CAMERON

As much as Ferris thinks he's doing me a favour by roping me into his magical mystery day off and making me complicit in his zany bullshit, as soon as he steps away, even for a minute I return to the loneliness all over again cos it's the loneliness that keeps me company 24/7. It's there for me when my mother deserts me for Decatur and when my father treats me like an unwanted Christmas toy which is to say all the time.

I'm not going to deny I haven't had fun so far today but unlike Ferris, I have this constant ticking time bomb of anxiety inside of me and I just know there's a price to pay for all our japes. Most likely it'll be me that pays the bill for both of us at the end of the day. Ferris is like Teflon when it comes to consequences. I'm more like, well, whatever the opposite of Teflon is.

VELCRO!

The funny thing about standing here in the Art Institute Of Chicago is how it almost makes me feel as if I'm protected by all these works like some sort of art firewall. As long as I'm standing here being all noble and thinking about art my ticking time bomb is suddenly paused and somehow I feel like I'm immune to getting into trouble. I mean it's unlikely that Ed Rooney is going to turn up here. Or maybe not. Maybe he's a big Kandinsky fan.

There is something spiritual about being around great works of art though. Not unlike nature, I guess, though whenever I spend time in the woodland at my father's place I see it as kind of quietly judging me just as cruelly in its way as he does. It certainly doesn't offer me the same level of comfort this art does here in the heart of the city.

But is it even comfort I find here? Or just a brief stepping outside of my own head for awhile while I vaguely remember that some guys and gals from history did some art shit that outlasted all the bullshit of day-to-day life. Maybe Ferris is an artist in his own way, striving for some greatness beyond the suburbs. Only it's misdirected. His idea of art is in constructing a perfect day off not on some canvas with his paints. Plus, his art can only be appreciated by an exclusive audience of me and Sloane.

Ah, Sloane. Talking about works of art. She's totally perfect. But she's in love with Ferris. Even if she wasn't I would never stand a chance. Sloane is the kind of girl that would make endless Buddhist reincarnations to go out with her seem worthwhile, even if it was like millions of years. That's probably what it would take for me to go out with someone that amazing.

No. I'm destined to be alone always.

Currently, I'm looking at a painting that was painted almost exactly 100 years ago. It's by some guy called Seurat and shows a Sunday afternoon in the park with some French folks relaxing by the River Seine. They look like they're all pretty happy and without any cares in the world. The opposite to me. Haha! Though the longer I look at the work the more the subjects seem kind of lost and sad, shut off from one another, almost like human robots. Maybe Seurat was a time traveler and he painted how humans would be one hundred years later but in clothes from that time so no one thought he was crazy. Okay, I'm never gonna be a critic with this whacky theory of mine.

Actually, this painting is really speaking to me right now. Did you know it's made up of thousands of tiny dots? Seurat was big on his dots apparently. Kind of an obsessive way to paint but I relate. I'm kind of obsessive too especially with prescription labels. I get that from my father. He could match Howard Hughes with his OCD I reckon. If there's just one thing out of place in his showroom house he freaks out. Some kids get to work for the family business, others just take on the family insanity.

I keep thinking about moving away from this painting but it won't let me go. That little girl in the picture is staring directly at me and daring me to move away.

Actually, she's starting to freak me out a bit. The more I look at her the more I see all those little dots making up her image to the point where she no longer exists. It's almost as if Seurat painted each of his subjects as a thousand tiny paint-specked atoms just like the universe does with us. It's kind of scary and liberating when you start to think about it.

It also makes me a bit sad, like there's nothing real of substance, in reality, to hold onto. Try telling that to my dad though with all his materialistic bullshit or any of the yuppies that this decade seems so good at propagating.

Then again, who am I to judge? Maybe there's nothing much to me when people look in close. If it was me standing where the girl is in the painting, I would probably cease to exist on closer inspection too. Or maybe I already am slowly becoming a non-existing entity. Feels like it these days. If it wasn't for Ferris reminding me that I'm alive I would probably just be a permanent ghost.

Jesus. I'm depressed again.

And another thing I just noticed. That red where the girl's mouth is looks familiar.

Oh shit. It's the same color as my dad's Ferrari.

Time to go.