Chapter Fourteen

Melissa lay awake in bed, staring at one of her pictures that had been framed on the wall. It was an oil pastel picture of a tree, half of which was its state in Winter, the other in Spring. She stared at it, wondering all of the same things that she had been wondering when she had drawn the picture in the first place. She found it amazing how Winter and Spring were seasons that came right after each other, yet were so different. Just opposites, in fact. Sure, in one sense, they had two whole seasons between them. Enough time for life to begin, grow, and end slowly. But in another sense, they were right next to each other. So close, yet so unsimilar. The new beginning comes right after the end. Perhaps it was waiting to commence since long before its turn. But we won't know, now will we? It was all behind the curtains.

 

With a sigh, she got up and dressed herself for school. She had her mind set from the pep talk she had with her uncle. There was a chance, she would be getting an iPhone. That was all she could think about, now. All of her friends had one. And to use them as much as possible, they did not hesitate. Their lives depended solely on modern technology. Melissa did not understand all of the words they kept using, as her old Nokia phone did not have all of these features. With her friends, though, it was always Photoshop this, and Instagram that! She did not even know how Bluetooth worked. Technologically oblivious, Melissa found it a bit hard to fit in with her friends at first. To think her problem would come to an end, she was more than eager to do whatever it took to get the highly idolized iPhone.

 

 This meant that she would have to study, and she had. So when she got to French that day, Melissa felt a little bit more confident than usual about her mid-terms. French was a subject she found fairly easy. Her palms tingled as she recieved her test paper, and she took a deep breath in and out before starting to read the questions. The test wosn't all that hard, Melissa was relieved to find out. Perhaps it was so as she had been practicing in her spare time with her boyfriend, Tommy.

 

They were playing a game, where Melissa would say something in French and he would try to guess what she was saying. After a while of losing miserably, Tommy decided it was time he showed her some of his French skills; ones which also required his lips-and hers-but did not contain so many words. None to be precise. Just moans.

 

FOCUS!

"What are you smiling about?" Luke asked from his seat next to her. It was then Melissa realized that she had been grinning to herself at the memory of Tommy's kisses.

 

"Umm...Nothing." she told him, mortified. He didn't bother to ask further questions, and went back to his own test. The two of them always sat together in French, starting from the day of the first test, when Luke had begged the girl sitting next to Melissa to sit elsewhere. Neither girls understood what his reasons had been, until the test began, and poor Luke was clearly disappointed to find Melissa to be much dumber than him. He had learned his lesson. But the two were like best friends, so they continued sitting together, although the roles of cheating on tests had been somewhat reversed by now.

 

 Melissa finished the test with only a few seconds left on the clock. She had answered about 70% of the questions. She knew how to answer more of them, but her poor attention span caused her boredom and she lost patience, rushing through the assessment. All in all, it had gone much better than her previous tests, so she was pretty much satisfied. Her day had gone well so far. Everything was normal until she reached what was once her favorite class, but the assigned teacher had managed to suck all of the positivity out of it: art class.

 

When Melissa reached art class, she felt a buzzing in her jeans pocket and realized her phone was ringing. Taking out her phone, she discovered she had 8 missed calls and one text. She checked the text message first. It was from Uncle Martin, and it said "Under ctrl. Nthn 2 worry abt." Confused, Melissa checked the missed calls. They were all from her uncle too. Relieved to find whatever the problem had been was solved, her curiosity still couldn't keep her from trying to find out what had happened in the first place. She dialed Martin's number. He picked up after the third ring.

"Hello?" he said.

"Yeah, what happened?" Melissa cut to the chase.

"Oh it's alright now. You don't have to worry." he assured her.

"Yeah, but what happened?" she repeated in a hushed tone, expecting her teacher to arrive in class any minute.

There was a momentary pause.

"Julie got sick again." he finally spoke.

"What? She was fine for the past month! She was walking and everything!" She felt her temper rising.

"I know, I know. And I got another doctor this time. He said there's nothing seriously wrong with her."

"That's ridiculous! Nothing serious? You would think these medical idiots could trace SOMETHING after all this time!" she exploded. Olivia signalled her to lower her voice, so she did, not noticing how quiet the room had grown.

