Art By Night {Kiana}

[Isabelle Leynette R3]

The modern street lights where replacing the bright sun as it began to set. They lit Apple Blossom Boulevard rather nicely. Apple Blossom Boulevard was in fact like any other street in London. Yet two things made this street very unique. One being that it was always strangely empty. There wasn’t a soul in sight except perhaps for a stray cat that looked pretty beat up and a few mice. And the other was the teenage kids that would miraculously appear at exactly eight in the evening as if by magic. If one was paying attention they would swear the teens would exit from one of the boarded up buildings that resided on Apple Blossom, but no one really paid attention. Most people didn’t know Apple Blossom Boulevard even existed. They seemed to be doing exceptionally well without it. They walked by it everyday and didn’t even bother to look its way. As previously stated the street was almost always empty, except on Friday evenings. Tonight was Friday and it was almost eight. And as if by magic the quiet street bursted with noise and activity as the students exited they’re art class. Isabelle was the last student out the door. The lady in the doorway smelt of paint and dust, so did they building she worked in. This very lady was chatting with Belle about next week’s lesson. “So next week we’ll try something somewhat different. Maybe watercolors ...” She trailed off as she drifted off into her own thoughts. Probably about her favourite watercolour paintings and masterpieces. “So I’ll leave my things here.” Isabelle prompted her art teacher who came back to reality with a jump. “Oh please do.” She said without skipping a beat. “I want to look at the rest of your work. Good-bye now.” She said smiling before closing the door. As she did so Belle looked around the street. They were all gone. The street was empty once more except for her. It was chilly and quite. She bite her lip as a shiver ran down her small back. She stood in one spot for the next few minutes before she to walk into one of the other streets of London making Apple Blossom Boulevard seem like it didn’t even exist.

She was wandering aimlessly. She would admit that. The people who walked past her wouldn’t think so. She looked very comfortable in skinny jeans, a stripped tee with a cropped jacket, and her walk. She walked with purpose, with importance. She wasn’t one to look like she had nothing to do, and nowhere to go. It was too early to return home and she wanted to do something. As she walked less people began to get in her way. The all seemed to be heading in one direction some club. They all seemed very excited. She wasn’t, she walked right on by until she reached the art museum. It would be open for one more hour, enough time for her to wander around until she found one she really liked. This was one of her favourite things to do. She loved it. She came to the front desk and showed her pass before she went in. She took it all in. The cold air surrounding her, the smell of things old and expensive, and the walls of endless white spotted with colours from the many paintings, and the feel of excitement in the depths of her stomach. She walked around stopping only once in awhile to read about a painting or to study it. Some of the paintings where modern, while other where slightly older and more traditional. She liked them. All of them. It made her very happy to see some works acknowledged, she vowed her work would one day too hang in these hallow halls.

She smiled at the thought. Until she bumped into something. Terror seized her chest. She had walked into one of the vases or something. Wait, where was the crash? There wasn’t one she had walked into someone instead of something. She knew her face showed her shock and terror. She was caught off guard and this wasn't good for her. She liked to be prepared for everything.

[Kia Brightstar]

It would be a mistake to go to London. Kia had known that even before she had started to beg Adam to let her go. It had taken one very good question from her dear cousin to make her stop, shut up and think it over. She knew why she wanted to go to London but it was such a tangle of thoughts, emotions and simple nostalgia that it was hard to convey in words. Words just didn't have the elegance to tell Adam what drove her need to go to London. After five or so minutes of pondering the question and her wordless answer to it, she had grabbed his sleeve to draw his attention - trust her cousin to get distracted while he was waiting for her to sort her feelings out in her own mind! - and just looked at him, silently pleading with him to understand what she couldn't put into words. Something in her gaze must have shown him something that he himself needed to see because he had given her full permission and hadn't even given her a time to be back by. She hadn't gone to London first thing in the morning though, even though that was when she had gotten permission for her venture. She had wandered around Liverpool for a while before ending up at her destination, without even realising it.

Serenity Harper, her gymnastics teacher, had long ago given Kia her address and an invitation into her home. The patient yet demanding woman had become, over time, like a second mother to her and it was Serenity that Kia ran to when she had nowhere else to turn. Well, at one point she had. Now she relied on Maryn and Ciaran and Adam more than anyone else but she was taking a trip back into her memories of the past and so it seemed only right that she stopped outside the house of her favourite teacher for a few moments, sunlight making her hair glow golden, before turning on her heel and walking away without looking back. The lights were off and there was no one in the house. She had known that that would be the case even before she had made her way there. After all, more young people had time to devote to gymnastics during the summer. Only last summer, Kia had been helping out in the beginner classes, only having ten minutes to rest before her own class began. It had been tiring, more so than anything she had ever done before, but exhillarating because she had found something that she could do for the rest of her life. As a child art had been her hobby but now, as a teenager, gymnastics was her passion and nothing could change that for her.

