Smoke Break

Iris managed to get us tickets to Don Giovanni.

“All the doors magically open to you when your dad’s an alumnus with deep pockets,” she winked at me, explaining. We were going to a show at the beginning of October, 7:30 PM, black tie event. Apparently this was the gala night with a big after-party. “Dad was a little weirded when I told him a couple of teenage girls wanted to go see opera. He asked me why.”

“What’d ya tell him?” I took a drag on her cigarette, then handed it back to her. Iris had been trying to convince me to start smoking. I wasn’t sure I liked it, but there was some kind of stress relief associated with the action.

“I couldn’t think of anything,” she giggled, “so I told ‘im what you said at 13, about the murderous statue.”

I groaned. “Your parents are never gonna let me come over now.”

“Don’t worry about it,” she patted my arm. “If they’ve managed to stand some of Ian’s friends for this long, I’m due for you.”

“If your parents can stand Ian,” I started, but the bell saved Iris from having to hear me rail on her brother more. We slid away from the warm wall of the kiln room and hurried back inside the sculpture studio.

Our trip to 13 had marked the last warm day. The Saturday after had been frigid, and every day since had been the same. We’d taken to having Iris’ smoke breaks outside the sculpture studio, where the heat from the kilns seeped through the brick walls. I’d stopped hanging out in the library and computer labs during my ‘study periods.’ Instead, I’d become a nearly permanent fixture in the sculpture studio. When I wasn’t working on my homework or helping the underclassmen with their projects, I was reclaiming clay or checking the kilns to make sure nothing was in for too long. It was all repetitive and easy, and very Zen.

It was also possibly keeping me from killing my other teachers. Mr. A had developed an annoying habit of standing directly behind me and watching me draw. My classmates had noticed it. Liam had already started making jokes about him trying to get a better look down my shirt this past week. Ms. O’Neil had asked us what we wanted to do with our painting skills. I’d made the mistake of telling the truth; set design. Oh no, that wasn’t real art. Not that I could get a job in set design anyway. Entirely too much blue in my work. The theater is about passion and everyone knows that red is the color of passion. My calculus teacher couldn’t draw a straight line with a ruler. No, seriously. He couldn’t. We saw him try to in class one day. It was squiggly.

School was monotonous on good days, and degrading the rest of them. And home wasn’t much better. Dad had the presence of mind not to bring his many girlfriends home while I was living there, but still. I heard the messages on the home answering machines and saw the new boxes of condoms on the grocery receipts. If I’d had anywhere else to stay, I would’ve gone. All I could do was keep to my own room as much as possible and pray that brain bleach would be invented for localized application. Hopefully Don Giovanni would be a temporary respite from the stupid.