Someone Drawing Novels & Stories

The girl was a talkative—something I loved about her. "And why are you still up?" My gaze fell on his drawing book. "Drawing something?" He nodded and sat back on the floor. I took a closer look at the drawing. It was a weird one. Xylon was definitely going to be a good artist when he grew up. But for now, his sketches were still amateurish. Observing carefully, I could tell it was a rough sketch of a man. At least, that was what it looked like. The person had beards and a moustache with a hoodie over his head. The drawing looked poor and unclear, but this was what I could make out.

He had found a pad of paper and a dull pencil in a kitchen drawer. He was drawing. I stood in the doorway, my breath catching in my throat. I didn't want to disturb him. I watched the way his hand moved—it was fluid, confident, but with that slight, human tremor he had inherited from the resonance. He finished the sketch and turned the paper toward the light. It wasn't a blueprint. It wasn't a map. It was a drawing of a single, wild iris growing out of a crack in a rock. It was messy. The lines were unoptimized. It was, in every sense of the word, imperfect.

He smiled. "Just stay still," I watched him open his bag and brought out drawing pencils and pad. And just like that he began to draw. "What are you drawing?" I asked, trying to peer into the pad. "Shssh! Just stay still." He whispered, raising up the sketchpad to prevent me from seeing it. I chuckled and leaned my hands on the grass, relaxing my body so I could be comfortable. Dan looked at me as he draw, that's when I realized what he was doing. Dan was drawing me? I gasped in surprise. He smiled as he continued.

Someone was watching. And whoever it was had just drawn the first real line.

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.

"Hey, kiddo." Her big blue eyes beam in happiness. "What are you drawing?" I ask, walking over to the abandoned paper she was working on moments before. She catches up to me taking my hand, she then leads me the rest of the way to the drawing. I pick up the picture and look it over, there's a yellow sun in the top corner with grey clouds around it. Towards the bottom is two people, both stick figures, ones taller with short hair and the others shorter with long hair. The two people are holding hands.

Sighing heavily, he continued drawing not wanting to divert his attention. Her cute egg-shaped eyes roamed around disturbing him to another level. Sanskar lifted his eyes from his drawing board and drifted it towards the side where the girl was standing. She was lost in the painting. Her priceless expression makes him giggle. She is indeed a cute bubbly girl and he is attracted for sure.

He rushes in and stops at the edge of Adrian’s bed. Adrian’s eyes widen in surprise. “Hey, champ.” Liam pulls out a folded paper from his bag. “I made you a drawing.” Adrian tries to sit up straighter. “Let’s see.” Liam hands it over carefully. It’s a crayon sketch of the three of us—me, Liam, and Adrian—holding hands under a bright yellow sun. There’s even a dog beside us, though we don’t have one. Adrian stares at it, clearly touched. “This is amazing.”

Christ, I’ve got so many questions about this young woman, I’ll never get enough answers to be sated. This particular drawing is one I’ve seen before. Two of the bar regulars, Hank and Jimmy, shelter together by the open doorway, cupping their hands around a smoke and trying to protect the tiny flame from the wind. Their shirts flap against their stocky bodies, and their heads are bowed together in concentration. In the background, mountains loom into the sky.

"Actually, I meant to tell you—" "Daddy, look." Ezra appeared in the doorway holding a drawing that appeared to involve several stick figures and what might have been a dinosaur, though the proportions made it hard to say definitively. "I made this at school." "That's incredible," Kian said, examining it properly. "Is that you?" "That's Noah," Ezra said, pointing at a smaller figure standing very still next to the dinosaur. "He's not scared of it." "I'm not," Noah confirmed, still drawing, not looking up.