Chapter 1

Here we meet our main character, Mel, who alway has her nose buried in trouble.

Chapter One

I'm not going to try and romanticize small town living, because honestly, it's not all it’s cracked up to be. I don't know where you people in the big cities get the idea that small town life is supposed to be this perfect and idyllic experience. Well, I got some news for you, it's not! Life here in the washed up mining town of Blackville, Colorado is about as boring as it gets.

The back of my school's gym was a miserable shade of gray with rusted pipes and water stains littered about. I looked up at the blank canvas spread out before me and let a small smile play on my lips. I climbed up the industrial ladder that I had bribed the school janitor, a twenty-something high school dropout, into leaving out. How much? Twenty dollars. Enough to buy a pack of smokes and a couple of beers from the town corner store. I personally would have asked for more, given the risk. I reached into the small duffle bag that I had thrown over my shoulder and pulled out a black, paint splattered bandanna and tied it around my nose and mouth. I pulled out a can of black paint, shook it a couple times before popping the top and beginning to outline my artwork. The outlining was tedious and took nearly three hours. When I finally finished the outline, it still wasn’t obvious what exactly what it was but I looked like two people. Back to back with only an upper body. One had hands pressed to their ears and their posture tense. Their shoulders were hunched and their head was slightly bowed their eyes closed. The other had a finger placed against their hands covering their mouth, eyes closed. I let out a sigh and capped the black and pulled out a can of beige paint. I began coloring the people’s skin making sure to shade it as best as I could. When I finished with the skin I pulled out a light purple and green and proceeded to color in their shirts. The hair was next. I pulled out a brown and colored in their hair. One was a girl the other was a boy.

I put the brown back in my bag and pulled out a white. I sprayed it around them so it looked like an aura. I put the white away and pulled out a black can moving up a couple steps. I shook the can, popping the top before beginning to write something in an arch. ‘The Silence Of One Can Hurt Another’ I moved down so that I could reach below them and wrote, ‘Speak Up,’ I capped the black and pulled out a can of red shaking it and popping the cap before spraying the words, ‘Stop Bullying.’ In all caps. I sat back and looked at my masterpiece before removing the black again and adding some hateful words in front of the girl covering her ears. This wouldn’t be an anti-bullying campaign without a powerful message. I scrawled things like, Hoe, Skank, Fat, and loser. Any word I knew that could be used to bully someone. And then I climbed down from the ladder scrawling my name in the bottom left corner in red and black paint. I wouldn’t be an artist is I didn’t sign my artwork. I backed up looking at the finished product of a day's work and hoped that Mr. Simmons liked it. The whole endeavor had been a project that I’d been commissioned for by the only teacher I didn’t hate. My art teacher. He had asked me to help him in his anti-bullying campaign. With the incentive that when I got caught he would try to reduce my sentence. He also paid me fifty dollars upfront so, yeah, there was that to.

I took one last look at the masterpiece in front of me before and smiled. It was definitely worth the trouble that I was going to be getting in later. I picked up the duffle bag, slinging it over my shoulder and pulling out my phone snapping a quick photo of it so that it would live on after I was forced to destroy it. And with that I grabbed my skateboard and was out of there faster than you could say ‘Hoodlum’. All in all, it was a Sunday well spent.

Reviews

[MightyMouse]

Don't mind me stalking your work. I like this one so far, it sounds like your writing is improving.

[Avery Howard]

I don't mind at all. Thank you for the review. This is actually on of my older works that i'd written in high school.