Chapter IV
The Drawing
Later, after the poor gentleman had understood my moral lesson on life and death, I allowed myself to relax and delve into my thoughts. I did not want to go that hard with him; usually, I never let my pessimism on the whole universe be seen, not even to my closest friends or my family. It was only the morbid nature of the question...as well as the unpleasant memories it evoked...
Feeling uncomfortable, I sighed irritably and reached out to light the lamp on my bedside table. Then, determined to try and relax for tonight, I plunged my hand into one of the cupboards of the table to pull out my last sketchbook.
I have always been good at drawing. It was one of the few things I have always loved and been good at practicing, even when I was just a child. At that time, which I still kept very good memories of, I was a real geek.
At the time, before my grandmother died, I was a little guy who spent all his time reading and drawing, who was not doing his work at school because he was too busy daydreaming while looking out the window, who always spoke excitedly about impossible things that could never happen, who did not like to play sports with the other boys at school, and who started to cry every time the other guys in his self-defense class, which his father forced him to follow, hit him.
I was a wimp. A weird guy...that little kid who sometimes seemed to be talking to himself, this little boy that others swore to see talking to imaginary friends who were not there for real. But I was also more open, happier. I smiled more. I made friends more easily. I was also nicer.
Then I watched my grandmother die right in front of me, without being able to do anything. I decided that I was too weak. I was never going to be too weak to save someone important again. Next time, I was going to be a lot stronger.
I managed to push myself to the black belt in Karate class before everyone else in the class, surprising my teachers and peers with my fanatical and burning determination to become the best of all. But I still felt furious inside. I still remembered this feeling of helplessness too clearly. I decided that a black belt was not enough. I had to fight somewhere where there would be a challenge - somewhere where I would learn to survive anyone or die.
I started fighting in the streets, growing up and adapting my body with my one and only strength of will to become one of the best there ever was. But even THAT was not enough. I was always angry, always tense, always frightened, still helpless to have watched my grandmother die before my eyes, still not strong enough.
I turned to minor drugs. I started to miss classes and I was away from home very often. My family was worried about me. The few friends I had were no longer my friends. But the funny part, I did not care. And for a while, life was perfect. But it was then that I felt myself lose control. I felt that I was beginning to break, that I was pushing myself to the limit, I was going crazy.
Of all the people I knew, it was one of my high school teachers who drew my attention to this reality. This surprised me because I was pretty sure that all my teachers had abandoned me to that point. But that's when Professor Sylvie got tired of me doing nothing but sitting in the back of the class without saying anything, the other children giving me hesitant glances, during the rare times I decided to show up in class. She decided to teach me a lesson by embarrassing me in front of the whole class.
She was a math teacher and asked me to come to the board to try to solve an algebra problem. I only looked at her for a moment...and I realized that she was completely serious. She kept looking at me impatiently. Shit. Furious, I threw my sketchbook on the ground which frightened everyone before I got up and walked to the table, well-decided to stand up to my teacher. I stood in front of everyone and went through the whole problem. Correctly.
I remember giving a triumphant smile in the face of Mr. Sylvie before returning to my desk. Later, after class, she managed to trap me. She was furious to realize that I was wasting my potential.
"Do you realize how amazing it is?!" she yelled in my face. "What you've just done is completely incredible, imagine everything you could accomplish if you were sober, do you understand, Keyber, that every time you come here, you give the wrong to all those who think you can not do anything right?"
It took me a moment to understand what she was insinuating. To understand that I was beginning to lose control. I realized that when a person was as strong as me, something had to be done with this strength. You could not just be angry with all the time. So I tried with all my strength to free myself from this cage that I had built myself...still in vain.
Then, Mr. Amataro arrived.
My thoughts wandered vaguely along this path for a moment...before I forced myself out of there. What was my problem today? Memories came from everywhere. But the point was that the day before I saw my grandmother dying, I scribbled in my notebook and ended up marking the vague outlines of a man. I started it with very good intentions, but I never really knew what to do with it. Then, grandma came to me to tell me that she was going to take me to my Karate class. She died on the way home.
For the next few years, I could not convince myself to draw again. It was the strangest sensation. It was as if I could not move on until I had finished drawing that I had started before my grandmother's death. As if I could turn the page after finishing it; I could go on to other drawings. But I could not do it. I could not complete this image of a man. I could not decide what he was going to look like, who he was going to look like.
