“It’s not like you to be late,” she said.
Lee scowled, but didn’t say anything. After throwing her pack into her locker, she banged the door shut and stomped to the classroom. She flung the door open (now that she was into slamming) and marched in.
Her new teacher, Ms. Candle, looked up from the attendance sheet. “You just made it,” she said, erasing the x.
“So?” Lee sat down. She threw Natasha a dirty look, then focused on her empty desk top. Why was she acting like this? She didn’t usually treat Natasha this way. They’d been best friends since grade three. Lee put her elbows on the desk and rested her head on her fists. She wasn’t the sort of student who purposely caused problems. Sure, she’d gotten into trouble before, been angry or rude. Now she wanted to misbehave, to yell, to smash something. She was furious. She kicked the desk leg.
Ms. Candle asked everyone to take their binders out. “It’s time for our writing assignment,” she said cheerfully.
“Sure,” Lee mumbled. “I’ll write a story: My dad, the drunk, takes all our money for booze…” She scowled. I’m sure Ms. Candle would love a story about that.
Lee kept her elbows on her desk, her head on her fists.
“Lee, where’s your paper and pen?” Ms. Candle walked along the row.
“I can’t think of anything to write.” Lee bent down and found a pencil in the front of her desk. She took a crumpled piece of paper and smoothed it a little, looking up.
Ms. Candle took a pen from the desk and put it in front of her. “Yesterday you wrote a great story about the beach.”
“That was yesterday,” Lee muttered.
“Why not write about that beach again and what you found there. It sounded like an interesting place,” Ms. Candle prompted.
“Why should I? I don’t want to write a stupid story,” she said loudly.
Ms. Candle frowned. “I’ll ignore that this once, young lady,” she said. “Get started.” She turned sharply and walked down the row.
Lee saw Natasha looking at her with surprise, her big, brown eyes wide in her round face. She looked back angrily, then grabbed her pencil. Why write in pen? It would be all wrong anyway. Everything was all wrong. “I HATE my life,” she wrote. She erased it. “My parents are splitting up.” She erased that too. “It’s no use,” she wrote before crumpling the paper into a ball and stuffing it back into her desk.
She sat, her head on her fists, until Ms. Candle came by again. Lee told her to leave her alone.
Ms. Candle asked Lee to go out to the hallway for a talk.
“What’s the matter?” The teacher ran her hands through her short, dark hair. Her olive-brown face wrinkled into a question mark.
“Nothing.” Lee, looking at the floor, slipped her hands into her pockets.
“You don’t usually act like this. Did something happen this morning?”
Lee didn’t answer. She stuffed her hands deeper into her pockets.
“Do you want to talk?” Ms. Candle tried again.
“No!” Lee wanted to kick the wall, but at the same time she felt tired, empty.
She started pulling her hands out of her pockets. She did want to talk. She wanted to ask why these things happened, what she could have done to make things different. But then she remembered Mom’s words, “It’s best not to talk about it too much with others. They may not understand.”
Lee pushed her hands deeper into her pockets and looked at the floor.
“You’d better wait here,” Ms. Candle said. She walked to the office, her shoes squeaking on the linoleum.
“I phoned your mother,” she said when she returned. “I’m sorry to hear your dad left. If you need to talk, I want to listen.” After a short silence she said, “Just do the best you can today.”
Lee didn’t say anything.
Ms. Candle told her to go back to her desk. Lee sat there, doing nothing, thinking nothing until the recess bell rang.
Lee saw Natasha walking over before she’d reached the classroom door.
“I’m sorry. I waited for you as long as I could,” Natasha said. “I was almost late myself. Where were you this morning?”
“Nowhere.” Lee took her lunch from her locker. She ate the jam sandwich in a few hungry bites and kicked the locker shut, hard.
“What happened with Ms. Candle in the hallway?” Natasha asked before biting a piece of her banana.
“Nothing.” Lee walked outside, her hands in her pockets. She didn’t want to talk to anyone.
Natasha followed. “What did I do?”
“Nothing.” Lee sauntered on.
“Bad day?” Natasha asked.
Lee only shrugged her shoulders and started walking away across the playground.
Natasha walked beside her for a bit. “What’s bugging you anyway?” she asked again. When there was no answer she said, “Fine. Don’t talk. I’m going to play soccer.” She headed off in the direction of the field, her strong legs taking big steps.
Lee wished her pockets were bigger; she wanted to push herself deep into them and disappear.
After recess the students worked on the math Ms. Candle had assigned. Lee usually didn’t mind math. Today she hated those stupid numbers. Next they went to music, down the hall. Lee hated singing.
By lunch time she was hungry, but she had nothing left to eat. Natasha chewed her sandwich. Lee tried to smile. It felt funny, as if her skin was too tight, as if a smile no longer fit her face.
In Ms. Candle’s class Friday afternoon was set aside for art. She taught sculpting, weaving and drawing, and the best art projects were put in the display case.
Today Ms. Candle showed slides of paintings by one of Canada’s most famous artists, Emily Carr. She talked about each slide, commenting on the vivid colours, the realistic shapes of trees and the swirls in the sky. She pointed out the difference between a photo of a tree and the paintings. “They’re so rich,” she sighed. “Artists are often extremely poor, but their work gives us such wealth. That’s certainly true of Carr.”
She went on to explain that Emily Carr had lived in San Francisco for a few years to take painting lessons and had then gone to Europe for the same reason. Later, she travelled around B.C. so she could experience the feelings, the smells, sounds and movements of what she painted. She visited the northern part of Vancouver Island, the Skeena and Nass river areas and the Queen
Charlotte Islands, and painted in tiny Native villages, even though she got sick on the boats, even though the mosquitoes were horrible.
“These were not easy trips, certainly no luxury, but she loved the totem poles and the huge trees. She never married and didn’t have children of her own, although she liked children and gave talks at a few schools in the area. But she was a loner and she put her feelings into her art and her animals rather than into people.
“We can see some of her work in museums. Her paintings are worth a fortune now, but copies of them, prints, like this one,” she pointed to a poster on the wall, “are relatively cheap.”