Originally posted on my tumblr.
Raivis misses his first day of high school because he throws up on his shoes when the bus pulls up at his house. He tries again the next day, and manages to make it into the building without feeling nauseous, but then he loses his map and is late to his first period class and the day just goes downhill from there. At lunch, he ends up sitting by himself in the boys bathroom but is too nervous to eat, so he just pretends he's a successful human being instead. In German, he bumps into a classmate, tries to apologize in two different languages and somehow ends up saying 'bite me' instead.
By the time he makes it to Art I, his last class of the day, he is too exhausted and too close to tears to care that he stumbles into the room six minutes after the bell. The teacher, who looks like he's maybe eighteen, ushers into a seat and hands him a piece of paper and a pencil and a ruler looking thing and five hundred other things that Raivis has never seen before in his life, and asks his tablemates to explain the assignment to him.
He glances up at the three other people occupying the table. One guy at the end has his hoodie pulled over his face and is apparently sleeping. The other guy stares forlornly at the scribbles on his paper.
"We're drawing fruit," the girl says quietly. Raivis glances across the table at her, then to the apple sitting in the center.
"Okay," he says. Why the hell is he in an art class.
"I'm Mei, by the way," she says, still watching him. "I'm a freshman."
"Oh, me too. And I'm Raivis."
"Cool name."
"Uh, thanks. You too."
Mei goes back to her drawing, which looks pretty good compared to what the other guy is doing. Raivis picks up his pencil and tries to make an attempt that is at least halfway decent, but he ends up staring at the apple for most of the period. The teacher- Mr. Vargas, he's told- floats by near the end of the class and moves Raivis' hand like it's a puppet, and hey, that curve didn't turn out too bad, but then he tries to do it without any help and gives up.
"Ludwig, you're pressing too hard," Mr. Vargas says as he moves to the other side of the table. "Try to loosen up." Raivis and Mei watch as Ludwig nearly breaks out into a sweat when Mr. Vargas tries to show him what to do. "Did you guys meet Ludwig already? He's a senior, and he needs a fine arts credit to graduate, so I told him I'd go easy on him, but I think he's taking that a little too literally!"
"Do you like know Mr. Vargas or something?" Mei asks once the teacher is out of hearing. "He got, uh, kind of uncomfortably close to you there."
"I'm in art club," Ludwig mutters, knuckles whitening as the grip on his mechanical pencil tightens.
Raivis frowns. "Why are you in art club if you can't draw?" he asks, finding the courage within himself to speak to an upperclassman.
Ludwig doesn't answer, so Mei rolls her eyes and goes back to her apple.
"How can it be time for grades already?" Mei exclaims when Raivis sits down. They're a few weeks into the school year, and so far Raivis has not been hung by his underwear from the flagpole, so he thinks he's doing pretty good. Except he has a C in physics, but no one's really surprised by that. "I swear, school just started like yesterday, and now it's halfway through the first semester? How did that happen?"
Raivis concentrates on his work. "Pointillism is hard," he mutters, eyebrows furrowed in despair. Mei shakes her head.
"It's called stippling," she says, pulling her long hair back into a bun. Once it's secure, she grabs her pen and bends low over the page to work. "Pointillism is with paint."
"I thought stippling was only black and white," Ludwig interrupts, looking even more thoroughly confused than usual. "We're using color."
Mei shrugs. "It's an art I class."
They continue in silence for a moment, each one of them pressing dots to paper, some of them pressing maybe a little too hard, before Raivis clears and his throat and quietly speaks. "That guy isn't here today," he says, gesturing to the seat diagonal from himself. Mei glances to her left.
"I'm surprised," she says. "This is the first day he's missed. I mean, not like he does anything when he's here, but…"
"He got suspended," Ludwig adds, still concentrating way too hard on his drawing.
"Oh, really?" Mei asks. "What stupid thing did he do?"
Ludwig sits up straight, biting his lip, then clears his throat. "He uh… he brought his cat to school."
