Trying To Endure

Chapter Fifty-One

SONG: Jaden Smith - B

🌷

April Levesque

Kids knocked on our doors for Halloween. A hastening darkness, shops started to bedazzle their displays of tinsels, trees and flashing lights. People mount ladders to attach ravishing adornments on walls of edifices and light poles. The serotonin flickered each house, modifying from one colour to another. Normally, we don't prepare our houses for the holidays, as November is for the saints.

The first day of the second semester started on November 9th. First period is free. The whole group has no classes. My lessons officially begin at ten. I want to finish Derek's aspiration, so we gather in the most mesmerising art class: the school's attic, vintage curtains, old-fashioned and worn out walls, colour-dotted sinks stacked with palettes, brushes and paint bottles, and the slanted ceiling overviewing the cloud-speckled sky.

Theo and Naila sit to my right. "You know that Maths test we had before the half-term?" he says to Derek. "I got sixty-eight percent."

"That's good."

"Good?" he echoes. "That was a C. The boundaries are too tough, man, it's actually fucking annoying. What'd you get?"

"Ninety-eight."

Theo blinks. "What, how?"

"It was easy."

Theo scowls. "Can I have your brain?" Then, he whistles at the A1 beauty, frustration retreating, an arm around his girlfriend. "Sell that and you will get millions, April."

Tanner cherishes the art. A Versace, black baroque collar and cuffs shirt, dark-faded jeans. "Want us to help?"

"She won't let you," says Derek. "Trust me, I tried."

I hold out a free palm. Derek slaps three water colouring pencils onto it, his arm casually extended across the top rail of my blue chair. I fill a section of the gardens, dapping it with a brushstroke of water.

Naila watches me stifle the paint. "Jasmine got news."

Jasmine's blush is as pink as her hair. "Not like anyone cares—"

"We do," says Ines.

"I lost my v-card."

Instantaneously, the boys explode:

"How was it?" asks Tanner.

"When did you do it?" says Theo.

"Who's the lucky girl?" says Jackson.

"Are you feeling alright?" asks Derek.

A dreamy haze lurks in those strident storms.

Tanner notices the dazed shimmer. "Damn, hoe. It was good."

Jasmine cutely giggles. Aw. "It was. Do you know Sorsha Rojas?"

"She's in our Biology class," says Derek, connoting to him and me.

"We've been talking for quite a while now and ... Last night, we decided to meet up. It was awkward at first. Eventually it got pretty heated ... So we did it. It was good."

"As long as you liked it, as long as you were comfortable, we're happy for you." Tanner leans back in the chair. "Now, what's your favourite body part of a woman?"

Jasmine purses her lips. "Don't know. You?"

"Thighs."

"Agreed," says Theo. "No, no, stretch marks."