I really wanted to return Max's camera to him personally. That way, I would've been able to ask him what he had been doing in Sloth City that night. Sure, I was extremely thankful for what he did, and I'd probably never live to repay him. Returning the camera myself was the least I could do to show that. But still, he made a promise to his family and friends to never go back there.
I suppose he could place similar allegations against me, though. I was much less entitled to be there than he was. And I knew it. There would have been a lot to talk about if I had been allowed to deliver his camera; possibly too much. But even that was a faraway dream now. I was under house arrest and it would remain that way until I had "fully realized the consequences of my mistake."
That's what my parents had said, but they and I both knew that I'd already realized and experienced over and above the consequences necessary for that particular mistake. It was only because of their supposed obligations as parents that they still chose to punish me manually.
I wondered why none of my friends had called to check on me. After my little adventure, I had missed a whole week of school. Today would be my first day back, and I was anxious as I jumped out of the shower and struggled to tame my hair. My excitement, almost overwhelming me, wasn't caused by the fact that I'd be able to tell my story. I hoped to avoid that as much as possible. What I was excited about was the return to normalcy.
But my initial question still beat my brain raw. Why had no one called? I had a decent amount of friends. If none of them tried to contact me, I could've at least expected a ring from Quinn. But she hadn't called either. That's another reason why I was a bit anxious for school. I'd know what was going on and why I hadn't been informed of it.
My parents didn't say anything much to me as I practically hurdled out the front door to the bus stop. I had been like a bird, not even caged, but trapped in a holed box. I hadn't been outside for a week, and the sun was the first to greet me when I finally went.
In my rush, I was the first one at the stop. I hadn't fully dried my hair, as I noted that its springy locks were heavier than usual. I was thankful for the near arrival of summer, finishing this job for me. However, the air was moist and the sky was faded because of the harshness of rain from the previous few nights. Then, out of nowhere, my cheeks began to hurt. I realized that I had been smiling since I stepped out of the house and therefore forced myself to stop.
The sound of a front door opening and then shutting with a click caught my attention from behind. I turned to see Austin stepping out of his home and walking towards the stop. I placed my smile back on my face and waved.
Returning my wave, but only with a sufficient-enough smirk, he stepped forward and wrapped his arms around me. I was still smiling, I noted. When we stepped apart, I dreaded the question of "where have you been?" and prayed for it to remain only in my mind and not his. My prayer wasn't enough, for the question soon passed his lips.
"I was sick." I said simply. It wasn't a complete lie, so I said it more easily than I possibly would've said something else. Austin nodded and picked up his backpack from where he had thrown it to the side. I mentally sighed with his acceptance and absence of request for elaboration.
I liked Austin. I liked him too much, really. I regretted that I didn't have the courage to actually tell him, because nothing is more awkward than being a little bit afraid of one of your friends because you think they are the most beautiful being on Earth. I often thought about drawing Austin. To trace the delicate yet defined outline of the boy I loved and fill it with the color and life that he possessed would beat any kiss, in my opinion.
But a kiss would still be nice.
Then I realized that we had just shared a hug. Wishful moments like those were so fleeting that by the time I processed what had just happened, the moment was gone. Small insecurities about how strong a relationship we had often dispersed for a little while with small interactions like those. Small interactions like those had a bigger impact on me than he intended for them to.
One by one, the several other kids from my neighborhood loaded onto the street corner. I struggled to keep up a conversation with Austin for the five minutes or so before the bus pulled in front of us, coughing out steam like an old smoker.
I climbed on and proceeded to my usual seat; eighth from the front and fifth from the back, left side. It was the perfect spot to keep from hovering into social oblivion. I simply refused to sit anywhere else.
But despite the intricate planning put into bus rides, they were not the highlight of my day. I often sat alone there, whereas Austin sat in the back with most of his closer friends. I could've gone back there if I had wanted to. I was popular enough. I guess I just didn't fit in, though.
The first sounds I normally heard when pulling into the lot of my school were those of Owl City. The harmony of the light vocals and music reminded me of the water droplets dotting the grass outside. Music playing in my ears during the ride was often the only thing that kept me from worrying about my social status.
For some reason, as I gently tucked my iPod back into my bag, I felt butterflies entering one by one into my stomach. It seemed as if my mind was trying to convince me that I was someone important, and everyone would be so ecstatic to see my return. I clasped onto common sense, straightened myself up, and stepped outside, nonchalantly checking behind me to see if it would be worth walking slowly to wait for Austin.
It took me a shorter time than usual today to decide against it. Looking around, everything seemed beautiful to me. The gray skies, still moist and darker than usual, couldn't even bring me down. With even breaths and steady strides, I fell into step with the stream of other students entering the school, then made my way out of the raging current when I reached my first class.
I seemed to float above the layer of teenage grogginess that had collected in the room as I walked over to my seat, right next to the window. I looked around. A few people met my gaze. Some smiled and some simply went back to sleep.
Once I made sure that everyone had seen my face, I began to watch the door as the rest of my class dragged into the room. Only a few were holding their heads high enough to actually see me staring back at them like an eager puppy, and most of those who did otherwise didn't matter much to me.
One of the faces, however, reflected my enthusiasm. So I gave a small wave as she walked over to the desk behind me. Tillie Marx was a good enough friend of mine. We met in seventh grade because of the similarity and closeness of our names. It took her about half the year to stop responding when "Lily" was called on the roll. But I finally introduced myself, and soon enough, she reclaimed her own name. Then she moved away for a year, but had returned in time for our our reunion during freshman year.
