Everyday Combat

Putting the brush down in the mug of white spirit I sat back, lifting the canvas up to survey my pop art painting. It was a red colour with a black microphone across it diagonally. This was Matt's. I looked to the side to where Danzig was on the old couch nana had donated to me and Zack.

"What do you think?" I asked, turning the canvas to show him but he didn't even so much as open one eyelid instead favouring remaining blissfully asleep on his back with his legs in the air. I shook my head before standing and leaning the painting up the wall beside the first canvas which was black with the death bat across it.

When I came back I grabbed the next blank canvas and my pencil, and sketched out a left handed guitar. Namely, the one that was sitting in its stand upstairs in its owners room. Hearing the door open, I simply sat back and studied the grey lines checking for imperfections.

"Hey sweetie." I heard dad greet me and I looked up with a smile and watched as he sank down beside me, holding out a sandwich for me and a glass of juice to which I smiled thankfully.

"Hey," I greeted in return before raising the canvas to show him. "What do you think?"

"Is that Vengeance?" Dad asked, taking from me the canvas therefore freeing up my hands and allowing me to start on my lunch he had kindly brought in for me. I nodded and he looked back at it, before looking up and at me once more. "Did you just draw it now?"

"Yup."

He began looking around the garage with that, as if for looking for said guitar. "Where is it, then?"

"I have a photographic memory dad," I pointed out, grinning when he smiled sheepishly and placed the canvas on the concrete floor of the garage. "I could even draw you nonnos birthday cake from two years ago if you asked me to, without looking at moms photos of it."

He smiled and nodded, before studying the other two. "So what are they for?"

"It's a year on Monday since the band formed, so I'm making them all 'well-done-you-lasted-longer-than-MPA' presents."

Dad laughed and I grinned with a giggle as I came to my feet and moved to grab the black paint and pour out some more before grabbing the green - Zack's favourite shade of green too - and pouring that out. I took another bite of my lunch and a gulp from my juice before reaching for a clean paintbrush and began filling in the canvas.

"You love doing this, don't you?" Dad asked after a while.

"Hmm?" I looked up, sitting back from what I was doing.

"You love your art, don't you?" Dad re-asked, moving the lock of platinum blonde streaked hair that had fallen into my eyes back behind my ear. I had tied the damn lot up, but obviously that part decided to rebel against being unceremoniously squished into a hair tie with my natural black hair, its fellow platinum blonde streaks and the lime green extensions.

"Yup."

"I think you're mother has convinced herself you'll grow out of it," he then said.

"She would though, because she wants us both to be doctors or the scientists who discover the cure for Cancer or whatever," I shrugged. Mom loved us both like nothing else and supported us both through our talents - Zack's being music, mine being art - but we both knew that even if she never mentioned it she hoped we would grow out of them.

Mom wanted us to use the brainsshe everyone knew we both possessed.

"Oh, on that note we get our report cards on Tuesday," I informed him. I couldn't wait to see what our teachers wrote, because of the way we behaved in school. To say we were only freshman too.

"Good are they?" Dad enquired with a sly grin and I grinned back.

"Probably not from Mrs Knobflop- I mean Knoefler." He raised an eyebrow in curiosity, hinting for me to continue. "She's French and she's really easy to piss off and we somehow we always end up doing it by talking in Italian so she can't understand us."

Dad blinked a few times before laughing and pulling me into a hug, even though I was holding a paintbrush covered in bright green paint. I felt him kiss the side of my head before leaning away to look at me, his familiar school boy grin that Zack had inherited - and myself apparently, even though mine was much more feminine obviously - firmly in place.

"Don't let your mother know that."

"Eh, she'll find out sooner or later," I retorted. "Sooner since our reports come out Tuesday and she's always first to read it though it does depend on what Knobflop- I mean Knoefler, God dammit, writes."

Dad laughed at me some more - I figured this was my cursing myself for calling the teacher the wrong name - and let me go so I could continue painting. Suddenly I heard raucous laughter from the hall and my gaze snapped to dads. That was the guys!

Instantly dad stood and hurried out of the garage, and once the door was closed I listened in to hear what he came up with to stop them from coming in. It's a surprise. How original dad? Now Zack and the guys won't bug me for information will they?

I heard Zack whine anyway and yell through the door at me so I just laughed and carried on, deciding to do the last four the next day when Zack would go to Sarah's, and the others would have to go find something to do themselves.