12 hours ago Jen10
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What a dick. Some ppl can’t stand other people doing anything cool. Alex rocks!!
12 hours ago PhildM
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Holy shit, I want to kill guy who wrote that. I googld henry whittaker and can’t find him. Alex is one of the nicest guys. I will do some damage if I find this punk.
12 hours ago TheNulMan
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Just talked to my friend in CS dept. He looked at the IP address of the form and said it’s from the British Virgin Islands. So its probably fake.
11 hours ago TheNulMan
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Guys, I just visited Alex at his house. He said he was under too much pressure and broke when he read that comment. He saw our school’s website as a major way to get himself shown. He thought the website would be seen by everyone. He says he is sorry but I told him we all loved his show.
12 hours ago Jen10
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Jen, I loved it! Tell Alex it was totally cool. see you Sat.
-JD
11 hours ago JD
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Alex don’t listen to the Man! A lot of people thought it was the best opening they saw all year.
10 hours ago S_McCrane
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Hey you know who’s in the British Virgin Islands right now… didn’t Edward Tache post something about working there right now.
8 hours ago sTerry
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Comment removed by author
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F*CK if that guy wrote that I would SH*T down his throat. He always was an a$$hole in class. He asked to copy my notes like three times.
7 hours ago TheNulMan
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I remember in figure class we worked next to eachother. He kept whispering to me that my proportions were all wrong. I just wanted him to leave me alone.
7 hours ago Jen10
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OMG Jen, he did that to me too. He thought everything he said was funny or something.
7 hours ago Kara_Light
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IT’s true. He wasted time and then complained about people that finished early. Total drag.
6 hours ago PhildM
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Yo, peace ppl. I know Edward. He’s cool. You don’t know who wrote the comment -- Carlos
6 hours ago CarR
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One time me and Eddy replaced mr mckinnys white board markers with permanents. hilarious. Don’t tell anyone.
6 hours ago _tyler_
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i hope edward gets eaten by a shark
6 hours ago anonymous
The comments continued like accusations thrown from the crowd at a post-revolution courtroom. One comment about him stirred another. They came together like a criminal rap sheet. Edward became that class clown everyone remembered. He was that guy who poured red paint in your white when you weren’t looking, the whiny guy on the team, that guy who drew dirty sketches in your notebook. Two girls said that he had insulted them. One classmate said he copied work. Another said Edward had waited until the day before a writing assignment’s due date and then asked him for help, promising to pay the guy back – but he never did. Edward was the moocher, the leech, the lazy jerk. The anger toward him grew until they became comical threats and insults. Only Carlos defended him.
He started a reply denying it all, and worked on this rebuttal for over an hour before looking it over and deleting it, closing the browser.
They knew it was him. They had his computer IP address. He reread the posts, feeling like an outcast. His joke, his simple little comments had turned into a judgment on him. And who would have thought that Turk would take his comment so seriously? Had Alex really trashed his centerpiece canvas with a fork?
He mulled over writing back and saying that he didn’t mean to hurt Alex. He wanted to say it was nothing, he was sorry, and that he regretted it deeply. But after reading the unsolicited biography from his classmates – the life story of a fool – he didn’t have the strength. He wanted to hide.
Edward turned off his computer and lay down on the bed, rolling onto his side. He could picture Alex Turk, standing in front of his canvas with that fork, bringing it down to slash the material into shreds. He could see his classmates, their angry faces lit by their laptop screens, yelling at him. He didn’t move until the sun sank over the treetops. With the room lit by the glow of the TV, he slept fitfully, dreaming that he was standing in front of the classroom trying to teach students who were mocking him.
~~7~~
DUTIES FOR PROPERTY CARETAKER
Lot 17, Deadman Bay, Peter Island, British Virgin Islands
…
5.11 Because of environment, caretaker must sweep floors of sand and clear leafage debris twice every week.
5.12 Once every week caretaker should test faucets and toilets for leaks in order to conserve cistern water.
…
Five days later, he walked into the second house for the first time. It was an older colonial, single floor, three bedrooms, and one bath. It had high ceilings and wood molding around the doorways and floorboards. A number of Edward Moran-like paintings hung on the walls. As he explored, he took his time on each painting, figuring they were created by someone doing a study of maritime paintings. Like Moran’s work, the paintings did a fair job of capturing the dimensions of the seas and details of tall ships that might have sailed by the island two hundred years prior.
He found the best one in the master bedroom. He sat on the bed and looked up at it. The painting was of a ship listing on translucent green waves and used Moran’s technique of placing the sun behind a thin layer of clouds. He spent twenty minutes appreciating it, remaining quiet as he would in an art gallery. He had always hated it when people gave their opinions in front of the artwork, and ruined the viewing for others.
He made his way to the bathroom. Inside was a toilet, a reconditioned claw foot tub, a teak shelf stacked with folded towels, medicine cabinet loaded with unopened toothpaste and brushes, and a lot of yellow tile. The only other object of interest was a scale on the floor under the window. After checking the room for any problems he might need to fix, he slipped off his sneakers and stepped onto the scale’s square plate. He had last weighed himself at the university gym almost a year earlier and remembered how he had gained five pounds in as many years. The dial bounced around before stopping on a number that showed he had gained almost thirty pounds since then. Edward looked at a bulge of stomach that oozed over his belt. He pinched the protruding skin with his hands to play with it, to gauge its dimensions, to squeeze it like a massive pustule before letting it flop back down.
He burped and a pain grew in his upper gut. It felt like there was a hot ember stuck at the bottom of his stomach. The ache had started two days earlier after he had finished dinner, and returned after he ate a full meal. He filled his lungs with air and waited a few seconds for the pain to abate. When it had gone, he stepped off the scale and over to the bathtub faucet. He leaned down to turn one of the porcelain cross handles. The initial stream was reddish and gritty but cleared after a few seconds. After he was sure all the rust was out, he turned off the water. When he stood up, a movement to his side startled him. He quickly turned to face it and found himself staring at his own reflection in the bathroom mirror.
The house was airtight, and with only the creaking of the walls against the midmorning breeze, the silence was overpowering. It filled the room like a liquid. He shivered, overcome with the strange feeling that someone was watching him from behind, but he could clearly see in the mirror that he was alone. He waited and listened for the comforting sounds outside, a seagull calling out, the palm tree fronds rubbing against each other.