Assured Destruction

by Stewart, Michael F.

  “Just not sure I’m totally in the mood to paint today,” he says.

  I raise my eyebrow. This from the guy who wrote that if he doesn’t paint, he’ll explode?

  “We’re already here,” I say and jog past the wall of the Underpass. When I see it, I freeze.

  There are three stacked layers of graffiti. Each canvas is about as far across as I can reach and as high as I can stand on my toes. All told, forty or fifty wicked murals of signatures, aliens, dragons, cartoons. And one … one that looks an awful lot like me. Except I’m a cyborg. I’ve got a camera lens for an eye and these fiber optics sprouting from my head. I look so cool. Maybe firewire hair isn’t as bad as I thought.

  “Sorry, well.” He doesn’t even try to suggest it wasn’t him or that it’s not me. He rummages in his pack and pulls a can with a white cap. “I can cover it.”

  I shake my head. “No, I mean. No!” I yank my phone from my pocket and thumb the camera. “This is amazing.”

  I snap a picture and then I wave him into the frame. It looks like Cyborg Jan is kissing his cheek but he doesn’t notice. Then I dash in and hold the camera out to take a pic of all three of us. I don’t have five-foot-long arms so we have to snuggle close to be in the shot and our shoulders are pressed together and the day doesn’t feel cool at all despite the damp beneath the bridge and the river running past. I take three more pics than I really need.

  “Thanks,” I say.

  “You want to paint?” He hands over a spray can, and I chuckle.

  “Can’t be serious,” I scoff. The art around me goes from serviceable to it should be in a museum. “I draw stick people.”

  “Why else are you here?”

  Why, indeed. Would I be here if I hadn’t read his journal?

  He takes back the can of paint and reaches into his knapsack to produce a can with a black cap. “So draw stick people.” He hands me the new can and points to a spot further down that is just a gray area.

  Every month or so a van comes by and paints over all of the art so that it’s a new fresh canvas. It’s both sad and very Zen, like those monks who create patterns from colored sand which the wind then carries away.

  I haven’t been frightened for a while, but I am now as I wander up to the big gray spot. I pop the cap off the can and shake it like I see Jonny shaking his, but he’s not watching me, he’s focused on his own gray spot. I reach out and place a tentative blob in the centre. It starts to drip. And now I have a dripping blob in the middle. I make a sort of circle and pull back a bit so it no longer drips and then … then I’m painting. And spraying.

  Soon my hands are speckled, and I wish I was wearing crappy clothes. The air is redolent with spray paint. I stop thinking of what my mom will say about my best jeans and keep going, stepping back, checking my mural out. Adding a detail here and there.

  After a bit I head over and steal some new colors.

  Jonny cranes his neck.

  “No, wait until I’m done,” I say. And he nods. I can’t tell what he’s doing yet. Looks pretty abstract.

  An hour goes by, then another, and I run through the can of yellow I’m using for highlights. Besides the paint, it smells musty in the shadow of the bridge, and cars race above us, thunderous as they pass, but that all fades into the background.

  “Okay!” I call, and I don’t want to step back to see it until he gets here. When he does, he laughs and I can’t tell if it’s at me, the art, or something else. His eyes twinkle like his avatar’s and I can’t believe I never before saw the light in them.

  In my picture is this big stick-person head with a wide grin and paint on him like war paint. He’s got an oversized paint brush between his teeth and is reaching down with another brush to draw on his missing foot, something I totally copied from my favorite artist.

  “Escher,” he says and I smile, delighted he caught the reference. The only reason why I know about Escher is because the guy was a mathematician.

  “Actually, it’s you,” I tell him.

  “I’m very yellow.”

  “You with liver disease.” I laugh.

  “From sucking on too many paint brushes.”

  “Let me see yours.” I dash over while he stands before mine.

