fandomhigh | Hands-On Art, Class #9, Period 1

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hands-on art

Hands-On Art, Class #9, Period 1

"Welcome back, class," Lily greeted everyone. "And, you know, welcome to any temporary class members who are tagging along with actual class members, don't worry, we won't treat you any differently." And then she thought to look to see if there were any new kids.

"Anyway, we're having sort of a free period today. You've got all the supplies, so you can just practice on either your favorite technique so far, or try to get better at something you've been struggling with. As long as you're working, it's all good. I'll be here for any questions if you need help."

[Sorry it's lame, I totes forgot LJ is going down early in PST time and I want to get it up before the deadline. That's what she said.]

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"Fair enough," Cal said, grinning a little sheepishly as he held up his own black and white (with a touch of red) abstraction. "So long as you don't ask me the same."

Because, while his did have a particular meaning, he wouldn't admit to it.

"We will be mysterious and artistic together," Claire decided, reaching for pastels and adding an outline to an image of a castle on her canvas. "Explaining it cheapens it, blah blah blah."

"I see you've clearly learned from those photography books after all," Cal observed teasingly. He turned his attention to all the angles and curves of his piece and decided that he was done, setting it aside, a little bit of a distance away to see what he thought about it, and decided that he liked it.

"I am a fast learner," Claire informed him, smile brightening her face as she critically inspected her work, then added a little more purple crayon. "I'm going to rock the calendar shoot, seriously."

"You're definitely going to help with it, then, huh?"

"Unless Ben changes his mind or I randomly need to go home," Claire said, frowning a little. "I mean, I'll be gone a couple days for Thanksgiving, so I hope you weren't going to do it that weekend..."

"If we do," Cal said, "I'll be out of luck, too, since I'm definitely going home for Thanksgiving."

Actually, maybe that would be how he'd get out of it...He wouldn't mind that too terribly.

"Yeah?" Claire asked, looking up under her bangs. "My family always makes this big thing out of holidays, and this is the first one without my dad, so ... no way am I getting out of it."

"And my family's Greek," Cal nodded a little. "Any occasion to stuff as many of us into one house with a crap ton of food, and it's on. I'd rather skip it," -- last Thanksgiving had just been so awkward; maybe this year will be better, though he couldn't blame anyone for still being a little weird around the new Cousin Cal-- "but it'd mean a lot to my mom."

"How many of you are there?" Claire asked. "I don't have a huge family. Mine will probably just be ... me, my brothers, whoever they're dating if anyone," -- she didn't trust either Nate's relationship or David's single state to last -- "and my mom. And I hope not the last guy she was dating. He was weird."

Edited 2008-11-19 03:21 (UTC)

"Well," Cal said, "out of Stephanides' proper, there's just me, my mom, yia yia, and my brother. But there's my aunt and her four kids, and then some other relatives, and then anyone with even a remotely Greek name who lives within a twenty mile radius...At least the traffic from people we know through church will probably stay diminished."

"Oh, what happened with the church people?" Claire asked.

"Uhhh..." Cal bit his lip a little.

"That's....kind of complicated," he said, still trying to decide if he should explain it further. Claire had told him the story about the crematorium burning, though, so he felt it wouldn't be fair to withhold weird family stories on his side of things.

And, besides, out of all the things he could tell her, this was on the light side.

"Well, my uncle was one of the priests there; he married my dad's sister. Greek Orthodox priests can marry, and, well...turns out, Father Mike really wanted to marry my mother, but Dad got there first, and so there's an assumption that they never really got along after that. When I ran away, someone eventually called my dad and was all, 'yeah, bring such and such money to this place and I'll give you information about your missing da-- kid.' Dad goes, turns out it was Father Mike, and, okay, I wasn't there, I have no idea how it happened, but a car chase ensued, and that was the car chase that ended up killing my dad. So now it's all kind of...'huh, the priest killed your father. Awwwkwaaaaard.'"

Cal wondered if Claire even followed all that.

She followed most of it. "Wow, yeah. That must have been the most awkward funeral ever, if people knew."

"So ..." She had no idea where to go from that. "Was your mom into him, too?"

She sometimes failed at tact.

"I'm gonna guess not," Cal said, "considering she was practically engaged to the guy, and still opted to marry my dad."

Who was her cousin. Which Cal didn't feel Claire needed to hear about, because, yeah, she probably thought he was weird enough without having to bring in the fact that the Stephanides Family Tree was much more of a shrub.

"But I could be wrong. Not like I know, considering this was kind of before I was even born."

"That's kind of romantic, that she went for true love," Claire decided. "For your dad, anyhow. If thinking about parents can be romantic."

It was a little ew to her.

Cal just wrinkled his nose in response to that, since it was a lot ew for him, considering the whole cousins thing and the fact that, really, it was just weird to think about Milton and Tessie being romantic because he'd never really seen anything like that his entire life.

Claire wrinkled hers back at him, and tried not to giggle. It wasn't that gross.

But, then, she didn't know the cousins thing.

"So, yeah," Cal concluded. "Should be interesting. I kind of miss home sometimes, anyway."

"Yeah," Claire admitted. "I like it here most of the time, but ..." A shrug, and her face was back behind her hair. "It's going to be good to see my mom. Even if I'll be completely sick of her by noon Friday."

"You might be surprised," Cal offered. "I thought it would be really weird when mine came for parents' weekend, but we ended up spending almost all our time together and it was kind of nice."

He got a little bit of a dopish smile that he couldn't help, and, really, with everything Tessie'd done for him and put up with because of him, he wasn't even going to bother hiding being a total momma's boy sometime.

"Even if she did make me get my hair cut."

"Last time mine decided we had to bond, we ended up sneaking out of her cousin's house at 6 a.m. to get out of spinning class," Claire informed him. "... okay, that was kind of fun."

She squinted at him. "Did it mostly grow back already?"

[OOC: Crashing. Night!]

Cal looked up, rubbing a hand through his hair. "Yeah," he said. "A lot, I think. It's always grown fast, but I'm not going to complain if that's the worse I get of the hairiness that comes with being Greek."

Edited 2008-11-19 04:44 (UTC)

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Hands-On Art, Class #9, Period 1

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