Damsel in the Dust

22

Jake starts work on Monday. I lend him my truck since neither Maive nor I have anywhere to go for the rest of the day. Maive fusses over the wrinkles in his shirt as he sips his coffee.

"Honestly, I don't know what you do! You haven't even been wearing this five minutes and you're all wrinkly," she balks at him.

He just grins into his mug as I grin into mine. For the life of me, I can't find the wrinkles Maive is talking about. Jake looks crisp, clean, and ready to take on his new job. I decide this is just Maive's way of worrying about him. When she finally finishes smoothing out the imaginary wrinkles, I toss Jake the keys.

"Good luck," I tell him.

"Thanks."

Maive and I both watch from the front door as Jake fires up the truck and backs down the driveway. We both smile and wave in encouragement until the truck disappears from sight.

"Alright. What should we do today?" I ask Maive.

It's my first time alone with her, and after Jake's confession about not knowing how to raise a teenage girl, I'm determined to prove that he can count on me to help out. Except I have no idea what to do with her. When I was her age, I was getting into all sorts of trouble with Chris all over town. Not exactly the role model behavior I want Maive emulating.

Maive looks at me and shrugs. "I don't know. What is there to do around here?"

I glance around the kitchen and out toward the yard. "Not a whole lot, unless you're into yard work and cleaning."

She wrinkles her nose at me. Of course she's not into yard work or cleaning.

"I have books, or the tv, or... I don't know."

Maive folds her arms. "What do you do for fun?" She asks.

"Sketch," I answer instinctively, even though I don't sketch all that much anymore.

That one word is like magic though. Maive's eyes light up and she unfolds her arms, leaning in to look up at me. "You know how to draw?" She asks.

"I mean, I'm not trained or anything but yes, I know how to draw," I answer, suddenly cautious in the light of her enthusiasm.

"Can you teach me? I've always wanted to be able to draw, but I'm not very good. I need to get better though because what fashion designer can't draw the ideas they picture in their minds?" Maive starts to chatter, her words flying faster as she word vomits her dreams of becoming a fashionista and having her designs featured on runways in New York, Paris, Milan, and a bunch of places I've never heard of, spill out of her.

I don't know if I'll be any good as a teacher, but the way she's looking at me I can't help but say yes.

"Sure. I like to sketch in the sunroom, so why don't we set up there? I'll go grab my supplies if you'll go clear off the end tables.

Maive dashes off to the sunroom while I head to my room and dig out my sketch pad from my dresser drawer. I also venture into the depths of my closet, pulling out a plastic storage container stuffed with extra practice pads, pencils, pens, and charcoal. I drag the whole thing out to the sunroom.

"Woah," Maive says, eyes on the box.

"Behold, my personal treasure box," I say, opening the lid and handing her an empty sketch pad and an unopened box of pencils. I hoard art supplies; half of the stuff in the box is unopened, waiting for me to take up my hobby again.

Maive kneels down and digs around inside, picking up the various boxes and tools before sitting back and looking up at me.

"There's no color in here. How am I supposed to be a fashion designer without colors?"

I fight the urge to laugh at her question. It's so innocent and reminds me of me when I first started drawing and thought I needed every single thing ever to be a great artist. New pencil? Bought it. New paper? Bought it. New books, tutorials, drawing kits? Owned them. It took me a while to figure out that I was happiest with a nub of charcoal and a blank page. I didn't need anything fancy to enjoy my art.

"I don't work in color, so I don't really have that stuff. We can stop by the art supply store when we drive up to the city, but for now, you get to work with the most basic of basics: the pencil," I tell her.

"The city?"

Shoot. Did I forget to tell her? In all the excitement with Chris the day before, I hadn't thought to discuss our trip to the city with Maive.

"Yep, on Friday. You need clothes for school, and I'd like to say hello to my aunt who lives up that way, so I was thinking we could make a special trip. If Jake can take Friday off, of course," I say.

"Yay! Okay, I guess I can wait for color. Black and white is so boring, Leah!"

I smile at her. "I guess I'm just a boring person. What can I say?"

She shakes her head at me. "No, you're not."

I don't know if she's right or wrong. I do know that I've started to live my life in shades of grey, where good, bad, and moral aren't always as black and white as I once thought they were.

We start our lesson with a quick draw. I have Maive draw a series of figures in intervals of 30 seconds to see how she approaches a drawing before I launch into a lesson on shapes, proportions, and dynamism. I'm afraid I'm throwing too much at her, but I have her full attention and each time I ask her to try a quick figure again, she applies the new knowledge as if she'd been practicing for months rather than minutes. She pouts when her drawings aren't perfect, but instead of getting frustrated and throwing the whole pad aside (like I did when I first started), she plunges into her next figure with renewed determination.

Eventually, I stop giving her advice and critiques and tell her to keep practicing. She spends the entire day absorbed in the sketch pad, lost to the real world as she searches for a way to bring life to a world of her own.

Maive is still sketching when Jake comes home. It's with a start that she finally puts down the pencil and leaps up, demanding to know how his first day went.

"It went just fine. Mr. Abernathy is fine with me taking off this Friday if you still want to go to the city, Leah. I think he secretly wants to keep running things on his own, but Mrs. Abernathy won't let him," Jake laughs.

My heart soars. A road trip into the city, with Jake. An escape from my reality, with Jake. I'm starting to think this day might have been perfect; I did great with Maive, Jake had a good first day and we all get to go to the city this weekend, and now Jake and I are sitting on the porch in comfortable silence. Maive is back in the loft, probably still sketching even though she swore she was going to bed.

My life feels perfect, at peace, as if I'm finally finding my way back to the path I'm supposed to be on after wandering around in the woods for too long.

I realize this is an illusion when Jake says, "Leah, there's something you need to know."

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A/N: 

I promise this is the last slow chapter for a while! Coming up next, Jake and Maive's mysterious back story! What do you think their story is?

Thank you to everyone sticking with me. I appreciate every comment, vote, critique, suggestion, question, and emoji more than you can possibly know. :)