London had been the place that Kia had taken her little sister to when Kaelyn had turned eight. Not for the first time though. They had often been to London before because Kae had adored one of the playgrounds found there and Kia had enough control over Adam to get him to take them there whenever he could just because seeing Kae having fun had been fun for her. And how many secrets had she shared with her cousin then, sitting on a bench at the edge of a playground as they watched Kae play with children both older and younger than herself? Would she really know so much about Adam if they hadn't found that playground that her little sister loved so much? That wasn't where she was headed though. For her eighth birthday Kia had taken her younger sister to an art museum. Teaching Kae to respect art in all forms had been easy once she had gotten the hang of it; it was making it fun for the girl that had been hard at first. When she had been younger it had been her dream to see some of her paintings hanging in an art gallery, for all to see and admire. But she hadn't been good enough and she had realised it quickly. Art was her sisters interest, not hers. Not anymore.

Kia gasped when she saw a girl heading straight for her, noticing her but not in time for her to step aside and avoid the collision. It was half her fault too and so Kia opened her mouth to apologise, knowing that she had been caught up in memories and not paying attention to anyone around her, but closed her mouth in surprise when she saw the terror on the girls face. "It's alright," Kia murmured soothingly, guiding the girl to a nearby seat smoothly as her older sister instincts kicked in. For a minute, it was Kae's terror she saw, not this mysterious girls, and so she knelt in front of her and tilted her head with interest, speaking in a gentle tone. "I don't bite, you know. It's not your fault that I walked into you because I wasn't paying attention."

[Isabelle Leynette R3]

When she had walked into the person she felt an unusual feeling of falling. She wasn’t really falling. It felt like it though. Maybe she was falling in her mind. Suddenly her head was spinning. Clouding with emotions and memories. She normal felt overwhelmed after a session. She worked hard to keep all these emotions and memories in tact and not consume her life like it did after her class. But art left her vulnerable. She had so much built up inside her, not enough time to let it all out though. That was the sad part. She only had and hour and half to vent into her paintings. It was always like that. But her feelings where ready. There in the open she couldn’t control them all. They weren’t dogs; she couldn’t tell them to heel or sit. She lost control on evenings like this. She let them all pour out into her paintings as if a dam inside her broke. The hour and a half was long gone and she knew she was stuck. She wasn’t sure what emotions she was feeling. Defiantly anger and resentment towards her mother, but this was usual. Confusion on what was going on in her life. Sadness towards not seeing her grandparents all summer. Happiness because she would see them very soon. It was all swirling around her. Making feel sick and woozy. The memories didn’t help much either. They mixed with each other, and the emotions. She was on the brink of letting it all out. Walking into someone was just the icing on the cake. It was if her emotions where sitting there, but now they had caught fire. They where ready to explode out of her.

The only memory that kept coming back time and again was the one of the day she left her grandparents. She had felt overwhelmed that day as well. Tears where streaming down her face, but she knew she had to remain brave. She wouldn’t, or couldn’t act like a child. She was somewhat curious about her mother, the person she was now going to spend her time with. She didn’t want to, but she was. She was standing on the porch with her grandparents waiting for her mother, and she already missed them. She remembered crying all the way to her new house. The house in fact was another memory that consumed her. It was too big and quite. It felt dead. Not that most houses felt alive; it just felt like there was no life in the house. She later told her grandparents the house was empty and lifeless. She too felt empty and lifeless for a whole year. There was a lot of fighting and tears that year as well. It was too much for a child, but she handled it, she would handle things in time to come.

Her eyes had been closed. Now they where open. Her head stopped spinning to the sound of the girl’s voice. The girl spoke as if Belle was a child. She was not going to be treated like a child. She had never been treated like a child. She did not intend to start now. Her shock and terror, along with her other emotions had disappeared when the person she walked into began to try to sooth her in a voice Belle used on her little brother when he was crying. It made her feel angry to be treated as if she was her brother. He was merely a baby; she was a girl of thirteen. She then was led to an empty bench. They where all empty, but this was the closest to them. She sat down. Her head was pounding in her ears still filled with the emotions. She wished they had disappeared altogether. They just seemed to dim a tad. The air was now to cold and she couldn’t stand it. She felt on the edge. Her sense where always like this after one of her art classes. She smiled when the girl told her she didn’t bite and told her it was her fault. As per usual her mind was stuck in art for the day. “Did you know most artists are left-handed?” She asked the girl softly. She herself was right-handed. This had always bothered her. She looked at the girl and smiled. She probably seemed pretty weird or difficult. She couldn’t help it. Her mind was racing a thousand miles a minute. She couldn’t calm down. She probably seemed content like nothing was wrong, just a not there. And she wanted to leave it at that. She wasn’t sure how much more she could and would take.