Innocence and Fear chapter 2
Here is the second chapter in my monthly release of a novel.
Photo by Fernando Lavin on Unsplash
Innocence and Fear Chapter 2
Fabian had been itching for months to play. He had been at Patton Academy since September, nearly three months, and he had been very “good”. He didn't breach additional systems and respected his access limits. He wanted to break into the school’s systems, of course, but he told himself that he didn’t want to get kicked out of school. The need to investigate grew stronger and stronger, though, and he couldn't ignore it any longer. His thoughts egged him on, “I won’t get caught, anyway. I almost never get caught.”
From a young age, Fabian possessed the ability to "speak" to machines. At four, he wrote his first computer program in Basic. His father bought him a small personal computer for his fifth birthday and Fabian became obsessed with finding every in and out of the machine. The machines seemed to speak to him, with the fan's gentle hum, the keyboard's steady clicks, and the screen's soft vibrations. He found computers a preferable company to most people when he was younger. He spent all of his time “talking” to his computer as a child. It had gotten to where, when he was six, he stopped speaking and only tapped his fingers in patterns that to him represented positives and negatives or a sort of elevated binary.
His concerned parents took him to see a psychiatrist. He was cognizant of the therapy’s positive effect, but not the mechanism behind it. Because he lost memories around this time. There was just a long white blank void when he tried to search for any memory of those years. But his memories resumed again around nine years old, and he made human friends in the small Texas town his family lived in. Once again, as a teenager, he reverted back to a machine-like state and spent a miserable time in a psychiatric hospital. After that, he told himself to ignore the machine language because he never wanted to go back to the hospital again, not after what happened that last time. But sometimes he found his hands tapping in that imaginary language even without him consciously doing it. It happened again in mid-November. His fingers rat-a-tatted on his desk. Zero, one, zero, zero. His fingers and mind were itching to have deeper conversations with the computers, network, and database at Patton Academy. His hands tapped to a machine’s heartbeat.
After a full day of classes, he returned to his dorm room and sat down in front of his computer that sat on the handsome wooden desk in his room. The monitor was so large that it almost crowded the keyboard off of the seizable desk. He stretched his long limbs outwards. His height made it difficult for him to sit comfortably in the chair. The Unix operating system popped up, and he typed into the kernel. Fabian’s fingers flew over the keys, never hitting an incorrect key. He told himself he would just look around a little, just poke around. He told himself there would be mostly secretarial stuff. Using SSH, he connected to the school’s server and entered the credentials he’d stolen from the key logger he installed on Mr. Hansen’s computer. Mr. Hansen was a teacher but also worked as a Network Administrator for the school. It was effortless to insert a floppy into his computer when he stepped out to use the restroom. He looked around for a few minutes through different directories and didn’t find much. But when he used the find command for “mail”, things became interesting. In the directory /var/mail/spoll, there were more directories, one for each username. He figured a quick read into the school’s email might be interesting. He wasn’t sure what he was looking for, but he noticed that most of the teachers and staff at the school were very much into email. In his old school, the teachers could barely run a computer, let alone email each other often.
He tried to sign into /root, trying the same password that got him on the server, but it didn’t work. This he expected, because he didn’t think Mr. Hansen was the type to reuse passwords. Although Mr. Hansen was competent, Fabian was confident that he had more knowledge about computers than any of his teachers. He went into the /etc/passwd file and saw there was a long list of users and hash of their passwords. He recognized who some users might be, others he did not know. One of the first he saw was for what he thought might be the Head Mistress and owner of the school. It occurred to him that a dictionary attack and John the Ripper might help him read the messages sent to and from the school. He figured the simplest way might be the best. He almost heard the components singing together as he set up his attack. Having observed some strange idiosyncrasies at the school, he wondered if it would be easy at all. The staff and whoever set up the school were obsessed with security, something he noticed immediately upon arriving. Every student was assigned their own login to operate any public computer in the school. There were no private access machines anywhere other than the individual dorm rooms. The phones had locks with 3-digit codes to track usage. Prior to making any call, including to the operator, you were required to enter your PIN. He suspected phone calls were being monitored and data stored in some place. And then there was the cameras. The first time he stepped into the school, he noticed them.
