Chapter 2: The Pages Between

He moves closer.

Not all the way. There is still space between us on the bench. Maybe a foot. Maybe less. But it is the closest we have ever been. Six weeks of sharing this bench, and this is the first time I can smell him. Laundry soap. Something warm under it, like skin after a shower. And pencil dust. Of course. Pencil dust.

The sketchbook is open on his knee, and I lean in to look.

The first drawing of me is on the left page. The one he showed me. I see it differently now, up close. The details are sharper than I first thought. He caught the exact way my braids fall over my left shoulder. The little line between my eyebrows that I get when I am reading something on my phone. The way my lips press together when I am cold.

"You really looked at me," I say. My voice comes out quieter than I meant it to.

He does not answer right away. When I look up, he is looking at the drawing, not at me. His jaw is tight. "I was not trying to be strange."

"I did not say strange."

"You did not have to. I know how it looks."

I should agree with him. A man I do not know, drawing me for six weeks without saying a word? My mother would tell me to run. My friends would tell me to get his name first and then run, so at least I would know who to tell the police about. But I am still sitting here, wearing his hoodie, and I am not running.

"Show me the others," I say.

He turns the page.

The next drawing is the bus stop itself. The empty bench. The streetlamp. The schedule on the pole. It is drawn with clean lines and careful angles. He has drawn the way the light hits the metal arm of the bench, the shadow it makes on the ground. It should be boring. Just a bus stop. But there is something lonely about it. I can feel the missing people in the empty seat.

"You study architecture," I say. It is not a question. I am putting things together.

"Fourth year," he says.

"So you draw buildings."

"I draw everything."

He turns another page. And another.

There are buildings. Many of them. The library on campus, drawn from an angle I have never noticed before. A row of old houses I have seen downtown. A church with a broken top and a fence around it.

But between the buildings, there are people.

An old woman on the bus, her hands folded over a shopping bag. A man reading a paper, his glasses sliding down his nose. A little girl with her face pressed to a car window, her breath fogging the glass. A couple fighting on a street corner, their mouths open, their bodies turned away from each other.

He draws strangers. He draws them the way he drew me. Like he is trying to understand something about them. Like the pencil is how he asks questions.

"You are really good," I say.

"I am okay."

"Do not do that."

He looks at me. "Do what?"

"That thing guys do. Where you pretend you are not good so someone will say it again."

He blinks. Then the corner of his mouth moves. Just a little. Just for a second. It might be a smile. It is gone before I can be sure.

"Okay," he says. "Thank you. I have been drawing since I was six. I am better than most people in my class, and I know it, and saying I am okay is a way to protect myself. Because if I say I am good, then I have to prove it every time, and that scares me."

I stare at him.

He shrugs. "You asked."

The wind picks up again, shaking the schedule sign on its pole. I pull his hoodie tighter around me. My hands have disappeared inside the sleeves. I must look silly, like a child wearing clothes too big for her. But I do not care. I am warm for the first time all night.

"Why architecture?" I ask.

"Why post colonial studies?"

"I asked you first."

"I asked you second."

I laugh. I do not mean to. It just comes out, a short sound through my nose. And now he is smiling for sure. It is small, just a twitch at the corner of his mouth, but it is real.

"That is fair," I say. "My grandmother was born in Mississippi in the year 1942. She picked cotton when she was seven years old. She could not vote until she was twenty three. She cleaned the houses of white people for forty years so my mother could go to college. And my mother worked two jobs so I could be here, getting a master's degree in understanding exactly how the system tried to crush women like them. That is why I study what I study."

The smile is gone from his face now. But he has not looked away. He is looking at me with something I cannot fully name. It is not pity. I would hate pity. It is something else. Something that feels a lot like respect.

"Your turn," I say.

He closes the sketchbook. Sets it on his knee. Runs his hand over the cover like he is smoothing something down.

"My father builds things," he says. "Houses. Offices. Parking garages. He is a very practical man. When I told him I wanted to study architecture, he said good, you will earn money. When I told him I wanted to draw, he said that is a hobby. So architecture was my middle ground. I get to draw, and I can tell him I am being practical."

"Are you?"

"Am I what?"

"Being practical."

He is quiet for a moment. A car passes, lights sweeping across us, and I watch his face in the short white light. He is younger than I first thought. The tiredness makes him look older from far away, but up close there is something young in the way his eyebrows pull together when he thinks.

"No," he says at last. "I am not. I am drawing strangers at a bus stop at ten at night instead of working on my final project. That is not practical at all."

The word strangers stays in the air between us.

"Are we strangers?" I ask.

"You tell me. You named me Pencil Boy in your phone. That is not what you call a stranger."

My stomach drops. "How do you know..."

"I do not know. You just told me."

He is smiling again. Really smiling. It changes his whole face. The tiredness falls away, and for a moment I see what he must have looked like before school wore him down. There is some fun in there. Some warmth.

"That was a mean trick," I say.

"I pay attention to things."

I should be ashamed. I am ashamed. My cheeks feel warm even in the cold. But I am also something else. Curious, maybe. Or something that starts with the same letter.

"Fine," I say. "You are Pencil Boy in my phone. What am I in yours?"

He does not answer.

Instead, he opens the sketchbook again. Flips to the very last page. Turns it toward me.

It is me again. Not the same drawing. This one is new. From tonight. I am curled up on the bench with my sweater pulled tight, my phone glowing in my hand, my brows pulled together. The time in the corner of the page is written in his handwriting. 10:02 PM. Still cold. Still has not seen me drawing.

But below that, there is something else. A name.

The Girl Who Checks the Bus Schedule Like She Does Not Trust It.

"That is a long name," I say.

"I have had six weeks. I could make it longer."

We look at each other. The streetlamp hums. The wind moves through the trees. And I understand I have no idea what time it is anymore. I have not checked my phone in how long? Ten minutes? Twenty? The bus could come any second, and for the first time tonight I am not sure I want it to.

"You know," he says slowly, "there is a diner two blocks from here. It is open all night. They have coffee. And pie. And heat, which I am starting to miss."

My heart does something strange. A little jump.

"Are you asking me to get pie with you?"

"I am asking if you want to get out of the cold. The pie is just a plus."

I think about it. My paper is due Friday. I have reading to do. I should be home, in my apartment, in my soft pants, with my laptop and my books and my very grown up study playlist.

But his hoodie smells like clean clothes and pencil dust. And he draws strangers because he wants to understand them. And I am tired of being so grown up.

"What about the bus?" I ask.

He checks his phone. "Ten twenty three. We have twenty seven minutes before the next one. That is enough time for pie."

Twenty seven minutes.

"Okay," I say. "Pie."

He stands up first. He is taller than I thought. He must be six feet tall, maybe a little more. He holds out his hand to help me up, and I look at it for a moment. Long fingers. Pencil bump on the thumb.

I take his hand.

His palm is warm and dry and a little rough. He pulls me to my feet, and I am standing closer to him than I planned. I have to tilt my head back to look at his face. The streetlamp makes his eyes look almost gold.

"Your name," I say. "What is your real name?"

"Eli."

"Eli," I say again. It fits him. Simple. Strong.

"And yours?"

"Nubia."

"Nubia." He says it slowly, like he is trying to get the feel of it right in his mouth. "That is a beautiful name."

"Thank you."

We are still holding hands. Neither of us has let go. I am not sure who is supposed to do it first. The moment stretches. The streetlamp hums.

And then he lets go. Slowly. His fingers slide away from mine like he is trying to remember the feel of my skin. He points down the street.

"The diner is this way."

We start walking. His sketchbook is under his arm. I am still wearing his hoodie. The cold has stopped bothering me completely.