Page 14 of Crown Jewels
Another argued, “I think it’s deep.”
“Yeah, but publishing a book isn’t the same as walking down the street naked.” The guy beside me added.
The words came out before I could stop them, “It’s worse.”
The professor’s eyes locked on mine. “Care to elaborate on that Miss. Rose.”
Not really, but I didn’t really have a choice now. Everyone was looking at me. I should’ve kept my mouth shut.
Huffing out a sigh, I opened my mouth and said, “Your body is always on display, whether you’re wearing clothes or not. But art is raw. It comes from the wounds and scars we tuck away. That’s why one painting will make you feel something, and another won’t.”
“Wow,” someone muttered. “I didn’t think of it like that.”
“That’s the problem with your generation.” The Professor rolled his eyes. “You’re so engrossed online that you’ve become disconnected from the world. Which brings us to your assignment. I want each of you to create something. A painting, drawing, write a short story, I don’t care. The only requirement is that the piece represents you.”
“What do you mean it should represent us?” Miss Hendricks asked.
“I suggest you figure it out because if I don’t look at it and see you, you fail Miss. Hendricks.”
Great. How was I supposed to do that? I didn’t know who I was. My first instinct was to figure out something the professor would like, but that wouldn’t work. He’d see right through that.
Basically, I was screwed. If I had someone who could help me break my bad habits, and point out when I was people pleasing, maybe? But I didn’t even have that.
And if by some miracle I found someone, how would I know if it was working? Would I actually be finding myself, or learning what made them happy? My instinct was to be the perfect version of me for everyone around me. Well, almost everyone.
I didn’t care if Vahn was happy or in a good mood. If he pissed me off I told him, and when he was an ass, I fought back. Why was that? Why was he the one person I didn’t try to appease?
“You’re too busy pleasing everyone else to listen to yourself.”
Did Vahn see right through me? No, he was just a jerk that enjoyed teasing me. But maybe he was a jerk that could help me? Did I really want to go there? It was just one assignment. One assignment that might make me fail the entire class.
Crap.
EMMA
All afternoon I kept going over my assignment, trying to think of ways to portray me. There had to be something I could do that didn’t involve asking anyone for help.
Considering the aim of the project was for the professor to see me, getting help felt a bit like cheating. So, I was determined to figure this out on my own. And what did my hours of brainstorming come up with? Flowers.
“Ugh,” I tore the sketch out of my notebook, crumpled up the paper and tossed it on the floor.
Drawing a flower should not be this hard. The first pile of paper balls on the ground was because the style wasn’tright. I found myself continuously going back to Cubism, (the professors favorite style), instead of finding the one I liked—which I was unsure on.
After that I decided that a better place to start would be with my favorite flower. That was where the second pile came in. Crumpled up pages of daisies, irises, daffodils, orchids, and roses, all of which someone I knew liked, but didn’t know if I did. And don’t even get me started on colors.
Purple, blue, pink, green, I kept switching. How was I supposed to show someone me if I didn’t even know what my favorite color was? I was going to fail, which would affect my GPA, making me lose my partial scholarship and spend the rest of my life serving coffee between cam shows to make ends meet. Proving every single person in my life right who said I’d never amount to anything.
I flopped my head down on my notepad and grumbled, “Stupid flowers.”
“I’ve never heard a girl complain about flowers before.”
Of course Vahn would pick this moment to walk in the door. Why did the universe hate me?
Lifting my head up, I rolled my eyes over to Vahn as he dropped his bag on the chair by the door. “Don’t you have study group?”
“It was moved to next week.”
That didn’t sound right. In all the years I’d known Vahn, not once had his study group been moved. They met on the fifteenth of every month. Rain, wind, sunshine, weekday or weekend, it didn’t matter. It was always the fifteenth.
