Sheltered(6)

“I really do like your shoes,” she said, then felt worse. Her heart had passed her chest and moved on to hammering in her teeth.

“Thanks.”

“I like the…flower.”

God, she hoped it really was a flower. What if he’d drawn something much more manly and impressive, like a skull and crossbones, and she’d just mistaken it for a flower?

“Did a bigger version for class,” he said, and for a long moment she debated asking him what class he was talking about. She debated and debated and possibly also wrung her hands, while he went into his backpack and drew out an actual notepad, filled with…things.

Pictures. He had a notepad filled with pictures, that he’d done with his own two massive bear paws, in interesting mediums like charcoal. And then he handed it to her as though he maybe wanted her to…he wanted her to…

“Can I look in this?”

She felt like an idiot for asking, but by now this was so far out of bounds of her real life she’d started thinking she’d fallen into a parallel universe. And for definite this was out of bounds of his real life. He’d just said he had issues talking to people, and yet somehow he’d just handed her his life’s work.

“Sure,” he said.

Was it stupid to feel honored? He’d probably think it was stupid. Likely as not he showed this to everyone, all the time, and never blinked an eye. She was just imagining that whole “life’s work, closed-down secretive person” thing.

“Never shown it to anyone except my art professor before.”

“Oh.”

He hesitated, then just seemed to push the words out.

“I guess there really is something about your face.”

She thought about the boy again. The one who’d kind of followed her around a bit, and said weird things to her like, Hey maybe we could get an ice cream some time. Of course, she’d never actually gone with him for an ice cream, but that wasn’t the point.

He’d still said those words to her. Those odd words that she just had to ask the punk about.

“Is it because I kind of look like a silent movie star?”

A hint of a smile touched his lips.

“That’s not what I meant, but yeah. You do. Some guy tell you that?”

“How did you know?”

“Because I doubt you’d come to that conclusion on your own.”

“Oh.” She glanced down at the notepad in her hands. At its curled corners and the slightly dusty feel of it, and then the hint of what it contained, beneath the half-torn front cover. “What did you mean then?”

“You look like someone…someone trustworthy.”

Her heart stopped hammering in her teeth, and started not beating altogether.

“I am,” she said.

She wanted to add other words after them, but couldn’t. Didn’t even know what they were, really. Instead, she lifted the cover of his notepad and looked at the first picture, while inside her heart continued its silence.

“You like it?”

He sounded vulnerable, she thought—though that didn’t seem possible. He still looked huge and jagged and hairy, sitting there on her mother’s couch.

Strange, really, that he’d drawn something so beautiful. It was a flower, like the ink thing on his sneakers. Layers of petals, one inside the other until everything disappeared into a thick, dark heart. Like a maze, she thought, or a Russian Doll—something complex created from something so simple.

And he’d done it in charcoal, like she’d suspected. Lines so dark and thick they looked like that black hole she’d imagined disappearing into, only moments earlier. The whole of it so him somehow, and yet so not him.

He suggested devils, skulls, harsh masculine drawings. This thing was…heart poundingly good. She wanted to pluck it, and bury her face in it, and keep it in a vase by her bedside.

“It’s perfect,” she said, then squirmed to think she’d actually used such a silly word. Perfect. Like what? Like Polly Pocket? Like a pretty coin purse with Hello Kitty on the front?

But when she looked up at him, he seemed…relaxed suddenly. Almost flushed and certainly pleased. It made her want to turn the pages and look at the other drawings, but he stopped her before she got past page four.

“Uh, they’re just sketches,” he said, but not until she caught a glimpse of the reason why he’d taken the book from her.

Page five almost certainly had a naked person on it. She knew it did. That rounded thing hadn’t been someone’s bare elbow. He’d drawn pictures of naked people, and now he’d gone right back to that jagged closed-off-ness for reasons undisclosed.

It made her want to tell him, It’s okay. I’ve seen nudity before. But the truth was, she hadn’t seen nudity before. Except for her own, which seemed singularly pale and unimpressive.