“Shouldn't you be in class, Rowan?” the teacher inquired, feeling violated and
intruded upon.
“Can I just stay here and paint? Please?”
“I don't think . . . .”
“Today's just a study day anyway.”
The teacher sat at her desk for a while, sipping her poor excuse for coffee from the
teacher's lounge. She stared at the back of the broken girl's auburn head, tapped her foot a
few times, and watched as the senior painted.
She painted a dark scene. Everything grey-scale, except for violent splashes of red
here and there. The canvas depicted little creatures with hollow ocular cavities, bleeding
from their hearts and lost in a swirl of lines.
Concerned, the teacher walked over.
“Lately, your work has been . . . .”
“Empty?”
“Disturbing.”
A long, awkward pause followed.
“I was eleven weeks, but the baby was eight.”
The elementary school hallways were empty, long, and eerily quiet. The ceilings
were high. The entire institution seemed to be built around a two-story library with glass
walls that allowed natural sunlight to bathe book pages. Rowan walked up to the door of a
Special Education classroom, and stopped just before turning the door handle.
Outside the door was a beautifully decorated bulletin board with the header ‘Our
Class’ with pictures of the little boys and girls who learned inside. Rowan’s eyes fell on the
picture of the little boy named Adrian. Six years old with red hair and brown eyes, Adrian
was the student that Rowan had been working with the past several weeks. The art teacher
felt the only way Rowan would be able to begin the healing process was to help others. She
advised the senior to help a child with special needs to paint a self-portrait. Nothing big,
but a starting point.
At first, things did not start off so well. Adrian would not even look at Rowan, and
would get angry if she tried to take his hand. When they would transfer his image on the
large graphing paper, Adrian would force the pencil away and aggressively scribble.
She felt like he hated her, and almost quit until one day a woman in her mid-thirties stopped her i