Winged Victory

On Monday afternoon, a few days before Christmas vacation, our high school principal announced over the intercom a door-decorating contest between the classes.

I looked around at the other juniors and noticed a lot of rolling eyes. "Who wants to do that?" someone groaned. I do, I thought. I even had an idea: a beautiful angel, like something out of a 16th-century painting. Golden hair, halo, flowing robe...

I'll go home and make it myself, I decided. I was always sketching one thing or another. The other guys liked to play soccer or shoot hoops. I liked to draw. If my angel was good enough, maybe the athletic students would understand me better.

Gym was my least favorite period. I dreaded it. I was usually the last one picked for basketball, and my teammates never let me near the ball—they wanted to win. I just wished that when they saw my angel, the guys would realize I was good at something.

At home I unrolled a big sheet of paper on my dining room table and outlined the angel—face, wings, gown and hands. Then I colored her in with pastels, blending the shades until I got them just right. When I was finished, I raided my mom's gift-wrapping supplies for some gold tissue paper and pasted it behind the head for a halo.

It took me all evening. Finally I stood back and admired my angel. She wasn't half bad. Careful not to smudge the colors, I rolled up the picture.

But at school the next day I got nervous about what the other juniors might say. What if they didn't think my angel was any good? What if they thought it was stupid that I'd spent all night on our door decoration? I decided to test it on my friends Jessica and Lauren. If there was anything wrong with it, they'd let me down gently.

I unrolled the paper, watching for a reaction. They stared and stared and then they laughed. Both of them. They must really hate it, I thought.

"What's wrong?" I asked. "Is it ugly?"

"Ugly?" Lauren exclaimed. "It's not ugly. It's beautiful!"

"I'm laughing because it's so good," Jessica said. "I can't find anything wrong with it."

What a relief! Now I was ready to show my angel to everyone else. Holding the paper up to my chin, I turned and faced the class. "That's awesome, Jason!" came the response. "Cool! We're going to win!"

I put my angel up on the door. Suddenly it became "ours." During study hall, several of my classmates hovered near it. "Some blue would really set it off," Brian said. He looked to see if I agreed. "Go for it," I said. So he and Jeff wrapped blue paper around the door to frame the angel.