Sketchy (3 page)

I take on the fabric folds of the backpack’s dark green canvas when she catches my eye—Willa, the cheerleader, the girl who was raped. She sits across from me, eye level above the planted backpack.

I study her milky white skin, the pale green and yellow bruises peeking out from the top of the cream-colored turtleneck underneath her cheerleading uniform. Her pink glossed lips are slack and open; her blue eyes, glassy and wet, are frozen in a heavy-lidded stare. She looks like a frightened, wounded deer.

Her pencil dangles from her right hand. Her head cocks slightly to the left as her gaze shifts away from the still life. It’s as if she sees something—someone. I watch her breathe—even, steady, one, two, three. Exhale—one, two, three.

And in that moment, looking at Willa with my pen in my hand, a man’s face explodes in my head, flashes in front of me. It shoots through my head and down my arm to my hand. Long nose; full, defined lips. He’s staring at me,
in
me,
through
me. I see his sculpted high cheekbones, his chin—pointed, no beard, smooth complexion, his round wire-rim glasses, his dark brown eyes. I see them.

I draw them.

My hands tremble a little as I stare at Willa again. He’s
there, in my head, maybe in her head? And now in front of me, on paper.

Oh my god! It’s Marcus. Why did I draw Marcus?

I drop my pen. Chris leans over to pick it up and notices the sketch. “Who the hell is that?”

I startle at his question and turn over the paper, hiding the drawing. “It’s nobody. Nothing.”

My head throbs. I rub the back of my neck, take a deep breath, and look at Willa again. Her eyes blink open and closed, her lids droop—and she goes down, down on her desk, her blond mane covering her skinny arms.

I turn the paper over and peek at the sketch of the face.
This is so creepy. Why did I draw
him
when I looked at her? Why is this happening to me again?

The school bell rings, and my first day at Packard High is over—and I managed to stay out of trouble. Whoo hoo.

Chris walks with me to my car—a kick-ass Volvo sedan junker. “So… what do you say we start off where we ended last winter?”

“Like the last half a year didn’t happen? Would
love
to.”

“So we’re BFFs, right?”

“Were we ever best friends, Chris?”

He shrugs. “Sure we were… don’t you remember?” He slugs me in the arm.

“Careful. This cardigan is at least fifty years old.”

“Sorry.” He pats my arm. “Hey, Bea, I was thinking… how about you help me out in the concession stand on homecoming? You need the hours, and I could use the company.”

“Yeah, right. Me, at a homecoming? No way, Chris.”

“Why not? You have something better to do?”

“AA.” I roll my eyes.

“Come on, please?” Big smile.

A couple of bros pass us. They look our way, snickering, and I think I hear the words “queer-ass faggot” whispered.

Chris ignores them, but I know he heard. His cheeks redden, and his smile disappears.

“Hmm… you know, I do need those service-learning hours, Chris. I guess it’s either that or tutoring little kids with lice or something gross like that after school.” I shudder at the thought. “I hate kids.”

“Oh my gosh, can you imagine picking nits out of your hair?” His smile returns. “Or you could choose to help file library books on the weekend with Mrs. Halitosis Hogan.” He’s laughing now.

“Okay—you one-upped me,” I concede. “I’ll join you on one condition.”

“You name it.”

“You can’t look sexier than me, okay? Look at you in those jeans.” I tease.

“Can’t promise you that.” He sways his hips. “Am I blushing?”

“I don’t know, because the glaring white light from your hair is blinding me.”

“Hey! I won’t make fun of yours if you don’t make fun of mine, Chia Pet.”

I gasp. “How did you—”

“You told me a lot during art camp, Beaver-head. You were just too high to remember.”

“Anything I should worry about?”

“Rule number four, Bea: what happens with Chris stays with Chris.” He gives me a kiss on the cheek. “Remember to pack a lunch tomorrow.”

“Will do, BFF.” I slug him back.

I hook my right leg up and around the lowest branch and I climb. It’s been a while, but I clamber up the stable, strong limbs, shredding my tights even more, until I settle in on one of the large, majestic boughs. It cradles me.

The tree is a massive sycamore on the front lawn of my house. She’s been a trusty friend over the years. I have climbed her, watched her grow and fill out—her branches splayed in all directions, reaching out for me—even when I wasn’t there for her. And I wasn’t the last couple of years.

I light up a cigarette and blow the smoke away from the crinkly, triangular-lobed leaves. My thoughts are whirling
around and around in my brain—trying to make sense of this drawing thing. I write in my sketchbook:

I’ve always been able to draw—can draw anything

I see in front of me, but now… what I draw

seems like it’s in other people’s heads, and then it’s

suddenly in my head!

But Marcus? In that girl Willa’s head? Why?

I pull the sketch out of my bag. It’s his face—Marcus’s face for sure. A pang hits my belly, hard.

What the hell is happening to me?

Am I nuts?

T
he first time it happened was at rehab. Everything was a blur—a horrible, nightmarish blur—the sweats, the insomnia, the jitters. I kept busy, tried to distract myself with drawing, always drawing. I found that my hands stopped twitching when I drew and kept me focused, a little more in control. I carried my sketchbook everywhere—I told them it was my bible—and it sort of was. They banned pens and pencils, thinking that we could use them to hurt ourselves (or others). So I hid my pens in my hair, holding it up. It was the first time I ever appreciated the density of my hair. I drew whenever they weren’t looking—especially in my bedroom at night.