Only the night after I assaulted Mr. Amataro's attacker, panicked and covered with blood in a hysterical state, blindly rushing into my darkened room, did I threw myself after my old notebook, of all things. Automatically, as if that's what I always wanted, I went to my bedside. One by one, I pulled out all the sheets I had stored in it, descending lower and lower among the works of my life. As the drawings I was bringing out became more childish, more innocent, I went down even lower.
Finally, I reached my sketchbook, gently pulling it out, almost with reverence, as if it was a sacred relic. In a sense, it was. It was then that, kneeling on the floor of my room, drawing under the moonlight shining behind me through the window, I finally managed to complete the picture. I had drawn myself...myself in all my worst glory. Myself as I saw myself. A caricature very appalling, immoral, disfigured, horrible and crazy. Above the picture, I decided to write, 'That's the thing I'm NOT going to become.'
I have never seen myself as a sentimental person, but I have always kept this image in one of my drawers.
Since that day, drawing has not only become a personal pleasure for me, but also a method to repel stress. Of course, nobody knew it. If my friends learned that I loved art, that I drew poetry, or even read Shakespeare, classics about Western culture, ancient mythology, romantic fantasy, or whatever history in my free time, they would never let go of it. The tough, stoic and sarcastic Jason Keyber reading Shakespeare. It would ruin my image even more than my weakness for puppy eyes. I only showed the comics I read and the rock music I listened to. Poetry and art did not need to be mentioned. I kept them all in my drawers and only took them out when I was alone. It was my little secret.
My other secret was the pile of chocolate bars that I kept hidden in my lower drawer, but it was obviously not the secret that I was trying to defend the best - except perhaps for my mother who would surely not like me keep so many sweets in one place. I had to change my hiding place once in a while because sometimes, she would slip into my room during my absences to try to find my reserve and throw it in the garbage.
One time, I took out a tablet for pleasure and sat on my bed, peeking through the window to admire this beautiful evening sky, slowly savoring my chocolate and sketching without really knowing what I was doing or where it was going. Not that it was really important either.
Suddenly, the door to my room opened and I automatically hid the chocolate behind my pillow. Mom came in with a tray full of food and smiling...before stopping to take a look at me.
"Jason ...," she told me in THAT tone.
"What?"
"You're hiding something."
"No, what are you talking about?" I said innocently.
She kept staring at me for a long moment. Then, she finally sighed.
"Okay, dinner is served, come down again when you're done with it," she said, putting the meal down on my bed.
"Ok, thanks, Mom."
"You're welcome," she replied with a smile. "By the way, your father feels bad for pushing you, he's starting his number again, swinging his arms in all directions and whining for grandma."
"I can imagine it," I said, rolling my eyes. "How's the gentleman?"
"Oh, he was a big help, I did not fail to tell him that and he put so much in such a good mood. I don't know what you're telling them, my little wolf, but they're always leaving and feeling better! "
Her tone of voice was full of admiration and her eyes were wide open and resplendent.
"It's so sweet of you!"
"Hey, I'm not sweet," I said indignantly in spite of myself. "And it was not so difficult: I just had to give him something to do."
"Well, that was nice coming from you anyway," she insisted with a smile before going out. "See you later, my little wolf."
After she left, I drew a little more before realizing that I was definitely not going to create a classic tonight and preferred to focus on my homework instead. I pulled out and put everything in my backpack down on my bed before putting on my big, good quality headphones and playing some X Toxication to help focus. I needed my favorite music tonight, and that meant classic rock. I was one of those wannabe musicians. I even had a guitar in a corner of my room with which I sometimes tried to play notes, but the improvisation process was quite slow.
I could console myself by knowing that I was not with a garage group without talents every time I put on my headphones and the fantastic groups that played behind were much more fantastic than me in every way possible.
My homework was easy enough, especially for me. As usual. When I could (especially when I had the determination to) concentrate, I never had problems with school; Math and science were as simple as literature and art. Although I liked the last ones a lot more. I have always been careful to make sure all my homework is absolutely perfect these days. Since I started again, I was absolutely determined to prove that I was no longer an idiot, and I always made sure that my homework bore witness to that.
