Andrea had continued with her paintings from first year. Yes, she was terrible at painting, but she had made moderate improvement through excessive practice.
All the emos did something like this. Something artistic, to express themselves, pour out their souls, that sort of thing. Andrea had tried various different things. It started off with poetry - diabolical free verse about the darkness inside her soul, nothing too original. Then it was playing the violin, but she was not coordinated enough to be musical. Even she could admit that the "music" sounded like a cat being scratched against a whiteboard, or whatever that expression was.
Her clique had a hangout, an abandoned classroom the other side of the school from the dorms and busy parts. Within it, Andrea had a corner. She hung up paintings, mainly black canvases with red paint dripping down like blood, and made new ones. It was quiet and peaceful. Usually.
But on one particular occasion, there was some serious identity theft crime planning going on, which she wasn't in the mood to take part in. Instead she migrated to the art classroom, which was far less preferable, but would do nonetheless.
Rather than sticking with her usual, dripping blood sort of style, she tried something different, a knife and a bottle of pills from observation on the desk in front of her. More difficult, but more original, she guessed.
The thing with the art classroom was that anyone could walk in, and usually someone did. It was particularly bad luck that today it was her least favourite person in the world. She'd been working on the painting for three or four hours when the interruption came in the form of the loud, screeching cackle, aka Taylor Bennett's awful laugh.
"The fuck is that, goth?"
"Emo," Andrea corrected automatically, with no emotion.
"Whatever. But sr'sley, mate, that's matted."
Andrea scowled, but didn't acknowledge the chav with a response.
"You 'ent got no gradience. And the shape o' the pills, unrecognisable," Taylor added. "Here, let me fix it."
Andrea's hand had been clutching the paintbrush forcefully, contemplating whether to throw it or stab Taylor with it. But the chav grabbed her hand, and guided it towards the painting, going over the shit bits and improving it considerably.
That was the first time Andrea felt butterflies at Taylor's touch.