Help, oh knowledgeable members of YWS. ^_^ I don't think the site wanted me to post this though, 'cause it kept signing me out as I hit submit. Gah!
(three/how to be a pseudo-art kid)
“Okay, let’s see ‘em.” Natasha ordered, gesturing to the marked up table in the high school’s art room. Suzan held the binder up to her chest, the rings containing her completed contest entry. She let out a dramatic sigh; this was the revealing of her months-long project and she was drawing it out, savoring every moment.
And Natasha Bryvlinski was her guiding light, her badgering encouragement. The two of them had been friends since they entered middle school and realized in homeroom that they had the same Andy Warhol folders, bought at the local art museum on a sixth grade field trip. They banded together into their eccentric unit, which would be their means of survival for all of middle and high school.
And eccentric certainly was the term to be used for them. Suzan wasn’t outlandish with her appearance, but she stood out with her strange, colorful comics, and her concert t-shirts that depicted bands and images that no one had ever heard or seen before.
Natasha was a much more bizarre creature when it came to looks. She towered over Suzan, and was thin as a seedling. Her hair was chopped short and dyed a bright pink and blue, little colorful strands tousled and spiked into a fauxhawk. She wore black lipstick on her sliver lips. She desired nothing more than to be different, yet she was bothered extremely when others gawked. An explosive paradox at Suzan’s side, the two together didn’t quite fit in with any other groups and were left to their doodlings in the study halls.
The place they existed most at ease was inside the art room, though the art kids tended to stray toward the other side of the room, where they laid about and stared at canvases. Suzan and Natasha had most of the tables on their side to themselves, and they congregated there every day at lunch to scheme and construct comic plotlines or various other projects.
At those art tables, the conceptual idea for the Castle County Comics’ young artist contest had blossomed. Once Natasha had dragged Suzan away from her anxiety upon hearing about the contest, they brainstormed and drew up rough drafts.
The end product was the graphic tale of two young sarcastic super heroes, Bikini Broad and the Crimson Tide, whose super saving adventures were constantly thwarted by teenage angst and petty issues. The characters were more or less based off her and Natasha and their conversations, and she felt they had developed a wonderful balance of action, irony and plotline.
Suzan had laminated all of the pages, carefully hooking them into the binder. Her entire project, shiny and bound in one place.
“Beautiful.” Natasha said as Suzan laid the binder on the table and flipped open the cover. She rifled through the pages, the colors and images flying off the paper in an exciting whirl. “A refined and prize-worthy product. You’re so getting that five hundred buckaroos.”
“I kinda want some fruit for lifetime artistic efforts more than the money.” Suzan shook her head, her heart thrumming at high-speed. “But the money is good too. This is too exciting, and I just hope this doesn’t end up as something embarrassing.”
“Embarrassing? How can a noble attempt at a passion of yours be embarrassing?” Natasha crossed her arms and shot a nasty look at the other art students, lounging like cats. “Some of us recognize true creative talent, and actually work at improving our craft. Or, your craft.” She struck a pose. “I’m merely the Artistic Advisor.”
Suzan laughed, touching the smooth laminations before her. “I don’t know. My mom thinks this is all one big joke. And you should’ve heard what Mr. Griffon said to me yesterday in English. I made the mistake of referencing some material that I know about, and he went off on a biased, mini-tangent about how graphic novels aren’t literature.”
“Ugh! Still worrying about your mom? She is old, and far too removed from our world with her Martha Stewart endeavors,” Natasha chided, her face contorted with distaste. “And as for Mr. Griffon, well, that man just loves arguing with kids.” Her rebellious streak was glowing. She glanced distrustfully at the languid art crew, then sat in a chair next to the binder, her black-painted lips twisting into a pretty little sneer. “How about we activate ‘Project Gnome Place Like Home’? We haven’t done anything wild in a while, and that man’s had it coming to him since we first walked into his class. Plus, every high school student needs to prank at least one of their teachers. It’s a requirement of not being lame.”
