Starbird

Chapter 5

Scurrying back in my room, I spotted my sketchbook on the floor and instantly remembered what my plan was yesterday. Quickly snatching my colored pencils and my sketchbook, I headed back out to the loft’s balcony. I settled against the outside wall and set my colored pencils beside me as I took my regular pencil, sharpened it to a fine point, and then began sketching.

The initial skyline is always fairly easy. Just copy what you see. My tongue remained wedged between my lips as I carefully outlined the city and the park and the random dog tied to a tree across the road. Feeling satisfied with my sketch, I picked up the blue and began shading in the sky. I was happy with the weather today. Mild, with a clear blue sky. Not difficult to draw at all. Now storms, those were difficult to capture in a drawing. Clouds and rain and lightening took forever to get a grasp on and I typically ended up pulling out my Monster and snapping a few quick pictures instead. But not today. Today everything was perfect as I filled my outline with colors and watched it come to life.

The thing about my artwork, was that no one really knew about it. Sure, my family knew I liked doing it and did it all the time, but they didn’t really know how much I wanted to pursue it. Of course my family would say, “Cam, it’s so good! Wow!” but family members say that without really meaning it sometimes. When I saw my artwork, I thought it was pretty incredible. Not to sound conceited, I’m just confident in my work. But that’s just the thing. I’m confident in my own opinion, but I was absolutely terrified to get anyone else’s thoughts.

“Cam!” My head whipped to the side, seeing James standing above me with a quizzical look crossing his face.

“What?”

“Are you deaf or something? We’ve been calling you for the past ten minutes.” James said, pointing inside.

“What time is it?” It barely felt like I had been out here ten minutes. James pulled out his phone and squinted at the time.

“Almost five.” My eyes widened.

“Five?” I asked incredulously. “Are your friends still here?”

“Nah, they left awhile ago. Speaking of which,” James sat down next to me, pushing my pencils aside, “you weren’t very social earlier.”

“I have nothing to discuss with them. Ava seemed nice, but after Gemma made that joke, I just knew I wouldn’t quite fit in with your group. Also! Carson. Did you hear what he said? He wants to go out for coffee and a movie with me. He just asked me out, James.”

“Don’t pay him any attention, he’s a flirt.” He told me. 

“He needs a haircut. He looks pubescent with his long hair.” James snorted, a bad habit we picked up from our dad.

“I know, he may have to cut it for the movie, we’ll see. But Ava and Gemma are really nice. I think you’ll like them. Hopefully. Because chances are, we’ll all be hanging out a lot.”

“Are you saying you’re going to drag me along?”

“Not drag you, you’ll want to come. Not all my friends are going to shun you just because you’ve never been in a movie.”

“Most of your friends in LA did.”

“No, you just didn’t trust yourself acting normal around them.” James reminded me and I opened my mouth to protest when I realized that’s exactly how it was.

“Fine.” I said in defeat, pretending to suddenly be very occupied in putting my colored pencils back in their box.

“Oh, by the way! Here is your all access pass.” He dangled a lanyard with an ID tag in front of me. “You won’t really need it until next week. I mean, the majority of this week is going to be costumes and run throughs and making sure the lights don’t wash us out.” I nodded, pretending that I understood what he had to go through. In reality, I had no idea.