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Bella stays home, moving in, moping, for a day, and then she shows up at school, gray-faced and withdrawn.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]

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.

[shesepankh]

Bella does sit next to him. He's comfortable and the exact right brand of distracting; she wants to be friends. "What project did I show up in the middle of?" she inquires.

[castmyown]

He actually wants to be friends, too. Partially because she's personally agreeable, and partially because everyone else seems to have their cliques pre-made since kindergarten and it's nice to have someone who isn't a part of any of them.

"The teacher called it a fancy thing and I forget the name of it, but - basically, take a paper, cover it entirely in charcoal, then erase from there to get whatever the drawing is. It's very messy."

[shesepankh]

"Sounds it. Do we have still lifes or are we doing portraits or what?"

[castmyown]

"We get to pick what we do, but the teacher's got like a stack of things we can use as still lifes if we've got no idea what to do. Mine is a piggy bank."

[shesepankh]

"Okay."

When class starts Bella gets a mirror, charcoals a paper, and starts doing a self-portrait. She's not especially talented, but she's methodical, eyeballing a grid on the paper and mirror to keep things spaced right.

[morethanimaginary]

Savannah manages to make it in just before class starts, moving Darren's stuff with a, "Thanks."

She waves at Bella, then heads off to retrieve her stuff.

[castmyown]

Darren grabs his in-progress drawing and his piggy bank. The piggy bank turns out to be purple, with flowers on it. It's very cute.

He's not particularly skilled in drawing, but he's obviously making an effort and has a good grasp of form. It is definitely recognizable as a piggy bank.

[shesepankh]

Bella waves back at Savannah.

She spends about half the class getting a loose suggestion of her features erased, and then she goes into more detail, diligently scrubbing away charcoal for the whites of her eyes and the highlit protrutrusions of cheekbone and lip and nose. It looks like she's staring at the viewer out of a void.

[morethanimaginary]

Savannah turns out to be drawing a potted plant. The pot itself is shaded a little strangely, but the plant turns out to be pretty, if boring. She's got more art skills than Darren, certainly.

"So, how goes the piggy bank of girly wonder?"

[castmyown]

"I'm having trouble with the nose," he says. "And the piggy bank would like you to respect its life choices."

[shesepankh]

Bella snorts.

[morethanimaginary]

Savannah bows to the piggy bank. "Sorry, piggy bank. I'll try."

[castmyown]

"See, that's better," says Darren loftily. "Now you know."

(He finishes messing with the nose and gets to working on the flowers.)

[morethanimaginary]

"Yes, thanks, I am so enlightened by your girly piggy bank," laughs Savannah.

[castmyown]

"Good. Because it's not girly. It just happens to be purple with flowers."

[morethanimaginary]

"Mhm. Yeah, keep telling yourself that. Wallflower."

[castmyown]

Darren snorts. "Don't know why you keep calling me that, nerd fits better."

[morethanimaginary]

"Because you are a special snowflake so you get lots of words to describe you and I find it funny."

[shesepankh]

"He was perfectly friendly to me. Did he glue himself to a wall at a dance once and you've refused to let him forget it?"

[morethanimaginary]

"He's actually really shy. Let me guess. Was his version of friendly 'Here have some notes now we shall work in silence for the rest of the class'?"

[shesepankh]

"Well, yes, but I kind of welcomed that. And he got chattier at roughly the rate I wanted him to."

[castmyown]

Darren grins. "Ha," he says.