I gave the most time to those of Mrs. Sylvie. She was now a teacher at my high school. I remembered telling her with determination after she noticed that I looked better, that I had stopped worrying and started to live. I was finally doing what I wanted to do. I had never really thought what I told her until later when she introduced herself as a new teacher at my high school. She gave me a soft smile and said that she had thought about what I had told her and thought it was a good idea. She was a math teacher, but what she really wanted to teach was art. She was going back to get a certificate to be an art teacher instead.
She was now teaching the third contemporary art to my class and was the only teacher I liked, even to this day. She never judged anyone, she was strong, and she was not afraid to tell the students what she was thinking, she was really sweet but also discreet. Secretly, I think I can say that we shared a kind of camaraderie.
As soon as I finished his project, I went on to maths, then science, history, and social studies, writing, and grammar, then literature, working steadily and relentlessly through all the papers in front of me in the order they had been stacked in my binder. It was soothing and more distracting than difficult. It kept my mind from wandering too far, especially in another topic that I did not really want to revisit. My brain had this annoying habit to do this when I was bored. When I shared this detail with my mother and my brother - they were pretty much the only ones who knew everything about me - Oscar had told me that I had the mind of a maniac.
"Thank you very much, big brother," I replied sarcastically.
"That's right," he told me fiercely. "Believe me, everything is in the head."
It was definitely one of my brother's favorite replicas. In fact, it was one of only two in the house with "Here is my new plan to make money" from Mom. Seriously, repeating this, she was really going to get rich one day.
Speaking of Oscar...I sat down and listened attentively. I could hear the BEEP! and howling from his room which meant he was playing his video games with Mom. Having finished my homework and not in the mood to look out of my bedroom window like a misunderstood teenager, I put all my binders and papers in my backpack, put my headphones and my sketchbook back in place and then went out to the lobby to play with my family. I have not done it in a while. Maybe they'll forgive me for acting wrongly sooner?
When I opened the door of the room, Oscar was in the middle of a victory dance while Mom was launching one of her dolls at him. I stopped the small stuffed missile, grabbed it in my hand and sent it away. Mom received it in the head, then Oscar gave me a surprised look.
I smirked at him as he looked at the pose he had taken in the middle of his ridiculous little dance.
"You have no idea how ridiculous you look, brother."
"Shut up," he growled, grabbing another doll and throwing it at me, but I easily avoided it.
"If I was you, I would save my energy for the game," I retorted, coming to sit in Indian position in front of the paused game and took a controller in my hands.
Mom gave a gasp of pleasure, her face turning immediately.
"You want to play with us?! Really?!"
"Seriously?" Oscar asked in surprise. "I'm trying very hard not to look too happy," he said, his expression still firm.
"Well, why not?" I asked shrugging and received as a reward a huge hug from behind by my mother.
"YEAH, JASON WILL PLAY WITH US!" she screamed right beside my ear.
"Ouch!" I complained. "Stop screaming in my ear!"
She giggled, not paying attention, and I had to fight the desire to smile because of her infectious joy. Then she came down from my back and walked away.
"Okay, you can finish my game with Oscar."
"It's cool for me," my brother said, coming to sit next to me. "I will win, anyway."
"Not too sure of yourself, brother?" I asked curtly.
"Uh, no, look at the score," he ordered, pressing the START button.
"What?!" I shouted, opening my eyes wide.
"Exactly," he smiled as he leaned toward the TV and began to press hard on his controller. "Prepare to see my victory dance: I intend to win a round against you for the very first time."
Grumbling with concentration, I immediately leaned to the television too. "Really, Mom?" I whispered incredulously without looking away from the game. "Did you try to break the record for the slowest game of all time?!"
"Hey!" she said indignantly.
"That's exactly what I told her!" Oscar boasted next to me.
"Enough, Oscar! That's not what you said! Your insult was much less intelligent!" she accused.
"Let me concentrate!" replied my brother.
"And creative replicas keep coming," I commented curtly.
"Hey, you used the forbidden 'shut up' against Papa, just now," Oscar argued without looking away from the game. "You have no right to moralize. "
We had a special rule in the house: anyone who used 'shut up' as a replica was ridiculed...unless the person who was making fun had also used it, which allowed the other to laugh at her too.
"For my defense, I almost received Hurricane Goat in the face, I did not think by myself.
"Excuses always excuses."
"Like this time, last summer, when you used Dad's latest attack on you as a pretext to shout at everyone to shut up for five minutes?"
