Sonder

Chapter 29

As he spread the blue ink across the whiteboard, Nick thought of his first investigative journalism assignment, way back in middle school. That last hairy spring of those horrible years illustrations began to appear on whiteboards throughout the school. And even one of the few remaining chalkboards. News of each drawing spread around the school like reviews of The Blair Witch Project. Every illustration was a detailed creature of mythology. The first was a small flurry of flame-winged butterflies. Dancing, they were crowded in the corner of Mrs. Hatfield's classroom. Each following sketch was incrementally larger and more menacing. There was a crowd of soaring pegasuses, a regal mountain-dwelling griffin. A pouting stone crushing cyclops. Cerebus crouched and growling. A rabid minotaur, and then the mural which caused a frenzy: A razor-sharp and sleek two-headed dragon (Polycephaly). It had a perspective violating tail and photo-realistic geysers of flame. One head was in profile: the jaws, fangs, and fire flung wide. The other head faced the viewer directly, singeing their eyebrows with the power of impression. 

The mystery muralist had used all three whiteboards in Mr. Osowski's band room to emphasize the shape of the subject. Two boards met the third in a corner allowing the tail to literally curve around the viewer as if they had stepped into the reptile's parlor.

Nick was put on assignment, by his mentor Mrs. Jergensmeier to solve the mystery. How exciting! Just like Hank the Cowdog... or The Boxcar Kids!.

Soon into his investigation, his classmates started to say: "Why don't you just confess? We know you're doing this?" to which Nick responded: "If I could draw that good, I wouldn't be in public school... I can tell you that much". No one could know how desperate he was to find this person. But, all he found were worthless suspicions and silly theories.

"What if it's a threat?" one person pondered, "They should probably call the police". "Why did I get the cyclops?" Mrs. Wirner mourned. Pictures were taken and a special edition of the paper was printed: "Maplewood Titan Lurks at Large". The thesaurus had taught Nick that "Titan" can be a synonym for "artist".

Nick's mom carried around a clipping of the article for months. She would insist that she had helped write it. It was no use attempting to correct her.

As he had feared, the drawings soon stopped. But, thankfully, non of the teachers had had the heart to erase the images. Some of them remained for weeks. Others survived for an entire year. Mrs. Hatfield kept those butterflies on her board until she retired. But, there was one last sketch. During field day, the last week of school, as tweens were running 3-legged races, playing red rover, and tossing water balloons, an Atlas was drawn.

Mrs. Jurgensmeier's a journalism/English classroom had two modest boards. But the earthing-bearing giant was not confined by the frames of the boards. The image was mostly eyes, shoulders, and a marbled horizon of earth pressing upon Atlas' back. Sweat dripped down the washboard of his brow and his straining eyes dwarfed any human able to fit in the classroom that afternoon. The lines extended from floor to ceiling. Construction paper had been taped to the walls as needed. This was strange. Nick's first comic book-- ever-- had been a vivid graphic novel about a disagreement between Hercules and Atlas...