Doppelganger

Chapter 15

For the first few, very boring, hours of the day, Joshua and Quip sat in the living room, both pretending to read books while they sized each other up. Joshua smelled like paint, wet earth, cheese and something warm that she didn't recognize; it was a good smell altogether but unfamiliar. Quip didn't really know what to think of the big, giant dog-man. She had heard about people like him while she had been at Manticore; experiments that had gone wrong or didn't make Renfro and the others happy, so they got thrown into the Basement. Quip had only been in the basement once, and she didn't remember seeing Joshua there...

Lowering her book just a little, she glanced over the top of it, sneaking yet another look. She caught his curious gaze and jerked her eyes away. Nope, never seen anything like him.

A few more silent minutes passed, and then he cleared his throat, making her jump a little.

"Quip like the poems?" he asked.

She nodded. He was looking at her over the top of his novel, a brown one with Uncle Tom's Cabin plastered on the front of its cracked cover. None of those words really made sense to Quip, except she knew that Tom was a name. She realized that Joshua was mimicking the exact way she had glanced at him a few minutes ago, but she didn't know whether to be amused or frown at him.

"Good," he said, giving an official-looking nod, "Poems are good."

"Mhmm."

He put down his book on the arm of the chair he was sitting in and stood up. Quip unintentionally moved farther back into the corner she nestled in. He was really, really big, and since she was sitting on the floor, he looked enormous. But she shouldn't be afraid, Alec said so...and he wouldn't lie to her. But still, she watched the dog-man as he walked across the room to the wooden thing with a painting on it and picked up the slender paintbrush that was lying on the ledge. He glanced at her again before turning to the side and dipping the brush into an open can of paint. It came out yellow, brighter than any yellow she had seen before.

She stared as he swished the brush across the painting, leaving an impossibly bright trail of color behind the thick bristles. Joshua dashed the brush the other way, dragging it through the pink and orange swirls. Quip closed her book and leaned forward so she could see the easel better.

What was he doing? The painting looked fine before, or she thought it had. Alec didn't seem to like it...well, she did, and that was all that really mattered. Right?

"You like painting?" Joshua asked. His question interrupted her thoughts.

She shrugged. "I don't know. Never tried."

Joshua looked down at the brush in his hands as a slow smile scrawled over his face. "Then time to try." He held out the brush to her. A drop of yellow paint fell off the tip and splashed onto the floor.

Quip looked suspiciously at the brush then up at the dog-man before getting to her feet. As usual, the quickly healing wound on her side ached when her skin stretched, but she was getting better at ignoring the pain and, besides, the medicine was still dulling the ache.

Her eyes locked on his, she walked up to the big man, stopping when she was a few, safe feet away. He held out the paint brush a little farther and smiled.

"You try."

She reached out and took the paint brush from him, her hand landing on the wooden handle. Cool paint splashed off the end and stuck to her skin, creating a small splotch of yellow on her wrist. She poked at it with her pointer finger of her left hand.

"What do I do?" she asked. She glanced over at the painting that was sitting on the wooden thing. He didn't want her to paint on that, did he? That was his, not hers.