It was normal that the front gates were topped with cameras. Most places would want to watch their perimeter, but there were cameras all over the inside of the school as well. Cameras were visible in every classroom and all the hallways, except for the bathrooms. The cameras were small little black orbs affixed all around the walls and ceilings. From the outset, they made him feel uncomfortable. He didn’t enjoy being so… observed. Strangely, nobody else seemed to talk about the cameras. He knew deep down that he would try to find the controls of the cameras next. He didn’t want to watch others. He wanted to see where these cameras could see him. He tried to shake off the nagging thoughts that there may be a camera or two even in his room, but as he tried to break into the mail files, waves of paranoia hit him, almost like a sore stomach. He tried to act casual. He ran his hands through his wavy black hair that reached the bottom of his ears. He slowed his pace, stretched, and stood up to look for cameras while the program continued to run. When he found none, he breathed a small sigh and thought about how stupid he had been. He thought it was silly of him to think a school would watch its students in their own private rooms. However, during his travels through various systems worldwide, he had seen even more peculiar things. He saw many things, some in public files on Fortune 500 companies that could cause a scandal, just sitting in the open…only hidden because most people didn’t know where to look.
When he was first accepted by the school, he even attempted to get into the Patton Industries network. He wanted to know more about the company whose owner started this school. He found himself irritated; it had been very secure and hard to access, even when he tried more complex techniques. He saw some internal memorandum that mentioned a mysterious “Club”. He also saw the letters GC affiliated with mentions of the “Club”. He spent days searching the Internet and beyond for anything related to a club or the letters GC. He’d come up with almost nothing. The Club was interesting to Fabian because one email said something to the effect of “The school and business needs to separate itself from the Club could be too close for comfort.” He scrunched his brow when he read it. He wondered if it was some sort of shorthand for something. Fabian just figured it was probably way less interesting than he imagined, but it stuck with him. He hoped that by getting on the school’s server and viewing the email, he might find mention of it again. Fabian promised his parents he would try hard at the school, and also that he would stay out of trouble. He knew this meant his parents didn’t want him poking around. They made him repeat the part about “no trouble” four or five times. He had only been caught once sneaking into systems he didn’t belong in, at the hospital. But he tried not to remember that time in the hospital, after what had happened there.
But if he got caught looking in school files, he imagined they would expel him. He tried for his parents’ sake to keep his digital hands to himself. But he found balance when he crossed the threshold of starting to hack, feeling deep happiness for the first time since arriving at the school.
There were several days when Fabian felt bored waiting for the program to bring back any results, but once it did, he gained access to an account. He came back from afternoon classes to find that he now had access to Patton34999. He sat in the burgundy leather chair before the computer and read through all the emails. Most of it was boring and just business he didn’t care about, but then a group of emails came up…he read them and it was strange and interesting. He felt like he had to tell someone. And he knew who he would tell right away. From the moment he laid eyes on her, he knew he wanted to chat more with her and thought emails would be a good way to get her attention. But there was also a second intention of telling Miette. She was like him, in tune with computers. He hoped she might aid him in pirating his way into all the school’s digital corners. He decided he would tell her the next day.
*****
Miette was eating her lunch by herself in the large cafeteria on the first floor of the school. As always, she chose the vegetarian lunch. She threw her black and red plaid tie over her shoulder, trying to protect it because of her bad habit of dropping food down the front of herself while eating. She looked around the cafeteria. Even though it was lunch hour, the large room was not even half full. From the high decorative ceilings to the wood chairs at the tables, every aspect of the room appeared carefully chosen. The identical carvings of birds and trees on the high backs of each chair gave the room a sense of unity and harmony. Miette liked how many places in the school there were rustic-looking or dark wood. It almost made you feel like you were in a castle in the woods.
