Playing With The Big Boys Now

This chapter goes out to Victoria, I'll miss you so much when you move to FREAKING FLORIDA!!!!!! I even used Huzzah specifically for you. Much love, Melly/Poppy/Benny/Whatever the hell you're calling me these days
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Taking a deep breath, I grasped the frigid metal handle of the door and pushed it open, glancing around the room. There were only a few kids in the room, seeing as how there was still time left before the bell rang. There were numerous tables scattered around the room in no particular order or pattern, most of which were covered in rogue paint splatters or stray graphite marks.

There were a few preppy, jock looking guys seated at most of the tables, one geeky looking kid at another, and a guy at the back bent over a piece of paper, long black hair hanging down and hiding his face. Huzzah.

So there I was, standing around and looking like a complete and total idiot, when the teacher walked in. I don't know what I was expecting, but it sure wasn't her. Yes, ladies and gentleman, a woman teacher. Thank God. She looked like she had wandered straight out of the 70's, tye-dye and all. She must've noticed me standing there looking lost (who wouldn't notice?) because she turned to me and said, "OH! You must be the new student, hello, I'm Mrs. Dowdy."

"Hi, I'm Delilah," I said, mustering up a small smile.

"Well, Delilah, welcome to my art room. Have a seat wherever you feel like it, I don't do assigned seats, and I can't wait to see what you can do!"

She was way too cheerful. I usually sat at the back in my old art room, that way I didn't have to deal with all the noise other students made, so I made my way back towards creepy kid, taking the seat across from him.

"Hi, I'm Delilah," I said, trying to start a conversation.

"Gerard," he said after hesitating a bit. So this was the Gerard kid Frank was talking about.

"Oh, so you know Frank then?" I asked.

"Yeah, how do you know him?"

"He had to show me around today, plus he's in most of my classes."

"Cool," he said, eyes still on his paper. He didn't seem like a very talkative individual, so I got up and fished my sketchbook out of my bag. I never left home without it.

As I began to work on the drawing I had started a few days ago of a unicorn and a girl, I felt someone watching me. I look up to see Gerard staring back.

"That's really good," he said, gesturing at my drawing with the end of his pencil.

"Thanks, it's kind of hard to finish right now though, because the girl is modeled after my best friend, and she's not here right now, so I'm just kind of winging it and going by memory since I don't have a picture and she's obviously not here."

"Breath," he said, laughing at how fast I could talk. I looked over at his drawing of a person standing at the end of a pier, looking as if they were debating whether or not to jump right into the ocean and end it all.

"Your's is good, too. A little depressing, but good." He laughed. I guess that's a good sign.

"Yeah, I get that a lot about my artwork." We both smiled and settled into an easy silence, except for the scratching of Gerard's pencil and my detailing pen. After a while, I felt someone leaning over my shoulder. I looked up and almost fell out of my chair at the sight of Mrs. Dowdy's huge brown eyes behind her glasses at about two inches away from my own green ones.

"You're very talented, did you take art at your old school?""

"Yes ma'am, I did, it was one of my favorite classes."

"Well, you and Gerard here should get along fantastically then, he loves art, too, don't you Gerard?"

"Yeah," he said without looking up. And with that, she smiled and walked away to go help some jock scrape blue oil paint off of his hand.

"Is she always like that?" I asked Gerard.

"What, annoying? Overly happy?"

"All of the above."

"Yeah."

"Greeeeeaaat."

"Yeah."

"Is that all you ever say?"

"Yeah."