The War for the Art Barn

It began when KK painted the sink red. It was hardly an abject rebellion: she simply had some left over paint and a whim. For this whim, she was given a month’s worth of Saturday morning detentions, the first of which was dedicated to scraping the sink clean.

The First Battle of the Sink went to Ms. Campbell.

When KK was expelled, I sneaked into the art barn after final check-in and began repainting the sink, finishing the next day with Leigh in tow. We both screamed, voices echoing off the supply cabinets and easels, when we ran into the custodian. As we sprinted back to the dorms, we reassured ourselves with the fact that if he reported a brunette and a blonde in the art barn at suspicious hours, the public’s collective mind would go immediately to Melissa and Lindsay, who were also best friends with yin yang hair, but who were known throughout the school as outspoken, rebellious slackers. The sink stayed red for the rest of the year and Leigh and I cheered silently for months.

The Second Battle of the Sink went to art.

The next year, art gained an ally. His name was Mr. Wyatt and he was all at once Ms. Campbell’s colleague and main adversary. He wore tie-dye t-shirts and cargo pants and let his students paint whatever they felt inspired by. He told his first class of Campbell-Clones to write “it is my art and I should put what I want into it,” in the front of their research work books. He would look slowly, luxuriously, through his students’ art frowning in appreciation and leaving them detailed, thought-out comments. He listed obscure modern artists he thought each girl at the lunch table would like as he smeared ketchup mandalas across his plate. Within a month of school’s start, a mural had appeared on his side of the art barn. Ms. Campbell scowled from her white haven of order, but could do nothing to stop him. She could only cling to her rulers and turpentine and elements of design, an insufficient life jacket. Another mural joined the first. This one was an enormous eye looking down on the art students, watching over them in shades of blue and purple. Ripples appeared on the ceiling, giving the viewer a Sistine chapel neck crick and the distinctive feeling of being a mermaid. There were hot air balloons on the door, a slinky hanging from the rafters, dinosaur footprints leading from the dark room to the main room to his office. Ms. Campbell made snide comments in a voice just loud enough for Mr. Wyatt to hear. She gave up on scraping the red sink clean over and over and over again and gained new wrinkles, the impression of a scowl permanently carved into her face. In the past, we had never had an art teacher (other than Ms. Campbell) stay for longer than a year. We all knew, if Mr. Wyatt made it through his first year, he would be the victor. When June rolled around without any rumors of his resignation, the students celebrated silently.

The Battle of the Walls went to art.

But when we got back to school after the next summer, the entire art barn was white breath caught in our throats, as our eyes burned open. We made bewildered curses. Mr. Wyatt’s psychedelic hodge-podge side of the art barn had been erased, demolished completely. In its place, Ms. Campbell had put up posters of color wheels, jointed drawing dummies, and art history books. She smiled her vampire smile at us as we walked through the door, mouths hanging open in horror. Rumors ran rampant through the school, about Mr. Wyatt being deported to Canada (although I think he was actually from Minnesota), about his sister having cancer (though I’m fairly certain he was an only child) and about him being arrested for possession of marijuana (I know he was kidding about that.) Finally, slowly, the truth came out. He’d been accused, by Ms. Campbell I have no doubt, of sleeping with one of the students. The girl in question had been a senior, a brilliant paint-covered girl by the name of Lupe who, by the time of Mr. Wyatt’s dismissal, was happily attending RISD. Lupe had been in the art barn constantly, joking with her friends that she lived there and the school had been forced to fire Mr. Wyatt, even though the entire student body had known that Lupe was gay.

The War went to Ms. Campbell.