Lavender Andreas
Early March, 2017
After suffering through the persistent feeling of needing to pee for thirty minutes, she caved.
Lavender glided along the tattered tapestry of anti-bullying posters, wondering if administration genuinely believed pieces of construction paper and comic-sans headings would really spark a shift towards positivity.
She doubted it.
She turned towards the bathroom door, narrowly avoiding being hit square in the face as it swung open.
Lavender barely avoided the pair of girls barreling out of the bathroom, their laughter filling the hallway. She squeezed her eyes shut and brilliant greens illuminated her mind’s eye. Shades of lime, sage, and olive draped like vines alongside deep blues and lavender splashes overtaking large, gray rocks beneath the surface of her vision.
“Oh my god,” the water giggled, spilling over the top of the cliff. “I’m so sorry about that! Are you okay?”
She nodded, blinking hard. The two girls stood wide-eyed, holding back an incoming fit of hysterical laughter.
“Mhm.” She stepped forward, grabbing the door to the bathroom. “Yeah.”
~*~
Lavender quietly opened the classroom door, her hands damp from the lack of paper towels and silently stalked back to her table. It was only after she had crossed the crammed class that she noticed.
Oran Warner
August, 2022
“Hey!” His footsteps quickened. One, two, one, two, one- “Excuse me!”
She shot a glare at him over her shoulder, sketchbook in one hand, fist in the other. “What?”
His breath came out in short bursts. “What was that? That ink drawing. T-the one with the blue face. And the betta fis-”
“I told you.” There was a sharpness in her voice. “Don’t ask.”
Oran screwed up. He couldn’t help it. He’d watched the lines of her drawing curve entrancingly across the page. She’d sat next to him. The girl in blue had sat next to him, and when she’d gone to use the bathroom, he’d looked.
He’d looked at her sketchbook, the same one now clutched in her fist.
She sized him up in the overly-analytical way a stereotypical female lead of an action movie would as he stammered through a measly attempt at an explanation. “Listen, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. I shouldn’t have done that, especially since I don’t even know your name-”
“Lavender.”
Her palm slid gracefully off the handle and the door slammed shut behind her.
Lavender Andreas
Early March, 2017
“I want to switch seats, please? It’s-” Lavender coughed, the looming threat of tears making itself known through the pain in her throat. “It’s hard for me to see.”
“Sure, Lavender, I can do that for you,” her teacher tittered, reaching toward the stack of papers on her desk, completely oblivious to the storm brewing on the horizon of Lavender’s mind.
The noise of acknowledgement her teacher made resembled a low-tear bullfrog impersonation.
“Alright. Why don’t we put you right,” her teacher stretched the word, trying to fill the silence, “Here.”
She looked at the paper, checking the names surrounding her own. Not her favorite people, but then again her favorite people had become the terrors restraining her from sleep.
She swallowed, nodding. “That works.”
“Alrighty, well, I’m glad we figured that out for you, sweetheart.” The creases in Mrs. Whitman’s face deepened as she smiled unsettlingly through her foggy reading glasses.
Uh oh. Lavender knew that look. That was the look of a white woman about to pry.
“Are you sure that’s all that was wrong with the seating chart? I did my best to put you next to people you work well with.”
“I-” She faltered, her mouth opening and closing like that of a beached whale. She saw it so clearly in her mind: the sun gleaming off the sand, shallow waves beating the sides of the majestic humpback, a taunting reminder that the safety of home was just out of reach.
She took a sharp breath, shaking her head. “I’m sure. It’s just I’ve been having trouble. Seeing. I-I need to get my eyes checked.”
She turned, saving herself from seeing the look on Mrs. Whitman’s wrinkled face telling Lavender that she didn’t really believe her.
