Short Stories (bxb)

The Art of Feeling Small Pt. 3: Cadmium Green

Walking out of Aerodynamics on Tuesday afternoon, I was met with the sight of Ezra leaning against the wall, leash in hand. When I called out to him, he raised his head, greeting me with an easy smile. "Alexander."

He started off before I reached him, and I had to jog for a second to catch up. He was already holding something out to me when I settled at his side. I wasn't sure what he wanted me to do with a sketchbook, but I took it anyways -- I wasn't about to pass up an opportunity to look at his art.

I flipped through the pages, voicing my appreciation as Ezra walked silenty beside me with head tilted bashfully downard. I wasn't sure exactly where we were going, and I probably should have been paying attention, all things considered, but my eyes followed the dark lines on the pages. Ezra mostly drew people; not real people like the ones in the portraits, but the sort of mystical mostly-humans I used to read about in fantasy stories. There were a number of fairies -- delicate, pointy-eared things with flower petals in their hair. It was sort of adorable. I only understood why he'd given me the sketchbook when I flipped to the most recent page and saw my own face staring back at me.

Well, sort of.

Ezra must have interpreted my quiet "oh," because he asked, "How'd I do?"

The features, pictured from the shoulder up, were all vaguely correct. It was something someone might draw if they'd seen me from afar, enough to guess that the drawing was probably meant to be me. But it looked more like a distant cousin. Ezra had nailed my hair, the width of my shoulders, the general shape of my face. But it was off in too many ways to really look like me -- the nose was too narrow, the lips too wide, the eyes shaped all wrong. Looking at this me's bone structure, the real me couldn't help but think Ezra had a more attractive image of me than I deserved.

"I'm surprised you remembered the description so well."

"Please, that's all I remembered," Ezra said, then went pink at his own words and switched gears. "So? Are you gonna tell me how I did or what?"

"Definitely not me, but really good."

He grinned like he'd hoped I would say that. "Tell me what I can fix."

By the time I'd finished pointing out the issues, growing bolder as I realized he wasn't offended in the slightest, we had unintentionally made our way to a café on campus. I acted as if I had been aiming for this the whole time, and if Ezra caught my bluff, he didn't say. Seated at a table in the corner, he asked a few final questions and took some last (mental? unreal.) notes.

I wanted to know how he drew, so he demonstrated on a blank page while we waited for our food. He used a weird tool that looked sort of like a pencil, but with a thin metal tip on each end instead of lead and an eraser; he called it an embossing stylus. He pushed one balled tip against the page and drew a heart, leaving behind a depression in the sheet which he ran his fingers over, then filled with pencil.

"Have I mentioned that you're unreal?"

"It's a heart," he deflected. Flipping back to the attempted portrait, I could see the colorless dips in the paper that hadn't been filled, like sketch marks that couldn't be erased.

"Un. Real."

He ducked his head, hastily shutting the sketchbook. With a self-satisfied grin, I turned to the waiter to accept our sandwiches, and for a few minutes, we ate in silence.

He turned to me over the rim of his coffee mug -- black, unlike my own sugary drink -- and said, "Tell me something that matters."

I clicked my teeth. "You really don't do small-talk, do you?"