Raivis and Mei stare at him. "He did what?" Mei exclaims after a confused moment. Ludwig goes back to his drawing.
"Yeah, I don't know why. But that's what I heard."
Mei looks really put out by this new information. "I thought it was gonna be weed or something." She glances at Raivis, then shrugs and returns to her stippling. "Weird. People are weird."
The week before winter break, Raivis stumbles into the art room, still shaking from the 5-10 minute presentation on The Lord of the Flies that he was forced to give in English the period before, and stops dead when he sees that the mysterious fourth member of their table has returned.
"I'm back, everybody," he says when he sees Raivis staring at him. Ludwig glances across at him, sparing a precious second from his college essay revisions to make a snarky comment.
"I don't think we've ever seen your face before," he says blankly. The guy shrugs, throws his hood up over his head and shoves his hands into his pockets.
"Well," he says. "you're seeing it now."
Mei moves her t-square to make room for Raivis to put down his bag. "Can we at least know your name? You sat at this table for like two months and never did anything other than sleep."
The guy gives her a lazy smile. "Heracles."
Mei blinks. "Excuse me."
"I said, my name is Heracles."
Raivis is about to ask what kind of name that is, but then he remembers that his own name is Raivis, so he stops.
"But if I could change my name," Heracles continues, making Mei furrow her brow even more, "I think I'd like to be Shale, or Cloud. Or maybe Godtiger."
"So are you perpetually high or are you just like this?" Mei asks.
"Well, probably a little bit of both."
Raivis spends his winter break on the computer. He reads A Christmas Carol for English, tries to finish a painting for art and fails miserably, gets a few texts from people but is too much of a horrible/nervous/lazy person to answer them. He writes a few poems that he considers taking back to school for the next Creative Writing Club meeting, but he deletes them and plays the Sims instead.
"Hey, you can sing, can't you?" Mei asks one day in art. It's January, their first week back from winter break, and they're painting in complementary colors.
Raivis bites his lip. "Um, I guess, yeah. I mean, I'm in chorus…"
"You're in writing club too, right? Are you just good at everything or what?"
"Well, I'm not very good at art," he says, staring miserably at his pathetic attempt for a flower. "Or writing. Or math."
Mei washes her brush in the water cup. "No one's very good at math."
"Ludwig got an 800 on the math section of the SAT," Heracles adds from the other side of the table. Mei drops her brush.
"What the hell?" she exclaims. "Sorry, Mr. Vargas. But did anybody else not know that this kid is a genius?"
Ludwig keeps reading his book. "I'm not a genius," he says, though his cheeks are slowly growing pink.
"Whatever," Mei huffs, turning back to Raivis. "God, why can't I be good at math? I am Asian, isn't that enough?"
Raivis coughs. "So um, you asked me if I can sing?"
She nods. "Right. I do costumes for drama club and we need a lot of guys to audition for the spring musical this year- I mean, we always need guys, but for this show we need a lot more guys than usual, we're probably going to end up cross casting half the show."
"I can't dance," Raivis says immediately. "Or act. And I'm really not that good of a singer."
"That's okay, you can just be in the ensemble. Just please audition. It's a high school production, no one's really expecting it to be that good."
Raivis lets water drip onto his painting. "Eh. I'll do it if I don't have to audition."
Mei frowns. "What? You have to audition."
"No, I can't. I had to give a presentation in German the other day and I passed out. And I didn't even have to speak in German."
"Ludwig speaks German too," Heracles adds.
"Go away, Godtiger!" Mei exclaims. "We all know how much of a genius Ludwig is now, okay?"
"I'm really not-"
"Shut up, Ludwig."
Raivis glances sideways. "You're just gonna let a freshman talk to you like that?"
"You too, shorty."
"Sorry, Mei."
Raivis doesn't audition for the musical but it doesn't matter because it's a high school theatre department and they're always short on guys, so the director lets him into the ensemble without a fuss. He's kind of happy for a moment that he's going to be involved in something like this. Chorus is fun and creative writing club can be interesting, but from what Mei tells him, the theatre department is really a family. Maybe he'll finally have friends.
