Externalizing [mxm]

Chapter 1

Marc strolled through the halls of the school, admiring the clean and elegant decorations. It hadn't changed since he had been a student there, years before. It was a small school that hosted students from lower elementary all the way through the end of high school. They also charged parents like him out of the ass.

Not that he really minded though. Since his wife had left two years before, he wasn't exactly sure how to handle a child himself—even if she was well behaved. He figured a private school could help teach her some of the things that he might miss with her, and in a way that he hated to admit—help take her off of his hands at times.

He finally found the right room and glanced in through the window in the door. He could see older students mingling inside; some of them were working intently on their projects, while others simply sat there talking. He noticed the uniforms were lax on the older students—or maybe it was just the class.

He always made sure that Ariel looked her best on the way to school, so that no one had anything to say about him being a single dad raising her alone. Marc popped his head into the room then, frowning. He still couldn't pinpoint where the teacher was.

The two years before, the art instructor had been Mrs. Lowling; and yet the day before, he gotten an e-mail from a Mr. Snowden as the art instructor. Maybe he had missed something in that regard, but Marc was also curious. It was a few weeks too early for parent-teacher conferences, so he'd shown up  just before the end of the school day to stop in.

One of the students finally noticed Marc in the classroom and gave him a wide-eyed stare for a moment before hollering, "Brendan!"

Someone popped up almost instantly from the other side of the room. "What's wrong?" A younger looking man asked immediately, his eyes narrowing down suspiciously on the student that had said his name. That was when he saw Marc then too, and his face twisted in confusion.

Panic struck him then for a moment as he dove to hide something behind a cabinet then before finally, totally inconspicuously of course, trotting up towards Marc. "Can I help you?"

"I'm Ariel's father, Marc," Marc introduced himself briefly with a raised eyebrow. He'd liked Mrs. Lowling. She was an art teacher, but her classroom certainly didn't look like a hurricane, and this Mr. Snowden looked like he could be a student himself. Hell, he even let the students call him by first name. His hair was dark and swept over his face, but undercut on either side, and he wore a stylish long sleeved turtle neck.

"Oh." Mr. Snowden frowned, still looking confused. "Oh!" He remembered it then. "I e-mailed you, but you could have just e-mailed me back..."

"Well you said you wanted to talk to me," Marc pointed out.

Mr. Snowden nodded and took off towards the front of the classroom. Marc just figured he should follow along. The man's desk was covered in tubes of paint, including a painting that looked like it was in the works. He was pulling out and pushing in his drawers though, looking for something. "One of Ariel's pieces... a few weeks ago..." apparently he couldn't talk properly while he was looking for something. "Ah, here." He pulled it out haphazardly and handed it to Marc.

Marc looked down at it. Ariel liked art, and for a six year old she was already better than her peers. Marc tried not to react towards the rendered face of his ex-wife—it wasn't exact, and still looked like it was done by a child, but he recognized some of her features anywhere. "Is there something wrong with it?" He asked coolly as he tried to hide his unease with it. He thought parents were only called in about artwork when it was inappropriate.

"Oh, no. Just there's this gallery show coming up in about a month. I'm supposed to pick a kid from each class and display a piece of their work—I just need you to sign the consent form for it. I was just going to have you fax or e-mail it back to me, but since you're here..." Mr. Snowden started going through the abyss of his desk again, this time pulling out a paper that had seen better days. "Here. Read over if you want, and sign. It just says that you give permission for her name and age to be posted by the work, and for the public to view it, and that it's on display."