She stuck her fork in the bean salad a few times. Carina was nowhere to be seen, so Miette figured she was taking her lunch in her room again. This meant that she would be alone while eating the bean salad. Her only close friend at Patton Academy was Carina. She told herself it was OK though, because she loved the classes she was in. She wasn’t so lonely because she was too busy to be lonely. The most advanced and current machines she had ever worked on were in the school's computer lab. She had, for once in her life, found herself challenged and interested in a class. A lot of the work was self-guided and very open-ended, but she liked this very much. The project her small advanced computer programming class had been working on was designing and implementing a program for a mock silicon chip manufacturing system. The program had to run correctly and if it could understand Chinese; she got extra credit. She was about ninety percent done with the assignment. She hoped hers was the best and got the top grade. Miette was known for surpassing academic expectations everywhere she went.
She liked how at Patton Academy someone always got the best grade in the class, placement in classes was always on a scale and you could slide up and down said scale. She always wanted to be on the top. Her only actual competition was the Texan kid Fabian. She felt like he knew as much, or maybe more about computers and programming than she did. She kind of hated him, but she couldn’t help thinking how attractive he was. Miette stared at her salad, tearing apart every line of code of her program in her mind’s eye. She was so focused; she didn't hear him approach and clear his throat.
At the sound, she looked up and Fabian was standing in front of her, as if her thoughts summoned him. She was sure she looked stupid sitting with her tie over her shoulder, but she left it flipped over her thin right shoulder.
“Hey.” He said in a smooth voice. She had heard him speak before, but they had spoken little to each other. He stood in front of her and she looked at him deeper than before. His presence was commanding, with his tall frame and his skin, which was the color of rich, dark brown earth. His blue eyes were like a beacon against the warm, rich tones of his brown skin. She was frozen and entranced by him and wondered if she was blushing. His lips were full and looked smooth. She stared at his magnificent hair. His hair flowed down to his chin in dark, wavy locks. Miette tried to shake away the warm force of blood rushing all over her face and chest. “Merde! Je suis tellement embarrassant”, she thought to herself.
“Hey,” she said back to him. “Are you almost finished with the COM450 assignment?” She hoped to one-up him with the status of her assignment.
“OH yeah, I finished it yesterday. The onboard multi-language translator was a little finicky at first, but I have it going now.” It seemed like to him the assignment was just some simple thing. He spoke as if he hadn't given it much thought. She crossed her arms across her chest, trying to calm her racing heart.
“Yeah, I’m close to finishing too…”
“Can we meet and talk about something later today?”
She felt whiplash from the change in the subject.
“Yeah, sure? What did you want to talk about?” She asked, her curiosity peaked. He leaned in towards where she sat and cupped his hand around his mouth. She leaned her head towards him.
“I broke into an email account on the main server and … I found something weird…I wanted to show you.” Fabian said to her in a nervous voice. Miette nodded. But she was paranoid. Earlier that same week she also found her way into Elena Patton’s secretaries email. Elena was not only the Headmistress of the school, but also the person who founded it, created it from a rotting, abandoned old building. Elena was also the owner of the worldwide manufacturing giant Patton Industries. What she saw in the Secretary’s communications in the past few weeks had been, in a word, odd.
Miette wondered if she could trust Fabian with the fact that she was hacking into a private email. But she realized he had just admitted to her he had done the same. She thought for a moment and realized she wanted to let someone other than Carina into her life. Also, she realized she wanted to be around Fabian more. He was smart. It attracted her to him, even though she wanted to be better than him. Miette decided it was OK to take a bite of forbidden fruit. She could still try to best him academically, even if they were friends. She cupped her hand tight around her mouth as he’d done and waited for him to lean his ear close to her mouth. As he leaned in very close, she whispered to him. Her breath was hot against his cheek and in his ear.
“I’ve…had a look around too, and I’ve found some things as well…maybe we could trade information?” She looked around the large room. Scattered small groups in uniform were around them, but no one was looking at them. But Miette knew that something and someone were watching them. As she looked around the cafeteria, she counted at least four cameras positioned in different places. It was during the second week of her time at Patton Academy that she realized just how much was being monitored. She observed they hid some cameras from plain sight, while most of them were noticeable. Miette didn’t look toward the cameras she knew about. She didn’t want to look suspicious.
“Can you meet me in my room after classes today?” Fabian no longer hid his words. “I want your opinion on my code…I just need you to test a few original features.” Miette admired how confidently he was lying.
“Sure, how about six?” She hoped her voice sounded casual.
