His Model Student: A Student-Teacher Romance

9. The sketch

[RECAP: Sera has to face her sexy art teacher Mr Marek in class again]

Sera was working on a sketch of Joel while they waited for Mr Marek to arrive for their next lesson. She had drawn both Joel and Lois a dozen or more times before. So she knew the shape of Joel's eye and the twist of his lips almost by heart.

Lois looked over. "You are getting good," she said. "And fast."

Speed was one of Sera's goals given her future plans so she was happy to hear this.

"People might even pay for them, if you made them flattering enough," Lois said.

This was also one of Sera's distant, dearest hopes. "What would you pay for it?" she asked Lois.

"I wouldn't pay anything for it because you're my mate and I'd get it for free. But if I wasn't, I don't know, maybe five quid? Ten quid, even."

It wasn't exactly Sotheby's price level but it was a start. Given that Sera could sketch a reasonable likeness in about five minutes, and have a more complete picture done in ten, if people lined up back-to-back that would be sixty pounds an hour. She started to fantasise about actually doing this, and wondering where she would find clients when a shadow fell over her.

Her pencil froze as the paper was slipped away and held up by Mr Marek, who scrutinised it.

"Did you do this?"

"It's all mine," Sera told him.

For several seconds he gazed at the paper, his expression unreadable.

His next question took her by surprise. "Why do you leave the faces blank in evening class?"

Sera was disconcerted. "I wanted to do a portraiture class, but..."

"So why choose life drawing?"

Why would he never let her finish. "Because there wasn't one. I thought life drawing would be the next best thing, and so..."

Mr Marek raised his eyebrows. "So I'm only second best?"

Sera felt her face flame and stared down at the table to hide it. "No. I'm finding the class really productive. I just thought I should concentrate on the figure because I haven't done that before." She moved her eyes back up to meet his and saw a mocking glint in them. He was amused, not angry.

"If you want to paint portraits, by all means focus on that. I think learning to draw the entire human form would be useful to you as an artist, but you should do what you need to do." He put the sketch back down, and as he left - before Sera could react - he said: "You have considerable talent." His eyes lingered on her for a moment before he left.

Sera was stunned and strangely shaky. As she started to get her other pencils ready for the morning's exercise, her fingers were shaking. She could tell that Lois and Joel were giving her curious glances but she needed time to process this.

He had said she was talented. He had called her an artist.

Given she had assumed he hated her, this seemed like rare praise.

"Well, well," Joel muttered and Sera kicked him.

"There's no well well."

"Well, well, well."

Lois was giggling. "You're the colour of a beetroot. Anyone would think you had a crush on him."

Sera was mortified. "No way. I was just surprised that he didn't shout at me."

"I'd say he wants to do more than shout at you, the way he looks at you."

It was highly unlikely, as much as Sera would have liked it to be true. They all got on with that day's exercise.

Sera noticed that Mr Marek spent a lot of time helping Janette, a girl on the other table, who wore hearing aids and also had very thick glasses. Despite this she was quite talented at art, particularly abstract works with lots of bold colour. Mr Billings had tended to ignore her as he liked figurative art and Janette struggled with fine details. Sera was glad to see her finally getting some teaching attention.

"So are we going clubbing this weekend?" Lois whispered.

"Definitely." Hitting the town and getting wasted would be a good way to keep Sera's mind off things.

"What about you, Joel?"

Joel pretended to shudder. "A night of watching you two dance around your handbags? I don't think so. They've got a guest DJ at Orlando's, so I'm going there." Orlando's was unofficially the only gay club in town.

"We don't carry handbags as you well know, and you ought to talk about embarrassing dancing. One drink and you're the shame of the town." Lois quickly buttoned her lip as she saw the art teacher glaring at them. At least I'm not the only one incurring his wrath, Sera thought.

~~~~~~~~

I wrote and posted this chapter long before the terrible slaughter at the nightclub Pulse in Orlando, Florida. I picked "Orlando's" for its similarity to "Oliver's", a former gay nightclub in the UK that this club was loosely based on.

I will likely change this name in the published version of His Model Student to avoid confusion. But after some reflection, I've chosen to leave the original name up here as a tribute to the 49 men and women who were murdered, as well as the dozens more injured. 

We should not forget them.