Unsure of the success this project of theirs would hold, Suzan just shrugged in response. Their English teacher, Mr. Griffon, had suffered from a serious case of stick-up-butt since discovering he had some talkative and independent-minded students in his class. He was ruthless on their papers, and his condescending attitude was something they would not tolerate. So about a month ago they had come up with “Project Gnome Place Like Home”, which, in short, involved the giant and grotesque gnome statue on his front lawn that they drove past every morning on the way to school, an apple, and his desk.
“Maybe after the contest. I feel high-strung enough as it is now,” she replied, turning the pages of Bikini Broad and the Crimson Tide. She loved how she had a fanbase and cheering section in Natasha, but she wished her other fellow students would understand what she was trying to do. It was awkward to love art as much as she did, but not be accepted by the art community.
The door of the art room creaked open then, but Suzan was too absorbed with fantasies of her graphic novel to look around. Natasha set off a warning though, tapping her on the shoulder.
“Your boy’s here,” she laughed.
Suzan felt an instinct to whirl around in her seat, but managed to contain it and just shifted her eyes to the side so she could see over her shoulder.
Sauntering over to the congregation of shaggy-haired art kids was Owen Locks. He was part of that flock, and though Suzan had been in several classes with him throughout high school, she had never really heard him speak. She had heard him laugh though, at things she found interesting in class and everyone else just stared blankly at the whiteboard upon hearing. After a few years of seeing him out of the corner of her eye, she found herself hopelessly intrigued.
She didn’t understand why her hormones had to go all flippy for him, since he was a strange bird. There was his apparent quiet nature, and then his looks: wiry black hair, his eyes always squinting as if he was staring into a lightbulb, and a long, pointed nose that looked like it would get in the way. Not like she thought about that sort of thing.
Natasha had nicknamed him Curly-Q for whatever reason.
“I don’t understand you half the time, Suz.” They both watched from the corner of their eyes as he slunk down onto a chair by the other students. “He’s with people who think your comics are kids’ stuff. And he paints abstract expression. What even is that stuff?”
“I love his stuff,” she shot back. Even before she had known they were his, she had found herself staring at the large canvases after school one day, the explosive gale of colors that seemed so angry, soaking into the pores of the white cloth; the strange twisting images that somehow made sense to her, like the frustration was evaporating off the paint and she was lost in its cloud.
“Mmhmm.” Natasha murmured, leaning forward and putting her grinning face in front of Suzan’s. “You love Curly-Q’s stuff, I understand completely.”
“Eugh! No!” She shoved Natasha away. “You only swoon over lead singers; you wouldn’t understand a stupid, meaningless, real life crush.”
Natasha pursed her lips and sat down, holding her leg to her in a dainty manner. “Uh, my crushes are ‘real life’, just not realistic. And you’re seventeen, Suz; you can allow yourself to admit that you like someone. Which you almost kinda just did – this is the first time I ever heard you call it a crush.”
“Nat, don’t make me ruin my submission by being forced to shove it down your throat.” She rolled her eyes and closed the binder. “Now, let’s get to our lockers before the hallways are swarmed.”
The two of them kicked in their chairs and headed toward the doorway, Suzan holding her binder in her arms like it was the Holy Grail. When the art room door swung open as they approached it, she jumped back and clutched all her artwork to her.
In walked the art teacher, who usually was in the high school’s dark room developing photographs during her free period. She halted before she ran into the two of them, and stared for a moment in slight disorientation.
“Who? Oh! Suzan Mackintosh,” the art teacher said, smiling sweetly down at her. “The cartoon girl.”
“Yeah…” Suzan gave her a lop-sided smile back, wanting to grimace. Her and Natasha stepped aside to allow the teacher to get into the classroom, and then dashed off into the hallway, both of them wrinkling their noses at the doorway once they closed it.
Suzan sighed. Natasha turned to her, giving her two thumbs up.
“Just remember, chica,” she said. “Bikini Broad and the Crimson Tide is your ticket, and we’ve got business to do once this school day is over.”
(four/how to do something about your dreams)
Since it was a school night, the mall wasn’t crowded. Suzan and Natasha found their way to Castle County Comics, but Suzan couldn’t just walk in. She stopped in front of the glass, staring inside and gauging her competition while her friend tapped her foot impatiently. Many of the people looked older than her, loitering around the counter and the comics, talking to the man at the cashier. Several of them looked younger, and a large percentage looked like absolute losers.
