“Its barely blue”, she muttered at me as I walked into the auditorium. She was standing too close and I was startled. I looked down at my own shirt, gave her a contrite a look, and continued walking. This was the first time the principal of my high school had spoken directly to me. I don’t think she knew my name. But she knew my shirt was not blue. It was a grey collared shirt, with only a hint of blue. I was, just barely, in uniform, which left me mostly out of uniform. Also, it was known, that blue was her very favorite color, she wore it every single god-given day.
A year later in my art class we were drawing and painting portraits. I wanted to do a portrait of our dear old wrinkly principal, who everyone seemed to love, but I really didn’t. It was uncharacteristically brown-nosey and gutsy for me to want to do this, but her face was so interesting. Also, at that point, I knew I was good. She would know my name now. I marched down to her office. She sat across from me in a chair, in her almost nuns habit, which was really just a habit of wearing the same color every day. I sketched her face, it seemed young and old at the same time, with tracks of disappointment running every which way across it. I was working quickly and nervously. Then, she moved her head. She was falling asleep in the chair. I didn’t say a thing. Maybe she needed a nap. Of course she needed a nap, poor old lady. I finished my drawing. It looked very much like her. We exchanged pleasantries.
I went upstairs to the art room to turn my drawing into a painting, one that would hang in her office for years to come. I would be famous. Sort of. I decided to paint her portrait in cool blue hues, because those were her favorite and because I had to do my blue contrition. I worked it and reworked it, with colors ranging from out-of-the-tube royal blue to the yellow-grey of a bird feather to soft metallic greens. Something was emerging. Something very strange. I put more paint on, painstakingly doing her eyes so they burned cold with equal intensity to her actual eyes. I stepped back to look at it. She looked very very ill in my painting. What had I done? I had particularly messed up her shoulders. Desperately, I cut the painting off at her neck. Now, I had a sick and intense blue head of my principal and it looked very much like her. I frantically pasted it on another piece of white paper. Then it looked something like her blue head on a plate, minus the plate. And maybe in the back of my mal-adjusted high school mind, that is just where I wanted her. That painting never saw another face, blue or otherwise.