“Bea, stop it! Stop drawing me! I look like shit,” Janine, my roommate at rehab, scolded me one night. “Oh god, I feel like shit.”

She was shivering, going through alcohol withdrawal. And I was sketching her.

“You’re a good subject, Janine, you don’t move from your bed.”

“Move? Are you kidding me? I wanna die, I feel so crappy. Just stop it, you bitch!”

I didn’t listen to her. I had to draw. I had to draw the faded, floral spread that covered her body; her dirty blond hair tied loosely in a tangled ponytail. I studied the pattern of blemishes on her face, the shape of the Big Dipper, and
BAM!
It felt like an electrical shock. It zapped, exploded in front of me, filled my brain. A baby, a tiny baby—a fetus—curled up inside Janine. And I drew it—I had no choice but to draw it. It controlled me, owned my right hand.

The room started to spin.

Janine lit up a cigarette.

“I, um, I don’t know if you should smoke, Janine.”

“What the hell? Mind your own fucking business!”

“I could be wrong, but I… I think you may be…”

I passed out.

It was confirmed the next day with a routine urine test. Janine was eight weeks pregnant. She had a hunch her nausea wasn’t just withdrawal and asked to switch roommates. She never spoke to me after that, but whenever I ran into her, she’d looked at me sideways, her left eye squinting.

That was the first time. But it kept happening.

I discovered my next roommate was still using. Her robe—that’s what I saw, what I drew one night when I looked at her. But I didn’t share that information—I wanted to check
it out myself. Sure enough, when she was taking her shower the next morning, I found packets of cocaine sewn into the lining of her robe. I would have taken some—hell, yes I would have—if it weren’t for the morning nurse bursting into our room to take my blood pressure.

That roommate didn’t last long. Not long enough for me to score—not long enough for me to numb myself dumb, to stop the images. She was busted by lunch—didn’t pass her urine test—and was thrown out of the facility.

I was honestly relieved when my pens were discovered and taken away by the director of the rehab. She did a pop-visit to my room one night. I was just doodling, but she yanked the pen out of my hand, seized my sketchbook, and leafed through it.

And then she saw it… a sketch of a man’s menacing fist—poised—ready to punch something—someone. Her.

I had drawn it while studying her one day as she checked in another shaky, weepy addict. She tried to cover the bruises on her face with makeup, but that fist, that powerful, threatening fist set down in a drawing on a page in my sketchbook, exposed her. Exposed her painful secret.

“It’s okay,” I said. “I won’t tell anyone if you don’t want me to.”

She swallowed—her hand touched her face—and she bore her eyes into me. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” her voiced cracked. “But you are not getting back your pens or this book, young lady!”

I was banned from drawing anything—even during arts-and-crafts therapy—and was never assigned another roommate. I was pissed but secretly happy for the punishment—relieved to have a break from the images.

I thought it was all about my withdrawing from the drugs, like a hallucination or something.

But now it’s back, this strange power. Back with a tsunami force.

I can draw the truth out of people… literally.

I
gaze down from the tree at my house, my home, the large, old brick Tudor on the edge of the University of Michigan campus. From the outside it looks like a comfortable family home, a home that you’d see on a sitcom—a family sitting around an oval dining room table, tying up a clichéd, episodic mishap in a neat and tidy half hour. But it’s far from that, for sure.

I look through the smudged windows of my dining room—we don’t have a housekeeper, and the last thing my mom would think of doing is wash a window. No, the interior of my house doesn’t much resemble a sitcom set. The dining room table is covered with a drop cloth instead of a white linen tablecloth, and my mom’s painting paraphernalia takes the place of the baked chicken and mashed potatoes. She specializes in painting murals in people’s homes—something
my dad scoffs at (being the art snob that he is)—and practices on the walls of our house. Puppy dogs, balloons, kids’ names I don’t recognize line the walls.

I can see my mom through the window. Annabelle is her name—or Bella, as my dad likes to call her—and she’s a fiery Italian hothead. She’s sitting—painting, of course.

My mom and dad met at art school in Chicago—both talented young artists. But my dad eventually gave up drawing and painting for some reason and continued in academics. Then they had me, and my mom put her studies on hold. But Dad barreled through school, got his PhD, was appointed the art chair at the University of Michigan, and moved Mom and me to Ann Arbor. She never got her degree, but she continues to paint daily—puppy dogs and flowers. “It helps me stay sober,” she says.

Yes, my mom passed that powerful gene on to me.

Do I dare try it on her? Draw what’s on my mom’s mind?

She’s wearing one of my dad’s large white oxford shirts. (He hates it when she wears them because of paint stains, and that’s exactly why she does.) The sleeves are rolled up, revealing her long, thin, olive arms holding a paintbrush.

And it happens again, but it’s more like pressure in my head this time—something trying to get through to me. And it does. I see it: a glass of wine. I draw a crystal goblet filled to the brim with dark, blood red wine.
Mom is thinking about a glass of red wine!

Shit… she’s been sober for over ten years

and she still thinks of drinking?

I’m doomed.

The sun is beginning to set, and the temperature has dropped a couple degrees. I see that my mom is checking the time on her watch, I’m sure a little worried about where I am. She picks up her cell phone and dials—my number, I know it.

I hide my cigarette behind my back just as my phone rings (set to David Bowie’s “Rebel Rebel”). “Hi, Mom.”

“Where are you?” She sounds on edge.