“OK, I’m room sixteen. See you then.” He waved and walked away. His attempt to move slowly was clear, but his tall, lengthy limbs prevented him from doing so. Miette noticed an awkward yet strangely eloquent quality in his movements. Almost like he was some sort of animal. She shook her head and stopped watching him. She was excited to see what he had found that had caused him to approach her. Miette concluded it must have been something captivating for him to feel the need to share it. Excitement flooded up inside her at the prospect of getting to know him better. She tried to stop her heart from leaping, but it pumped very hard while she tried to finish the cold bean salad in the fine dining room.
*****
Carina had been at the keyboard for an unknown amount of time, and her voice was now hoarse from singing the same song again and again. She knew she should rest and give her voice some time to heal. She looked at her wristwatch and saw it was 3:25 and knew Miette’s classes would be out and her friend might be back in her room for the rest of the day soon. Carina practiced the chorus one more time without singing, but she mouthed the words to keep them fresh in her head.
“Still, we lift our heads to the person who makes us work the hardest…” she mouthed, only soft breaths escaping her lips. Her fingers danced over the heavy plastic keys, and the sound of the synthesizer was that of a digital bell piano, like far-away bleeps. The waves formed before her on her computer screen, but she could also see the shapes and colors before her. They danced and jumped and bled into the air. She wondered if she should record what she had been practicing and play with the sounds a little. She started recording on her computer and played the chorus again, this time mouthing the words while barely breathing. Once she had recorded the sounds for that section of the chorus, she messed around with a band filter on the sounds and turned the compression up and down. Her music teacher there had warned her about her compression obsession, but she liked the unique effects it produced.
What she was working on now was just for fun. She had already finished her class assignment to come up with a thirty-second jingle for a short film shown in class. She had thought the film had been an odd thing to ask them to score. It had appeared to be an Asian coffee commercial. The film contained actors speaking Japanese or Chinese, Carina didn’t know, and there was no music. They had been told the actors were selling the small, brightly colored can of coffee. She had made up a quirky little tune that she knew would be better than anything the four other students in her class came up with. Music was easy. It was the only simple thing. She simply remembered the colors in the commercial that stood out the brightest, then played around until she made a piece of music that made her see soothing round shapes and bright yet calming colors, blues, and pinks.
After playing around for a while in Logic, she decided that enough time had probably passed for Miette to get back from class and in her room. Carina saved her work and got up to leave. She looked around her dark room before she left. It was a mess, as always. The tape that kept the large pieces of cardboard she had stolen from the mail room on the windows was losing its stickiness. She hoped they could last just a bit longer. She felt too lazy to go search for more tape. The band posters all over her room stared at her with unmoving yet somehow skeptical eyes. She realized her hair was getting quite greasy, and she wondered if she had started to smell again. She decided she didn’t care, her Mi wouldn’t care, she was nice and didn’t judge Carina like all the other snobs at this school did. Carina knew there were so many worse things than poor hygiene, and she had been too busy again composing to take care of herself.
She left her dark room and her eyes burned at even the low light in the dorm hallway. She blinked hard, small tears appearing in her eyes. It almost hurt straight into her brain. She had been in the habit of wearing sunglasses at all times unless she was using the computer. However, she received instructions she could only wear sunglasses outside because of the dress code. She cursed the bitch head Mistress, Elena Patton. She questioned why Patton was keeping a close watch on students' appearance in the hallways after classes.
Thankfully, she didn’t have a long way to go to Miette’s room. It was the room right next to hers. She saw the handwritten notebook paper sign on Miette’s door that read “Hello”. It flipped to the other side when Miette was not in her room. That other side read “Gone” in Miette’s spidery handwriting. She knocked twice, then opened the door.
Miette’s dorm room was brighter than her own, but still dim. There were black curtains on the windows on the wall opposite the entrance. They covered a lot of light, but not all. Miette's room was consistently tidy and well-organized. One might have mistaken Miette’s room for the living quarters of some sort of monk, if not for all the technology everywhere. A desktop computer, and an IBM laptop open right next to a Mac PowerBook G3. Carina had met no one with so many computers before she had met Miette. Prior to attending Patton Academy, she had little experience with computers. Even her previous school, which was more upscale than any she attended before, only had her use them for word processing. Music classes at her last school sparked her first feelings of inspiration. The second time she craved knowledge was when she learned to harness machines’ ability to shape music in the first weeks of coming to Patton Academy. She learned everything she could about computers since arriving at the Academy, much of her knowledge she had Miette to thank for. She saw her friend sitting on the bed with long bone-thin legs crossed. She seemed absorbed in the book she was reading, but after a moment, Miette looked up slowly and greeted her.
