Graveyard Shift by Chris Westwood Read Free Book Online Page B

class, naming names. “Raymond and Mel. Curly and Tommy . . .”
    Chairs scraped and crashed as students flitted between tables.
    â€œDan, you go with Liam. Matthew with Ryan. Becky with Ben.”
    Everyone stopped at that. You could tell from their faces that Becky had just drawn the short straw. She’d landed the weirdo.
    I picked up my things and started toward her desk, but she was already on her way to mine and motioned me to sit. Herface was pink with embarrassment. Slapping her bag on the desk with a sigh, she looked back at her friends as if pleading for help. She took pencils and an eraser out of her bag and set right to work.
    Becky had a hard-set expression, which I preferred not to draw. It wasn’t a natural look, but I couldn’t think of how to make her relax. A joke might’ve helped, but I’d forgotten the punch line of the only joke I could think of. It wasn’t that good a joke anyway.
    On a clean page of my sketch pad, I roughed out the general shape of her head and shoulders, then softened the lines with my thumb. After ten minutes her outline seemed about right and her features were coming together. It felt strange, though, having to draw someone while she was drawing me. All I got were concentrated frowns, plus Becky had a habit of poking her tongue from the corner of her mouth, which I decided not to include. It didn’t flatter her.
    As the period went on, she spent more time checking what I was doing than focusing on her own work. Her lines were too clean and precise, and although I was seeing it upside down on the desk, I could tell the portrait looked nothing like me.
    â€œVery good, Dan,” Mr. Redfern said, moving between desks. “Too harsh, Kelly. You’re not supposed to carve it into the page.”
    Apart from Mr. Redfern, you could’ve heard a pin drop. Everyone was engrossed in their work. For once there were no blank stares, no whispered insults from Raymond.
    â€œRaymond,” Mr. Redfern went on. “You’re a budding Picasso. Nose on one side of the face, eyes on the other. Intriguing. And Mel? Some advice if I may. Look closely and you’ll see Raymond has two eyes, not just one slap-bang in the middle of his forehead. Observe!”
    Then he stopped behind me. My pencil faltered over the page. I heard the whistle of his breath above my shoulder, but he didn’t comment before moving on.
    I was close to finishing. All I had to do now was correct the light in Becky’s eyes, soft white orbs, which I managed with a tiny ball of Blu-Tack, dabbing it around them. I did the same to lighten the freckles on her nose. Becky watched in wonder as if she’d never seen a blob of Blu-Tack before in her life.
    The portrait looked as close as I could make it. I put down my pencil and turned the sketch pad around to show her.
    She flushed, not looking at me as she spoke — which was the first time she’d spoken to me at all.
    â€œThat’s really good. Wow!”
    Then she looked at her own unfinished effort and planted her forearms across it to cover it.
    At the end of the class, we were invited to circulate the room to see what everyone else had done. Constructive criticism was encouraged. Smart remarks and insults were not. The wide variety of styles included stick figures, abstracts that looked nothing like human beings, and one portrait in two separate pieces which Kelly had torn apart in frustration. Oddly, Mr. Redfern had chosen to seat the twinstogether. Their work wasn’t bad, but it was hard to tell whose portrait was whose.
    Most of the class crowded around the desk I’d shared with Becky, pushing and prodding one another and straining their necks for a view. There were gasps and approving looks I hadn’t seen before, even an admiring nod from Devan, one of the gang of six.
    â€œLooks just like her,” he said to Ryan, loudly enough to make sure I heard.
    At the back of the commotion, out of