Читать книгу Suzanne - Anais Barbeau-Lavalette - Страница 34

You like school. Mainly for a bizarre reason: you like watching people from behind. Watching their necks. You sit in the back of the class, because the steep slope of anonymous necks reminds you of how fragile they are. From behind, it’s as though the crack is inevitable.

Imagining their necks broken brings you closer to others.

In art class, the teacher tries to teach you to trace an apple and a hat.

You wonder about the significance of the pair. Why an apple and a hat?

You have to use a ruler, a compass, and an eraser. You have to, the teacher says.

You apply yourself.

You are a good student.

When you’re done, the perfect hat is alongside the perfect apple. You look at your perfect drawing. Your mother will probably hang it on the living room wall.

You think it could use a bit of colour.

You have a hangnail on your right hand. You pull on it. It bleeds a little. You spread the blood on the apple and the hat.

There. Perfect and red. Perfect and bloody.

The teacher is furious. You, so proper, so perfect.

He rips up your work and sends you to the hallway to think about what you’ve done.

Standing in front of the window, you count the pigeon droppings piled between you and the outdoors. You tell yourself that life is dirty, and that’s the way you like it.