The Meeting
My mouth was left wide open, not physically but mentally. Any eye that did not wander through every crevice of this piece must have a stone of a heart, or at the very least, an extreme lack of taste.
“Narcissus, by Caravaggio. It’s a beautiful piece.”
My gaze shifted to the right of me, it was a girl, about my age. The girl had a slight smirk upon her face whilst staring up at the piece.
“Yeah, yeah it is.”
We both turned our bodies to face each other.
“Are you an artist?” she asked me.
“I paint a little, but I wouldn’t really consider myself an artist.”
She glanced a little lower than my chin, where a pin that stated I was on a school trip stayed clipped upon my shoulder. The girl then walked closer to me with a white piece of paper in her hand. The scent of roses filled my presence.
“Here, take this. I have a club built upon appreciating beauty and art. I know we just met, but I feel like you’d fit right in.”
I felt the cold card slip into the palm of my hand but before I could even get her name, I was only gifted a wink and a smile before she turned and walked away. My eyes were still fixated on where she last stood whilst a crevice of my lips laid open with the hope of at least muttering a “Thank you,” to the beautiful stranger. I snapped myself out of the stiff position I stood in and walked out of the art gallery. The cold air brought the fresh smell of rain and pine to my attention, scents I had never smelt before moving to Oregon. Onto the school bus and out of the present, suddenly I was at my dining table for dinner.
I played like a child with the peas and chicken that sat on my plate while my father quietly ate the food he made for us three. The awfully bright white light that my parents had installed above the dining table and in the kitchen made, my dad’s food look more unappetizing than it already did. I much preferred my mother’s food over my father’s.
“So how are you adjusting at the school so far? I know you had a school trip to the art gallery today.” my mother asked as she took small bites at our meal.
“I’m fine, the gallery was nice.”
I’m sure an ounce of annoyance slipped into the sentence I said, mostly due to the fact I knew what would be coming next. She will probably ask if anyone is bothering me like last time. Or maybe she will pester me on how I should make an effort to go out more, either way, both scenarios pull out an inner eye-roll in me.
