Lost In The Fray

Thirty Five

Milo

"You okay?"

"Yeah. Go sit over there a little bit so you don't copy my work." Nia waves her hand, exiling me to the end of the table.

"You know he was joking, right?" I don't bother moving any further away from Nia.

"Yeah. It's just..." Nia drops her gaze to her laptop and closes it in favour of her empty sketchpad. "Nothing."

"Nia?"

She lets out a heavy sigh but doesn't lift her gaze. "I have ideas, but I'm not sure I'm ready to talk about them."

"Okay." I reach out before I know what I'm doing and squeeze her arm. "I'll be over here if you need me."

Without getting off my stool, I jolt to the side to give Nia some space. The metal legs drag painfully loud across the tile, and Nia winces.

"Just. Stay there. No peeking at my work." Nia smirks, and the pain in my chest settles as relief washes over me at the loss of her frown.

"I promise I won't copy your work. As long as you don't copy mine."

Nia scoffs but says nothing more as she scribbles with a pencil on the first page of her pad. I get up to claim my own new pad from the front of the classroom and write a list of names I can draw and count as an alliance.

Katy is scribbled down first. As the only idea I have, the word siblings is written beside her.

I list the other people in my life; Mum; Callum; Ruby; Natalie.

Nia.

I glance at Nia. A small crease sits between her eyebrows as she rushes to get all her ideas down.

My drawings of Nia are too personal to either of us. Her emotion is something I want to bring out of myself without exposing hers. I cross out her name. She doesn't want the level of exposure appearing in my work will reward her. Neither do I.

I circle back around to Katy and pull out my phone to find a good photo of the two of us. I find one of us laughing at something I no longer remember and prop my phone up against the side of Nia's laptop to draw from.

I sketch out Katy easily, but I'm struggling to get myself on the paper. Self-portraits are too revealing.

When Nia pushes to her feet, I follow her movement around the classroom as she gets some water for her paints. She's not focusing on what she's doing and has to tip out water from the overflowing pot.

"So when's your birthday?" I ask when she sits down. Her mind is full of something, and I intend to settle her nerves without pushing her to talk about it. I know I've opened up to her in the past and found it somewhat liberating, but being asked outright still makes me nervous.

"August." She doesn't turn her gaze to me, still distracted about what she's about to paint. She picks up various colours and squeezes a small amount onto the pallette beside her pad.

"Oh, good. I've got six months to find something as good as this jumper."

She glances up in the middle of a squeeze. "You really like it?"

"Yeah."

Nia smiles, and I know no matter what else happens tonight, she's already made this one of my best birthdays.

***

"Can Nia read to me tonight?"

I don't bother letting Nia answer this. I'm certain she doesn't want to put my eight-year-old sister to bed. Besides, Nia's mine.