"Hey, these were entirely different circumstances," my mother said, turning to look at me. "He does not attack you, he only shows his affection by trying to choke you to death, and just so you know-"
"It's okay," I interrupted her with a smile of satisfaction.
"What?" exploded my brother, his dark eyes filled with the same rage as Dad. "Why do you say that?
"Because I won."
His eyes opened wide and he instantly turned to look at the screen. He understood then that I had totally beaten him flat. I used a certain topic to make him lose his cool and distract him long enough to get back on top.
"It's not fair!" he declared immediately, getting up and pointing at me. "You cheated!"
"It's not cheating, it was just a tactic," I replied with a smirk. "It's only cheating when you do it."
Oscar threw his controller in my face.
Later that night, as I was getting ready to go to sleep, I took time to realize with amusement that with all the launches of things, trampling, kicking, screaming, insults, swearing, jumps, thrusts, attacks, and all the actions that would have earned us anger control classes...I was rather surprised that Dad did not come into the room to inspect all this fuss. He sometimes did so when he wanted to feel part of the family but did not want to have to act like a child to do it. The funny irony, he still ended up acting like a child. For him, I was pretty sure it was inevitable. But he must have had a lot of inventory to fix, cleaning to do, and orders to take care of in his office tonight. Anyway, he was used to the idea that I, my brother and my mother were the most horrible, cheating, and violent little monsters when it came to video games. In fact, I always thought that this trait came from him.
Bending myself to pick up all of my clothes drifting on the floor, I returned to the bathroom after my shower to throw them into the laundry room. Passing my comb through my short hair, which never cooperated anyway, I took a moment to examine myself in the mirror. I had a special appearance, it was the least we could say, but for once, you could not say it was my fault. My father was a very strong Canadian man and my grandmother was a soft-looking Caucasian woman. From all of us, my mother looked a lot like grandma, and Oscar looked more like Dad. In my case, I had inherited a bit of both. Result? I looked like one of those models that we saw in reality shows. I was not helped by my hair that was in a bowl cut with picks.
Yes, you read that correctly: a bowl cup with picks.
My hair was...strange. A real pointed hat, long or short, and the more I brushed them, the more they remained the same. Small tufts of hair stretched all around my head, even when they were cut short, as they were now. They were clean and thick, without looking glistening. And as I said, their natural shape was in a bowl cut with picks. The little mustache on my upper lip that looked like a little brown comb did not really help. It was not common in my family. Oscar called my hair an 'unnaturalness of reality that defied all scientific laws, including gravity.' Unfortunately, he was not really exaggerating.
The hairdressers were making the same comments, cutting my hair and making comments on disapproving tones because they thought I'd arranged them that way. Unfortunately, I was not nearly as tolerant as they were. There was a reason why only Mom always cut my hair. I did not want to pay people to judge me and criticize my appearance.
I was also very tall for my age and my muscles were rather vigorous. According to my friends, all these elements, combined with my pale skin, my long fingers, and my longer legs, made me look like a skeleton on two legs, especially when I sit on a chair. My head also had a funny shape, with my flat forehead, my tall cheeks, and my teardrop-shaped chin, my skull had an oval shape. And the fact that my skin was pale made the whole thing even stranger. A round nose, tight lips, and soft brown eyes, like moons, decorated my face. My expression was normally serious, empty, revealing almost nothing.
My clothes were varied. Most of them were either purple or red and they were very thin. Skinny jeans, tight t-shirts, tank tops, muscle tees...I didn't like loose clothes. When I occasionally wore loose clothing, which I mostly received as gifts or something, they automatically became my new pajamas, because I just could not bear to wear clothes like that regularly. My shoes - usually running ones - and my socks were tattered and run down, with holes whether they were new or not. It frustrated my mother all the time. "How can you have already made holes in it?" As if I was doing it willingly.
The only thing I really wore every day was my wristwatch, because I knew from my mom and my brother that the most annoying question in the world was 'What time is it?' Time to wear a damn watch!
As I turned off the bathroom light and returned to the lobby towards my room, my thoughts turned to the day behind me. It had certainly been interesting. Going to school, laugh a bit with my friends, beat a bunch of drug addicts, bring my support to some guys, fight with my dad, cheat on video games, do six ridiculously complicated homework, and have a little time relaxation, all before ten o'clock. But so was my life. Tomorrow was probably going to be boring for a change.
Only time would tell...