ghost

[shesepankh]

Kindergarten teacher Renée Higgenbotham Swan (36) was killed in a car crash one mile from her residence in Phoenix, AZ, January 9, 2005. She is survived by her daughter Isabella (16). Her service will be held at -

Bella has the entire obituary pasted into a page of one of her compilation notebooks but tends not to re-read past the first lines. It's repellent. The concept of obituaries is repellent. The funeral is over. Renée's vibrant brief life has been summed up over the course of a paragraph, and is also over.

Bella pretends to sleep on the plane. Her neighbor is talkative and she doesn't want to say shut up, my mom just died, because - what if it doesn't work? What if this news doesn't have the power to bludgeon everyone else into stunned silence the way it does Bella?

Charlie collects her. Charlie hugs her. Charlie doesn't make her talk. Good wonderful understanding quiet Charlie does not say a word. He takes her home. Her room's where she left it last August.

It's raining.

Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn. First class is English. Okay, whatever.

The teacher wants her to introduce herself. Bella wants to yank on the skinny end of his tie until he regrets making her.

She stands at the front of the room and says that her name is Bella Swan and she's moved here to live with her dad. The teacher makes an impatient go on gesture and she stands there for a moment before robotically saying the same thing she produced at the beginning of the year in her old school in Phoenix when they were doing go-around-the-room-and-share-facts. "I'm one of those people who actually likes Shakespeare."

He lets her sit down.

She sits.

Comments

[castmyown]

"Very. But I can be patient, so it's all right. Kind of."

[shesepankh]

"I'm not patient at all."

[castmyown]

"Can't blame you. It does get quite annoying, being patient."

[shesepankh]

"...If you're annoyed by being patient, by what definition are you patient?"

[castmyown]

"Not letting the annoyance get to me."

[shesepankh]

"Oh, then by that definition I'm patient too. I'm good at managing my annoyance whenever it would only be in the way."

[castmyown]

"See, there you go. That's the spirit."

[shesepankh]

"But I don't consider myself patient because when I'm making plans I heavily negatively weight having to wait a lot."

[castmyown]

He snorts with laughter. "I don't, if I get what I want in the end, I don't mind waiting a while for it."

[shesepankh]

"Well, no plan is a hundred percent guaranteed. Trying the ones that fail fast first is more efficient."

[castmyown]

"True. Still, some plans can only be implemented once and if you mess them up, you're just doomed. So I'll wait to improve the odds for those."

[shesepankh]

"Yeah, I'd make the same call in that case."

[castmyown]

"Good, good. That gives you the best chance of success."

He's just about finished his lunch. This is a fun conversation, he's glad he's met her. (Though considering the circumstances, he's not glad she's here.)

[shesepankh]

Bella finishes her pudding.

"Art," she pronounces, looking at her schedule.

[castmyown]

"Savannah and I have it, too," pronounces Darren, smiling a bit. "So we can keep people shooed."

[shesepankh]

"Thanks."

[castmyown]

"You're quite welcome. Though I don't have notes for Art, so you are on your own there, I'm afraid."

[shesepankh]

"Well, that bodes well, if it's more of a 'projects' than a 'theory and history' art class."

[castmyown]

"Projects. I hope you like charcoal and acrylics."

[shesepankh]

"I'm not a particularly miraculous artist, but I will get an A for effort."

[castmyown]

"Good, though I don't think anyone can fail Art. I'm not even sure how they'd get to trying."

[shesepankh]

"Cutting class?" Bella suggests, dropping her lunch trash into the trash can and following Darren to the correct building. "Deliberately drawing nothing but those S-shaped things you make with two rows of three lines? Bringing glitter gel pens from home and putting mustaches on their paintings of apples."

[castmyown]

He giggles. "I kind of want to do the glitter gel pens thing, now."

[shesepankh]

"It'd be cute in a sort of weirdass-modern-art way."

[castmyown]

"It would be hilarious in a weird-modern-art way," he corrects.

They reach the building! It's definitely an art room, with large tables set up in lieu of easels, a badly organized open closet filled with various art supplies, and pictures of student work and the color wheel pinned to the walls. It's got sinks, on the side, because its an art room and people will get messy.

Table-sets seat four per grouping - Darren finds an empty one and sits there. Savannah will show up eventually, he'll save her a seat with his stuff, like so. Plop goes the stuff onto the seat next to him. Bella's entirely free to sit with him, or not.