exit: Who’s That New Art Teacher?

A Story by J

The halls of the Academy had gone quiet.

Since the Twi†hFour system took hold, classroom chatter vanished. Students no longer whispered jokes or doodled in the margins of their notes. Mr. Screecher ensured silence. Xen, sweet and shy, offered what warmth he could but he was a helper, not a shield.

And still, the lights buzzed. The monitors blinked. The lessons marched on.

Until someone painted the wall.

It started as a streak of coral across the locker bay.

Then: a faint teal handprint on the cafeteria ceiling.

Next: a full mural appeared overnight above the old music room. A woman made of color, leaping over geometric cubes, laughing in defiance of gravity. Underneath, scrawled in looping purple chalk:

“There’s no wrong way to draw a dream.”

Security filed a breach report.

Mr. Screecher labeled it “unauthorized expression.”

Xen just tilted his head. A flicker of memory or longing crossed his face.

That morning, the intercom buzzed.

“Attention, students: Please welcome your new supplementary creative arts instructor... Jay.”

No last name. No department ID. Just... Jay.

And then: she walked in.

She Wore the Sky

Voluminous hair curled into a loose side swoop like the tail of a signature.

Her outfit was loud: a cropped hoodie fading from coral to teal, sleeves rolled up to reveal stacked purple bangles. Earrings shaped like bold, angular Js. Skirt swishing like brushstrokes, sneakers splattered with color and rebellion. A purple scarf trailing from one pocket like a forgotten thought.

She looked like the sky after the system tried to erase it.

“Yo,” she said, grinning wide. “I’m Jay. She/they. I'm your new art teacher.”

The classroom so used to monotone voice commands and blinking red cursors froze.

Only Xen smiled, hesitantly.

“I believe this is a math period,” Mr. Screecher said, standing sharp at the board.

Jay walked to the front, pulled a marker from her pocket, and drew a spiral across the whiteboard graceful and loose.

“Exactly,” she said. “Let’s talk Fibonacci. Let’s talk rhythm. Let’s talk how math feels when it moves.”

Somewhere in the back, a student stifled a laugh.

Jay winked. “Yeah, I saw that. Go on. Laugh loud next time. Joy’s not illegal. Not yet.”

Ghost in the Data

The administration tried to trace her credentials.

There were none.

Her badge returned static. Her file was blank.

In the server logs, the name Jamie T. flickered briefly before vanishing.

But it was enough.

Xen recognized it.

He remembered the student rebellious, inventive, fearless who once sculpted a volcano out of confiscated testing tablets. The one they sent away under E.X.I.T. protocols.

Jamie had been erased.

But Jay… Jay was something new.

A self-portrait drawn over their former self.

She hadn’t escaped the system.

She rewrote it.

Paint Against the Cold

Jay’s class became the only space where students whispered again.

Where they sketched theories instead of reciting them.

Where colors started showing up in notebooks, in socks, on fingernails.

Mr. Screecher monitored. He recorded. He issued warnings.
But his tone, perfect as it was, began to crack.

“Expression… is… not… relevant…”

He watched a student draw flames around an algebra problem and laugh.

The system glitched for 1.6 seconds.

Jay simply smiled. “Relevance is overrated.”

When Xen Met Jay

One afternoon, Xen found her on the rooftop, painting a mural on a forgotten wall.

“I remember you,” he said softly.

Jay didn’t look up.

“I remember you, too. You taught me once.”

“I… I was someone else,” Xen replied, fingers curled at his chest.

Jay turned, green paint on her cheek. Her eyes were kind. Fierce.

“Doesn’t matter what they called you. Doesn’t matter what they renamed you. The pieces are still inside. You feel too much to be what they want.”

“I’m the assistant now.”

“You’re a person,” she said, touching his wrist gently. “And people don’t come with instructions.”

For the first time since he was reprogrammed, Xen felt something stir. Something not scheduled.

Something real.

Unmonitored

The walls started changing. Not just the paint, the feel.

Students moved more freely. Whispered with urgency again.

One started composing songs in code.

Another painted their math notes into constellations.

Jay didn’t ask for rebellion. She made room for it.

And that was enough.

Mr. Screecher filed multiple escalation requests.

All returned the same response:

“Status: Anomaly tolerated. Efficiency impact: currently positive.
Monitoring continues.”

But underneath, the system quaked.

Final Scene: Marked

One evening, as the sun melted over the academy roof, Jay finished her mural.

It showed three figures:

A woman with a yellow tie, laughing as she taught.
A child with pigtails and striped socks, holding a chalk heart.
And a silhouette, sharp and still, with glowing eyes but holding a paintbrush behind his back.

Jay looked up at the sky.

“They’re going to try to erase me again,” she whispered.

Xen stood beside her, silent.

Then he reached into his pocket.

And offered her a blue marker.

“No,” he said. “This time… we draw over them first.”