Work of Art

Van Gogh. Degas. Rembrandt. Monet. Picasso

Each boy with his sketchpad stood, closing one eye as he drew what he saw, though Tom Brown a pale, platinum blonde fifteen-year-old, sketched his with a slight M.C. Escher bent, smirking through his dark sunglasses. In their dark blue school uniforms, the students of Gulinger High had flooded the Metropolitan Museum of Art with a number of other private schools on field trip. Tom’s pal, Matthew Calamori, flirted with a cluster of girls that attended an all-girls school, standing near a Johannes Vermeer painting of another young Dutch girl. The girls flirted back, giggling and grinning at the brown-haired Italian boy. Their own sketchbooks hung just as neglected in their hands as his. While Rick Deacon, their rusty-haired thirteen-year-old friend, stalked around a replication of a Michelangelo sculpture looking for a good angle to draw, mostly stalling, Troy Meecham dropped to a bench and rolled his dark blue eyes, wishing they had gone to the natural history museum instead. Only Randon Spade, Troy’s lookalike, was doing the assignment seriously. Actually, the dark-haired fifteen-year-old was the only one of the gang with artistic interest. And he was already half done.

Their instructor walked into that room from the adjoining one where many of the other Gulinger attendees were. He clapped his hands and called out, “Hurry it up. You have five minutes left.”

The teacher’s eyes lingered on Matt with a terse glare, jerking his head to get to the boy to quit flirting with the girls and start paying attention to his assignment. Matt barely gave him a glance, winking at the girls before handing one of them a phone number. It was Rick’s number, since he was the only one with a cell phone, let alone a person to call. Those in hiding were under strict orders to never call out of the school. However, Matt had already used Rick’s phone for random things before, including ordering take out. Of course when the headmaster found out about it, she almost exploded in anger. Luckily she didn’t confiscate Rick’s phone—yet. All the boys were waiting for it.

The teacher cleared his throat to remind them once again to hurry up. Then he stalked out of the room. Rick sat down to quickly sketch the sculpture, flipping open the cover to his sketchbook, his charcoal pencil tucked between his fingers. Troy scooted over to give him room, drawing a stick figure of the same sculpture while leaning his elbow on his knee. Finished with his sketch, Randon had moved from where he was, walking out from view just as Rick looked up. As Rick’s eyes tried to get the shape of the carved human body, he noticed movement just beyond it. One of his classmates rushed into the room in a mad walk, nervously glancing over his shoulder. Following after him Rick noticed two broad, muscular men in suits. One had a shaved head and tattoos on his knuckles. A thug. The other was dark haired and leaner, like a weasel. Both appeared to be Italian. Rick stood up.

“Hey, Tom!”

Tom whipped around the same moment the men walked into the room, bumping right into them. He dropped his sketchpad, and his charcoal pencil flew from his fingers. Only the thug apologized, as the weasel plowed past without even a look at the boy.

“Hey!” Tom stomped after them, his eyes on the fatness of their imps.

As thug turned to deal with Tom, Rick hopped forward to get between the weasel and his escaping classmate.

Matt immediately looked up. Just he promised, he was still watching out for Rick, and Rick looked like he was getting into trouble again. And Randon, twitchy as a cat, perked up his head at the quick movement. Their eyes fell on the scene. They assessed it at once.

“Troy,” Rick waved him over. “Come here.”

Happy to set down his ‘artwork’, Troy hopped on over to both Rick and his classmate who was already breathing easier to be among the pair of them—especially Rick and Troy whom everyone considered the most normal out of that gang of five.

“What is it?” Troy asked.

“Take him outside to the van,” Rick whispered, looked back to the weasel whom Tom had already converged on, despite the other man’s platitudes to keep him back. Matt joined Tom along with a sudden appearance of a black cat under their feet.

Nodding, Troy pulled on their classmate’s arm. The pair of them rushed out of the room, down the stairs, back to the Great Hall to go outside.

“Hey! Marco, you can’t run!” the weasel shouted, shoving Tom out of the way.

Tom stomped hard on his

Impressum

Verlag: BookRix GmbH & Co. KG

Tag der Veröffentlichung: 18.09.2014
ISBN: 978-3-7368-4019-5

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