“What’s wrong with it?” I ask, scrutinizing my skyscraper.
“You drew a dick.”
“Where?” I ask as I eye the very phallic-looking skyscraper. “I don’t see it. There’s the door. And those are bushes. He saidthere was landscaping. How many dicks have a place for people to sightsee? And that tip style was just like… for the wind. Skyscrapers are all designed around being able to handle the wind.”
“Looks like it can handle more than the wind,” Matthew mutters.
“Would anyone like to share their drawing and talk about their process with their partner?” Alana asks.
Weirdly enough, my arm only makes it halfway up before Gabriel pins one arm down and Jesse pins the other.
Like why the hell did they bully me into participating, and then when I beautifully contribute, I’m bullied into staying quiet?
Alana’s eyes are right on us. She sees the bullying. She recognizes all the signs signaling that I need help. Michaels is panicked, and he’s trying to position himself between me and her to break our eye contact and my cry for help.
“Liam, would you like to share?” she asks.
“Thank you, I would absolutely love to. There’s actually nothing I would enjoy more. Jesse, please come. I couldn’t have made this masterpiece without you and insist that you’re by my side. It was your talented words that kept my pen moving.”
“I don’t want to,” Jesse whispers.
“Jesse is a little shy,” I explain as I reach out and interlock his fingers with mine. I am not against physical touch if it means terrorizing the other person. He looks quite concerned now but still not as concerned as Gabriel.
“Liam, don’t you dare,” Gabriel murmurs before deciding that he has to take this into his own hands. “I’d really like to go first!”
“After Liam, we’d love to see yours,” she says as Gabriel gives me imploring eyes.
The problem is… he isn’t aware how much I’m loving this. They torture me, so I shall torture them back. They wanted me here, after all.
“Jesse, stand tall… I mean…” I grimace a little at his lack of height and he glowers at me.
“Ha,” he mumbles before holding up the picture. “I had a picture of a skyscraper which I recited perfectly to Liam who knew just what to draw. And what he drew does not reflect on me at all. Please don’t fire me.”
“With Jesse’s clear communication and my superior listening skills, I was able to draw a perfect rendition of a skyscraper,” I say. Michaels hovers near me like he’s prepared to throw his body in front of my artwork as I hold it up high for all to see.
Alana looks at it and smiles. “That’s fantastic. You both did a wonderful job,” she praises while she looks at the second skyscraper I’d done on the back of the sheet of paper.
Jesse whips around to see what’s so fantastic about my phallusscraper and is likely disappointed I didn’t show it off.
“You’re so proud of yourself, aren’t you?” Jesse mutters.
“Very. Thank you for asking.”
Once that atrocity is done, I assume we should be good to receive our lunch and call it a day, but no. She informs us this is just the first of five hell-filled activities.
“I want you to get in groups of ten!” she directs.
The four of us group up, which I really think is close enough to ten, but then Chris comes trotting over with a smile on his face like he thinks we’re going to give him a warm welcome. It isn’t long before Penny joins us, and right on her heels is Donna, which makes me grimace.
If one asked me why I dislike Donna, I would simply have to explain that she took a bite of Gabriel’s pie. If one asked if she took a bite without permission, I would refuse to answer. It’s notthe fact that she was allowed to eat his pie; it’s that the pie was only for Gabriel and me and she tainted it.
She will never be forgiven.
Before long, we have ten people, some of whom I’ve worked with for years but haven’t bothered to remember their names. And when Donna first settles in beside me, Gabriel does this strange move where he places himself between me and Donna and forces Matthew to my right, as though he thinks I can’t work well with others.
He really is so cute.
“I’m going to set a rope in the middle, and I want everyone to blindfold yourselves,” Alana says.
