“I’m so sorry,” she says, looking quietly furious as she stops with her hand on the storage room door. There’s a strong chemical stench hanging in the air though the windows are wide open, despite the cold.
“You’re a talented student and I’m not sure—” She shakes her head, briefly lost for words. “Tiaki Academy will support you however we can.”
My nerves scream as she pushes the door, revealing the horrors inside. My most recent work, the one I struggled with on Sunday, is on the floor, the canvas ripped in dozens of places.Chemicals wet the surface, diluting the paint into a dark, liquid mess.
It’s not that bad. You were thinking of starting the piece again, anyway.
Then my eyes move to the shelves and floor behind it.
More canvases are in tatters, the chemical stench enough to make me retch. I can only recognise the one of my father—the one Gail ‘adored’—by the type of frame. The image is completely obscured.
I gulp in a breath, my hand tightening so hard on Zane’s, I must be crushing his fingers, but he doesn’t withdraw.
“Could we examine the damage alone?” he asks Miss Murewa and I’m so glad because I don’t want anyone else to witness my complete destruction.
Each point of damage to my art hits like a physical blow.
I fall to my knees, pulling the remnants towards me, numb tears of devastation cascading down my face. Zane crouches, silently waiting with me, letting me work through the pain as I sort through the wreckage, desperately hoping to find something, anything, left intact.
It’s not just the work I’ve created since attending. When Mr Simmons showed an interest, I bought in pieces I’d created at home. Pieces I’d kept from my previous school.
A sculpture I made in year ten is pulverised, barely enough for an identification. A print, meticulously carved from an Italian tile before ink and a roller inverted it onto the page, is now a watercolour of nothing, diluted with turpentine.
Some works are so distorted, even my mind’s eye can’t recreate them. The piece on bullying has so many cuts it looks like paper through a shredder.
Moments I captured, emotions I poured onto the canvas when there was no other outlet are gone. A complete amnesia of my history.
Grief settles on me, heavy as a tombstone, and I feel like I’m sinking into the earth before Zane takes hold of me, hauls me to my feet and wraps his arms around me.
The warmth of his embrace slowly brings feelings back into my extremities, calming me with the soft whisper of his breath on my cheek, the slow circles of his palm on my back. Making the loss bearable.
Zane is a lifeline,advocating for me when I don’t have the energy or words or brainpower to do it myself.
He takes me to the clubhouse, safe from curious eyes, and sits with me as I work through the devastation. Each time I think I’m recovering, another visceral reaction tears through me.
I can’t stop replaying yesterday in my head, wishing I’d slept through my alarm, wishing I’d turned the offer down to begin with, wishing I hadn’t let my ambition cloud my judgement.
Mr Simmons didn’t just hit out in a fit of temper. The man systematically destroyed every shred of work. He might as well have set fire to my dreams.
The entire day takes on a surreal quality. Every time there’s a noise or a movement, I expect some new disaster to strike.
By lunchtime, I’m spiralling too much to think of staying and head for home. None of my other classes have ever mattered. There’s only one thing I want to be, one college I want to attend, one career I ache to pursue.
I should be at school, starting over, putting a brave face on it.
Instead, I curl under the bedcovers, too exhausted to think. Barely aware of the difference between being awake and asleep.
My physical numbness slowly fades but nothing is left in its wake. My riotous canvas of internal emotions is blank, the palette completely bare.
Mum arrives late, clutching a packet of fish and chips she got on the way home. I force a smile, my lack of feeling allowing me to hold back the bad news until we’re finished.
The smell and the fat and salt perk me up. Dragging a greasy chip through a splotch of tomato sauce, I gather the strength to tell her about the destruction, keeping my commentary focused purely on what the students learned today.
“You don’t need to stay at school,” she says when I stumble to a finish, reaching for action first. “There’s an art course at the Polytech you could try instead of sticking it out at Tiaki.” Her face blackens like thunder as her arm squeezes my shoulder. “I’m sure their teachers won’t have some weird breakdown and destroy your hard work.”
“Maybe. I’ll have to think about it. I’m too emotional to make decisions right now.”
Except the truth is the opposite. I don’t know how I’m going to care about anything, ever again.
