A Study in Form (#LunaEast)

Crimes and Injustices

Saree was dumbfounded.

Katey began telling her how she found out about the painting, but she didn't pay attention. She just stared at the pieces, jaw agape.

The one in mid-arabesque was definitely of her. There was no mistaking the red costume she wore when she danced solo to Barbra Streisand's rendition of All I Ask of You during last school year’s dance recital. That particular painting of her would have been forgivable, not only because it could have been of any dancer, but also because of the detail. Even in her shock she could see that the artist took great care in bringing that moment to life. The red skirt seemed to be flowing fluidly even in still life. And the sequins! The artist painstakingly recreated the pattern of the sequins on the dress and how beautifully it shone against the spotlight. How many hours did it take to do that?

But the one of her face... The Saree in the painting looked as if she was looking at someone she loved. Her expression, as emphasized by the soft tones of the watercolor, was so tender that the real Saree felt like her privacy was invaded. Like she was bared in front of everyone and made... vulnerable.

No wonder the students at the quad were staring at her. This was mortifying.

Saree's eyes went at the labels at the bottom of the pieces.

Grace in Motion

Oil on canvas

Eli Antonio

Eloquence

Watercolor portrait

Eli Antonio

"... And I just had to show it to you. So there." Katey paused from her monologue. "Saree?"

Saree ignored her friend. Instead, she went straight to a group of students she knew to be art club members who were hanging out by a big collage of what looked like to be a forest with illustrations from children’s books.

"Saree!" Katey called, hot on her heels.

The art club members stopped talking when they saw Saree approaching. Sensing her anger, they purposefully looked away. But that didn't deter her.

"Where is Antonio?" She demanded of the boy who had the misfortune of being a split-second too late in avoiding making eye contact with her. At the back of her mind, she recalled his name: Aaron Basco, from the same level but a different section.

"Antonio?" The hapless Basco repeated. He turned to his friends but only got shrugs or subtle head shakes.

"Where is Antonio, Basco?" Saree asked again.

"I saw him talking to Mr. Bayle upstairs an hour or so ago--"

Saree turned on her heels and stormed away.

"Saree, wait!" Katey reached for her arm, but she just brushed past her and headed for the stairs.

-@-

I hate him. I hate him. I hate him...

She barged into two (fortunately empty) classrooms and crossed the (fortunately deserted) bridge connecting the two wings before she found him in the third and last classroom at the other end of the building, sitting alone in the farthest corner. By then, she lost count of how many times she repeated ‘I hate him’ and murdering him in her mind. She was just fuming mad.

Eli Antonio, the person responsible for landing her in her current embarrassment, looked up. To say that he was shocked to see her was a slight to understatements. He looked like he just realized the heinous crime he had committed after being haunted by the ghost of the girl whose peaceful existence in Luna East he destroyed. And it was that look on his face—eyes wide with shock, mouth hanging wide open—that added fuel to her burning rage, and prompted her to unleash it.

She stomped her way towards him, nearly knocking over benches and tables along the way, and let him have it.

“You jerk! What the heck was that?! How dare you put me on display in front of everybody and make a fool out of me?!”

Saree lost it by then. Her mind went on auto-pilot, and she started saying things without even thinking them through. She couldn’t remember half of what she said; she might have even added expletives for all she knew. But as she went on in her angry monologue, Eli, who seemed to have recovered himself, suddenly grabbed some things from his bag.

Saree, pausing for a moment to catch her breath, eyed the sketchpad and pencil in his hands with a raised eyebrow and asked, “What are you doing?”

He looked up and said, “Dance for me.” As if his request wasn’t out of the ordinary, he promptly looked down on his pad and started sketching.

Saree blinked a couple of times before what he said hit her. “Excuse me?!”

“Dance for me.” He repeated, this time without bothering to look up from his pad.

For a few moments, Saree just started at him and his unkempt hair. The sound of pencil strokes on the pad punctuated the silence in the classroom. “You’re crazy,” she said in defeat and started for the door.

“Wait.”

She heard the slamming of the pad on the desk, a pencil dropping to the floor, the screech of a bench being pushed back, and the squeak of a pair of sneakers against the floor, before she felt a hand on her shoulder whirling her around.

“Please,” he all but begged. “Just for a few minutes. I just need you to twirl a little bit.”

Saree was about to proclaim him insane again and to call him to task for demoting dancing to just a mere “twirl,” but she paused as she met a pair of the most earnest and brownest eyes—framed by unbelievably sooty lashes—she had ever seen. Everything—even her anger—was replaced by a single thought:

It’s a crime for a boy to have to-die-for lashes. The injustice!