Imaginer

1 - Where a Drawing is Ruined

 1 

          Emerald green stalks of grass stood tall and silent, still as foot soldiers guarding a castle. Beyond the grass were acres upon acres of forest; dark and deep, trees loomed and branches criss-crossed to form a net of feather-light leaves. Though the sun beat down heavily from the sky, the blanket of pine needles was not dappled with light. The tree fronds interspersed too closely to allow any sunbeams through.

         I picked up my charcoal stick and contemplated my drawing of the scene in front of me. A languid smile splashed across my face as the warmth from the sun dripped down upon me, and I lowered my hand and prepared to carefully shade in the grass, glad that I had such peace, such tranquility, such blissful and pleasant—

         “Jaaass-lyn!”

         My charcoal shot off the thick creamy paper I was drawing on and I stared at my ruined picture in dismay.

         Oh, fudgety-fudge.

         What had started out as something that could be stuck onto a wall in my room to show off my slowly progressing artistic ability was still a nice black-and-white sketch of the forest.

         If you don't count the really, really big streak running down the entire page.

         A sigh left me and I tried not to grit my teeth and crumple up my drawing.

         Sounds of little feet pattering across hard-packed soil reached my ears and I quickly dusted my fingertips off—successfully smearing more of the crumbly residue over my skin—and placed my charcoal into the little tin box it had come in. I was just closing the lid when a shrill voice drove into my head.

         So much for my peace and tranquility.

         “Jaaaasslyn. What’cha doin’?”

         I took a few deep breaths as if I were warming up for a sprint.

         Kind motherly smile. Check. In control of impulse to throttle her to death. Check...Sort of.

         I heaved an inward sigh and studied the drawing-wrecker’s dirty appearance.

         Dusty blonde hair pulled up into lopsided pigtails. A filthy, pink Barbie bandage slapped onto her forehead. Chocolate coating her mouth and chin like a five o’ clock shadow. Sticky fingers. God knows what under her fingernails. You’d think with all the techy stuff of the twenty-first century they’d make some kind of Insta-Clean for dirty little children.

         Emma had a large gap between her two front baby teeth, something I always saw since she always smiled when she was around me. And her eyes were as round and as glassy as a pair of green buttons, shining with admiration. This girl idolized me, and I wasn’t too sure if that was a good thing.

         “I look just like you,” she had said once before, beaming up at me. I personally thought she resembled me as much as an emu did, meaning not at all. My hair was a gazillion shades darker than hers, and I didn’t have the luxury of owning green eyes. I remember at one point in my childhood asking my mother, “Mum, why do I have to have brown eyes? It’s the colour of doo-doo.” Her comment on how they were more chocolate than “doo-doo” was clearly the more accurate and kinder of the two.

         In the time it took to give her a onceover, she had already lost patience waiting for my answer and squatted down beside me. I automatically reached out to adjust her white dress.

         “What’s this?” she asked, pointing a chubby finger at my charcoal drawing.

         “It’s a drawing of the grass and the forest,” I explained.

         I shouldn’t have dreaded talking to Emma. Sure, she was an unclean and unmannered lump of energy, but she would behave if I was patient with her and did not keep her waiting. Still, I found myself thinking I had better things to do in the last week of summer vacation. Like watching TV. Or twiddling my thumbs.

         Emma scrunched up her face and scrutinized my drawing. Rocking back and forth and sending her weight forward onto her toes, she nearly toppled face-first into my sketch. I shifted it out of the way.

         “It doesn’t look like a forest to me,” she said stubbornly once she regained her balance.

         I opened my mouth, wanting to explain to her that her tiny child-brain was nowhere near being developed enough to comprehend the…the abstractness of my sketch, when she stuck out a grubby little finger and pointed at the streak of black running across the page. Her fingertip made a thwack against my paper and the cardboard underneath.

         “What’s this big fat line over here?”

         I flinched as the paper stuck to her finger for a moment. When she sat back down on the ground, I grabbed the page and picked at the dirty mark she had left behind. Jam. Or was it Jello?   “It’s…” I struggled to find something to say other than ‘an ugly line I created when you screamed and made me mess up’.

         “Oh, I see it now!” Emma crowed.

         My fingers took turns rubbing the sticky stuff off. “Really? What do you think it is?”

         “You got mad at how ugly your drawing looked so you scribbled allll over it,” she said brightly, looking up at me as if she was waiting for me to present to her a gold star for ingenuity, of course.

         A scowl materialized on my face. Try as I might, I couldn’t keep it from appearing. “Where’s your cousin?” I said stiffly.

         Emma frowned. “What’s it to ya?”

         “You’re…what, six years old? Shouldn’t he be taking care of you right now?” I said, disapproving of Jacoby’s irresponsibility. He wasn’t exactly the best babysitter on earth. This situation was merely one example of the many times he’d left her with me.

         “Yeah…But I’m seven. I’m seven years old now,” Emma said defensively, as if being seven was a valid excuse to go wandering off on her own.

         “If he is, then why don’t I see him around?”

         Emma crossed her arms and huffed. “He’s so boring,” she complained.

         “Well, I’m sorry to hear that. But we can’t all be fun, right?” I gave the top of her head a tousle as I rose to my feet and dusted off the back of my pants with my clean, hoping there weren’t any embarrassing brown stains from the dirt. “I’m going to find him. You shouldn’t run off like that, you know. Come on.” I waited for her to join me.

         “But Jake isn’t fun anymore. He used to play with me, but not anymore.” She leapt up and bounded towards me as I started to head back to our picnic site. Her grimy hand found mine and she held on with a grip that was surprisingly strong for a six—seven—year old girl.

         What do you know. Jam works better than glue.

         Every single year, my mom and Jacoby’s mom would insist on having get-togethers between our families, mostly at Camp Iliadys, with Emma usually tagging along since her mother had class at the local university. The only people that really got any fun out of it were said get-together organizers. Even Mr. Harold had trouble keeping entertained. The rest of us sat around awkwardly, and if we could manage it—like me—escape and do something worthwhile.

         We hadn’t gone to Iliadys since the start of summer, but we frequented Arborbridge Park, like today, for picnics. I didn’t hate the get-togethers, but I felt like I wasn’t…putting my time to good use, you could say. My one shining ray of hope was that there would be less time for these family friend outings once school started.

         As I trudged along the beaten path and under less shady trees back to the picnic area, I found myself thinking back to the hazy but innocent first day we'd met the Harolds.