TROPOSPHERE
By Jessica Schmidt

“It’s raining,” Julia observed.

I pushed my bangs to the side of my forehead again. Just like I’d done 10 seconds ago.

Everyone else went through this phase last year. But not me. I somehow missed the bangs-aren’t-cool memo. Now everyone sported stylish parts down either cheekbone and I was stuck in the death stage, with bangs too short to store behind my ears but too long to sit where they naturally wanted to fall.

I let go of my hair and turned my attention back to Julia.

“So?” I answered, voice a tad bit less casual than I’d hoped for.

“Sooo,” she said, glaring at me from across the cafeteria table. “I was supposed to go to Stanley Park today. After school. And now apparently the stratosphere is screwing me over. Feel sorry for me, jerk.”

“It’s not the stratosphere,” I said, adjusting my bangs yet again. “Weather happens in the troposphere.”

I was fidgeting with my hair so much I didn’t notice she was gone until I looked up a few seconds later to an empty table.

“Julia?”

I frowned and resumed my lunch. What was her problem?

Then again, maybe a technical correction wasn’t the best consolation.

High school is the troposphere of life, I thought. It’s where all the weather happens.

Jessica Schmidt is a grade 11 student at Langley Fine Arts school. She is not particularly tall, or particularly short, but she likes to complain about her height anyway. If Jessica could travel anywhere, she would take her whole family and move to Greenland—although she doesn’t know why she’s so attracted to that thought…maybe because she’s always felt more at home in ice and snow than hills and fields.

Jamie Smith is a Vancouver artist, educator, consultant, and events producer. Her mixed media paintings are inspired by her many travels and focus on the sediment of memory and experience. She is the founder of THRIVE Studio, a place for female artists to connect and learn, and the creator of ROVE, a Mount Pleasant Art Walk. More by Jamie Smith here.