For notes, warnings and disclaimers see chapter 1

Scene 14: Screaming in Silence
(Age: 15)

Kara absolutely hated the summer. The weather was miserable and school was out. Sure, school she could definitely do without but unfortunately when school was out so was the pyramid team. That was the real problem, that and the fact that during the summer it was that much harder for her to come up with a way to avoid having to go home... especially since her mom had refused to allow her to get a summer job, just to annoy her. That had left her scrambling for something to do with herself.

Sure, there was a community center with a pyramid court in it but it was always way too crowded for her liking... especially during the summer, when a number of classes and activities were organized to keep the kids out of trouble while their parents were at work. Still, seeing how it was either that or risking an unpleasant encounter with some of the whores, junkies and drug dealers that had staked their claim on what passed for a court in the neighborhood park, Kara had reluctantly come to the conclusion that, if she wanted to play, the community center was the lesser evil. Unfortunately that conclusion had come back to bite her on the ass.

The problem was that, seeing how she was a couple of years older than most of the kids there, at one point one of the volunteers had cornered her in the court and she had basically volunteered her to teach a bunch of brats ages eight through twelve the basics of the game.

Kara still wasn't entirely sure what could possibly have possessed her to agree to that but the bottom line was that she was stuck. Well, at least the fact that she was 'teaching' gave her an excuse to claim the court as her own for several hours a day... though more than once she had been tempted to strangle one of the kids, just on the general principle. Sure, she knew what to do with the ball but she didn't have the patience. She just wanted to be left alone and in that regard teaching was definitely a bad idea.

Of course, part of the problem was that alone just wasn't much of an option either... in fact, even though she was teaching the younger kids, her time on the court was still way too limited for her liking. Once that was over she usually had no clue as to what she could possibly do with herself.

Out of sheer boredom she had tried to join in on some of the other activities but it felt weird and --for the most part-- her experiences had been anything but successful. In fact the only thing that had sort of worked had been an art class. That hadn't been so bad. The way she saw it, painting wasn't much different from all the doodling she had been doing on her notebooks ever since she could remember, except for the fact that at least in art class she didn't have to worry about the possibility of getting yelled at... or so she had thought until the teacher had tried to get her to paint one fruit basket too many. At that Kara had decided to try to paint the thing as it would have looked after being left out rotting in the sun for three whole days, with bugs crawling all over it.

As far as she was concerned her little experiment had turned out pretty okay but her teacher had not been amused.

Well, if nothing else at least Kara had to admit that fruit baskets were a little less corny than flower vases, though the shapes of the flowers were more interesting. Fruits were just big blobs of color. That wouldn't have been so bad if it hadn't been because her teacher insisted that she had to try to get things to look as close to the original as she possibly could. Her teacher wanted her bananas yellow, her apples red and her oranges orange... and in all cases she wanted to see a happy, happy world in which the sun was shining. That was where they had a problem, a big one.

Kara had never been too good at playing by the book or doing as she was told to begin with --not to mention that her disposition was anything but sunny-- but when it came to painting she soon realized that trying to follow her teacher's instructions was even worse. There it was like being tied down after being promised absolute freedom and she hated it... not that when she had tried to do her own thing it had gone much better.

A few times, when the teacher wasn't looking, Kara had tried to paint what she wanted but the truth was that --even though she had a clear image in her mind of exactly what it was that she was trying to do-- she had never been able to get it onto the page. Her paintings always looked off, broken and distorted and that frustrated the hell out of her.

Still, even though her efforts never quite turned out like she was expecting them to, Kara had come to appreciate the possibilities afforded by a simple notebook. In a way painting was a lot like screaming in silence and, even though she hated being constrained by the page, drawings could be hidden away without too much trouble... not to mention that the basic materials weren't all that expensive. Those were some pretty major advantages and who knew, maybe someday she would be able to do it, maybe someday she would be able to get the things she could see in her head to appear on the page.