Lavender Monarch has Exactly Thirteen Fears

10. painting for the queen

Patty is a really bad painter.

He's been helping me with the set every day but to be honest it's not that helpful. It's no wonder he dropped Viscom. School has just finished but we were given access to the hall to keep working on it under the promise that we'd behave.

"That's the wrong green!" I exclaim for about the five hundredth time. We have four different greens; one for the ivy, one for the moss, a darker one for shadows and a brighter one for the slime. Patty can hardly tell the difference between any of them and it's driving me crazy. He's using the darkest one on the Ivy leaves which means that his don't match the rest of the plant.

"You can hardly tell," he says stepping back and squinting at it, "It looks exactly the same to me."

"It does not!" I cry taking his paintbrush off him and handing him a new one along with a tub of the right shade. He just shakes his head at me.

"Anyone would think you were painting this for the queen." How dare he insult my masterpiece?

"Excuse me, but the queen would be impressed by this." He just starts laughing and in a fit of annoyance, I grab the tub of grey paint I had been using for the spider webs and dip my fingers in. Before he even realises what's happening I reach out and smudge it directly on his cheek. He pauses for a few seconds in shock, just looking at me closely.

"You just made a big mistake," he says with a smile and I back away slowly. He dips his fingers in his tub without breaking eye-contact. He shakes off the excess paint and takes a step towards me. "You better run," he says and I squeal. He better not put any of that on me! I know I kinda deserve it seeing as I did it to him but that doesn't mean I want the sticky stuff on my face. I dash away from him, placing my bucket of paint down carefully as I go, not wanting to spill anything.

"Don't you dare!" I say as he starts following me with a grin on his face. I'm not the kinda girl to slow down and let him catch me, giggling. You best believe I'm not going down without a fight. I start running across the hall, jumping over the rows of chairs. I can just hear him laughing.

"Geez, you really don't want this on you, huh?" he says. He's just standing there laughing, not even trying to chase me. This just annoys me even more so I go back to my tub of paint deciding to try and get more on him. I edge closer and he just watches me carefully, "I wouldn't do that if I were you," he says. Is that a challenge? I lunge forward again spearing it on his face. I grin triumphantly.

"Ha! Take that." I quickly try to make my escape back down the hall but he grabs my wrist.

"Not so fast," he says laughing and I squirm away from him. He doesn't let me go but instead reaches forward smearing the paint all the way from my forehead down my nose. I erupt into laughter and he does the same, letting go of my wrist.

"Oh my god," I say, reaching up to touch my face, my finger coming back covered in purple paint. He just starts laughing more and I threaten to put it in his hair. We are both standing there looking like a complete mess, the set we were supposed to be working on abandoned.

It's just then that the door to the hall opens and Patty and I both look over to see our drama teacher standing there with a very exasperated expression on her face. I look over at Patty with the paint all over his cheeks and struggle to keep a straight face.

"What do you two think you were doing?" she asks and the sternness of her voice immediately wipes the smiles off my face. We could actually get into trouble for this. Patty and I glance at each other and I gulp.

Whoops. I did get a bit carried away there.

"Clean up this mess right now and go home. You're obviously not working so you can leave. I expect you to be in my office in five minutes and explain to me exactly what's going on." She slams the door behind her. This teacher is well known for not taking crap from students, we really should have been more careful. We were told that if we wanted to paint after school we had to be quiet and not get distracted and most importantly that we couldn't spill paint anywhere. Patty and I quickly pack everything up making sure all the paint is closed so it won't dry up and all the brushes are washed. We are just about to quickly clean our faces off when she opens the door again. She inspects the room and then looks at both of us.