I’m not good at anything. I’m terrible at most things, actually, including the art class my parents signed me up for. They see potential. My parents, that is, not the teachers. I’m just another student here, another weekly tuition, which they use to pay their bills as they attempt to work as real artists, not as midwives for the pretentious students that sit around and glop paint onto the canvas.

Today Tanya, the Monday, Wednesday, Friday art teacher, she prefers we call her by her first name, while Donald, the Tuesday, Thursday, Saturday art teacher prefers we call him Mr. Tunsun, but we all call him Donald because we don’t like him much, showed us some of her artwork. She doesn’t normally bring in anything she’s working on. We think it’s because she doesn’t want us to get down on ourselves. She’s a professional artist, haven’t had three art shows over the last ten years. She’s a graphics artist, although she trained in paint and canvas. She brought in a graffiti filled brick wall. She carried it in on a red wagon, the type the used to buy kids to haul their stuff around in. The wall was about three feet high and four feet across, and she had painted it in miniature tags, the type that used to decorate all the boroughs before the mayor ordered a cleanup before I was born. That’s at least what my parents told me. They were fans of graffiti and fought for some of the more artistic work to remain on the walls, or at least have them removed to other places.

Tanya’s work was good. She’s not terrible at this art thing. She gets her feelings across in the work. She hasn’t sold the wall yet, though. She brought it in to show our parents mostly. There are ten kids in the class besides me, and except for Tommy, all of our parents are very affluent. We’re not supposed to talk about that, but it’s true, and I don’t know why they ask us to deny it, even amongst ourselves. I think Tanya is hoping one of our parents will buy it or talk to one of their friends and have it presented in a show where someone might buy it. My parents will like it, I told Tanya. And they did, and they promised to make a few phone calls when they got home. I showed my parents my work. It wasn’t phone call worthy.

I’ve hit a rut as of late. I’m tired of the constant painting and lessons. We paint five hours a day, and study academic classes for another five hours. We’re given two hours of free time during the day to read or socialize, but most of us walk around outside, talking about the weather, mostly. We watch the younger children in the school play in the swings and monkey bars, but we outgrew that years ago.

Today I painted a tree. It was the tree that lives outside my bedroom window. I would have climbed down it or up it, but I’m afraid of heights, and my bedroom is on the second floor. That’s what the kids in movies do: they sneak out of their bedrooms by climbing down adjoining trees. I think my parents want me to do that. Every time we watch a movie where a kid does that, my parents always point it out, and they threaten me with grounding if I try that. Serious grounding. But I know they’re trying a version of reverse psychology. They do that. They’re overeducated, and they think they can manipulate me by setting strict boundaries for the rules they want me to break, and loser boundaries for those they want me to obey. I realized what they were trying to do from the beginning, but I’m not much of a rule breaker, and I end up following both types, much to chagrin of my parents.

I’ve been thinking of hanging up my paintbrushes. I haven’t talked to my parents or teachers about it, but I feel it’s almost time. There’s not much I want to paint anymore. There are no visions of beauty or intrinsic truths that capture my imagination. I’ve tried realistic and abstract. I’ve tried ridiculous sculptures and filming. I’ve tried it all, and what I’ve figured out is that everything has been done already. I’m derivative. And not a terribly good derivative at that. I should have gone to tennis camp instead of art camp. I see that now. Even though thanks to my scrawny body, I would never have been a professional, at least I would have known that going in. My parents and teachers always assumed I would make it.

They plan to send me to France when I graduate next year for my first year of university. There’s an art institute that has already accepted me based on my portfolio. I’m thinking of running away instead. I haven’t figured out where I want to run to, and I have a sneaking suspicion that this is what my parents want: they want me to experience the real world on my own terms instead of on their terms. They didn’t set any strict rules about running away, I know. I don’t think they consciously want it, but when they talk about their past and their regrets, I feel that was a big one. They never did anything rebellious. They followed the route set by their parents and accomplished everything beyond even their own parents’ expectations. I don’t think they want that for me. I don’t think I could be more successful, at least financially, than them.

I thought about leaving a note, but I wasn’t sure what I would say. They’ll figure out what I was thinking. They need only look through my portfolio to see where my head is at these days.