Science  Write  Now

Oscar hastily rips the sketch out of his notebook, getting up to put it on her desk before she can walk away. Not to talk to her – God no, he only wishes that it stays with someone who could appreciate it. He hasn’t seen the beauty in art for a while now. Pushing past other students is not an ordeal he has been able to tolerate, much preferring to stay behind a moment so that the aisle to the door may be clear, but if he doesn’t get the sketch to her, he’s stuck with it. The long walk to the front of the classroom stretches out before him, but the weight of the paper in his hand is enough for him to start moving forward. Between every desk students stand chattering to each other, and as he slides past them, he pulls the drawing closer; it isn’t meant for their eyes.

Once he’s made it to her, he feels flush. All that work when she’ll probably toss it with a laugh the moment he’s out of sight. Hesitantly, he taps her on the shoulder and whispers, “here.” Before she can react, he presses the sketch into her hands and turns away, not even thinking about the homework he was supposed to grab before he’s out the door.

~

The bell has gone, his art class is over, and the canvas in front of him is blank. He hasn’t been able to hold a paintbrush without his hand trembling since –

Oscar flinches away from the thought, instead focusing on washing his palette. He feels a twinge of guilt as his fresh, untouched paint washes down the sink, the colours swirling into an unpleasant brown.

He walks out – well after everyone else has – and steels himself for the walk back to his locker amongst the afterschool rush of people trying to head home. As he shuffles his way through the crowd, the mundanity is oppressive. The low humming of the flickering lights, the same halls pasted over and over, and the linoleum floors squeaking under his leather shoes. His mother had asked him if he’d been ready to come back to school, and he’d been so sure then.

He's not that sure now.

He’s at the safety of his locker, when he sees her.

It is only after she has walked off that it occurs to Oscar that he doesn’t know her name.

~

The bus home runs so long that trees give way to open air. Oscar longs to open a bus window to look down the sheer cliff face and see the ocean lapping at the shore. His stop is not far now, but the longer he spends in the mildew air of the bus, the more claustrophobic he feels. People board on and off at each stop, and as much as he knows they are different, all he sees is a faceless mass, their voices white noise. When the bus announces his stop, he rushes out gratefully. The walk to his house takes him through side roads covered in brush. Little birds chirp in the branches of banksia, and the occasional car meanders past. It's a peaceful walk, where one has nothing to do but think.

He hates it.

The house perches on the cliffside, his own personal nightmare, a quiet, quaint place, the opposite of his life before. As much as he understands his mother’s decision after the incident, he can’t help the pain that rushes through him at the reminder that they can never go back.

He walks up the stairs to his house with sea air blowing in his face. From his porch, the sea he couldn’t see from the bus is in full view. He doesn’t bother looking at it now. Doesn’t feel like it. He opens the perpetually creaking door with a scowl and slips into the house.

His mum’s asleep on the couch, her laptop left open and forgotten next to boxes of takeout on the coffee table next to her, the tv muttering some news about some fire somewhere. He shuffles around her, silently closes her laptop and turns the tv off, and reheats the takeout for his own dinner. Their living room is still sparse of furniture, but they’ve managed to at least remove the boxes. His mum couldn’t take the boxes being in their space and had worked on unpacking them fiendishly until they were gone. Oscar hadn’t complained.

He intended to stay up and do some homework, but he was so tired. He didn’t even notice he’d forgotten to grab the homework in the first place.

~

Oscar is on his bed. He’s in his room, and the city outside is noisy. It’s an unwelcome distraction, so he puts his headphones in, turning the volume all the way up. He doesn’t think it strange that the only music playing is static.

He begins a new painting,

One of a dance;

Oscar knows that now he has started this, there is no going back. His brush quickens.

First, there is Life,

She twirls with calculated precision,

For that is all she knows,

It is the music that keeps her dance going;

Next, Fire,

She reaches for Life with a wild arm extended,

There is no intent of pulling away,

Knowing there is no need,

They are nothing without the other.

Oscar can feel the flames flickering from his work, can hear the music of their dance. The static in his ears turns to the roaring of flames. Even as he feels guilt, he turns it up.

Life reaches back for Fire,

Allowing her closer,

Far closer than she should.

Oscar knows the flames cannot be contained by the canvas. He knows how this dance ends. Yet he continues painting, reaching for more paint – more fuel.

Fire reciprocates,

Of course she does, no matter how bright she burns,

Life is her warmth,

So she encircles Life,

And holds her face with adoration she holds for no other.

Oscar only stops his frantic painting when the flames consume the canvas. His bedroom is choked with smoke, and the fire flickers against his skin as an old friend. On his desk, slowly, far too slowly, turning to ashes lies

It, and the room around, burns.

And Oscar wakes up.

~

Never before has a school day been both as long and short as this one. A blur of students and teachers and bells and not once did he see the one he actually wanted to talk to. Now, he sits at The Lookout, his legs dangling off the edge of the concrete overhang. She never gave him a time, so he waits and thinks, and the soft chatter of children playing on the rocks below filters up the cliff, and he thinks of his nightmare, and all the ones before it. He hadn’t meant to ruin his life, hadn’t thought about what he was doing beyond a bit of an escape. The fire was never meant to hurt anyone, and now the guilt eats him alive. The waves crash on the shore, so close to the children. A bit like fire, one wrong move and the destruction the sea could wreak would change their lives too.

The children, the sea, the wind, the birds, the shore, the tall grass hiding ant colonies, the barnacles glistening on a far-off pier, it’s all too much.

The sky is streaked with orange when she slips into the space beside him. It’s peaceful, for a moment, as they swing their legs swinging side by side and gaze into the sea. When she speaks, her voice is soft.

“Who I am will never be defined in one day, one sketch. Who I am is not something I can tell you either, something I can just give you a summary of.” She pauses. “You don’t just sketch, do you?”

Oscar runs his fingers over the rough paper of the sketch, now unfamiliar. “I paint,” he says. “Or I. I used to. Before-”.

She looks through him, humming in thought. “Well, there’s an easy place to start, if you really want to know me.”

Thinking for an embarrassingly long amount of time, it finally strikes Oscar. “I don’t know your name,” he says it with his mouth slightly agape, shocked he had forgotten again.

When she smiles at him, it is nothing he has seen before. Not from her, not from anyone. It is unique, in the way that all things, all moments, are. “Paint me. Properly this time, no sketching in the back of a classroom, actual proper painting, and then I swear I’ll tell you.” Her eyes glance at the sketch in his hand, “I think a change of tools will let you see something more, something different.”

He doesn’t know how that could possibly change anything, how looking at the same thing twice could provide a different outcome, but somehow, the fact that she is the one requesting it, makes the thought of holding a paint brush bearable again.

When he nods, she holds out a hand, “My name’s Lucy,” she grins, “What’s yours?”

~

To be an artist is to be an observer. To observe is to interact and it is in interacting that the world is changed. Oscar does not understand this, and he may never understand it. Equally, there is every chance that the girl he sketched in his English class is the catalyst for his realisation, the beginning of his ability to comprehend it. Later, as he brushes her form onto the canvas, trying again, and again, to get it perfect, possibility upon possibility will collapse into one, her truth is hidden even as it is brought to light.

In his mind, which reality is true will not matter so much as the fact that brush stroke after brush stroke, the tremor in his hand slows and the fire behind his eyes fades to ash.

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