"Where were you on Friday night I was looking for you?" Mina swung into her chair next to me in art on Monday.

"Sorry I had to leave early I was feeling kind of sick," I lied easily. Too easily.

I hated all those lies building up around me, like tiny bricks in a huge wall that any minute someone would pull a brick out of causing the entire thing to collapse in on me.

"Feeling better now?"

"Uh huh," I nodded and put my concentration into my painting, this week we'd been set a task to paint the person who meant the most to us. I was painting my mom, of course, and Mina was painting her older sister.

I wish I had chosen someone simpler though, I should've just made a face up and claimed it was a distant Aunt who I aspired to be like. Painting mom was just too difficult. I couldn't capture her, something was always off. I couldn't bottle her charisma and liveliness to splatter onto the page in abundance. I couldn't make her eyes glow with the mischievous and daring glint that had once lit them up. When I painted her she didn't leap straight out from the page like I wanted, instead the face remained flat and impassive. The woman I painted wasn't my mom.

I lost count of the number of times I crumpled up my paper and threw it into the bin in frustration. The first few times I did it Mina asked what the problem was but by the end of our third lesson painting she gave up on acknowledging the wads of paper flying past her head towards the bin.

If only I could see moms face again, maybe then I could paint her properly.

At least I had dad though, he was now insisting on eating dinner with me every night in his apartment on the ground floor of the dormitories with the freshmen. He had his own kitchen/dining/living room that consisted of an oven, sink, microwave, table, sofa and TV.

I found myself slipping into a new routine. I started each day eating breakfast with the Silent Boys who then drove me to school. I spent my break and lunch with Mina and her friends who I was slowly becoming more friendly with. I got the bus home which unfortunately Jenny now took so I had to pretend to listen to her whine about how boys never noticed her until I got home. Then I would usually find Ben in his room doing homework and watching YouTube videos, he welcomed me to the world of comedy sketches and each afternoon we would find ourselves clutching our sides in laughter as tears of mirth dripped down our faces.

Spending time with Ben was so effortless, maybe because I felt that there weren't any expectations with him like there were with so many others. Instead things were simpler when we lay on the floor and watched chickens skateboarding on his computer. There were no questions left unanswered or old grudges held or tensions lingering in the air. Only laughter.

Until I was yanked back to real life, so far from the world of talking emus. I was pulled to my dads kitchen to eat pasta, as it was the one of one thing he could cook, and talking about mindless matters as we danced around the things we really wanted to say.

And finally I would close each evening with the Silent Boys in my bedroom, of course with the door open, and play card games (that I always won), computer games (that Nico always won) or we would just talk and listen to music.

I wasn't sure how I felt about this new routine, part of me was scared by it, I was worried I'd become too attached to it. I was just anticipating the moment it would inevitably be yanked out right from under my feet. If something became too familiar and too ingrained the more I would miss it when it was gone.

***

"Please say you're free tonight, like straight after this lesson?" Mina raced into art on Friday looking frantic. Her hair was spilling out of the bun she'd haphazardly swept it up into. Her mouth raced as she blurted, "well you better be because everyone has let me down. I have to go shopping for Connor's sisters wedding as I have nothing appropriate. I would take Connor but he hates shopping and would be no help at all. So I asked Betty and Helena to come with me but I've just found out Betty now has to babysit her two younger brothers and Helena has been throwing up since five o'clock this morning. Please say you'll come."

"Ummm," I was too dumbstruck to come up with a more literate response, my brain felt like it was still trying to process her words even though her mouth was no longer moving. I'd never heard someone talk so quickly in my life.

"Please save me," Mina clasped her hand together in desperation.

"Sure I guess, I'll have to text my ...," I didn't have a chance to finish before Mina had thrown her arms around my shoulders so my face was buried in her wild hair.

"Thank you, thank you, thank you," she chanted with a huge grin on her face as she pulled away practically oozing relief, "I thought I was going to have to go shopping alone which I can't do. I hate shopping so much that I need moral support just to help me get past the front doors. Usually I would make something but I have specific instructions to get something 'shop bought'," she made quotation marks with her fingers as she rolled her eyes.

"Mmmm hmm," I nodded as I texted my dad and Ben and the Silent Boys under the table letting them know I would be back late so they didn't worry.

"I mean why do you want to wear something someone else has made when you're perfectly capable of doing it yourself," I went to tell her that not everyone was 'perfectly capable' of making a pair of jeans from a rectangle of denim but stopped myself as I knew it would be futile, "and all the stuff in the shops is just so generic, you walk down the street and half the people you see are wearing the exact same thing."

"Yeah," I agreed knowing that was all she needed to continue on another rant about how the clothing industry only produced one style of clothes.

I remained nodding intently but my focus lay on the piece of paper in front of me instead. Our paintings were due in by the end of the lesson and currently all I had was white blankness in front of me. Suddenly I jolted up from my seat,

"I mean, seriously, do they think everyone wears tops with emojis on th ...?" Mina faltered at my sudden movement.

"Sorry," I shook my head, "I've got an idea."

I squeezed several multicoloured dollops of acrylic paint onto my pallet and rushed back to my seat. Before my bum had even touched my chair I was slapping paint onto the canvas.

I'd realised where I was going wrong, I was so concentrated on the face that I'd forgotten about what made my mom her. And I needed her whole body to show that.

I swirled great long strokes of red onto my page emphasising her curves. Then I used brown to create the waves of her hair. Finally I came to her face which I had to make perfect, this was my last chance. I became so engrossed in my work that World War 3 could've started around me and I wouldn't have noticed.

"Time up, finished pieces to the front," our teachers voice rang clearly through the classroom, she looked less lovesick today, more lovestruck, rumour had it that a new boyfriend was on the scene for her.

I took my piece up, it wasn't as completed as I would've liked but I was still pleased with it.

It was simple, with no background, just my moms body filling up the paper. I'd drawn her half realistically and half in a caricature style, over emphasising her curves in her tight red dress, and her brown hair, and huge eyes, and long eyelashes to give her a cartoon character feel. Like she was something caught between reality and imaginary. Finally her exuberance and charisma had been captured in the way she threw her head over her shoulder and pouted her lips in one final kiss goodbye.

"Who is this?" My teacher called out, she was standing right next to my painting.

"That's mine," I raised a cautious hand, every eye in the class pivoted to me.

"No, who is it?" She specified.

"My mom," I answered simply.

"She's ...," she paused trying to think of the right word, "enigmatic."

I liked how she spoke as if she knew my mom just from looking at the painting, it made me feel like I'd been able to share some of my moms magical quality to those unfortunate enough not to experience it firsthand.

"Yes," I agreed, "she was."