erasable!

It was hot in the classroom. The air conditioning had been out for about an hour, but they weren't planning on cancelling class because it was the last few periods of the thirteenth day of school. They said it would be fixed by the time school started the next morning. 



Shellie sat in her back row seat, pissed as hell at the boy who'd just ripped her heart out two days ago. He was up in the second row, flirting with the girl next to him. Sean had simply walked up to her locker on Tuesday, said he didn't want to date her anymore, handed her the watch, chain, and book she had bought him for his birthday a mere month ago, and walked away. She stared after him, not crying in the least, but rather stunned that 5 months had ended just that abruptly. 



The next day, she was still in a kind of denial, but she was obviously anoyed and went out of her way to blatently avoid him wherever he happened to be. He didn't notice, but a few other geeks and busybodies did. They gossiped amongst themselves and came to their own conclusions, deciding that Sean had dumped her for one of the prettiest girls in the high school; Ashley Coleman. 



That's who he was flirting with now. She sat there in her little white skirt, tan legs emerging right below the upper thigh length hem. The back of her baby blue sleeveless shirt seemed ironed. Her light brown hair with dirty blonde highlights hung neatly to her shoulders and a little below. 



Shellie couldn't see from the back, but she knew her face by heart. Perfectly pouty pink lips, always smothered in the newest Bonnie Bell fruity gloss... eyes lined in a thin line of dark grey, mascara to match... pale blue eyeshadow with maybe a bit of glitter to bring out those big, dull, dim-witted brown eyes. Even her nose was petite and "cute".



Shellie loathed how she was such a girl. Everything about her just screamed "cheerleader!" Of course, she was a cheerleader. Co-captain this year and probably Captain next year, her senior year. That was how they'd met. This was his first year playing varsity sports, but he'd picked football up quickly and became one of the best players on the team.



Shellie's face darkened as she looked up at them. They were passing notes back and forth in US History class, hers on pretty little pink paper and his on torn college ruled notebook paper. 



Shellie looked down, trying to avoid the anger that was kindling in her chest. She spotted her hardbound black sketchbook peeking out of her bookbag and reached for it, ignoring the teacher and whatever he had to say about the pilgrims and the new colony development.



Her right hand held a regular Bic mechanical pencil and she allowed her hand to draw the curve of a face, a chin, cheeks, the forehead. Her hand took charge and hair appeared, two ears, a nose. The lips came into view after about five minutes of working on the project, and Shellie stopped rather abruptly, looking at her creation. It was him. Dammit! Could she never get him out of her thoughts?



She looked at the picture curiously. It was missing eyes and she was tempted to go on. Her hand slid along the paper, to and from the spot where the missing eyes were, deciding whether or not it wanted to keep going. It did, creating the almond shapes, the pupils, the irises... eyelashes, eyebrows, and even that faint glimmer of light reflecting of the moisture.



Glancing up, she saw them, still flirting. He kept looking at her and she could see his profile, the one she had traced with her fingers so many times before. She looked down sharply, closing her eyes for a moment, taking a deep breath, and then opening them slowly. There was her favorite black skirt, long and satiny, hanging to literally the floor. The burgandy shirt hung lightly off her shoulders. She'd almost gotten in trouble for showing "too much" skin, but she managed to get out of it, being her sweet and intelligent self. 



She looked back up at the drawing, her greenish eyes tracing over every contour line. The eyes looked so real. She hated them. After a mere second of watching them, sarcastically seeing if they would move, she turned the pencil over and erased one eye, followed by the next. Blank holes now gaped up from where the realistic eyes had once been and Shellie smiled, about to close her notebook and planning on adding in magazine pictures of eyes when she got home.



Just as the notebook closed, her heart almost stopped as a wailing scream rose up from a familiar voice. A couple rows in front, Sean had jumped from his seat, knocking the desk over in the process. He stood there, his hands poised mere inches from his face and he was screaming at the epitome of his lungs. He turned back and forth as if searching for something and Shellie nearly fell out of her chair as she saw that he had no eyes. There were no eye holes... no beautiful blue irises... no pupils... no lashes.. just eyebrows hanging mockingly over circular eyesockets covered in soft, newborn skin. 



His screaming went on and on in her head, the class was rowdy and running for the door, some gaping at the freak of nature. Ashley was now screaming as well, her voice rising in perfect unison with his as she jumped from her seat and cringed away from his outstretched, searching arms.



Shellie sat there, shocked, but not willing to move. For a mere instant, she wondered what would happen if she erased the rest of his face.