Drawn To You

C
opyright
© 2016 by Lily Summers

Cover Design: Hang Le

All rights reserved.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

F
or my sister
. I love you.

R
ain rolls
down the front window of Pages & Stages Bookshop like drips of gray paint, perfectly matching my mood.

I give myself a mental shake. Too broody? Too broody. If I don’t force myself to perk up, Sampson will start asking questions again. I hate it when he asks questions. I’m running out of suitably boring answers.

Besides, these copies of the latest presidential biography won’t shelve themselves. I heave them over my head, my arms trembling from the effort. It’s not as pathetic as it sounds, I swear. I may be hilariously out of shape, but these books are full-on tomes by anyone’s standards. Presidents are pretty busy guys, after all.

I glance over at the poor, unloved poetry shelf. I’ll have to dust it later. Sometimes I feel like the only person who still gets emotional over e. e. cummings.

When the new stock is shelved, I move on to packing neglected books to go to the attic warehouse for return or pulping. Saddest part of my day, watching all these stories disappear, their pages unread.

There I go again. Get it together, Mia.

Thankfully the sound of the bell by the front door saves me from the storm cloud forming over my head. I turn and see a woman enter the shop, and she is so incredibly
Portland
that I almost break into a grin. Almost.

She’s probably in her seventies, maybe younger if she’s a smoker. The blue of her veins shows through her paper-thin skin, but the strong features of her face keep her from looking delicate. Arched nose, cutting cheekbones, savage mouth painted a red so dark it’s nearly black. Her coat is vintage fur, probably real, dyed a brilliant purple. It makes her look twice as big as she is. She waves her hand like a courtier measuring up the ballroom, costume rings flashing six different colors at least.

Atop her head, to polish off the whole look, her hair’s been shellacked into deadly-looking silver-white spikes.

Inexplicably, she reminds me of my Nana. They look nothing alike, but something in the contrast of her hard mouth and soft coat brings up memories of afternoons in my grandparents’ sunroom, sipping lemonade. I wish I could ask her for advice, but I know better. Nana’s long gone, like everyone else.

Even so, I feel the itch in my fingertips and I rub them together. My mind is already breaking the old woman down into lines and curves, strokes and blends.

She comes closer, smelling of mint and musk, and I see streaks of green and brown as her backdrop. Her mouth moves, the muscles of her face contorting beneath her skin.

“… Woolf.”

“Sorry?” I say, coming out of my daze. The woman is looking at me like she just had to pull me down from outer space.

“
Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?
, doll. The play. Do you carry it?” she says, adjusting her winged glasses.

“Oh, um. Probably. We carry most of the popular stage plays, plus some local stuff. Let me just…” I make a weak gesture toward the console at the checkout counter. “I’ll look it up for you.”

“Much appreciated,” the woman says, though it sounds like she’s humoring me.

I bite the inside of my cheek while I go to pull up her request and spot Sampson looking at me over the top of the children’s display with a cocked eyebrow. This isn’t going to help my reputation as a ditz, that’s for sure.

Oh well. Better my manager sees some dippy, cardboard college dropout than a hollow, girl-shaped shell. Who also happens to be a college dropout.

“We have two copies,” I tell the woman. “I’ll show you where they are.”

When I ring her up, she asks me where I’m from.

“How do you know I’m not from Portland?” I ask, not meeting her eye.

“Been here all my life, kid. I know from locals. You’re a transplant, probably here for all those restaurants with the duck fries. So, where you from?”

“Arcata,” I lie automatically, remembering where my old roommate was from.

“California.” She nods and takes the bag from me. “Never been there. What brought you up this way?”

I force a thin customer service smile. “They filmed part of The Goonies in the bay. Parents used to make me watch it, so I grew up with a fear of pirates and mob families.”

She chuckles. “All right, keep your secrets.”

“I don’t have any secrets,” I lie again.

“Sure, honey.” She shoulders her bag and leaves. The urge to call out after her and spill everything rises up in me. I clamp it back down.

