➕ Beauty ➕

Affect

My glare looks at the slowly ticking clock. The small hand is almost at the twelve. A sharp stare takes me leaning closer. "Yes... yes... yes..." I whisper under my heavily puffed nostrils. I look to the wall next to the door... a dark purple poster, a crowd and an excited band; 'City Square 8:00pm' with the date scribbled out, replaced with drawn up yellow letters: 'TOMORROW!!!'. My toes pull closer and deeper into the souls of my feet. I can easily tell my hand fidgeting has increased into uncontrollable territory.

"Cheesy peats Guys! Stop shaking in your seats!" Mrs. Botherway groans, "If you really wanna go so badly, you can just walk out that door just five metres~." Almost everyone's chairs budge out of from under their desks, half of them already almost all the way up. "Jeez! Sit down! I wasn't being serious! If I really meant it~." The school bell rings out throughout the whole building. "You guys can go now." She say before quickly flopping back on her desk, lifting up her laptop lid, typing like she planned a marvellous massacre for her keyboard keys. She looked back up finding we're all still sitting down "Seriously..."

"Gemma!" I smile, sonically turning to her.

"John!" She says folding the corner of her book page. I try to keep my disappointment away for a second... She looks back at me. finally, first full smile. "Hehehe... what are you looking at?"

"Nothing," I spark forward, "Just something beautiful." I wink.

Gemma's cheeks brighten up like an activated traffic light. "Hehe... I'm not~... hehehe..." Faces connected. "I'm-..." She turned back onto the cover of her book, smudging the corner of the page with a heavy amount of sweat and oils. "Damn. I-I... I didn't expect you to say..."

"Gemma," I say, her looking directly at me. I take a glance back to the concert poster, "Do you wanna go to the public concert with me tonight. It's no Paramore, but it's-?"

Her lips, slightly sucked in. "Oh FUCK yes!" She rushes into me, taking me in both arms, "This is the best thing ever!"

"Gemma," I say, "are you feeling happy?"

"YES YES YES! I so am!"

_________________

Later on the day. Gemma had her mother drive us to the place where her dad would be staying during the investigation. It was a light orange building possibly holding other citizens who have participated in bad deeds. 'House of Good Person Jail' it says over the front door. It has a plaque behind the floor of the door: '98% chance you'll get out here alive, and 98% chance you were innocent/didn't do something that bad all along.'

'In a few days,' I think to myself, 'the latter 98 will become 97.'

Gemma takes a hold of my wrist, "John, please send this to my dad. I want him to have it like a remembrance gift while we're... apart." She hands me a brightly coloured drawing, riddled with traces of thick crayon, and felted outlines. What is drawn appears to be a young happy stick-figure-girl holding hands with a larger stick-figure-man. The girl was labeled 'me', and the man with 'daddy'. Gemma's lip quivers, "Please..."

I walk into the reception room finding a joyful lady sitting behind the desk. "Hi, I have an appointment right now, so do you know where I meet them?"

She looks down, scrolling to what I expect to be her schedule... She turns to me situating her eyebrows in a strange fashion, "Oooh, I'm sorry if you're a family member because..."

"Hmm? Because what?" I ask.

"Well... when your there, just wish him good luck..." she quietly says handing me a crudely handwritten card, the name 'Josh' written on it with orange pen ink. She points to the double door next to her desk, directing me to go in that way.