Tillie was a very jumpy individual. Anything and everything excited her. Beside her, my eagerness of the day was like a flashlight being held to the sun. Her hair was a different color almost every month or so, and the colors were always extremely bright. As soon as you got used to that month's color, a new dye was inducted into her collection. Today, the light made her vivid, royal purple hair appear to shine. The fact that she teased it often and used hairspray to great extents helped it to appear flawless and yet keep a fluffed bounciness.
One eye wide, the other covered by her thick, side-swept bangs, she placed her hands on her desk very matter-of-factly. She seemed more stable and concentrated today. All of my senses told me that the reason behind it couldn't be very good.
"You've been absent. May I ask why?"
"No," I replied, even though I knew her inquiry was redundant.
"Then I won't." She said back, not at all shaken. I didn't know whether to be grateful or insulted by her lack of interest in where I'd been for the past week. So I just disregarded it, seeing as she obviously had something she needed to say.
"Freshman year is almost over. And I was worried that I wouldn't see you again. And I really wanted you to know what a good friend you've been. And I know this is kind of sudden-- Am I moving too fast?"
Not pausing for me to actually answer, Tillie continued.
"You know how it is right? With parents who are like, really, really busy? My dad's like that, and I don't know--"
Mid-sentence, the final bell sounded, extracting a brief squeak and then silence from Tillie. I told her she could tell me about it later as I shifted around in my seat, noticing that my teacher had soundlessly materialized in the front of the class, as usual.
By the end of the roll and the first part of class, I had doodled a page's worth of pointless things having nothing to do with my rampant train of thought. However, if I was asked to recall and expound upon any single thought that had run through my mind during that time, I would pull a blank. Sorting through my thoughts could be compared to sorting out one individual color and shape Lego block from a knee-deep tub of Legos after unleashing a group of preschoolers onto it.
My hand itched for my box of pastels back at my house. There are certain things that I feel I can better portray through the subtle, realistic look of pencil shading, but most of the things I draw cannot be considered complete without a few splashes of soft color.
But my drawings had been very strange lately. While I was bedridden for all of the previous week, I would often draw until my hand ached. What was strange about the situation was that I was drawing things I'd never seen or even thought about before. So far, I'd composed the shaded form of a long staircase winding down into darkness, an ornate door with a squared doorknob, and a pocket-watch attached to a slender loop of string. Even in my recovering state of mind, I knew that each of the pictures, though completely different subjects, had common ground.
I might have been able to decipher the drawings more if they weren't just pencil drawings. I just couldn't bring myself to add even a stroke of pastel or any other colored media to any of them. There was one other picture, however, that I did recognize, despite the lack of color. It was the exact horizon line I'd first looked up to see after losing my bracelet during my run in Sloth City. I remember almost the exact form and perspective of that particular view. This was because of my increase in senses resulting from the upset of my bracelet being gone forever. Staring down that horizon line was the only thing that kept me running.
Even with that being true, it made no sense that I would be able to reproduce it so perfectly without even thinking about it. If it had been up to me, I wouldn't have drawn it at all. I hadn't known what I was drawing in any of these pictures, only that I needed to darken a shadow here and erase a highlight there. And I didn't stop until something told me that it was finished.
Then, breaking my thoughts, Mia McGuire stepped in through the open door.
"Hey, Mrs. Pearson. Is it alright if I take a test in here?" She held a piece of paper and twirled a pencil in her right hand.
Mia and I had never spoken. We had no classes together. I only knew her because of the fact that she apparently missed a lot of school. In my first period, you could expect a visit from Mia at least twice in a month, tapping her pencil while sitting in the vacant desk in the back of the room.
I looked around at everyone else, heads bent down over their desks. Oh, that's right. The paper that had recently become home to an abundance of my doodles had once been an actual assignment. I guess I was the only one in my class who was still interested in the fact that we had a guest to our room, be it Mia or not. So as usual, I stopped what I was doing to watch her ask to sit in, to look over at Pearson nodding in approval, and then to watch Mia's progression to the desk.
But only the first of those three things happened.
"No desks today." Mrs. Pearson said in a hushed voice. Mia nodded, smiled, and turned to leave without even looking to see who'd occupied her spot. I wasn't even apart of the matter, and my first impulse was to snap my head around to do so.
There, in the back seat in the corner of the room, was a girl. She couldn't have been there before, I thought. I had watched everyone file into the room. But then again, I had been turned around talking to Tillie until the bell rang. This girl was a new student to the school, not just to our class, and I was sure of it.
I couldn't see her face because she, too, was bent over her work. But I didn't need to see her face to know that she was different. It was her hair. Cascading over her head and shoulders like a curtain of golden embers, it made you do a double take on whether or not she was actually on fire.
I was confident that it was her natural hair color, but it was so strange. It was the bright orange of smoldering coals mixed in perfect harmony with the metallic, honey-tinted color of gold. But her hair was almost all I could see of her.
Without feeling too creepy, though, I could see that she wore a loose, faded brown peasant dress that stopped right at her knees. Made of a light material, it also draped over her form like a curtain. Dark brown, transparent stockings fit her crossed legs.
Then, the fiery girl raised her head. As if she had sensed me watching her, the first things her eyes came into contact with were mine. With a slender face, lips in a straight line, and eyes wide like a mouse, her shaped eyebrows creased. Dark rings encased her stormy gray irises and black pupils. Every fire has it's smoke, and her eyes were hers.
My head snapped around to the front of the room once I realized I had been staring right back. What a creeper I must've seemed like. Letting my own hair fall into my face to shield me from the smoky eyes of the girl, I turned over the worksheet and let my doodles spill over onto that side of the paper. My mood had been depleted, or at least obscured by the undying urge to run out of the room and hide in my locker. Luckily though, no one had been paying any attention. The embarrassment would die away soon enough, I guessed. Then, looking at my paper, I also guessed that I'd be needing to grab a new, clean one before leaving class.