Growing up: 1
Zuko
It wasn't Harvard, which is why my dad was pissed, but it was college, at least I made it that far. Looking out the window seemed to ease the tension between my father and me. I didn't expect him to talk to me but I didn't think it would last this long. I had been accepted to the University of Fine Arts in Gaoling; much to my father's dismay. It's been a dream of mine to go there but my dad; again, disapproved saying my art was nothing but a stupid hobby. I wanted so badly to prove him wrong and get back at him by starting to apply early and quickly got accepted due to my portfolio. My cousin Lu Ten wanted to go to UFA but uncle Iroh sent him off to train for war. Uncle Iroh was a strict man back then. He had been drafted in his early days and war sort of stuck to him. He grew a liking to the job and insisted on making his son follow his foot steps. Sadly cousin died in the war and put uncle into a deep depression. He still blames himself for making Lu Ten join the military. His tea shop seems to be taking his mind off of things so that's why we (as in me and my mom) encouraged him to continue with it.
"Zuko." My hand muffled the 'humff' I gave him. This was the first he's talked to me through the entire plane and car ride.
"Move your hand away from your face when I'm talking to you boy." I huffed, but, did what I was told and moved my hand slouching more in my seat. We passed a sign; UFA Exit 21, 10 miles. We were almost there so he wanted to get something off his chest.
"You know I disapprove of this school." I gave him a hum.
"Words Zuko."
"Yes, father I know you disapprove." He gripped the wheel at my sarcasm.
"Who should be going to-
-Harvard like your sister." We said together. He shot a deadly glare at me but I shook it off and signaled him to pay attention to the rode.
"I know, you've said it a thousand times a-
"And I'll say it a thousands times more." I just looked at him using all the strength in my body not to glare at him.
"I'm sorry I didn't turn out like Azula." Turning my head, I went back to looking out the window, waiting for the car ride to be over. Conversations with my dad are always the ones I dread.
We neared the entrance of the school and sat in a brief traffic before finally getting on campus. We headed straight for the dormitory part of the campus to check in and get all this luggage into my temporary home. We drove around looking for the tables labeled last name O. I hope finding a parking spot in the future won't be as hard as it was now because it sure was hell finding this one.
After the hassle of standing in line, checking in, getting my room key, getting all my stuff out of the car, finding my room, you know all that fun stuff, I finally sat on my new bed and sighed. Never thought just moving in my dorm would be this much work, especially since dad didn't do much.
"Looks like this is it." Sometimes I wondered if my dad would ever miss me. He never did pay much attention to me at home so I thought nothing would change, but, looking at his face now…
"You better do well at this school. No son of mine will be second best, you hear me." I sighed and nodded.
"Your car should be on its way." Then he left me here all alone with no good bye. Might as well start unpacking, I always did like my things to be neat and tidy. I was definitely excited about touring the school. I looked at my watch: 2:17. The pamphlet said the next tour would be at 2:30 so I had just enough time to settle in and get going.
"Knock, knock." I turned around to see a kid in the door way wearing a lose green jacket and a simple white t-shirt underneath with jeans and a pair of goggles on his head with two bags at his side. I smiled at my new roommate.
"Roommate?" I asked pointing to him. He nodded.
"They one and only." I walked over to him to help him with his stuff. In that entire five minutes of officially being roommates I learned a lot about him. His name was Teo Chi and he was studying computer graphics. He was an artist like me, only on the computer. His dad is an engineer who sometimes even uses his designs on future projects. I thought that was pretty cool. Father son bonding wasn't something we had in common though.
A loud banging in the hallway stopped our conversation. We headed outside towards all the commotion and saw the tour guides about to start showing us around. Teo and I left our room to join the group that would be touring and let me tell you, the school was beautiful! Our first stop was more performing arts as in dancing and acting and so on. A few of the guys in our tour group got a kick out of the ballerinas stretching. All the girls did was laugh at the 'idiotism' and 'immaturity' of the freshmen. As we moved along we heard a more upbeat hip hop tune blasting from one room. There was a huge window outside of this room, showing the hip hop dancers practicing. The instructor was a petite woman with baggy clothes and short black hair. She could really 'bust a move' on that dance floor though. The poor students just couldn't keep up. Not to far away there was an acting class going on. Seemed like one of the students had just written the play and the actors were just acting out the parts all wrong. The poor kid was loosing his mind because of the poor actors.
