Play it Straight

I BROKE A CURSE AND GOT A PRIVATE ROOM

PHOENIX’S POV

“You look different,” Zeke stated as soon as I sat down on our table. He was frowning slightly, tying to figure out what was new about me.

“He showered,” Miles said proudly. When he came back last night and didn’t see me, he started to freak out, thinking that I’d been caught. He called me thirty-six times before finally deciding that he’d stay up instead since he couldn’t go out again because of ARCHIE. When I strolled back in wearing Justice’s clothes, smiling like I had won the lottery and smelling like I just came from a scent shop, he sighed in relief, hopped on his bed and was fast asleep before I could even tell him what happened. He heard the full gist this morning when he woke up. Words could not describe how pleased he was about me not stinking up the whole place anymore.

“Really? What happened to your allergy?”

A smile instantly appeared on my face at the thought of Justice. “A very sweet soul gave me his antihistamine.”

“I didn’t know there was someone with a water allergy in this school,” Zeke muttered but nodded. Marlow just looked at me with a blank expression on his face, but I have spent about a week with him and I knew it meant “I’m glad you found a way around your skin reaction and can now shower like a human being.”

“You know, just for once I’d like to hear your voice.” He gave me a blank stare and then looked away when Miles handed him the tablet so he could make his order.

“Hey, do you guys know Trevor Reed?” I asked deciding to give up on getting Marlow to talk to me. Instantly, all their faces became sour and grumpy.

“Everyone knows Trevor Reed,” Miles spat with disgust. He sounded like a Disney villain with his accent, I almost giggled.

“That annoying bastard from the top floor. I wish I could smash his face in every time I see it,” Zeke said. Even Marlow seemed to be annoyed by the mention of his name even though he didn’t utter a single word of reproach or condemnation.

“I’m glad we all share the same sentiments towards him. I wish I can punch him when next I see him. I want to wipe the smug smile off his face without him seeing it coming. I can’t punch s**t to save my life.”

“For you, Pretty Face, I’ll punch him a million times.” I blushed at my roommate’s comment but bit back my smile when I saw Marlow staring at me. I cleared my throat and looked away.

“The contest’s today, Phoenix. Are you sure you’re not going to participate?”

Miles was still trying to convince me to stay back with him and the rest of the artists. If I wasn’t so horrible an artist and I didn’t come here with the intention of joining the basketball team so I could spend time with Jackson, I probably would have considered staying back. But I needed my own room and I needed to do something I would excel in, and painting, drawing and sculpting were not an option.

The studio was bigger and more glorious than any of the other classrooms at this school. Each student had their own corner that was not in any way little. Giant canvases and easels were propped up in almost every corner and paint brushes that looked like fancy baby horsetails were seated on pretty marble countertops.

“Okay everyone, I know you’re excited about this contest cause it’s what’ll decide whether you get the big room for a month to yourself…”

I tuned out Ms. Strauss and turned to face Miles.

“For a month? The winner gets the room for just a month?”

“Yeah,” he responded offhandedly, keeping his eyes focus on our teacher.

“Does it also apply to the athletes or its just for the residents of SRA?”

“Probably so. We do this every month so that everyone gets at least four chances to win the room in a semester.”

My brain started to panic. So, not only did I have to pass the tryouts for the basketball team, I also had to win the private room match, and every month at that? Oh, I so badly wanted to kick Jackson’s ass until it was beet red! How could he do this to me? Why on earth didn’t he tell me about all these stupid rules? “I have a room all to myself,” he said. Damn him!!!

“…that is why it will be like that this year.”

Everyone started clapping and I looked at them, dazed and confused. I hadn’t heard a word of what she said and I was starting to feel edgy being the only one who didn’t catch that. Even Marlow was housing a tiny smile as he looked at the easel.

“What? What’s going on?”

Zeke came over and slung his arm over my shoulder.

“Get this: everyone has to participate and we get to choose what we want to do this year for the contest. Isn’t that awesome?”

“I would think so if I had more context to work with,” was my snippy reply, but thankfully, Zeke didn’t hear the edge in my voice.

“Usually, we get to choose if we want to be part of the contest or not and we all were assigned the same prompt to recreate. Most of us work well with certain elements and tools, so producing our best work with a tool we weren’t familiar with was torture to our poor souls. Marlow’s fluent in almost every art style and can use almost all the tools perfectly well so he had no trouble winning all the time. Now, everyone has to participate and we get to decide what to do and how to do it so we all have a fair shot of winning this year. God, I’m so excited! I get to use charcoal with confidence again!”

While he celebrated his untamed access to soot, Miles stared at the paint brush and canvases he had snagged last night. His grin was huge and it made me almost forget about my own troubles.

