a beautiful car accident. A train wreck, even.