“Hi, heart friend.” She said her French accent seeping into her words and looked up to Carina, her large deep brown eyes somehow reflecting bright, even in the dim room. Miette stood before her, still dressed in her complete uniform, even the heavy jacket. She was almost a model student dress-wise, except she wore black shiny tights that were split in several sections, revealing her skin, which was a golden color, especially around the knees. Carina felt a little embarrassed she had been wearing the same sweater and hiphugger jeans for at least two days.
Miette still wore her black, scuffed Mary Janes, even though she was sitting on the bed. Miette’s long, dark hair was waving around her face and shoulders. She looked tousled but somehow held on to the elegance she always seemed to exude. Carina told herself she wasn’t into girls, but she thought at that moment, that if she had been, Miette would have been the love of her life. She considered her friend for a moment. Miette was the first real friend she had ever had, other than her most recent foster parents. Before this, she had never found anyone she could get along with. To Carina, it seemed before like destiny had fated she would be a problem for almost everyone she had ever met. But she felt nothing but love for Miette, even though they had only met a few short months ago. She loved her like a sister. She jokingly thought of her as Mother Mary. She seemed to Carina a perfect being.
“Hello my soul friend,” Carina said back to Miette. Carina sat next to her on the bed. Miette elegantly sat the book on the bed with her delicate, long hands. Carina noticed Miette had just painted her nails black and a second clear coat with silver glitter. It looked like the night sky. Carina tried not to remember her ragged and chewed nails. “What are you reading?” She asked her.
“Just some Phedre I was supposed to catch up on for Lit.” Her speaking voice sounded smooth and clear, even with the accent coming through. Her lips seemed to have no blush on them. They looked too pale. “I didn’t see you there today. Did you oversleep again?” Miette asked in a tone more concerned than accusatory. It was the first class of the day, and one of Carina’s least favorite classes because it wasn’t in her music concentration. Miette's presence in the class motivated her to attend.
“I did. I was up all night casting spells again.” Carina heard her voice sounded like she wasn’t all there. Miette nodded.
“Can I hear the magic soon?”
“Soon, but it needs some more work first. I think I’m getting closer to the chorus, though.” Carina said. Miette nodded.
“Oh, guess what happened today!” Miette said, her hands flexing in front of her as if startled. When they flexed, Carina could see all the delicate bones in them through flesh. Carina nodded her head to the side. “That guy, Fabian…you know the cute black guy? The one who is in my concentration that I’ve talked to a few times?”
Carina knew about him. She nodded, but the pit of her stomach felt cold.
“He asked me to come hang out with him at like six today,” Miette said as if she had not expected this to happen. But Carina did. She had seen the kid staring at them. She didn’t get a terrible vibration from him like she did some people, but his interest in Miette made her uncomfortable. Secretly, Carina did not want Miette to pay attention to anyone but her. Carina felt scared…she figured a boyfriend might overtake her as Miette’s most important person, even as close as they were. She felt jealousy spike up in her.
“Why?” Carina spoke to keep the conversation going. But she was certain she knew why. Men usually had one goal, but her therapist had told her this wasn't the case with everyone. The only good man she'd ever known was Drake, her foster father. In her experience, men only wanted what they could consume sex, housework, admiration, and control. Men always took from women and were wasteful. Carina tried to tell herself that one day she would find someone who might change this opinion for her. Some men were nice to look at, and she could even imagine enjoying touching one. But she would never allow one to consume her.
“He said he found some weird stuff on the server.” The words interrupted Carina’s thoughts.
“The server keeps the files, right?” She wanted Mi to teach her. She knew Miette would never be cruel to her for things she didn’t know.
