"Cora." He called, eyes caressing my face in a way that I so badly wanted for his fingers to instead. "Tell me to stop."
I gulped, the words frozen on the tip of my tongue.
"Cora, tell me now." He repeated, growing more agitated as his gaze moved do...
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"Cora. What are you doing?" My maths teacher asked, standing directly in front of me and leaning over until I could smell the coffee she had been drinking.
I moved to hide the doodle that spread across the pages of my jotter and took up the space designated for the quadratic equations on the board, but gave up when a wicked smile spread across her face.
"Are you drawing?" She asked, raising her voice to an unnecessarily high volume and inciting a ripple of laughter across the classroom.
My face burned as every single head turned to look at me and she snatched the jotter out from under my grip.
"I'm sure your parents would love to hear about this." She said with glee in her voice, only too happy to remind my parents of how much of a disappointment I continued to be.
The private boarding school that I had attended since the age of six was my own personal hell, offering every subject and activity but those believed to be a 'waste of time'.
Art fell under that category and was 'too ridiculous to even consider', hence why my teacher had taken it upon herself to flick through the jotter and pause on every drawing I'd ever done, eyes glittering as she humiliated me in front of my class.
"You need to stop with these fantasies, Cora. Doodling on a page will get you nowhere in life." She lectured.
My heart broke a little at that statement, but I did my utmost to hide it. There was no way that I would give her the pleasure of getting a reaction out of me.
Art was the only thing I had an actual passion for, so if I didn't have that then I was well and truly screwed.
"Get back to your work." She finished, slamming the jotter back onto the table. "And let that be a lesson to you. When you're in my classes you focus on what I've given you, and nothing else."
Symbols that made zero sense swam around on the page as I looked at the questions, and I forced myself not to groan aloud.
There was a certain passiveness that came with experiencing the same thing every single day of your life, and I was all too familiar with it.
I needed a change, and fast.
- - - -
I squealed into the confines of my bedroom with nobody to hear me but the walls.
