The big difference between this art room and the one at St. Paul's could be seen in the paintings that hung on the walls, and in the sculptures that were displayed on shelves. And it wasn't just the quality of the artwork. Obviously, kids going to an art school where you have to audition to get accepted would be talented. It was the subject matter that was the crucial difference. At St. Paul's, there were some subjects that could not be painted or sculpted — or even thought of.
Two girls were already sitting in desks, side by side, close to the front of the room. The dark haired one kept on covering her mouth with her hand to hide her braces as she talked to her blonde friend. Both girls were dressed in dark coloured scoop neck T-shirts, but one had tight black jeans on, and the other was wearing baggy black cargo pants. They turned to look as Kat approached them, and they both smiled.
"You must be Katie," said the girl with braces. "My name's Beth Gupta."
"And I'm Callie Goodfriend," said the blonde.
"My name's Kat, not Katie. How did you know who I was?"
"We don't exactly get new students coming into the program all the time," said Beth, hiding her teeth. "Mrs. O'Connor told us at the end of last year that we were getting an ‘exciting new student'." Both the girls giggled. "We heard about what happened at St. Paul's."
Kat smiled uncomfortably.
She didn't really want to talk about what happened at St. Paul's. While that one instance had been a bad experience, she still felt loyal to all her friends there. And it was only a year ago that she had joined with these friends in scoffing at the self-important snobs of Cawthra. There was much tension between Cawthra and St. Paul's, and the fact that their properties backed onto each other didn't make matters any better. St. Paul's students liked to call Cawthra the CGCC — Cawthra Golf and Country Club. It was only for rich kids, after all.
And now here she was, one of Them.
"Well? Are you sitting with us, or what?" asked Beth, pointing to an empty chair behind them.
Kat looked around and noticed that the class was quickly filling up. With a grateful smile to Beth and Callie, Kat satdown behind them. As the other students wandered in and took up seats behind and around her, Kat had a tremor of apprehension. What if she didn't measure up?
She had always been the best student in any art class she had ever taken. But then again, there had never been much competition. Cawthra was different: every single student in this class had been required to undergo the same rigorous audition that she had, and each of them had passed. Not only that, the other students had been here for a full year already, so they were bound to be better. Kat took a deep breath and sighed.
The last person to enter the room was the teacher. Kat already knew from her schedule that his name was Mr. Harding. He was much younger than how she had imagined him. In fact, he was so young looking that in another context, she might have thought he was a senior student. He wore the long sleeves of his white dress shirt rolled up almost to the elbow, revealing muscular arms. The shirttail was tucked haphazardly into a pair of khakis, and although he wore a tie around his neck, it hung loose at an open collar.
He stood at the front of the class and waited, silently, until the murmuring of conversation died down. "It is good to see you all back here," said Mr. Harding. "I am sure that you all spent those glorious summer days holed up in the library researching the Renaissance masters."
Kat gave a gulp, but then realized he was just kidding.
"We have one new student this year, and I would like you to all welcome her," Mr. Harding motioned to Kat. She stood up.
"This is Katreena Balick."
"It's Kat-ar-yn-a. Kat for short," she corrected. "And my last name is B-A-L-I-U-K, pronounced Ball-ook." She could feel the flush of embarrassment heating her cheeks.
"Oh!" said Mr. Harding. "I'll correct that in my files. Welcome, Kat. I think you'll like it here."
"Thank you," she said, then sat down.
Mr. Harding began to pace at the front of the classroom. "For our first lesson, I need a volunteer. Each of you will have to do this at some point, so don't be shy." He surveyed the class. No one raised their hand.
"Callie?"
"That's not exactly volunteering," said Callie, getting up from her desk.
"When I don't get a volunteer, I make a volunteer," said Mr. Harding. The class chuckled at his feeble joke.
"Let's move our desks into a circle," he said. "And you two, Michael and George." Mr. Harding gestured at one teen sitting on the other side of Callie and at another from the back of the room. "Grab the platform from the storage area and drag it into the centre of the class."
After much scraping and pushing, the desks and platform were configured in the way that Mr. Harding wanted. He gestured to Callie.
"Lie down there and pose as if you just got hit by an ice-cream truck," he said, pointing to the platform. The class tittered uncomfortably again.
Callie wrapped her blonde hair into a knot to keep it off her face and then flopped on the platform, her arms and legs splayed out limply. "Like this?" she asked.
"Perfect," said Mr. Harding. "Hold that pose."
"Okay class," said the teacher taking a timer out of his shirt pocket. "You've got two minutes to do a shadow profile of Callie. Use the broad side of a black crayon and start from the middle of the body and work your way out to the edges."
As the timer ticked, the students quickly sketched. With a crayon in her hand and a sheet of paper in front of her, Kat was in her element. Maybe these other students were better than her, but she figured she could hold her own. She smiled with satisfaction as she put in the last touches. Mr. Harding passed
behind her, then stopped to study her work. "The feet are inaccurate. Fix that up and it'll do."
Kat felt momentarily crushed, but then she smiled inwardly. She had a feeling that she would be learning a lot in Mr. Harding's class.
CHAPTER 2
THE HOUSE WAS unusually quiet, now that school had started again. Usually Genya or Kataryna would distract him from his unhappy thoughts, but this day had seemed to loom on forever. Once his daughter and son-in-law had left for their respective jobs, and the girls had caught the bus to school, Danylo sat down at the kitchen table with a cup of tea and tried to read the paper, but the words seemed just a blur.
A swirl of lemony steam from the tea drifted to his nostrils, and an image of Danylo's wife filled his mind. Nadiya, or Hope in English, had loved lemon in her tea. And once they had moved to Canada, she would add a little bit of lemon juice to the water when she rinsed her hair. He loved holding her close and burying his face in her hair. In the spring, when the pain of losing her was still too sharp to bear, this memory would have caused him sorrow, but now it comforted him. He breathed in the scent of lemony tea and felt the spirit of Nadiya around him.
He spent the afternoon on his hands and knees in his daughter's garden, digging up potatoes. He preferred his own garden to this tiny one, but with Nadiya's illness and death in the spring, he'd had neither the time nor the heart to plant it. He still found going back to his own house painful. He was thankful that his daughter and son-in-law suggested he live with them for a while, and he was grateful that his daughter had the foresight in the spring to plant this small plot to keep him busy now.
He dug each potato carefully with a trowel, and set each one in the basket. When the basket was full, he set each potato, side by side, out on the window ledge of the summer kitchen and along the stone ledge of the patio to dry out in the sun. When they were dry, he would take each one and gently brush off the dirt with a towel. They stored better if they weren't washed.