Then he finds out that the musical they're doing is something called Cats and that Heracles Cloud Godtiger is playing one of the leads.
"Am I the only one here not obsessed with cats?" Ludwig exclaims one day in March. He's been doing that a lot lately, Raivis has noticed: exclaiming things. College acceptance letters must be going out soon.
"It's the musical, dumbass," Mei snaps. She's been on edge too. Turns out cat costumes are a lot harder to make than anyone cared to think about. "You'd have that song stuck in your head too if you had to listen to it for hours on end."
Raivis tries to form his clay into a reasonable looking bowl. "You're not the one who has to sing it."
"Yeah, well whose idea was it for you to be in the musical, huh?"
"Yours."
"Oh, right. Sorry."
Ludwig gives up trying to make pottery. "So is there a reason that the set looks like a junkyard?"
Mei glances up from her perfectly proportioned vase. "You've been in to see the set?"
"Well, I'm in art club. We're the ones building your set."
"They let you paint?" Raivis asks incredulously. The expression on Ludwig's face is just so broken that Raivis actually feels guilty. "Sorry," he says. "I meant, uh, you're working on the set?"
Ludwig dusts his hands over the edge of the table. "I've mostly been working on construction. Cutting wood. That sort of thing."
"You're building the set and you didn't know the name of the show?" Mei asks. "I thought you were a genius."
Ludwig scowls. "I'm not a genius. And Heracles told me that the show was called Cats, but I didn't believe him because… well, of course he would say that."
Mr. Vargas suddenly appears at the head of their table. "Lots of chatter going on over here, guys!" he exclaims. "I don't see much pottery!"
"Pottery is hard," Raivis grumbles. Ludwig throws his pile of clay down onto the table.
"Ludwig, don't be so rough! You have to be gentle with it! Treat it like a lady… or whatever."
Mei and Raivis watch, amused, as Mr. Vargas moves Ludwig's hands over the clay, guiding his movements.
"Art club, huh," Mei says once Mr. Vargas leaves. Ludwig sputters.
"What is that supposed to mean?!"
"Hey, you're 18 already, aren't you? Or whatever."
Ludwig smacks his pile of clay. "I'm not answering that question."
Raivis sits quietly, a little disturbed by the turn in conversation. He'd be glad for a distraction right now.
"Jellicle song for jellicle cats…"
"Oh my god, Heracles, shut up."
Okay, not that kind of distraction.
Closing night of Cats could not have come faster.
That's really all he has to say about that.
"It's quiet around here," Raivis says in an attempt to break the uncomfortable silence. It's the last week of school, and seniors have long since graduated. They haven't seen Ludwig since his last day in May (he got into all of his choice schools) and Heracles stopped coming after graduation. The only class they're still doing work in is art. And math, but that's to be expected.
"Yeah," Mei says. "Weird without Ludwig and Godspell, or whatever his name was. I have to say, I kind of miss them. They were good entertainment." She leans in close to her paper, lining the t-square up with the edge of the table. They're doing perspective drawings now, and Raivis is more confused than ever.
He stares down at his drawing, a blank house with one lopsided window and half of a door. "What are you doing this summer?" he asks, picking up his pencil again.
Mei shrugs. "The usual stuff. We're going to the beach in August. I'm taking a painting class at the community college. Not much."
"At least you're doing something."
"Why, what are you doing?"
"Nothing. I mean, probably writing poetry and then deleting it. Babysitting my neighbor's kid."
Mei laughs. "No way, you babysit?"
He feels his face flush. "Well, I shouldn't really call it babysitting, the kid's not much younger than I am. But he can't be left alone because he'd probably set the house on fire or something."
"Ha. Sounds like fun."
Raivis shrugs. "He's really not that bad to hang out with. Kind of a brat though."
"All kids are brats." Mei draws a swift line down her paper. She sighs. "I'm so glad this year is over."
"Me too."
It ends that way. Quietly.