She liked to imagine that she looked like she had a life, a chubby high school senior with her entry in a binder.
Eventually she managed to step through the door and hand her work to the cashier, telling him it was for the contest. He gave Natasha a wary look and then smiled at Suzan, thanking her for the entry and putting it with the others. He reminded her that judging would occur in a week, and to either check the website or drop by the store for the results. And if she was one of the top three, she would receive a phone call.
After taking care of that, Suzan felt a lot of the worry leave her, since she had finally done it – her art was out of her hands, and she couldn’t back out of this now. The two friends could return to their normal routine for that day then, which involved hitting Gold’s Gym. They put on their sweats and tank tops, making their way to their usual spots in the gymnasium when they arrived.
Suzan stepped onto the treadmill, glancing over her shoulder at the gigantic mirrors that lined the gym wall. “I cannot fully express how much I wish they didn’t have those. I look like a blimp on a production line.”
“Oh, shut up.” Natasha stood on her mat, picking up her hand weights. “You’re not allowed to judge yourself. Others judge you.” She winked. “And if I were a man, I would be all over your boobies right now, and not just because it’s hard to avoid them anyway.”
With a glaring look from Suzan, she hopped back to a safer topic. “So, anyway, we’ll find out the results of the contest in a week! How exciting is that? A week, and then money and glory and esteem. And they’ll put your comic on display in the store too.”
“I know, I heard him.” Suzan mumbled. Her anxiety was eating at her again and making her jittery. The gym was good for her right now; it would help her wear off some pent up energy over this whole suspenseful ordeal. “I just don’t want to go home today and have my mom ask me questions, which are bound to lead to questions about college and my future.”
Working on her aerobics with weights in hand, Natasha huffed and shook her head at her. “I don’t understand why you long for your mother’s acceptance about this. She obviously doesn’t understand your dreams, and they might forever be beyond her. I mean, look at my mom. She thinks I’m hiding a tattoo on my body and that the concerts we go to are those rave parties she heard about from the television. But I don’t care about her stupid suspicions, because, like I said, they’re stupid. If anything, I should egg her on for personal entertainment.”
“Our parents are totally different.” Suzan reminded, slowly turning up the speed on the treadmill. “My mom didn’t go to college and leans on my dad for money. Now she thinks it’s everything for me. Like my entire life hangs on this decision. The second I finally get the nerves to tell her that I’m going for fine arts, all I’m going to hear all summer is how I’m wasting my intelligence on doodles.”
“Yeah, but they’re intelligent doodles.”
“Like that means anything.”
“Well,” Natasha gasped in a breath, leaning down and touching her toes. “You’ll probably never get around to telling her. Just like you never seem to get around to talking to Curly-Q and telling him you want him to use your body as a canvas.”
“You are so - ick!” Suzan snapped back. “And that’s because that would be waste of time. It’s way too late for me to try talking to Owen.”
“Says you.”
“Yeah, I do. And that’s final.”
“I know how much you like him. You always look at him with big gooey eyes whenever you see him, like he’s a Brad Pitt, and not what he actually is…” She shook her head. “A David Krumholtz.”
Suzan made a face at her. “The elf from The Santa Clause? Why are your comparisons always so out there?”
She shrugged, counting under her breath, one, two, three… then: “I dare you to talk to him, you big sap.”
“Throwing insults now?”
“I freakin’ dare you.”
“Fine.” Suzan took her MP3 player from her pocket and took a tone that she hoped meant business. “I’ll talk to Owen tomorrow, if you dye your hair back to its natural color.”
Natasha squeaked, bringing a hand up to her pink and blue spikes. “But – it’s blonde!”
“So?”
“There’s nothing that stands out less,” she replied with indignation.
“Your sense of logic is skewed. But, do we have a deal? Because if you walk into school tomorrow with goldilocks hair, I’ll talk to him.”
Natasha narrowed her eyes. “This isn’t how dares work. You ruined it. But, alright. Perhaps I will come to school tomorrow with my natural hair color. And if I do, you have to pounce Curly-Q.”
“Deal.” Suzan cranked up the music on her MP3 player, doubting her friend’s ability to complete a vain sacrifice.
