Since this year was their second year, they were finally given an art class. Amelia and Rory had found out that they were in the same class, and they were lucky and they were able to take art for their first day! Rory knew that he liked the room as soon as he walked in, there were lots of posters up all over the room with all kinds of pictures on them, of planets, stars, flowers… to him it seemed as though there was a photo of almost everything that he could have possibly imagined. He looked over at Amelia, who he had been walking alongside for the whole day so far. Her smile was wide as she looked around, and for some reason, it made Rory smile. She looked so happy, it was almost as if she were somehow lighting up the whole room.
Amelia looked back over at him now, and he smiled a bit, too. They picked a table and sat on stools next to each other. Mrs. Jones, the art teacher, smiled down at everyone as they took their seats. She was a rather old woman, wearing a paint-splattered apron over her sweater. Her brown hair was in a bundle of curls, but streaks of grey were very apparent. She handed everyone a piece of paper, and there was a big bucket of crayons, one for each of the tables of students.
Amy picked up a blue crayon. "Hey," she said. "You know that spaceman I told you about? The one that visited me last night?"
"Yeah. Is he real?" Rory was thinking about it, and somehow it seemed unlikely that Amelia was telling the truth. He wanted to believe her, he really did, but he was thinking about the trick that had been played on him so long ago. He didn't want to be the fool for a second time.
"Of course he's real," said Amelia. " I saw him. Do you want to see a picture of what he looked like?"
"Is he blue?" Rory asked, looking skeptically at her choice of crayon color.
"No, silly," said Amelia, scoffing a bit. " He came in a police box, and that was blue,"
"A police box?" Rory asked. "I've never seen one of those,"
"Me either," said Amelia, " but that's what it said on it. The Doctor-person said that it was his spaceship," she explained, her expression completely serious. She drew on her paper with the crayon. "It just sort of looked like a phone box to me," she drew a box shape, and then added a door and a sign to the side of it. Rory watched as she drew a man beside it, a man wearing a tie and a shirt, and she jabbed her black crayon to create lots of tears and spots in it. She drew a picture of another, shorter, figure with red hair. Rory assumed that this must be her.
"What do you think that I should draw?" Rory asked. He wasn't nearly as good a 'draw-er" as Amelia was, but he was pretty sure that he was supposed to do something in this class other than sit and watch her draw.
But Amelia didn't answer this question. She just stared at her own drawing, her expression suddenly somber.
"I wish that he would come here right now," she said, quietly. "He said he'd be here in five minutes. He said that he would… and now he's not."
Rory wasn't sure what he should say. There was nothing to do to help her, nothing he could do that would bring this "Doctor" man here, no way that he could reach into the sky and pluck away the blue police box and bring it to her, though if there was a way, he knew that he would.
"Well… we could always play pretend," he said tentatively. Amelia looked back at him.
"You'd… you'd do that?" she said, still with the sadness in her voice.
"Sure I would. You're my friend, right?" Rory said. He smiled at her weakly. He was glad that she hadn't laughed at him. Most boys, as he found out from Mike, didn't like to play pretend. He'd said that only babies played pretend.
"No," Amelia said, suddenly.
"What?" Rory said, taken aback.
" No," she said again. "He will come. In fact, he's probably there, in the garden right now." She looked a bit more worried. "What if he thinks that I've left?" she asked herself. "What if he leaves without me?"
Amelia stood up from her stool, and proceeded to walk towards the door to the art room. Rory watched, almost unable to move. Was she really going to…?
"Amelia?" Mrs. Jones said. "Where are you going?"
Amelia turned around briefly, mouth open as if she was going to say something. Then she closed her mouth, as if she were making a decision. She opened the door and walked right out of the room, carefully closing it behind her.
"AMELIA!" Mrs. Jones yelled, in her frail and clearly worn-out voice. She opened the door quickly, just in time to see Amelia turn a corner towards the school's entrance- which was clearly about to become the school's exit.
Mrs. Jones ran after Amelia, but her frail legs could not carry her as fast as they clearly used to. Amelia was gone in less than the time it took for her to even stand up.
"She's gone back to her house," Rory said in disbelief. "she's gone to find her raggedy doctor," He didn't even hesitate before he ran after Amelia, following her out of the door, passing Mrs. Jones, and out of the doors of the school.
He could barely see Amelia, she was a much faster runner than he was, he could already tell. She ran behind the trees, and Rory lost sight of her.
Mrs. Jones finally made it out of the school doors. "It's no use," Rory said. "She's already too far away,"
Mrs. Jones stopped running, resting her hands on her thighs and wheezing. "Where's…(cough) she…(wheeze) gone off to?"
Rory knew where she was going, but a sudden, strange streak of loyalty to Amelia came through. Not even really thinking about what he was doing, Rory, replied to her question.
"I don't know," Rory lied. He did know, of course, that Amelia would go straight to her house, which couldn't be too far from where he lived if it wasn't far from Mike's new tree house club. Somehow, he wanted to give her enough time to find her spaceman, even if he had only just met her.
Review? I kind of like this chapter myself, I'd love to see what you all think.
-theravenclawsamurai