"The doctor has one suggestion though. It's something I'd been wondering myself, for a while... Melissa, think about it. Your mother started getting sick from around the time when your Stan died, right? And she'd always been sort of-sorry to say-weak. We're thinking the cause of her sickness might be psychological." he told her, reminding her of his love for crime shows.

"Psychological?" Melissa whispered.

"OH MY GOD, PSYCHOLOGICAL?" another voice boomed sarcastically from behind her, followed by the entire class burtsting into laughter.

Melissa whipped her head around to find a furious Mr. Moore towering over where she was sitting.

"Your phone, Miss Lauren?" he commanded, rather than asked, extending a palm to her.

Melissa quickly fumbled with the keys to end her call. Her fingers had been shaking and if she had a mirror she was sure she would find her reflection to be very pale. She never got into trouble before. To be honest, all the teachers loved her. Mr. Moore had been the first to be mean, though Melissa still didn't know why.

"YOUR PHONE, MISS LAUREN." he said more sternly this time. Melissa handed him the phone, her shoulders drooping with disappointment.

As he took it away from her, he continued to speak. "You will get this back at the end of the week."

"It was a family emergency!" she protested.

"Why yes, I know! A psychological issue!" he exclaimed like a Shakesperean actor. The class just continued to find amusement in the incident. "Perhaps you should take up Family Psychology, Melissa. You'll do great there. Art is definitely not your cup of tea..."

Melissa could feel her blood boiling. She had had enough. Fortunately, Mr. Moore thought so too, and dropped it at that, satisfied with the reaction of his audience. The girl couldn't come up with something clever to say, as words were never her talent. But she knew exactly how to put him in his place.

"Don't cry, Melissa! He's a jerk! He's like that with everyone. You'll get your phone back." she heard Olivia comforting her.

I'm not crying, you bitch! In order to be crying, you have to have tears falling from your face. Do you see that happening to me? No. So, I'm not crying. I'm just teary eyed.

"S**t, that was insane!" Luke gasped, clearly entertained. Olivia shot him an irritated look.

"I'm fine." Melissa nodded to Olivia, and to Luke she did a poor job at faking a smile and said "Yes that was."

But she knew exactly what to do now. If she was getting into trouble, she might as well make it splashy, right? Her assignment was to paint a fruit basket. A topic she hated. She never understood the point of painting a basket of fruits. How could she be moved by something so simple? She should be drawing something that did move her. Something she felt strongly about. She picked up her paint brush, and began creating an image of the Devil sitting at the teachers desk in the same classroom that they were all in at that moment. The Devil was wearing the same shirt as her teacher, only on the pocket, he had the initials of the man he was portraying. G.M.: Gregory Moore.

Olivia's eyes nearly popped out of her head when she realized what her little friend had been up to.

"What are you doing?" she hissed. Melissa ignored her. "This is a bad idea, Melissa! Don't do it! Mel, STOP!"

At this point, she turned to Olivia with a smirk. That smirk made it seem as if the Devil was not in the picture, but was possessing our dear Melissa. "Shhh. Don't make it obvious." she told her quietly, and went back to painting in silence.

When the class ended, she was the first one to leave the class. She practically ran out, so she could escape before anyone discovered what she had done. This was one of those times she thanked her heavens that Mr. Moore had been one of those teachers that didn't care what his students were doing. As she pushed through the masses of teenagers, she heard some of them mimicking the teacher's earlier words, in different versions. "Psychological! Oh my gosh it's psychological, did you hear? So cool, right?"

There was a moment of rage in her, but she let it go, realizing they had sorry lives, with nothing but others' troubles to feed on. At least she had better luck than that!

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Reviews

[Mr Dunne Poetry]

This is really good. I look forward to reading more chapters :) thanks for sharing TS

[Leslie Philibert]

I enjoyed this, even if I unfortunatly had only enough time to scan. A good write, especially like the first paragraph..you have the writer`s eye, and can put what you see excellently on paper.

[Blue Ivory]

Thank you so much! Hopefully you will have more time to read future chapters :)