  I can almost smell the roses and daisies and lilies that twist and dance in Jonny’s mural as if they’re blown by a warm breeze. In the middle, someone is submerged in a blanket of poppies; a hand reaches to the sky, and from a bouquet of tulips, the tip of a shoe pokes out. I look down. The toe of my shoe.

  “Paradise,” I whisper.

  “What’s that?” he asks.

  “Paradise,” I repeat, staring at his art.

  “You’re pretty cool.”

  Heat rushes through me and makes me shiver and rub at my arms. I check out Jonny, who is leaning back on one leg, hands and elbow crooks full of paint cans and a critical look on his face. In the shadows of the overpass and with the bright sunlight beyond, it feels like we can only see each other, as if it’s another world.

  He’s tagged the bottom of the painting and like all good graffiti it’s practically illegible. I finally make it out. Sorry. It reads.

  I look back to the cyborg, realization dawning on me. The cyborg wasn’t a nice thing to draw. Jonny was making fun of me. That’s why he was reluctant to let me see it. It’s why he said sorry when we arrived and offered to cover it.

  “Jan,” he calls over to me.

  I don’t answer, but look over.

  “Do you want to go out?” he asks.

  “Like go to a movie?” I reply.

  He’s still facing the painting, his Adam’s apple bobs.

  “Yeah,” he says. “A movie.”

  “You like me?” I glance back at the cyborg.

  “I just drew a picture of you,” he says. “Of course I do.”

  So his foxy mother drops off his computer, I steal it, and now he asks me out. Who says crime doesn’t pay? But there is the picture of the cyborg. The sorry. And my gut telling me that this would be considered ill-gotten gains. Besides, real relationships end badly and the look in his eyes is way too real.

  I walk over to him and he doesn’t budge, still back on one leg, arms to his side, every muscle flexed.

  “Today was really fun,” I say, my heart pounding.

  He looks away, and all I want to do is reach up and thread my fingers through his woolly hair.

  “But ...” he says.

  “Yeah,” I shrug. “I have to work like every night.”

  His head bobs and he smiles sheepishly.

  “Sure.”

  “But I’m a really good online friend,” I add. I pull my iPhone.

  He rummages through his bag and pulls out his phone. I nearly cry with delight when I see it’s an iPhone too. Not the latest model, but still.

  He holds it out. “Bump?”

  And I laugh. We bump phones, which shares our contacts with one another.

  At least it’s like our phones are going out.

  “I’m staying to paint a bit more,” he says.

  I stand there like a dumb cow before realizing he wants to be alone.

  “Right.” I dip down and put away the spray cans I used. “I need to go too ... see, ya. Text me.”

  As I leave the shadows of the Underpass behind, I realize that I do need to head back to school to retrieve my bag.

  As I push back the doors into the atrium and navigate the flow of departing students, I’m careful to avoid seeing teachers whose classes I skipped today. I manage as far as my locker. On it is a note:

  3:30 PM, Library. Signed, The Principal.

  My phone says it’s 3:35 PM.

  Chapter 8

  The library is dark, but not empty.

 
When I enter, Pig, the school gerbil, suddenly runs super fast around his cage sending pine shavings flying and a shot of fear screaming through my skull. What’s this about? I’ve for sure been caught skipping, but the principal doesn’t call students into a meeting for that.

  Gray light oozes through the windows as I tiptoe toward a circle of chairs. All are filled, except one. Book dust hangs in the air. Karl looks demure and chews his lower lip. Hannah’s eyes are red-rimmed, her face puffy. Ellie has composed herself since yesterday and sits with a straight back, chin high. Principal Wolzowski has his hands clasped before him. A washboard of wrinkles mars the front of his polished bald dome, but whether due to concern, dismay, or surprise, it’s tough to tell.

  “Good of you to join us,” he says.

  I bet on dismay.

  I look to each of the other students, but their eyes shift to focus on the gum wads stuck to the carpet or on the pattern of ceiling tiles.

  “Hi,” I say as I sit in the empty chair.

