‘This stupid piece of…’

My eyebrow twitched as I erased a sketch from my notebook for the 15th time.

‘Why does it never come out the way I want it to?’

“Are you okay, Elliot?” A voice next to me asked.

Looking to my side, I noticed Soriel and remembered she was sitting next to me.

“Yeah I’m fine, the drawing just isn’t coming out the way I want it too,” I replied.

Right now, it was a Wednesday morning, so both Soriel and I had art together.

At that moment, we were assigned to draw what we think happiness is.

But, I had trouble with that.

‘How am I even supposed to draw an emotion? And why won’t anything come out as good as I think it will?’

I had tried many drawings, a family, a house, money, and even fried chicken.

Nothing came out the way I wanted it to.

“Why don’t you see my drawing for inspiration?” Soriel suggested.

‘Don’t tell me she’s good at drawing too.’

“Yeah, that’s a good idea,” I responded.

Soriel then picked up her sketchbook and showed me her drawing.

It was a flower.

It wasn’t specifically well shaded and the line art was a bit inconsistent, but for some reason it looked better than all of mine.

‘Is it because she knows what she wants?’

Soriel’s drawing, although not extraordinary, had a specific intent or vision.

I, on the other hand, had no clear idea of what I wanted to draw.

When Soriel put down her notebook back on the table, I paused.

‘What is happiness to me?’

For a few moments, I stayed still.

Then, I picked up my pencil and began to draw.

I imagined many things, moments, and people that made me happy, and found a message stringing them all together.

“I think I got it,” I muttered, putting down my pencil, I stared at my drawing.

It was a glass being filled with water until it ran over and poured outside of the glass.

“It looks nice!” Soriel exclaimed as she peered over my shoulder.

“Why thank you,” I replied dramatically.

For the rest of my art class, I edited the drawing, not erased, and was pleased to see that it didn’t turn out terribly.

In my next class, which was social studies, I was with Nishimoya.

Unfortunately, our seats were changed so we ended up not sitting anywhere near each other.

Although, maybe that was for the best since Social studies required my full attention. 

After that pain of a class, I had English and math next. Both of which I had with Aurora.

In English, we didn’t talk very much and focused on our work.

In math, however, we talked a lot more.

“What’s your plans after high school?” I asked as I answered one of the questions in our handout.

We were working in pairs today, and since Aurora and I sat next to each other, Mrs. Rivers put us together.

“Hmm, I’m not sure,” Aurora replied whilst she tried to balance a pencil on her nose.

Tap!

The pencil fell onto the floor, causing Aurora to frown. 

Then, I picked it up and put it on her table for her.

“I mean, any job works. As long as it’s not shady, sexual, or like a cashier or something I don’t really care,” Aurora said.

I raised my eyebrow slightly.

“Your parents don’t want you to go to college?” I asked curiously.

“Yeah they do, but I’m not sure. I just want to live a life filled with fun. I’m sure they have enough money to cover my living expenses if they wanted to,” Aurora answered before writing something onto our worksheet.

‘It must be lovely having rich parents. Having such a secure net to fall back on must lessen her worries about the future by a lot. Consequences are so much easier to ignore when you have money. Wait...what if she likes sports so much because they aren't influenced by money.’

I shrugged.

“Well, you could always become a model. You’re pretty after all,” I complimented as I stretched.

Aurora smiled.

“Thanks,” she replied.

I glanced onto our worksheet and chuckled.

“By the way, this answer is wrong,” I said.

Looking onto the paper, Aurora’s eyebrow twitched.

“Ugh, I was so sure this time…” Aurora muttered.

Aurora absentmindedly took out her phone and started typing.

‘Is she looking up the answers?’

“Hey, you shouldn't do that. There’s no point if you don’t…”I began to say.

“What’re you my dad? I can do whatever I want,” Aurora replied abruptly.

I shrugged.

“Fair enough,” I replied. 

After that, we spent the rest of the period completing the assignment.

For our next period we had lunch, which was weird.

Everyone was acting normally, and nothing was really off but I felt odd.

It didn’t come from anything or anyone in particular, but just a general mood that felt different than usual.

Tristan seemed to feel the same and was already looking towards me.

When we locked eyes, we seemed to reach a silent but mutual understanding.

The rest of lunch felt kind of like a blur. Even though I was engaged with what was going on, I didn’t really care about it much.

After lunch, I had 3 periods. Science, Spanish and coding.

Overall, it was usually just alright. Science was a pain but Spanish and coding usually were enjoyable even if they were hard to learn.

This time though, I didn’t think about it very much.

I didn’t particularly enjoy it nor did I resent it. I kind of just did what I had to do.

So when school ended and I walked outside of the school building, I wasn’t surprised to see Tristan already there.

You see, Tristan and I had an odd thing that we did. Whenever we had a certain feeling or mood like now, we decided to walk home together and talk about stuff.

And now that’s what we were going to do.