"Acacia! I am in need of your services!" My grandfather called out from his bedroom.
"Coming!" I groaned, crawling out of my extremely comfortable bed. My whole body shivers when my foot meets the cold wooden floor. You could already feel the beginning of winter reaching your once warm home. I walked out of my room barefoot and into the hallway towards Grandpa's room. I entered his room and found him wearing his dark sunglasses, plaid shirt and overalls. I noticed on his feet he was wearing only one boot. "Darlin', can you help me find my other boot? I swear I threw it somewhere last night." I looked around his room, which only consisted of a bed, a dresser, and a bathroom. I looked under his bed, behind his bed, and by the dresser. When I entered the bathroom, I chuckled at the sight of his boot inside the bathtub. I picked it up and brought it back to Grandpa. "Tell me how your boot got into the bathtub?"
Grandpa laughed. "Well I'll be damned. There must be ghost in our home."
"Sure, that's the reason. Ghosts," I laughed along with him. I helped him put on his boot, tying his several laces. "You don't need to help me. You have school, don't you?"
"Ah, c'mon Gramps! Let your granddaughter help you out," I said. After finishing with the final knot, I handed him his pointer. He grabbed it and began to tap it against the floor. "Alright, I'm ready to roll," Grandpa joked. I grabbed on to his arm and sighed. "Alright, as long as you don't break your hip."
I put out a bowl of cereal out on the table for Grandpa and grabbed an apple for myself. Using his pointer, Grandpa slowly walks his way to his chair and searches for his spoon. As I bit into my apple, I stared at my Grandpa slowly eating his breakfast. For an old man who'd been blind for over forty years, he acted like any other old man living in the countryside of Arkansas. He never put his blindness to shame and acted more like a teenager than I did. Of course, there were downsides to his blindness, but he just saw it as a challenge he would conquer sooner or later. And besides, he had me, my older brother Otis, and our white huskie Snowflake to help him around the house. "Go get dress, Darlin'. Unless you plan on going to school in your pajamas," Grandpa said.
"Otis gets to go to school in his pajamas," I grumbled.
"Otis is a college student and a farmer. You're a high school student with a dress code that states, "Student's may not dress in any nightly wear in school at all times.'" I knew complaining some more wouldn't do me any good, so I just walked out of the kitchen and into my small bedroom. I stripped down from my black gym shorts and tank top and into my ripped jean capris and a red plaid shirt. I slipped on my white ankle socks and wore my red Converse.
Then, I hear our grandfather clock chime, it's beautiful yet loud noise filling the whole house, telling us that it was eight o'clock. "Crap! I'm gonna be late!" I quickly grabbed my book bag from the corner of my bed and ran out of my room. "Have a nice day!"
"You too!" I called out, running through the door and jumping off the porch. I heard the sound of Snowflake's barking. She ran by my side, barking loudly. Snowflake would run with me up until the farm gates, barking as loudly as she could, as if she was yelling, "Hurry up! You're late!" When the farm gates were drawing near, I sprinted and hopped over the gate, leaving Snowflake behind. "See you when I get home, sweetie!"
As I ran down the dirt road by the sunflower field, I suddenly tripped over my own feet, and all my stuff fell out of my bag. I cursed to myself as I began to pick up my junk, which mostly consisted of drawing pencils, sketchpads, and other art supplies. Note to self, leave all art supplies at home, I thought to myself. As I stuffed all my supplies into my bag, I noticed something that caught my attention.
In the middle of the sunflower field was a boy. A very dark looking boy. He stood out wearing black in a field of yellows and greens. He was standing there in his brown leather looking jacket, staring at the tallest sunflower of them all.
This was bad for a person like me. I was an artist, and artists are completely drawn to things out of the ordinary. I sat down on the dirt road, grabbed one of my pencils and sketchpad, and quickly began to draw without looking up so that I wouldn't look like a stalker. His dark messy hair, his eyes, his body structure; everything about him was just so…. abstract.
I loved things so abstract.
When I decided to look up again, I gasped. My muse was gone, along with the tall sunflower. It was almost as if he was blown away with the surprising wind that blew from afar. Where did he go, I thought to myself. I looked down at the pad and saw my drawing. I got his olive-colored face, his tall, built body, and that one tall sunflower. I looked more closely at his eyes. They looked so…dark, depressed, and filled with such sorrow. Why did he look so sad?
As I continued to be hypnotized by the mysterious boy, my watch beeped. I looked down. Eight-thirty. "Crap! Now I'm really late!" I stuffed my sketchpad and pencil into my bag, got up, and dashed my to school.
When I arrived at Covington High, I did not receive the most joyful welcome party. I was scolded by both the principal and my English teacher, got laughed at for my dirt covered pants, and was forced to sit outside for half of the period. I played around with my curly black hair, twirling it around my finger over and over again. Then, my English teacher, Mrs. Drake, called me back inside. I quickly hurried to my window seat. "Before Miss Baxter rudely interrupted us, can someone tell her what we were talking about?"
One of the students, Colin Kai I think, raised his hand. "We were talking about Acacia's barn smell."
Everyone laughed at his horrible joke. Ha ha, very funny. "Class!" Mrs. Drake yelled, raising her wrinkly eyebrow upwards. "This is not the time to be acting silly!" She sighed, rubbing her hand against her white-haired head. "Can someone please tell Miss Baxter what we were learning in class?"
It was Luca Nigel who answered the question. "We were talking about the history of poetry."
"Excellent, Mr. Nigel!" She praised.
"Great, so another snooze fest," I muttered to myself.
"What did you say, Miss Baxter," Mrs. Drake said. To avoid getting into more trouble, I simply said, "I can't wait to learn what I miss!"
"That's what I thought. Now class, turn your textbooks to page 780."
And the day went on after that; the usual classes, the usual gossip swimming though the halls, the usual, ordinary, normal lifestyle of a freshman in Arkansas. This wasn't how I wanted to live my life. I wanted something weird, something crazy.
Something abstract.