Artist Statement - Maya Sue

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The yearbook classroom never had adequate air conditioning, the type where the freon wasn't installed correctly so the fans would blow really hot air. The room was cluttered and the air stung with freshly cut glossy parchment and rusty staplers. The door was an obnoxious orange color with stiff hinges that moved with a squeak making it more like an airlock than entrance. As my heavy soled asics slapped the grainy yellowed white tiling, I peered towards the teachers gray plasma board desk and saw the dense stack of yellow and purple field trip slips. With the thin warped door knob attracting my hand, I felt the eyes from the short gelled haired man peirce my shoulder blades and linger in my ribcage.

As the door’s reedy creek resonated throughout the room, I was hit with a wall of cold stiff cold air. The class was an after school program, which meant leaving the class would be to enter a pasteled softer yet thicker environment compared to the harsh midday sun. The beige concrete with bits of plant matter strewn about from the garden took a soft skarlet and lavender hue softly coating the little cracks in the pavement. The little section by the terrace had a spectacular floor to ceiling window littered with bird excrement tainting the viscous swamp green tint. Everyday my classmates and I made it a point to collectively glimpse at our reflections in the window, now a brown with a crimson aura from the evening sky.

Tomorrow’s the day where the slips for the banquet are due, all I need is teacher and parent signatures. The mere prospect of persuading my teachers to approve a trip that not only is time consuming but is also purely recreational made my stomach turn.

The idea itself made waking up a mental chore, as I stared into the pristine porcelain slowly being stained by the blueish green toothpaste falling into the bowl, I turned to my parents begging for a signature. “Dad c’mon,” I uttered with colgate leaking from the side of my mouth, “ my grades are good enough for me to take one day off”

“Do you have to go?” he spoke with a touch of canned concern exiting the corner of his already pursed lips, “It’s a yearbook banquet, you seriously wanna go to that?”

“Dad this is my last year here,” I said with undetectable passive aggressiveness concealed with inflection and mint. “You said to make the most of it.”

“Fine.” he said, his breath reeking of coffee and shame from just being verbally bested.

The iridescent ball in the sky had reached its apex in the sky which glazed the back field an unbearable bright white. The sprinklers placed droplets of faux dew onto the dainty blades of grass, the perfect droplets lingering on the tips of the grass haulms and warped the sun’s rays, sort of disco balling the field creating a thin white haze that only climbed to our shins. At that point I had already had 2 out of 3 signatures, I can get the last signature in her math class. As the door opened, the threshold became a wall of sweaty napes and poorly done at home haircuts. The class had never gone so slowly, the usually swift motions completed with the teacher's dry erase marker had gone dull as if she had run out of oil in their wrist, all the while the white clock with blotchy black ticks running along the walls of the inner circle. As the hands slowly moved with satisfying clicks each movement, the fake bell over the intercom rang and the tsunami of restless middle schoolers started towards the door. Stuck in the crowd of bald spots and dandruff, we had shuffled out of the classroom out to the hallways.

As I wait for the yearbook program to begin, I watch the sky as it bleeds its clean blue hue out and is injected with a harsh monochromatic yellow color burning away all the clouds. As the loud orange door is slowly pushed open, the sun's reflection on the door scans the students like barcodes standing near the entrance.

As I walk in, I am immediately met with the yearbook teacher holding a stack of papers. As I gaze at the stack of yellow permission slips, my heart sinks remembering the last signature I missed. As the rest of the class sits down I flee the class room in an attempt to get the last signature.

As I sprint through the school, I tunnel vision on the messy asphalt that splashed onto the curbs with the rest of the world going out of focus leaving circular bokeh waste of the surrounding scenery. The path to the teachers room grew longer, I clutched the paper with a pen in my pocket desperately trying not to lose balance.

As the doorknob to their room grew larger and larger in my field of vision, I slowed my pace and eventually came to a screeching halt. Barging in the door, I looked around and the teacher was nowhere to be found. Brimming with disappointment I started my walk back, until through the trees I saw the teacher placing their bag into the car in the parking lot closest to the street.

I started to the field separating the school and the parking lot, and flagging her down. I handed her the paper and reached for the pen in my pocket. As I shuffled around in my rough denim jean pockets, she had given the paper back to me, with a signature in royal blue pen.