Boring Girls(17)

“I know. My mom’s really into art, she taught me a lot about it.”

“Well, Rachel,” he sat back, “I love it. I love that you incor-porated creative words into it. It’s obvious to me that you have a great passion for the painting. And I like that you took a dark approach to the dark subject matter. I didn’t expect it.”

“I wanted to make it darker,” I said.

“Well done. We’re going to be doing this project for the rest of the week, and since you’ve finished early, you can work in your sketchbook for a while.” As part of the class, we were to hand in a sketchbook at the end of the year for bonus marks.

I took my seat, careful not to rustle any of Josephine’s stupid paper scraps.

xXx

I ended up hanging that drawing on my wall, next to the pictures of Marie-Lise and DED. It made me feel good, looking at that wall. Empowered. I could tell Mom and Dad hated it, naturally, but how could they complain? I was doing well at school, I had a friend, and I was still being creative, which they approved of. I didn’t get any more lectures that winter from anyone. Not from Mom and Dad, and not from Ms. Voree. Of course, that was because I lightened up the things that I wrote for her class. She totally approved of nature and snowflakes and the moon and soft deer in the snow and all that shit. In Mr. Lee’s class, I knew I could create whatever I wanted and he would approve. I could express myself at school through art, and I could express myself at home through writing in my journals, which were quite rapidly turning into page after page of what can only be described as lyrics.

Even Ms. Voree had been forced to concede: I was a good writer, a creative person. And I knew it myself. I might only have had one friend, and she didn’t understand me, and the cutest boy in school thought I was a loser, but I was still better than the other kids. My dad had been right. I was smarter than them. I got it. I understood real feelings and I knew how to convey them. And I had my music. Fuck, it was such a comfort to me. I kind of liked that no one else I knew would ever be able to understand it. It was mine. To quote DED’s song “This Sad Earth”:

Me and myself

That’s all I need

To destroy this earth

To make it bleed

And if I’m alone

I feel no pain

Because the blood will purge

This sad earth again

That’s the stuff that carried me through the winter. And I felt just fine.





EIGHT


Even just saying her name today, I feel amazing. Something flows through my veins that I can’t describe. Like fire, like comfort. Like bliss. I don’t even know.

Fern.

I met Fern that spring. I’d enjoyed the winter: the days ending early, the long darkness. It was the perfect environment for me to write and fantasize about the bands on my wall who felt like a group of friends to me. I spent time with Josephine, and while I truly appreciated her, now that I was comfortable with the idea of making friends and having fun and going shopping and all that crap, I wanted something more. Josephine was wonderful, but we weren’t connected. We didn’t share a common view. There was no passion in it.

And before anyone gets carried away, I’m not talking about sex. I wasn’t looking to Josephine to satisfy any sort of romantic need, or lust. What I wanted was more important than that. Sex is stupid, and it could not have been any less important to what I needed. To describe it in a romantic way would be to cheapen and trivialize my feelings. I wanted a bond. I wanted to truly feel close to someone.

Still, I continued through the school year with Josephine by my side, hemp shoulder bag and all. There was some boy she liked, and we did all the same things that we’d done with the Guy: she walked by him, I dutifully watched to see if he turned his head. I did my halfhearted best to find out his name for her. But it was all so silly. Having a boyfriend seemed completely insignificant next to the more important goals I had: to write. To be creative. But I humoured her.

And I have to admit that whenever I saw the Guy, I still felt stupid. Even after months had passed. I’d tell myself, Fuck him if he doesn’t understand the world. Let him live in his little box. How pathetic, to wear a Bloodvomit shirt and not even understand the message. It was almost comical. Not comical enough, mind you, that I was able to erase from my mind the memory of my voice croaking, “Oh, through the grapevine.”

When the snow began to melt and the little buds on the trees were providing me with plenty of fodder for Ms. Voree’s class, Josephine invited me to yet another party. She was still close to her Our Lady friends and would natter about them from time to time.