Jason Weathers Picasso Davinci

• Aurora Soda, Grade 7
• Short Story
• 2015

Poor is a harsh word. The preferred word of Jason Weathers was necessitous. No one in his class knew what it meant so he was as happy as it was possible to be in the situation. Counting how many times old grandpa said “that is how aunty Sarah died”(the current record is 27)per hour was his only pastime apart from chalking masterpieces over the black mold in the bathroom. Old grandpa often mumbled that the crackly oil paint exterminated the zombie snails. Jason,s sister agreed that that was old grandpa language for “your an artist, it even kills the mould”. Jasons sister was rarely being a guardian as the papers instructed. Mostly she was holed up in her room attempting to write the young adult novel that would be the next Hunger Games/Divergent/Maze Runner. The responsibility was hard but after that much time with only an extremely old man whose brain had long ago passed its use by date, Jason was pretty good at cooking anything you could make with potatoes,garlic and cheese and I'll tell you now, his options were limited.

I shan't dither with back stories any longer. Jason Weathers was an undiscovered artist. That was it. Plain and simple. The little money he made babysitting and such was put towards things like school supplies and toothpaste. Art supplies were a luxury so art class at school was his only salvation. Straight A,s were the only grade he was happy receiving in art.

One particularly gloomy evening, Jason was at the local tip shop searching for bibs for old grandpa, when his eye landed upon a flyer blutacked to the door. It caught his eye because it contained the words art,from and trash. It combined two of the things that Jason had abundance of, artistic talent and trash. Broken plates and scrunched pieces of paper were in abundance at his house. If art materials wouldn't present themselves to him, his ingenuity would take him were paints and such couldn't.

What to create? What to be inspired by? The one time in his life that he actually want/needed his artistic skill and he was as stumped as a stumpy stump of a stumpy stump tree. He sat in his authentic harry potter under the stair cupboard and thought. He had thirty two dollars saved up for a rainy day and as he looked at the part of the flier mentioning the twenty five dollar entry fee he realized, it was raining.

The grand opening. The excitement, the food, the undeniably artistic people. All distractions from the fear of becoming a laughing stock. An irrational fear if you ask me. For they all looked upon Jason Weathers standing in front of A tiny family of three, each molecule of dust perfectly placed to create their features. Each figure was holding something they loved. Be it an unread bestseller, hand of a seemingly immortal aunt, or a hundred dollar gift card to an art store, it was deserving of a fortune.