The next section of the school was where I would definitely be spending all of my time; the artsy part of school. You could see smocks and easels, paint and paintbrushes, models and sculpting as far as thy eye can see. It was just breathtaking how much art was just in one small part of the school. We walked past some upper classmen showing off their work by swaying their arms as their brushes glided across the canvas. A little smug expressions here and there from a few sculptors and finally a snort and a laugh from a few jerks painting, immaturely I might add, a naked women. Go figure.
"Looks like your kind of thing, huh Zuko." My attention snapped to Teo as he bumped my arm. I shrugged.
"Not so much sculpting, but those canvas' look so tempting." He snickered and I smiled.
The next part of the school was more Teo's type with hand drawn 'blueprints' of huge skyscrapers and buildings and streets and roads, it was unbelievable. One girl had a huge desk with a wonderful looking city drawn on the paper in front of her. It must've taken her days to get up to where she was now. The freshman in my group, especially Teo, looked in awe at her city. She looked up and smiled.
"I call it 'Grande Ville'."
"Big city." Teo whispered slightly to himself and me. "French." He added. I nodded. Impressive.
Not to far away (literally on the other side of this wall) was another type of hand drawn art. The walls were covered in pictures of cartoons, superheroes, caricatures you name it. Now here was something very interesting. I myself once thought of choosing to study in this kind of art. In my younger days, like eight, I would draw poor sketches of superheroes that I just made up. When my Uncle bought me my first comic book that's when I, at first, decided to be a comic book artist when I grew up. But as I got older I started to admire the more classic yet modern mature art that I'm into now. We passed one table with a cover to a comic book that had just been printed. One kid went to pick it up when the artist almost chopped his hand off for touching his stuff. If there's something I learned from being an artiest, it's that no artist and I mean no one likes for you to put your grimy little hands on there hard work. And living with Azula for the first eighteen years of my life really had me crazy about that.
The last and final part of the school was just pure awesome. You could hear it from a mile away. If you ever got lost just listen for this sound and you would know you were close to the band rooms. From classical to modern, music was heard everywhere. I've always been a huge fan of music the only problem was that I was a poor musician. I had tried the most basic of all instruments; guitar. It lasted a week and I would just complain, complain, complain about my fingers hurting from holding down the strings. So I put guitar aside and tried another basic, piano. I've heard a lot of beautiful piano pieces and I was so eager to try this one. I gave up the next day. Just because it was hard to play two different patterns with my left and right hand, I thought I would never be able to play. Mom encouraged me to keep trying and practice harder but I was a grumpy little boy who wanted life to be easy and we all know that's never going to happen. That's when I started drawing cartoons and you know the story.
We passed by a few rooms and concert halls with instruments set up but no one was in them.
"What are these empty rooms for?"
"Those rooms are for any musicians who would like to practice on their own time. They've recently been added to this wing of the school actually." These 'practice rooms' were quit content with sound proof walls and a few stools and stands in them.
After our tour, our tour guides left us to fend for our selves and find our own way back to our rooms. Teo and I decided to get some late lunch off campus.
"I knew this school would be awesome but not this awesome!" Teo exclaimed on the way to his car. "This is going to be great!" I had to agree with him 110%. This school was amazing. I mean the amount of talent in one place astounds me. I wonder why my dad never liked this place. Oh I know. He's a no talented stick in the mud who survives on a large income just because of his background and family business and doesn't really need to do anything to survive. Yeah that's it, now I remember. But of course I would never say that to his face.
Teo's car was a nice green jeep with a black top and no doors actually. I sorta liked it. He played the corniest songs ever and danced in his seat while banging along to the beat on the steering wheel.
"You having fun there?" He stopped and looked at me almost forgetting I was in the car. I laughed
"I'm kidding." He shook his head.
