Full description:
"I draw the people I hate at school. I hear the gossip, I hear the lies but I draw what my own eyes see. And I see the embarrassing, devastating, beautiful secrets my peers are try to hide. I had quite the collection of illusions; a sketchbook full of their buried sins... Until the most popular boy, and my most hated, happened upon my misplaced book of secrets."
Alys is faceless, voiceless... and she is free. Being nothing more than an ever shifting shadow is an art she mastered long ago. It's one that allows her to sketch the oblivious people around her; sculpting their true forms without being seen.
The art within her pages is extraordinary; her hands having an ability to create perfect renditions of the world around them. But Alys' fingers tighten upon each pencil as the dark remnants of her past still haunt her. Her ability remains hidden behind a quiet wallflower's eyes.
No one must see, no one must know.
For her past is all she knows.
Yet there's one she despises most of all; a predator hidden amongst a flock of sheep. Hayden; the boy loved and adored by those around him. Hayden; the monster who secretly hated them all.
She never wanted to meet him. She never wanted to have to interact with ANY of them, but that all changed when her only friend was accused of a crime she did not commit in a flurry of senior pranks gone wrong.
In the chaos Alys faces afterwards, she accidentally leaves her condemning book behind. Who else would find it but the popular boy; the devil who fakes it all.
Hayden has found the most beautiful puppet, a girl who can see anyone for what they truly are- even him. And with art so beautiful, so breathtaking... so dangerous, he entices Alys with a proposition she can't refuse... For she was not the only one with dark secrets in her past.
She would be his puppet, to do as he bid... and he would help her get her retribution, her revenge.
And in what better form than a mural at graduation. One that might not be as it seemed.
.
.
.
A/N: name pronunciation:
Alys (uh-lease),
Hayden (Hey- Den)
You are about to read a story that still needs to be edited. Please be aware and understanding, I will get to them when I have a chance.
Thank you
.
.
.
I draw the people I hate at school. I see them everywhere, just walking down the halls with their fake personalities; their smiles and charms... even though secretly, behind each other's backs, they're cheating and spreading rumors and destroying the other's social status. And then I see them in the bathrooms, crying and puking up the last of what is already nauseating cafeteria food; because word got around that they gained weight or that they didn't have a perfect body.
And there I sit, watching point blank, as this disturbing and chaotic institute houses all these hormonal schizophrenics, still convincing us all it's a high school and not Asylum. Those fabricated and altered personas around me seem to be never ending. Perhaps directors and movie producers should come here for their casting roles. Our drama club sucks ass, but the fake smiling masks and happy giddy girls that walk arm in arm are the masters of the deceiving world.
Of course I see through all of this, not that it's that hard, because I've been here from start to finish. I've grown up with these jocks and nerds, bimbos and bïtches. And they all seem so scared to show who they truly are- which is why I draw them exactly as that. I draw you because I can see you...
The noise that surrounded me just increased louder as people tried talking over each other in order to be heard. A dozen voices mixed into the air and only slight random words distinguished themselves against the rumble.
I heard it all, bits and pieces of it, but enough to know what was circulating the school. Most of it was fake; Shannon didn't get a breast augmentation. Her father might be rich and spoil her, but their relationship was becoming strained. Why wouldn't it? He was disturbed that his daughter was now the replica of his young and lustrous new girlfriend. And even worse, that his own very friends were looking at his daughter like the piece of ass she was.
In reality, her bra was padded with those gelatin balloon enhancers that were sold in the lingerie department. I heard her friends freaking out one day because one ruptured and was leaking thanks to a flying locker, and her boob shrunk down to a B.
A big difference when the other one's a D.
I shifted my weight to my palm and continued darkening the eyes. Max barely made the Football team which surprised me. Though he'd been playing football since he was born... he wasn't the smartest. And yet somehow he managed an act of God and passed his history test, letting every coach and fellow player sigh in relief.
