Perfection, Beauty and Flaws

8- Danielle the Doe

Chapter Eight:

Danielle the Doe:

~Ryan~

I watched as Danielle shifted uncomfortable in her seat. Mr. Warner, like usual, was dead to the world behind his desk. Oops. I really need to stop using sayings that have the word dead in them. Every time I use one all I can think about is Danielle, and not in a good way.

“They are all staring,” she said leaning forwards slightly so I could hear her without her having to speak very loud. “All of them.”

I glanced around. Everyone was staring, but they were trying, and failing, to do so discreetly.

I hadn’t even noticed. It was normal for people to be staring at Danielle I had never once stopped to consider that today they might be staring at me too. But sure enough they were.

“They’re always staring at you,” I pointed out to her.

That earned me a smack on the shoulder since I had turned to face Danielle, once again I wasn’t drawing.

“They are not!” She said in a harsh whisper.

“Uh yeah they are. You’re gorgeous.” Oops. She paled and her eyes narrowed. “Why can’t you just admit it to yourself?” Again, that was the wrong thing to say.

“If they don’t know me, they shouldn’t judge me.” Danielle sat back and crossed her arms. That was a very good point.

I leaned over and pulled my latest drawing from my bag. It was a startled doe posed between two trees. But all I had so far was the trees, and the deer was lightly sketched in. I wasn’t sure how to finish it yet.

I placed it on Danielle’s desk and began to shade in the trees. It took a total of two minutes before Danielle cracked and had spun the picture to face her.

“What is it scared of? There should be more animals in the picture so it doesn’t look so lonely. Don’t colour in the trees, but the deer should definitely be coloured.” She looked at the picture a moment longer before glaring at me. “You did that on purpose,” she accused.

I held my hands up innocently. “What? Why would you think that?” I lowered my hands and laughed. “Yeah I did, but it worked. So what were you saying?” She smiled and slowly repeated her ideas as I drew, or fixed them.

By the end of class, with a lot of Danielle’s help, I had a pretty good picture. I had shaded the trees in darker with a black pencil and then in grays put the shadows of small woodland creatures. The doe was a little off centre and it stood unsure and scared. It was coloured a light tan colour and its tail was sticking up in surprise. Its head was slightly lowered as it looked at it self in the water. Its eyes were huge as it took in what it saw there.

I had wanted to give it to Danielle, but I knew then wasn’t the time. There was no way she would have accepted it then. When I gave it to her it would have to be the perfect time, I just didn’t know when that was yet.

The doe reminded me of Danielle actually: the way it was scared to look at itself. I knew Danielle wasn’t afraid, but one day the truth in herself would hit her like a ton of bricks and then she would look just like our doe. Except for the tail thing. Unless Danielle was secretly a part of the animal kingdom, I doubted she had a tail.

When we had finished our doe, Danielle had smiled at it proudly and claimed it worthy of a museum. She had said this about some of my other drawings, but this was the only time I had believed her. This picture was pretty good, but only because I had her help.