"I think we're gonna have a swell friendship Zuko, don't you?"
"I sure do." The moment we started talking I knew we would be best buds. Just his attitude alone makes anyone want to just laugh and have a good time. It's funny, I never really had a best bud before.
XXX
We got back from lunch around 4 and just finished unpacking all of our crap onto our sides of the room. This took at least an hour and Teo was already hungry again.
"Let's say we take a break and check out the vending machines in the lobby." I agreed to his devious plan of raiding the lobby for candy and went with him. The lobby was quiet and not many people were around except for the group of freshmen scattering to their rooms like we did. Teo put a dollar in the machine, punched in the numbers and frowned when his candy bar didn't come out. He growled and kicked the machine.
"You know for an amazing school they have not so amazing vending machines."
"Hey if you're going to spend your money might as well spend it on quality tools for the students here. You know like easels, brushes, canvas', instruments, paper, music stands, micro-
"Ok, ok I get it mister obvious." I chuckled leaning against the wall with one hand in my pocket and the other pulling my fedora a little down to shade my face. Teo continued to kick the machine until a little voice screamed-
"Hey! What do you think you're doing?" Teo immediately stopped and turned around to see where the voice came from. I almost burst out laughing at the little pipsqueak standing in front of us. She had black hair pulled into a bun with a head band and a 'cute' little yellow sundress on. Teo and I looked at each other but couldn't hold it in much longer. We burst out laughing holding our sides and at how much it hurt to laugh. Was the little kid really telling us what to do? This sure made my day.
"Why don't you run along little girl we can handle this candy bar malfunction." Teo said whipping the tears form his eyes.
"Little girl? I'm thirteen!" This just made us laugh even harder. She growled with her hands in fists.
"Don't blame me my parents made me wear this stupid dress!" Again we laughed even harder this time I literally fell to the ground just making steam blow from her ears. I felt my arm being pulled back a not so comfortable angle which shut me up fast. My laughter turned into begging the little girl to stop.
"Do you know who you're talking to kid? The names Toph Bei Fong and as long as you go to this school I practically own you so shut up and stop laughing at me." The name Bei Fong rang in my ears. They were the wealthiest family in Gaoling, they practically owned it. They donated tons of money to the school, since Mr. Gaoling attended here for art. I've seen most of his work which is astounding but I know for a fact that he has a somewhat close business wise relationship with my father. Once when I was ten he and his family came over to discus grown up stuff while I played with his daughter…Toph!
"Toph." I said between grunts. "Toph don't you remember me? We were little and you came over to play with me and Azula, my sister. You guys would play with barbies then rip their hair out. Then you two came in my room and trashed the place." She stopped pulling and thought. I got up and dusted my self off.
"You were only five at the time so you might not-
"Oh I remember all right. I just can't believe it took me this long to remember you."
"I think we should head back to our rooms now." Teo said awkwardly. I waved goodbye to Toph and followed Teo with his candy bar that he some how managed to get out of the vending machine.
XXX
After a while of reading, watching TV and sketching things with Teo, he finally crashed and went right to sleep, snoring and all. I on the other hand, couldn't sleep at all. I tried to draw some more to pass the time but t didn't really help. So I put on a jacket and ventured into the halls of the schools, giving my self a personal re-tour. I followed the exact same steps we used during the real tour when I heard that sound; the sound of the band room. Except it wasn't a band playing, but a lone cello playing a sweet but sad sounding yet relaxing tune.
Walking towards the sound, I found my self entering a grand concert hall with just the stage lights on and a girl sitting alone on stage with a cello. The sound that came out of that instrument was just so beautiful and relaxing I could sit there all night and just listen to her play. So that's exactly what I did. I took a seat in the top row so she wouldn't see me and just listened. I closed my eyes drifted off to the sound of her music. I drifted off a little too much and fell out of the chair making a loud thud. She stopped playing got up and just left.
"Wait!" I ran up to the stage, climbed up the stairs and ran to the back where she went off to but I she was know where in sight.
Humm, maybe I won't spend most of my time in the art room.