Fan Fiction ❯ Angel's Art ❯ Chapter 3

Angel's Art - Chapter 3

 

Angel arrived, almost eerily on time the next morning, walking into the classroom just as the second hand glazed one o' clock. For the majority of the students, it was their last class of the day. But for a child who could recite Shakespeare and give you the 149 times table in under two minutes, there was hardly any point to any other studies. Her skin was paler, Ms. Portrait now noticed, than any of the other students in the class. Her body frame was smaller too. She wondered... did this child get any exercise at home?  How much could she exercise?

The class was only a few weeks into the year, but most of the students had a very firm grip of the regular schedule. Angel watch curiously as they all piled their bookbags in the closet, then when and sat at their desks, taking out what looked like some kind of folder and waiting patiently (more or less) for their teacher to begin. Angel shrugged her shoulders and followed along. As luck would have it, Ms. Portrait had already set up a desk with her name on it.

After a few moments of class still not officially beginning, Angel began to feel boredom sinking into her mind. She glanced around there room. There were many shapes around here, everything from hexagons to parallelograms to ellipses posted about the room in various art forms. She could have a fine time analyzing this. Now, let's see...

"May I have your attention class!" Ms. Portrait's voice rung out bold and clear, interrupting Angel before she got very far with her equations. The low conversation in the room ceased and all eyes turned to the front.

"I want to announce that first of all, you all did very well on your assignment yesterday," Ms. Portrait began. "Also, we have a very special new student in our class today. Her name is Angel and I hope you'll all be especially nice to her." She indicated to the middle row, where Angel sheepishly put up her hand. The other children stared in disbelief.

"Aren't you that robot girl?" one of them asked, his spiky brown hair somewhat hiding his eyes. "Yeah, you've got to be, you've got that laser on your forehead." Angel's hand sunk down, as did the rest of her body. She wished her bangs were long like his right about now.

"Excuse me," said Ms. Portrait, rapping a yardstick on the board to get attention. "But Charlie, you should know better than to call names. Angel will be known by her name, and that's all I should hear anyone referring to her as. Am I clear on that?"

"Yes, ma'am," the children chimed, even though many of them continued to stare anyway.

"Very good," their teacher said, setting the yardstick down. "Now we can move onto our lesson for today. Our style for the day is pointillism. How many of you have heard of it?" The class looked at her confused, apparently only two or three of them knew what that word meant. And surprisingly, Angel had not gotten to it yet either. Then again, considering how her parents didn't exactly have a soft spot for art, she guessed that probably was no coincidence.

"Pointillism is when you use dots to draw and color your picture instead of lines," Ms. Portrait explained. Angel repeated the definition to herself, and stored it away, though it seemed like a rather silly way of doing things to her, as doing individual points took exceedingly longer than making lines. But then again, Ms. Portrait had told her the previous day that much of art would seem redundant or impractical. So maybe that was the point of this technique as well.

While Angel was sorting things out, Ms. Portrait began to pass out pieces of paper and a box markers to each student, instructing them to draw whatever they wanted to, using the pointillism technique. As soon as they got their supplies, the children eagerly began work, and the sounds of two dozen pen tips pecking the white paper filled the room.

When Ms. Portrait handed Angel her piece of paper she said, "I have a special assignment for you. I want you to use exactly 1,567 dots on this page. No more, no less. Do you think you can handle that?" Angel took the piece of paper and glanced at the markers in her hand.

"What colors should I make the dots?" she asked.

Ms. Portrait smiled. "That, Angel, is for you to decide and me to see." The child's eyes smiled brightly and she set to work.