“Oh lord, I’ve had enough of these people out here.”My mother says as we enter into my new high school. My mother has always had a snotty kind of attitude. She is always rude to people and believes she is better than everyone. When she was 18, she met my father, whom she thought she fell in love with. They immediately had me and ended up getting married. My fathers parents are very wealthy people due to all the acting both of them did in their lives. We have lived in California for my entire life.

A couple of weeks ago, I saw a flyer on her desk about a boarding school in New York. My family has never been very tight-knit, and I always hang out with friends and their families but I didn’t realize how much they resented me till they told me they were sending me to boarding school. California was my entire life. All my friends were there and all the sports teams I had been a part of forever were as well.

As you can imagine I was not thrilled, but here we are on move-in day at my new home for the next two years. My mother, of course, is the only one who came to take me. My father is too busy directing movies to even ask how my day went. As we move in, my mother is freezing, and because the school is very popular, the line to get in is out the door. She decides that she is going to cut the line. I stay put and know just what kind of trouble she is going to get us in. This guy in front of me is also having issues with his parents: they are screaming and he is ignoring them. I decided to talk to him. I said how “both our parents like to make a commotion huh?” he responds back with “oh yeah, you get sent away too?” From that moment on this boy and I became best friends.

Later I found out the boy’s name is Brian. Brian is from Florida and his parents are trying to get a divorce but think it will be too hard on him. He says, “I know they only sent me away so they could try and go through with the divorce, but them being together doesn’t matter to me anymore.” I have a lot of resentment towards his parents, as does he towards mine but I also have a lot of gratitude for them sending me away because I met Brian.

Brian is in a lot of my classes but one class in particular that is our favorite is Art. The boarding school we are going to is very prestigious and famous for their musical and art programs. Brian and I decided that during our art class, we were going to try to skip the class to go out on the streets of New York to see who would sell their art first. I went on East 79th street while he went to East 76th street. As I am trying to get people’s attention, this older man asks to speak with me. He says “this art is beautiful and I was wondering if you would happen to know who created it.” Of course I told him it was me and how badly I wanted to sell it. The man’s name is Mark Rand, a world renowned art dealer who finds underground artists and makes them go bigtime. He offered me $2,000 and a contract to create more art for him. I accepted and had to go find Brian.

When I went to find Brian, I noticed a man was yelling at him, screaming awful words. Once I got up close the guy grabbed Brian and told me how “this artist claims he did this work but I drew the same thing once”. Brian was trying to calm the guy down and take his hands off his arm. When you looked at Brian’s arm, you could see the grip of the man’s hand being insanely tight on his arm. As I am running, the man picks up Brian and throws him into the back of a van, then drives off. That was the last time I ever saw Brian. I am now a successful artist, still working with Mark. I have many new galleries along the streets of Manhattan. My inspiration for the art comes from Brian, hoping one day he would find me again or at least be alive. I will never know.