It takes everything in me and more to turn from her and walk away, my legs and arms shaking. I’m about to explode, becoming a mural myself, the anguished, enraged colors in me splattered all over this school. She must not have expected me to do that, because she doesn’t follow me.
I have no appetite and I’m still shaking hours later, still wanting to let out a scream that’s choking me.
I avoid Jamie at all costs during the rest of our shared classes, walking in late and getting reprimanded by the teachers, to the class’s amusement. Alexis avoids eye contact with me.
When the last bell rings, I leave early to get my things from my locker and head home. But when I get there, I see a crowd gathered around it. The panel is wrenched open, all the contents inside spilling out. The papers from the textbooks are all over the floor, some with shoe prints like someone walked all over them.
“Did you photocopy the textbooks?” someone asks, and I don’t know if they’re poking fun at me. I don’t even know who they are, because I refuse to look back. “Oh my God, she did.”
I have no choice but to kneel and collect my papers. I hear a camera go off and bite my lip. The humiliation is so palpable, I feel it like a second skin. It’s slimy, making my stomach turn. A couple of people leave, having had their fill. Once I have all the papers, I get up, my mind whirring. I try to think, debating putting them back into the locker. But it’s broken, so I have no choice but to put them into my bag along with everything else that was spilled onto the floor.
I gather what’s left of my dignity and stand, facing the crowd. I force my head up, not letting anything show on my face. A group of younger girls separate so I can pass between them, giving me pitying looks.
When I look up, I see Audrey is among the crowd, watching with her lips and eyes parted in shock.
I find my tongue and say, “You want to write about this?”
She looks at me like I’ve slapped her and steps back before turning and walking away.
But my humiliation isn’t over, because among the other faces is Jamie. He stands at the back, clearly having seen the whole thing. I hate that he saw everything, even more so when I notice the hesitation in his expression. I know this hesitation. I’ve seen it countless times on the streets when someone who needs help is looking for it in the eyes of strangers.
But then he slowly steps forward, and it’s too much for me. I move, nearly running away. I don’t look back.
I don’t know what I expected, but it wasn’t hesitation. Shame burns through me, and I imagine how pathetic I looked on the floor like that. I’m not someone others would defend in a heartbeat. My worth is seconds of unease and indecision. The worst part is, deep down I know Alexis wouldn’t have defended me either.Shewould have hesitated. She might have walked away. For some reason, I just didn’t think Jamie would be like that. Not after how he rushed to my aid with Adrian.
I thought when he told me he’d like to be friends, it meant something. He doesn’t know what those words meant to me. That I’ve always wanted to be the person who was picked and not left behind. That growing up shy, growing up with a mother who teetered on the verge of death made everything difficult for me.
But words are just that. Uneven ground that crumbles at the slightest pressure.
My insides become heavier and heavier until I know I can collapse into myself and became a statue. Maybe then I won’t feel a thing. Maybe then I will be left alone. A ghost among the living.
Sandy Yellow
I take the longway home, walking past all the murals I can find. They’re reaching towers, Mama’s eyes as a child watching the skyline of New York. People pose in front of them, others taking pictures from every angle, and I wish I could see them the way everyone else in this city does.
I can’t believe something I painted has people stopping to admire it. It’s not just buildings, but it’s also on benches, on the ground in parks, over billboards. When it’s not the entire mural, it’s pieces of it. Mama’s eyes on the exterior of the subway, studying the passengers. The jellyfish peppered along a staircase. Waves of the ocean swirling around lampposts. She is everywhere and nowhere.
Back home, I open my sketchbook, the one I’m sending to Opus, leafing through the pages until I come to an empty one.
I draw a body, the insides decayed, flowers growing along veins and the heart now wilted. There is a vast emptiness inside, memories fading away. It’s an abandoned shell. This body was once a home—its owner loved it. Grew in it.
There’s no pain inside me. The frustration I felt at school is gone. Nothing they can do to me is worse than what happened. They can’thurt me more than I’ve already been hurt. Now, here with this realization, my hands are steadier.
I fish out Mama’s sketchbook and close my eyes.
The blank page glances at me eagerly, waiting.
I draw Mama. Only now she isn’t ten years old, but in her teens. Eighteen with hair that rivaled mine. I make her magical, an ethereal version of herself. I draw the sea in her hair, the waves folding over one another. Half her face calm, the other solemn. Life overtaking dreams. I draw the jellyfish weakly wrapping their tentacles around her ankles, urging her to come back, but she’s leaving. Color leeches away from the solemn part, the realities of the world erasing it. She promises she’ll come back with a hand stretched behind her, open-palmed, even though she’s looking away.
She wants to see the world and to tell the jellyfish about it, just as they tell her about their travels.
She’ll keep her promise. She’ll come back. But she doesn’t know it will be for the last time.
“Oh my God, as soon as I saw it, I started crying,” one girl narrates over a video of my mural. The video pans over several buildings across Fifth Avenue, showcasing my painting of Mama from every angle.
The murals are now all over New York and New Jersey. I’m trending again the next morning, and there are iterations of my art from other artists posting it on their feeds. A few news websites have picked up on it, and the comments are either filled with support or people accusing me of being an attention seeker. One video with over fifty thousand views has gone into a deep analysis of the colors used, the type of jellyfish, and theories of how this could be an unveiling of an even bigger mural or an ad by a PR company for an art show.
The girl recording the mural on Fifth Avenue pans the camera tothe crowd of spectators. Apparently, there’s now a group of people who have taken it upon themselves to hunt for all the murals, checking them off their list. Looking for new ones.