The breath I’m holding hisses softly through my teeth. I grab the travel coffee mug sitting next to my messenger bag and take a swig. My face twists. It’s gone cold and extra bitter.

When I look up, Sampson’s standing there with his arms crossed. At six-foot-three with a full red lumberjack beard, he’d be intimidating if I didn’t already know he’s a total teddy bear.

Before he says anything, I say, “I know, I know, I’ll pay better attention when the customers talk to me, I promise.”

He shrugs. “I just wanted to make sure you remembered you’re closing tonight.”

I snap my fingers and drawl, “Crap. I’ll have to call and cancel that gig I had planned. I promised Arcade Fire I’d open for them.”

He blinks at me confusedly. “You’re in a band? How come you never told me?”

“No. Never mind. Yes, I remembered. Brought my keys and everything.”

“Cool. I’m going to head out, then.” He grabs his tartan coat and adds, “I didn’t know you were from California. I thought you were from Washington.”

All of the muscles between my shoulders tense up.

“Doesn’t really matter, does it? I live here now,” I say as I fiddle with the bookmark display next to the register.

“Guess not. You call me if you need someone to walk you home, okay? Sometimes the creeps come out at night.”

“Sure, Dad.”

He tosses a scarf around his neck. “It’s weird when you call me that.”

Once he’s out of the shop and I’m alone, I drop the plastered-on smile and slouch against the counter. It’s a Tuesday, so it’s slow in this part of town. Just as well, since I really don’t feel like dealing with any more people tonight.

I probably should have thought of that before taking a retail job.

The rest of my shift crawls by, but at least I get around to dusting that poetry shelf. I lock up the shop and dump my stone-cold coffee into the gutter, wondering if I should get a refill or wait until I get home and Audrey tries to tempt me with her new favorite blend. She tries so hard. I pull up the hood of my anorak against the misty rain and start walking.

Suddenly, the hiss of aerosol cuts through the quiet of the night. I pause, peering around the corner where the noise seems to be coming from. A guy with his hood up arcs his arm across the wall, leaving a spray of color in his wake.

Great. A tagger. Probably a gutter punk, too, given the Sonic Youth patch stretched across the back of the leather jacket he’s wearing over his hoodie.

I hesitate. I really don’t want to get involved – but I can’t stand the thought of Pages & Stages bearing some delinquent’s signature until the city decides to clean it up. Hopefully I can spook him and he’ll piss off, but just in case, I get out my phone and hold my finger over the emergency call option.

I step closer and my voice fades in my throat as I see what he’s really doing. He’s not tagging. He’s painting, and it’s beautiful. It’s like a song, the portrait of a woman colored over brown brick. The tagger’s hand moves as if he’s conducting a symphony to add lowlights to the side of her face. Her eyes are closed, but she looks sad, her hair flowing out behind her and becoming dark water. Eels and fanged fish twine through the darkness, pulling at her.

It makes my heart twist.

Without thinking twice, I take another step and slip on a wet piece of cardboard. I yelp and immediately try to suck it back in, but it’s too late. The painter jumps and turns at the noise.

I bolt. It’s instinctual and embarrassing, but I do it anyway, my flats slapping against the sidewalk. These definitely aren’t running shoes. I don’t own any running shoes. Running requires coordination, and I have negative coordination. I am non-coordinated. Ignoring the ache, I keep going until I round the corner three blocks away, where I finally slump against the nearest wall and catch my breath.

Once I have enough air in my lungs to groan, I do, long and low, covering my face with my hands. It’s been a long time since an art piece made me feel this way, like I’ve swallowed a lightning storm. It’s sending jolts through my heart and leaving marks on my psyche. I should have said something. I should have at least been less of a loser.

When I reach the apartment I share with Audrey, I take a deep breath. A very large part of my being hopes that my roommate is on another one of her first dates and won’t be around to try to get me to bloom into an over-caffeinated flower.

That being said, she does have excellent taste in coffee.