“Yes, well…It’s kind of like a brain” Miette then launched into a long explanation of servers and networks and how the clients and servers worked together.
“What kind of weird stuff?” Carina asked after Miette was done with her explanation.
“I don’t know…but I’ve found some, um…odd things, too.” Her eyes looked far away for just a moment. “Like emails talking about weird shit that almost seems like a code. I knew I shouldn’t sneak around in the school’s stuff, but that’s kind of what I do…I sort of can’t help it.” Miette looked anxious. Carina felt no surprise. Miette had told her a few stories about how she was kind of, well…was a hacker. She often sometimes talked over Carina’s head but usually tried to keep it on a level Carina could understand.
“What do you think the emails are about?”
“I don’t know, they keep mentioning religious-looking stuff, and the words ‘The Blessed’ come up a lot. It seems like they are watching us all a lot…you have seen how many cameras there are everywhere, right?” Her deep eyes were far away again. She had turned herself still cross-legged to face Carina. She took off the jacket of their uniform and loosened the black and red plaid tie.
“The Blessed?”
“Yeah, I don’t know. Must be some sort of code word. I’m going to keep reading these emails. I’m also trying to get into some computers of important people here, you know…for clues?”
“This sounds weird, ” Carina didn’t know what else to say.
“Yeah, I’m going to see what Fabian has found, and if it’s interesting, I might trade information with him. My curiosity is piqued enough to at least see what he has to say. He’s really smart, the only one who has beaten me on homework problems…he writes code so well, he thinks of elegant ways to solve problems…” her voice trailed off.
“I doubt he’s as smart as you.” Carina heard an edge to her voice.
“No, see, that’s the problem…I think he may be better than me…” Then Miette showed all her teeth, which were mostly straight except for two slightly crooked and sharp-looking canines. Her smile was still somehow charming. “And it’s really fucking irritating.” These words made Carina’s muscles relax. She was glad that she was still most likely in stronger standing than Fabian was. Carina remembered something then.
“You know I’ve heard some things too…now that I think about it.” Miette was quiet and waited for her to go on. “Like that asshole Nicolas…you know the one who is constantly trying to sleep with everything with a heartbeat…he said something about Kelvin, you know the guy from England. He called him ‘one of those blessed kids’” Carina had not thought much of it. There was a very obvious division at Patton Academy. Most of the student body consisted of spoiled rich kids. Carina found most of them annoying as hell, but she never let them boss her around. Most had become scared of her in the first few weeks, even the boys. But the other part of the student body were students like her, students that were naturally talented in something like she was with music. Miette also fell into this category. Her parents were semi-wealthy as well, but Miette was at the school because of her skill with every aspect of computers. There were about twenty students in the school who were gifted like this in some form. Most of them, like Carina and Miette, received a large scholarship to entice them to come to the school. Carina figured out early on that the rich kids resented people like her being at the school. They looked at her as if she was a piece of trash floating through their path. She hated them all. But Nicolas was by far the worst, and she took special joy in harassing and intimidating him.
“I mean, I guess it could be a coincidence he said that…” Miette paused for a second, “But I’ll keep it in mind.” She exhaled a small sigh. Then her eyes widened. “Wait, why did you say ‘guy’ so weird when you were talking about Kelvin?”
“Oh, you don’t know? He was or…. is a girl.” Carina mused. She wondered how Miette had not heard of this. Since Kelvin's arrival, it had been a popular topic of gossip for a month. Even though Carina had no friends other than Miette, she listened well…paid attention to what people were saying. She always had to take care of herself, every foster home, every new school. She found it best to know as much as she could about everyone around her. She never knew who her potential enemies could be or become. Knowing as much as she could about the ins and outs of the places she had been forced to inhabit had never not been useful.
“Wow… I had no idea! Honestly…that’s pretty cool. I admire him for being who he wants to be, and like, not letting even how he was born…you know, not letting anything force him into being someone else,” Miette brought her knees to her chest, hugging herself. Carina smiled. This was an example of the reason Miette could never be the enemy. She was just too good, too pure.