  “Who here is familiar with restorative justice?” Wolzowski asks.

  No one answers. He cracks his knuckles.

  “Restorative justice,” he continues, “is an opportunity for the victim to talk to his or her aggressors and for the aggressors to explain themselves. Punishment is determined by the group.”

  Aggressors and punishment. I’m really not liking this.

  “Hannah?” He points to her with an open palm. “The floor is yours.”

  Hannah looks up and stares at me.

  “You’re supposed to be my friends,” she says, and I’m actually relieved because at least I’m not the only one on trial here and I’m not really her friend, so maybe I’m not in trouble at all. “If I can’t feel safe with you,” she continues, “then who can I feel safe with? I mean, sending it around was really terrible and I don’t know who made it, but still—everyone saw.”

  I stare at her watering eyes. Oh—this is about the picture I photoshopped of her. Ellie posted it publicly? Of course she did. What else did I think she’d do with it?

  “I would like to know who made it as well,” Wolzowski says. “Which of you did so?”

  His glare lingers on me, and my eyes go to Ellie. She stretches her neck and then yawns.

  “All right,” he says, “Ellie, why did you post the picture on Facebook?”

  “I just thought it was funny,” she says. “If I’d known it would upset Hannah so much, I wouldn’t have. I’m sorry. It was dumb.”

  Damn, all the right words, and she even manages a concerned frown and a small shake of her head as if to say, What was I thinking?

  “Karl, you tweeted the picture. What do you have to say for yourself?”

  He shrugs. “I’m … uh … sorry, too, right?”

  Wolzowski’s raised brow creases further at this, but he continues on. “Janus?”

  “What did I do?” I ask.

  “What did you do?” he replies and glances to Ellie. Has she told him something? Why am I here? If they don’t know I made it, and I didn’t post it, I did nothing wrong.

  “I didn’t post it anywhere,” I say, testing things.

  “Ellie says you forwarded it to her,” Wolzowski replies. “She got it from you.”

  The little bitch. She tattled on me.

  “Why’d you do it?” Hannah cries.

  I shake my head. “I didn’t post it anywhere,” I say. “I fool around in Photoshop all the time. Ellie …” Ellie gives a sharp shake of her head. If I hadn’t been looking at her, I wouldn’t have caught it.

  “Ellie what?” Wolzowski probes.

  Does Ellie really expect me to stay quiet after she told on me?

  “Ellie asked me to do something funny to the picture. She emailed it to me.” Ellie’s eyes cast daggers. “In her defense,” I continue, “Hannah had said some things that Ellie didn’t like that day. I figured it was like giving her a voodoo doll to put pins in. Doesn’t really hurt anyone. Ellie shouldn’t have posted it.”

  “But it did hurt someone, Janus.” Wolzowski scratches his head as if having difficulty grasping this brave new world of bullying. “What do you think your punishments should be? The best justice is when the punishment fits the crime. Poetic justice.”

  No one says anything until Hannah puffs out her chest. “I know.”

  The principal nods at her.

  “I want all of us to come up with something beautiful in Photoshop every day for a year and then to share it with everyone on our Facebook and Twitter accounts.”

  Ellie and Karl both look at me. I bet they couldn’t make something beautiful in Photoshop in a year let alone every day.

  “Hey,” I say. “I’m not about to teach everyone how to—”

  “Are you sure, Hannah?” Wolzowski asks. “You want to be a part of it?”

  “A team.” She brightens. “They all say they take it back, right?”

  “How about we make it a hundred beautiful things?” Wolzowski says, but he’s not really asking a question. “That seem fair to you, Janus?”

  I nod.

  “I expect the first tomorrow. It had better be beautiful.”

  “Beautiful,” I repeat and narrow my eyes at Ellie.

  As if struck with a sudden burst of energy, Wolzowski shifts to the front of his chair and lifts his hands to us all.

