Cultist

Chapter 8, Accident

“Ok Daniel is going to take half of you over to Art camp with Dolf and the other half are going to follow me on a science adventure with Neil!” David smiled, Neil sighed loudly.

“By science adventure do you mean we’re going to pick the mold off the kitchen stove again?” Neil spat, David crossed his arms.

“Just for that, this time you don't get to use the big scraper to scrape the mold off the stove.” David huffed, Neil swore under his breath and faced the ground. The kids started pairing off, Dolf was already beside me, paintbrush in hand while Harrison, Nerris and Space Kid came over. David had an extra kid in his group, so one of them would have to come over to me. David took notice to this and started scratching his chin.

“Max! You and Daniel got off to a rocky start how about you go with him for the day!” David cheered, I ground my teeth together as Max started to protest loudly. David shook his head.

“Now now, I know your separated from your regular friends but that just makes this whole day an even bigger opportunity for you! You get to make up with Daniel and make some new close friends!” David smiled, Max growled loudly and stormed over to me, Neil waved bye to him as David ushered his group away.

“You guys can go and do painting by the lake! The painting supplies are in the mess hall storage room, meet back there for lunch around 1, sound good?” David informed and asked me, I nodded to him in reply to all of his statements and he walked off. I got the kids to follow me over to the storage room and start taking out paint things, holding brushes and jars and tubes full of colours in my arms as the rest of the kids did the same - all except Max who just stood there and stared at me. Now I understood it - arguably, I hadn't been the nicest person in the world, however I didn't end up poisoning all these kids and don't plan on doing it so Max should be grateful no one is dead and he shouldn't be all moody. I started setting up easels with blank canvases by the lake shore, the view was perfect for painting. Dolf started right away, grabbing a pallet and creating colourful strokes. Space kid had paint on his helmet that he just kept smashing his canvas with and Nerris was taking her paintbrush and flinging paint around like it was her wand while Harrison dodge the paint Nerris was flinging. Max still just stood near a canvas and stared at me.

“What's wrong Max? Not inspired by this beautiful day?” I asked him, walking over with a paintbrush and some paint. Max pointed at me.

“Don't play dumb with me Daniel I know you're just pretending to act all nice. I don't know what got into you but you can't fool me, and you can't fool David for long either - he's an idiot but eventually hell believe me!” Max basically yelled this sentence. I frowned at him and narrowed my eyebrows.

“I don't know what's gotten into you - you need to relax and mind your own business that's for sure, you have way to much attitude in a small package.” I countered, Max grunted something and then took the paint and brushes from me swiftly,  causing my arms to fly forward a bit. What an annoying child. I went back over to supervise the rest of the kids. A couple minutes went by and they were all just doing their own thing, the only ones really painting were Dolf and Max and I couldn't see what Max was painting. Dolf’s picture was of a ‘windmill’ as he told me, all I was seeing was a giant swastika but Dolf promised me it wasn't. I spotted Neil coming over to us and stopped him before he could get over to Max which was where he was heading.

“Hey kiddo, what's going on? Did David tell you you could leave his group?” I asked Neil, Neil nodded quickly and nervously;

“Yeah I just need to ask Max something” Neil told me, I raised an eyebrow at him but let him walk past me, I stood closer to Max and Neil to try and over hear their conversation. I was a pretty quiet and still day so just me leaning a bit closer I could pick up their words.