*****
One week since his arrival at Patton Academy, Sean had already settled in. He even made a friend. A small ginger-haired pale girl with dark brown freckles, named Agnes, approached him after one of the Bible study hours the school had. He hoped there would be many students in the bible study to befriend, but most of the Bible group comprised the help that worked at the school. Save two girls, Agnes and her friend Sachiko. Agnes came up to him that day after closing prayer and reached out a small hand to him.
“You are Sean, right? Just came here a few days ago?” He reached out and shook her hand. “I’m Agnes. Here’s a copy of the study guide this group will follow for the next two months. During Christmas season we will meet an extra day in order to study all of Matthew and Luke.” He had nodded. In the few weeks he had known her, she’d become like a little sister to him. He also got to know the people who worked at the school who attended the group and those that he worked with around campus when he did odd jobs. As promised, he made enough from cooking, cleaning, and assisting professors to send home. He also tried his best to stay on top of the homework assigned and he loved his art concentration hours. There were a few other kids in the art concentration, but they all seemed to dismiss him. He thought it very rude at best, and evil at worst. He knew they didn’t like him because he wasn’t “of their class” but he thought of Timothy 6:10, and every time they hassled him about having to work in the kitchens or clean up public bathrooms he repeated in his mind, ‘Some people, eager for money, have wandered from the faith and pierced themselves with many griefs.’ He knew these people couldn’t sleep well or like themselves or know the lord if they would treat someone who had never wronged them in such a way. But the negative energy was taxing.
He spent his free time painting. He had been presented with a full painting kit with over 100 tubes of quality oil paint, cold wax, a few painting knives, thirty high-quality brushes in varying shapes and sizes, painting smocks to protect his uniform and anything else he would ever need to create. Canvas and wood were in unlimited supply in the painting lab so he could make all the canvases he wanted in any shape, as large as he could dream of. The supplies appeared in the main painting room with a small card on top with his name on it two days after he arrived at the school. He felt like it was all too fine for him, but he thought to himself it was all just to better honor God through his art. He had even found the classwork to be fun and an interesting exercise. There were many assignments to paint and design normal packaging for fake products. It was a challenge, but to his surprise, his designs began to get the top marks of the class. He also was charged to continue his normal painting in his spare time with the promise they would be entered into juried shows and possibly people would purchase them. He felt amazement that he could do what he liked and still help his family back home. A month after he started at Patton Academy, Miss Andrews his art instructor informed him a church in Louisiana wanted to one of his paintings. She told him they were offering over five thousand dollars for it, and he almost swallowed his own tongue.
So even though the other students were very cruel, mean or just ignored him, he had settled into his new life. Every night he thanked god for giving him so much with his hands grasped so hard it hurt.
He was walking to get a hot tea from the kitchen to drink while working in his room on a smaller piece, and he was walking down the Dorm hallway when he saw someone unusual in the hallway. It was the girl from his English class, Miette, the Jewish one from Canada. He had never spoken to her, but he had noticed her. He felt weird about it, but he thought she was quite beautiful. She differed greatly from his crush Silvia back home. She was dark and had golden skin and eyes so dark he could almost see himself in them. They were almost like a black mirror. They reflected back parts of Sean he didn’t like to see. He had never spoken to her, but he told himself he probably never would because there was nothing to say. When she spoke, her accent was strong, which made him feel kin to her in a certain way because his southern accent stuck out at this school, even though there were some international students who had more exotic accents. But still, he knew her French accent fit in more than his Southern accent at the school. He had tried not to pay much attention to her after the first dream but he snuck glances at her when he could and paid attention to her answers in English class. The way she dressed on the weekends outside of wearing the school uniform had told him she differed from him in a deep way. He tried to forget about it and focus on his studies, but seeing her in the hallway was unusual. He had never seen her in the men’s dorm before. There was no rule against visiting the opposite sex dorm or even another person’s private room, and he knew some students had sex in the after-hours. He had seen girls in the hall from time to time, but never her before.
“Hey,” she gave a little wave and a smile as she passed him. Sean smiled back. He hoped she wasn’t just being cheap and had an actual purpose there. He saw her stop and stare at the numbered room near her. He decided it was none of his business and kept walking. But he couldn’t help but look back over his shoulder after he went a few feet. She was at the kid from their mutual literature class, Fabian’s room. Sean cursed in his mind.