“What are you gonna be painting?” he asked me.

“Uh…” I looked like a fish out of water. The three of them stared back at me, waiting for me to say something smart and artsy, but all I could think of was that dreadful sixth grade art project that I made.

“Abstract!” I cried out with joy as I remembered that ugly million-dollar painting that Maddison made my dad buy. She said something about it being a priceless work of art and how it was to be preserved at all cost. I remembered thinking that it looked like a toddler threw their lunch all over the canvas and decided to finger paint with it.

“I am really great at abstract paintings.” My voice was strong and confident, my smile evident of the composure I felt in that moment. Even if I didn’t win, no one could completely say I was a terrible artist when they didn’t understand what I painted That’s what abstract art was for; to help those who claimed to be artists get recognized by those who have millions of dollars to throw away on trash.

We all took our seats by our easels and canvases.

“You’ll have three hours to produce your best work for me. Begin.”

I looked at the everyone around me as they started to work on their project. Some were with pencils, others paint brushes. Zeke and two others were holding charcoal up against what looked like a canvas but wasn’t really. Someone was with clay. I had no idea how sculpting worked, but I was certain that a complete sculpture couldn’t be made within three hours.

I faced my own canvas. The paint palette on my marble stool reminded me of my makeup palette. I suddenly started missing applying blush and eyeshadow right before class. Being a boy sucked. The only things I could apply on my face were my serum, face masks and face cream and that was only when Miles wasn’t around.

I picked up a brush and mixed it with a little bit of paint. I had a few buckets scattered around the base of my easel to work with. The first color to kiss my canvas was red, followed closely by blue. I had no idea what next to add to it, so I mixed the two colors together to get purple. It was only after I had made a big blurb of purple did I realize I had ‘violet’ paint.

Dip, brush, dip, brush. On and on I went until I started having fun throwing paint on my canvas and all over my body. By the time the three hours were up, the whole area I occupied was covered in all manner of paint.

“Okay everyone. Time to take a look.”

Wow, the people here were really talented. A self-portrait, a 3-D model of the art block, some weird black and white painting of some dead politician. Someone even made a sketch of Jackson from when he won the trophy!

“You clearly haven’t been practicing your strokes, Miguel,” Ms. Strauss said, referring to the painting of a very beautiful nature scene. “Look at these flowers. They look dead. The sun isn’t shining on them at all. Isn’t this supposed to be the green house?”

I tried to understand what she was saying but I couldn’t. The flowers looked perfect to me. They looked almost real, like he had taken a photo of them and pasted them on the canvas. “I can’t see your passion here. It looks like you just dipped your paint brush in the can and sprinkled it on your canvas.” I looked at my own canvas that looked exactly like I did that because it was what I did. Ms. Strauss tutted, shook her head and walked away. Art really was confusing.

She came up to Zeke’s next.

“Oh, Ezekiel. You had a field day playing with charcoal this time around, didn’t you?”

He smiled brightly and nodded.

“Well, at least you had fun.”

She walked away and Zeke groaned and rolled his eyes. I had no idea what he made, but I thought it was good. Her comment pissed me off. Who was she to judge whether these people here were great artists or not?

“Marlow. As always, you impress me.” She smiled at Marlow, which was the first sign of life that she was displaying since she walked in. She went round the room, judging paintings and sculptures and models, smiling briefly at the painting that Miles made before finally stopping at my station.

“And what do we have here?”

Her eyes narrowed in on my work. For some reason, the way she pursed her lips and squinted her eyes made me feel nervous and my heart started to beat rapidly against my ribcage.

“Tell me, what was going through your mind when you made this?”

“Uh…”

What was going through my mind at that time was “How many layers of paint coat can I place on this canvas?” and “I wonder what color I’d get if I mixed all these colors together?” but I wasn’t going to say that and risk looking like an i***t in front of everyone.

“Life, I guess.”

“Hmm…” She moved closer and peered at it even more. “About the many layers that people have. How easy it is for one to switch identities depending on the situation they are in. How authentic people are hard to find and how only after all the layers they had thrown on over the years have been stripped off one after the other could their real selves be seen and admired or judged by people. Interesting.”

I stared at big blue-black paint that covered every inch of the canvass with drops of red and yellow across it and then stared back at Ms. Strauss.

“I like it. It’s real. It’s raw. It’s authentic. I am impressed, Phoenix. Very.”

Again, I stared at my canvass to make sure we were both looking at the same thing. How she came up with that conclusion about my painting was beyond me.

“I have seen so many pieces today, some trashy, some even worse. Only three caught my eye today, but I was most impressed by one.” She turned to me.

“Congratulations, Phoenix Jameson. You just broke a three-year cycle and got yourself a private room.”