  “The next two years will decide your academic future. What appears on your transcripts will be scoured and picked at, and blemishes may cost you entry to your institution of choice. Your future depends on your education. Missteps here could cost. Am I understood?”

  Each of us nods in turn.

  “Good,” he says, launching to his feet.

  “Let’s get started now!” Hannah’s grinning.

  “I’m already going to be late for work,” I say.

  The principal pauses in the doorframe. “Mr. MacLean is still in the computer lab. I’d be happy to call your mother, Janus, and let her know what’s happened.”

  I clench shut my eyes. “Uh ... that won’t be necessary, I’ll call her.” I’m going to be in so much trouble when I get home. I’ll lose Shadownet for sure.

  “Great!” Hannah bubbles as the library door shuts behind the principal.

  Ellie gives Hannah a big hug. “What a wonderful punishment,” Ellie says to her, and I can’t hold back an explosive sigh.

  “Meet you in Chippy’s lab in five minutes,” Hannah says.

  I grit my teeth and return to my locker to grab my bag. To my surprise, Karl is leaning against it. He straightens as I approach, almost as tall as the lockers themselves.

  “So you made that picture?” he asks and backs away to give me room to open the locker door.

  I shrug and miss my combination.

  “You’re good at it.”

  I shrug again.

  “I know you think you got a pretty raw deal.”

  I shrug, the lock snaps open, and I pull my backpack from the depths. He leans over to place a palm on the door next to it. I smell him. Not #yuck.

  “Sorry I shared the photo, that probably got you into more trouble. Sometimes I do stuff just because Ellie asks.”

  I stop, bemused.

  “As for this beautiful stuff,” he continues. “I can try too. I’m not an idiot.”

  “Really?” I ask.

  He brushes back the white hair that makes him look as though he was struck by lightning. Beneath are those sea-blue eyes. They’re smiling and something else. Nervous? Uncertain?

  “Not like I’m good, but I can try,” he says.

  I slam the locker closed. Ellie is hanging out at the end of the hall, trying to hear our conversation. It’s past four and I’m already late to take over from Fenwick.

  “Give me a
chance,” he says.

  I’m not sure he’s talking about Photoshop anymore.

  Hannah has joined Ellie and is waving us on.

  “Looks like we’re a team, right?” I say.

  As I walk shoulder to shoulder with Karl, a warm feeling spreads through me. I don’t know what’s going to happen when my mom hears about this, but there’s a definite upside to restorative justice.

  Chapter 9

  The students from the library funnel into the computer lab. I’m nervous; my mom will kill me for being late, but worse will happen if she finds out why.

  Hannah bounces in her chair before a computer screen near Chippy’s desk. Seeing him causes my heart to sludge into my stomach. I’d hoped I could just kick something off, but with a teacher hovering, I’m going to have to cooperate. We’re a team.

  Karl rushes ahead of Ellie as if to ensure he sits next to me. Thankfully I don’t have to ask for control of the mouse; everyone lets me take the helm. My goal is to be flying out the atrium door in fifteen minutes.

  “So,” I say. “Let’s get this over with.”

  Chippy looses one of his sick cow, muuuhhs. “I’ll judge when it is over with, Miss Rose.” His breath smells of tuna.

  “Something beautiful.” Hannah stares at the screen as if an image will magically appear.

  Everyone sits in silence for a moment.

  “Like a touchdown?” Karl suggests.

  “A dew drop,” Hannah adds. “A flower bud in Spring.”

  “Or a baby’s hand reaching out of its mother’s belly,” Ellie says.

  We all look at her.

  “What?” Her eyes widen. “Like in a C-section ... the doctor is pulling the baby out—” Suddenly everyone breaks into guffaws that leave us gasping.

  “I guess that’s pretty gross.” Ellie chuckles.

  “No, no, I’ve got one—a dog taking a dump?” I say. “A beautiful dog.”

  “A Praying Mantis eating her mate?” Hannah gets into it, and we’re all laughing.