Five Years

Chapter Three: Heroes and Villains

"So. Looks like you've been busy," he said. The sarcasm in his voice was bitter. He had pulled out a large notebook, and was making marks in it, but I couldn't see what they were.

"I've written an entire new page of notes," I replied through gritted teeth.

His head snapped up, "What?" He sounded shocked. I showed him the front and back sides of the paper we'd gotten about halfway through during class. "What are all of those lists?"

"Details on the setting: the weather conditions, the temperature, potential character names," I started rambling off what I'd been working on.

He looked back down at his notebook, "Anything good?"

"Well, I don't know why, but I keep coming back to the name Adam. I have this picture in my head of what he looks like, and how he is dressed, and how he walks. The name just fits the personality," I reasoned with myself; it seemed like Liam wasn't even paying attention.

"Describe it to me," Liam said. "Let's see if we can doodle an idea." He pulled a thin box of colored pencils out of his bag, but they weren't like normal colored pencils. Clearly, these were fancier than regular Crayola colored pencils because God forbid a college student have just regular old colored pencils. The more time I spent around him, the more pretentious Liam seemed.

"Why doodle it?" I asked.

"It helps me to put the whole picture in my head, like if I were actually seeing the short with real actors," he explained.

"I'm not much of an artist," I admitted.

"Lucky for you, I took cartooning and sketch classes back in high school," he said. Yep, definitely pretentious.

"Oh, okay."

"I'll give it a whirl, but I need you to give me as much detail as you can. Any facial hair, the pattern on his shirt or tie, whether or not he's wearing any accessories... just as much as you can think of," Liam said.

I described the image of Adam I had in my head to the best of my ability, "Well, he's about 5'10". He's got a stubbly beard, but nothing too overdone - more like a five o'clock shadow. He has gray-blue eyes, black square glasses, and like a reddish-auburn colored hair. He's wearing dark jeans, and a black crew-neck sweater. On his left wrist, there's a silver watch, and he's wearing black shoes- they're not dress shoes, but they're not sneakers, either, if that makes any sense," I struggled.

As he sketched, Liam pointed out, "You know, this guys sounds an awful lot like me." His eyes shot up at me for just a few seconds, and then he focussed on his sketch again. "Orangey red hair, glasses, the watch..."

"What are you talking about," I started to defend myself, and then I noticed the watch beneath the cuff of his sweater: it was silver, just like the one I pictured.

We didn't talk for a few minutes. I sipped my coffee, as Liam would swap one fancy colored pencil out for another. I would have died if he showed me the picture, and it was a multi-colored stick figure. The thought of seeing it made me laugh, and apparently that upset Liam, because he looked up at me.

"Something funny?" He asked, looking up from his page. I didn't understand why he was taking this tone with me.

"Forget about it. Can I ask you something?" I put my coffee down on the table.

"Go for it," he looked back down at his sketch book.

"Have I said or done something in the past couple of hours to offend you? Because you seem really put off by the thought of working together on this project, and I'm just trying to be civil with you. You've given me a lot of attitude, and I really don't appreciate it. I don't want to have to play hero here, but this is my grade too, you know? We're supposed to be writing a script, not coloring pictures - " I started to rant, but he turned his sketch book around to show me the character he'd been drawing, and I stopped mid-thought.

"What do you think?" he asked, seemingly unphased by my angry half-rant.

I stared at it for a solid minute before I said anything. At last, the only thing I could manage to say was, "He looks exactly like I pictured him." It was literally like he took the vision out of my head, and pasted it onto the page. Down to the creases in the pants, the folds in the sweater where it bunched up near the bottom, even the way he had styled the man's hair.

"Do you still think I'm a villain?" Liam asked, quitely, after another minute of silence.

"He does look a lot like you, doesn't he. But he's not supposed to be the bad guy," I said, lost in my own train of thought. The sketch really was eerily similar to the image in my head, and the fact that Liam could capture that so perfectly from just me talking about it was amazing. I snapped back into the present, and looked up from the sketch book to Liam. "I'm sorry, I didn't mean to go off like that."

"Hey, it's not entirely your fault. I'm not having the best day myself, so I'm a little cranky," he grinned, sheepishly.

"Same. It's just been a weird day all around, I guess. Maybe it's something in the school food," I joked. Both of us laughed a little. "But really, this sketch is amazing. It's right on point with the image in my head. And even if it does look like you, he's supposed to be the good guy. He's the hero, kind of."

Liam covered the page with his arm, and sketched something really quick. I peered uneasily as he ferociously erased the page, and then put the pencil down again. "Here," he said, showing me the page, "better?"

The character sketch was now wearing a cape, and a mask across the eyes instead of glasses. I couldn't help but laugh.

"Alright, alright fine. So, now that you have cast me as Adam," Liam smirked, "what is our 'villain' going to look like? And what is his name going to be?"

The two of us joked and laughed as we planned out our script's antagonist- a man named Charlie with long, greasy black hair, dark clothing, and a knife with a long blade. Now that we were working together, this story was really starting to come along. He was actually a great writer, and he sketched out Charlie's character, as well as a few of the scenes. Maybe this pairing wouldn't be so bad after all.