In truth, I played up to both teams. I giggled and blushed when Octavia patted the seat beside her in the common room, desperate to show me how many dirty words she knew and how she strung them into sentences that mentioned Adam Jeffrey Blackmore, her posse surrounding us both, some twiddling my wild untamed hair, some offering me a Skittle. And when Ruth Gilbert pointed out that my mixed-medium still life of a boudoir dresser was ‘accurate yet magical, giving a rather shallow item a blast of personality,’ I lapped up the chance to discuss art in detail, convincing my peers that I really was putting in the extra hours for my work, and only my work.
But Mr Blackmore contributed much more to my world than watercolours and acrylics. I had a friend; I belonged. When I worked on my creativity, I wasn’t trying to be as cool as Octavia or as intelligent as Ruth. I wasn’t figuring out ways to make my nannies desert me, or shaking my jazz hands to play the star in the school musical, anything to make my parents give me more attention.
‘You never take a break,’ I said, one lunchtime when February’s snow sat thick on the windowsill, the girls outside squealing as they slid about on the ice, arm in arm, overreacting to the minor danger this weather could impose.
‘Believe me, this is a break,’ Mr Blackmore said. ‘I can sit here in peace, eat my lunch and encourage young talent, or I can drown in Mrs Llewellyn’s cigar smoke, trying to look interested in staffroom talk about baking bun loaves or how quickly arthritis progresses.’
‘Mrs Llewellyn smokes cigars?’
‘Can’t you smell it on her?’
‘I never get close enough.’
He never suggested I call him AJ, although when I pointed out his initials on his leather art folder, he told me that’s what his mates at uni had called him. I just started calling him that, and AJ never corrected me.
We worked in silence often, and I loved how he wasn’t the kind of teacher to just sit behind his desk and pretend to mark things, the way others did during detentions. He was always working on a project of his own, usually sketches in charcoal or oil pastels, using the edges of his fingers to smudge or define. We commented on each other’s art, then carried on without fuss, or sometimes struck up conversations that enthralled me.
Once, it was about how the ending of A Chorus Line was more terrifying than uplifting, how the dancers became identical, lost all sense of their beautiful individuality in order to get the job, and how that happens too often in all walks of life. Another time, we discussed abortion, and I didn’t feel uncomfortable in the slightest. One particular chat that unfolded came after I’d taken photos on a disposable camera during a weekend trip into town. I’d snapped three homeless people in the doorway of a closed-down video shop. The shutters hovered a few feet above the ground, creating the opportunity for a den of sleeping bags and cardboard boxes. It inspired a collage of snaps and sketches, a chance for me to try out charcoal, too.
‘It’s sad, isn’t it?’ I ran my fingers over an image. ‘Makes me feel lucky.’
‘These people might have been lucky once upon a time,’ AJ said. ‘Depending on your perception of luck. Not only those without a physical home are homeless.’
‘You mean like people who don’t know where they belong?’
‘Do you think that’s what I mean?’
I pondered his question. He was always encouraging me to see beyond the 2D. He tried to get his classes to do the same, which usually ended in titters or smart-ass comments.
‘Well, it makes sense,’ I said, nodding thoughtfully.
‘How?’
‘It’s cheesy but home is where the heart is, right?’
‘Clichés exist for a reason.’
‘If you don’t know where your heart is, where you’re loved, then you can’t call a place home, can you?’
‘And how does a young girl like you come to that conclusion?’
‘Because I don’t know where I belong. I never have. I mean, I really loved living in Singapore because my school was awesome. But we moved, and I always knew we would move, so I never felt like I could relax or make friends because I knew I’d have to say goodbye to them. It made it easier that other kids were in the same boat; you know, expats.’
‘I’ve always been intrigued by the students here like you, the expats.’