My pencil glided over some shapes, darkening the color and making it stand out greater against the white of the paper. My blonde hair had tumbled off my shoulder and it lied on the edges of my paper, just out of reach as my pencil glided by. I made a mental note that Marcus had cheated on Emily again. For the eighth time.
But that was all the little trivial stuff; the mundane stuff that even I felt reluctant to draw. I wanted more; I patiently waited for word again of the fund raising funds that always seemed to come up short. Of the faculty sneaking around to the copy rooms in their attempt to re-code the cheat sheets; always wanting to have the best grades in their class in hopes a promotion was on the horizon.
But what I truly craved- above all else- was the true self of those around me. Not the cheating, not the fake rumors... not the pathetic babble that could be heard in the air.
No, what I wanted was hidden in their actions, subliminal movements and messages that meant so much more. What I wanted was the thing that was never meant to be known. And where rumors and gossip helped fuel the basis of each drawing... it was that dark secret my own eyes deciphered that would cast a replica below in a jumbled mess of graphite lines.
I drew what they never wanted to be seen. I drew the truth of who they were.
A voice was trying to be heard over the noise and I glanced up to see our small little man of a teacher, trying to bring order to the room. But no one was listening. No one ever listened. My eyes slowly traced back down to my paper again and my hand resumed its work as it sketched new angles and lines.
I heard more noise and my eyes glanced under their lashes to see that Shannon had indeed blessed us with her presence. Of course all word of her breast augmentation stopped, but I knew she didn't mind the attention. The teacher took advantage of the quick stop of chatter and stuttered his voice into existence. "Stu...students... students please..."
Everyone mumbled and groaned as they knew the lesson was about to begin. Shannon made her way towards her friends whom my cynical mind named the catfish gang. I watched those abnormally plumped glossy lips and those soundly blank eyes; all too like my gold fish back home, Sir Henry.
Shannon sat down next to those girls while leaning back a little more than necessary. The atmosphere of the room seemed to change subtlety. I could almost taste the heavy breaths of the males bedside me; I could almost hear the swallowing throats of those lost to her trance.
"Students if you will..."
I gently put down my pencil before closing my sketch book.
My eyes blankly absorbed those departing images;
She tried to hide her face which bore no makeup as she floated just beneath the water's surface. Her father was calling to her while he cried within his boat, but as he tried to reach into the water he froze at her reflected image dancing to the liquid's movement. He couldn't grasp the image of his mistress.
Shannon knew this; knew how others saw her; even her own farther, but she couldn't manage to save herself... to change herself. This was the only way to be seen. Even if she drowned under the weight of it.
It was her fake bra that was gushing water amongst the school beneath- drowning all the oblivious and idiotic students against its depths. Only the catfish gang seemed to swim and relish in liquid that kept them afloat. Only those girls could thrive within the misery of another.
All the other people had bubbles escaping their lips as the last of the oxygen left their bodies and rose to the surface. The air filled spheres rose through the mess and soon coordinated themselves into thought bubbles; the ending breath becoming what was truly a waste of their last thought.
"Her breasts look so real, she's so lucky,"
There they sunk to the bottom of their own ignorance- shadowed by a disturbed and regretful father.
My eyes curve over one other sole survivor who I draw randomly and regularly because of my relative interest for him. I've come to understand that he never truly gives in to the rumors amiss because he never fits in with anything but his imaginary friends and old star wars figurines.
The page finished folding over the loner kid- the boy who hides himself under the bleachers but yet no one knew who he was; we only saw him at assemblies. But on my paper, he gathers the bodies in a happy glee... new friends, I suppose, for his lonely world where no one ever seems to be alive.
The book lay shut and all reality faded into this fiction before me, and I heard its verses ring aloud as whispers quietly rose; "I wish I was Shannon, god she's got like everything going for her... it's not fair."
I thought about the girl in my notebook who had no false eyelashes or tanned skin to hide behind.
Did I ever mention I drew people for who they truly were? Yes? Then we don't have a problem.
Welcome to my life.
.
.
.
A/N: Yes? No? Should I keep going?