Win-win, I guess. That’d be the way Audrey looks at it. I push open the door.

“Oh my gosh, Mia, awesome you’re home! I have to get a third opinion on this dress – what do you think, too orange?”

Looks like it’s coffee-city for me tonight.

Audrey poses like a runway model in our living room, twisting her ash blond hair behind her head. She wears a dress that is, unsurprisingly, incredibly orange.

“Yeah,” I agree, shrugging off my anorak and kicking off my shoes.

She drops her pose and runs her eyes over me. “You look tired. Are you tired? I just got a new bourbon roast from this Boston company. It’s really good. From Guatemala. I could pour you a cup?”

Audrey’s look of concern almost breaks through my shell. She’s all sunny gold skin and laughing brown eyes and genuine, heartfelt sisterhood. If I didn’t like her so much, her coffee-induced bubbliness would drive me up every wall in our shared living room. But there’s just something about her

I hear myself ask, “Can you really drink coffee at this time of night?”

She shakes her head and bounces on the balls of her feet, swinging her arms. “Need the buzz! Have to finish drafting a motion for one of the partners tonight if I want to make that concert. Can’t sleep yet. Sleep’s for the weak and the tired. I’m neither. You could still come, you know.”

“Bands with harmonicas aren’t really my scene,” I answer cagily.

“Mine either, but the mandolin player is hot and Cameron said she’d introduce me. Are you sure?”

Audrey’s fervor is starting to dig into my skin, which makes me feel like a jerk because I know she’s being genuinely nice. She just wants to save me from being such a tragic shut-in. But I
am
a tragic shut-in. Can’t she see that? Especially with the tagger’s painting seared into my memory, there’s no way I would make it through a concert—harmonicas or not. The woman on the wall with monsters in her hair is still haunting me.

“I’m turning in,” I say. “Good night.”

Before she can object, I slip down the opposite hallway and disappear into my room. For all her persistence, my roommate knows that when I’m in here, I don’t come out until I want to. She doesn’t follow.

My door clicks shut and I breathe in the familiar scent of rubber erasers and oil pastels. Streetlight filters in through thin curtains, illuminating the dozens of sketchbooks on my shelves. The lines of my drawings cover the room like custom wallpaper, surrounding me in familiar sights—the strange and the beautiful glimpses of Portland that I capture. I follow the story they tell. There are people from around town, cityscapes drawn from rooftops, a skinny dog with three legs and the swirls of some multicolored dream world.

I walk over to the sketches pinned up near my bed, the space reserved for the pieces closest to my heart. My fingers brush over the layers of thick paper, the smudges of graphite and charcoal from years of work, and pause over my favorite. The sketch shows a girl laughing, her hair curling around her head as if caught in a sudden wind. Blue-violet, the color of an iris flower, highlights her eyes and lips. She’s beautiful, like the woman in the tagger’s painting, and her laughter masks the secrets underneath.

My little sister. The last time we laughed together before she died.

I keep the drawing close so I remember. So her laugh, the joy and pain and mischief in her eyes never leave me. I toy with the edge of the page. Looking at this portrait aches, that same ache I felt when I saw the tagger’s piece. Tonight reminds me of the last time I felt like lightning burned me up from the inside out.

My breath catches. The pressure builds inside my head and I suddenly can’t look at this anymore. Can’t remember anymore. I force myself away and stumble to my desk, scattering watercolor pencils everywhere as I desperately search for my charcoals. The itch in my fingertips is back and I need to create harsh dark lines across fresh paper.

I find my tin and crack it open, sinking cross-legged to the floor with the nearest sketchbook. It doesn’t matter which one. I turn to the first clean page and draw, the black turning from nothing to a living form. The distinctive features of an aged Portland woman in an overlarge fur coat appear, and I let her take my mind away. There’s only me, and the page, and the woman who reminds me of Nana.

Her hair is sharp and hard, nothing like the flowing locks of the graffiti artist’s muse.

Nothing like my sister’s curls, either.