I See You Lying Next To Me

I hated it here in New Jersey. I’d only been here for a month and I hated it so much. I wish I’d never came.

The worst part was having to live with Mel my sister, older by 12 years but she could have been older by about 25 years she was so stuffy and frumpy and her husband Ted was just… an arsehole. I hated him but the feeling was mutual and I knew that he resented me coming into their lives, me, the little sixteen year old, scruffy, paint covered, music playing teenager who he couldn’t relate to.

I wish now I’d chosen to live with Aunt Marie after my father had died. I had the choice, either stay in England with Aunt Marie or fly off for a new life in America with my sister.

I’d chosen.

I’d chosen smelly Mel who seemed to just hate everything that I did. Of course I didn’t really know her as she’d left home to marry American Ted when I was only ten and I hadn’t seen her since. She’d been generous with gifts that arrived at Christmas and birthdays and sometimes she’d send the odd letter if she could remember of if she could be bothered but when I met her when she came to my father’s funeral and I was to go straight back with her the next day, I knew we wouldn’t get on but I still came in the hope that everything would be alright. It was the thought of being somewhere different, America, like in the movies that made me think that everything would be OK but it wasn’t.

I couldn’t please Mel at all, whatever I did always seemed to be wrong so I just stayed out of her way, I hardly spoke to her and I especially didn’t tell her that I didn’t fit in at school, that I had no friends there and detested the place. I just went out for walks, not that there was much to see, I painted in my bedroom with my music on in my own little world and I slept.

No one liked me at school because I was different. I spoke differently and they took the piss, I dressed differently and they took the piss over that too. Sometimes it bothered me and sometimes it didn’t. When it bothered me I missed home and the friends that I had back in the UK. I wasn’t different there and I fitted in just fine. The thing was here in New Jersey there was no-one that I’d met that I wanted to be friends with anyway, I wouldn’t want to look like them in a million years, they were all clones of each other and if they could be that shallow towards me, who wanted them as a friend anyway?

There were a few others like me but the strange thing was, us ‘weirdoes’, ‘freaks’, ‘losers’ and ‘loners’ didn’t really stick together, we just kept to ourselves.

I knew what I wanted and that was to be an artist. I loved the art lessons and excelled at it, everything else I was crap at and it showed.

Then one day things started looking up because on the notice board in the corridor I saw a piece of paper pinned up.

Art Club, Saturday mornings in the art room, 10-12. Anyone interested is more than welcome to join us. and it was signed Mr Franks.

I liked Mr Franks; he encouraged me so much in his art lessons. He was a good teacher and his lessons just flew by, I could have spent the whole day there. Now here was the opportunity I wanted, extra art lessons. Today was Friday, not long to wait. I practically skipped off to the English lesson feeling excited about this art club so may be things would start looking up as I wandered off down the corridor until someone rushed past and knocked all my books onto the floor.

“Loser,” the girl shouted out to me as she looked back and laughed, others around me laughed too. I could have walked out of the building there and then but something deep inside always stopped me, I wasn’t going to let them beat me. They were the losers. They were going nowhere.

Fuckers.

**

Saturday was a boiling hot day so I made sure I took a bottle of water with me to the club.

Mel was glad to see the back of me so that her and Ted could spend some alone time together. She was 28 years old and acted like she was about 50. She looked it too.

I wore my usual pair of jeans, even in this heat and a little khaki coloured tank top. My fair hair which usually hung loosely about my shoulders was tied up in a loose ponytail.

Apart from Mr. Franks there were only two other people in the room busy at their work and I didn’t recognise them at all. A skinny, weedy looking boy that looked about a year younger than me was standing at an easel over to the left and was concentrating on a bowl of fruit that he’d set up for himself. His picture of the fruit was awesome.

“Hey that’s so good,” I said to him going over, how could I ignore his talent? He was great. I noticed he was blushing heavily as he turned and looked at me with his huge horn rimmed glasses that were held together with a piece of sticky tape. They slid down his nose and he automatically pushed them back up again.

“I’m Kitty,” I said to him being friendly.

“I’m Eugene,” he said flustering slightly. Fucking hell dude I’ve only said hello to you and introduced myself I’m not going to slip my tongue between your lips I thought to myself.

“Hi,” said a female voice. It was the other person in the room, a girl that was petite and small with long black hair that was plaited all the way down her back. She had almond shaped brown eyes and a friendly smile.

“I’m Liz,” she said. “You must be Kitty, I saw your name on Mr Frank’s list. That now makes just four of us that come to the art club, you’ve still to meet Gerard. Gerard is in my English class and he’s always late but I’m sure he’ll make it soon though, anything to do with art and he’s in on it.”

“Oh right, like me then,” I said as I walked across to Liz. She was painting what looked like a beach scene. “That’s very good you know,” I said to her as I heard the storeroom door creak open.

“Hello Kitty,” said Mr Franks appearing from the small room at the back of the classroom, “I’m so glad you could join us, now feel free to help yourself to anything you’d like to use but we would need a $2 contribution from you, just to cover some of the costs.”

“That’s fine Mr Franks,” I said to him going into my purse and getting out some money.

“Is there enough room for you here?” He asked. “I’ve moved these desks out of the way so that you can put down your paper.”

“There’s plenty of room thanks Mr Franks,” I said to him. Yeah there was I thought looking around, plenty.

“What are you going to do, paint on the floor or something?” asked Liz looking over.

“Actually yeah, I’m going to paint on the floor. Its… it’s just something I’ve always done.” I said.

“Cool,” said Liz who turned back to her picture.

I laid some newspaper down onto the floor then put some art paper on top, went into the store room at the back and filled myself a jar with water, collected the water colours and brushes that I wanted and settled myself down, sitting cross legged as usual in front of the paper, to begin.

It was so hot in the room and as I reached over to my bag for my bottle of water I was aware of someone entering the room out of the corner of my eye. It must be this Gerard guy that Liz had mentioned I thought to myself taking a drink from the bottle.

“Hi Eugene,” I heard this Gerard say, “Hi Liz.”

“Hi Gerard,” said Liz, “hey come and meet Kitty, Kitty’s new, let me introduce you.”

I didn’t look up straight away as I was just finishing off some detail to a flower that I had drawn onto my picture but I didn’t even get a chance to look up because this guy Gerard had immediately come over and he was crouched down beside me. Nobody did that, people always stood up next to me when thy looked at my pictures, just leaning over but he was crouched down right next to me, watching and taking an interest. I could feel his eyes on me and I could smell that he was a smoker.

“Hi Kitty,” he said and I turned and looked into his hazel eyes. He was grinning widely.

”Hi,” I said. I felt weird, nervous, may be like Eugene had felt when I’d spoken to him earlier.

“Kitty, nice name,” said Gerard. “Is it short for Kitten?”

I smiled and shook my head.

“Its just Kitty, its not short for anything,” I said to him.

Kitten. I liked it, that name he’d called me, but it wasn’t just the name he called me that I liked, it was the way he’d said it.