Free Wanderlove by Kirsten Hubbard Page A

charcoal on newsprint, the chewing-gum stretch of a kneaded eraser, the precarious bite of a razor blade in a new pencil. The vibrancy of fresh watercolors squeezed from a tube. A new sketchbook, cracked open to flawless white. The way the smell of turpentine made me feel simultaneously sick and excited. On this trip, I brought mostly pens and number two pencils—much easier to shove into my bag. I think about the way I’ve squeezed my pencils so hard over the years my middle finger has a permanent bump where the wood presses against it. I run my thumb over it now, trying to calm the thrill in my stomach, the sudden, overwhelming urge to draw.
    “Now,” Starling says, “imagine that feeling amplified, and projected all over the place, like a beam of light. Brightest in front of you, glowing everywhere but behind you . . .”
    “That’s stupid,” Rowan says.
    “Then you define it better.”
    “Pointless. You’ll never get it.”
    “I’m the one who invented it in the first place!”
    “That’s like saying you invented electricity.” Instead of retorting, Starling stands a quetzal coin on its edge with one finger. She flicks it with her other hand. It spins in a blur of gold. All three of us stare at it until it starts to tremble. Then Rowan slaps it flat with his hand.
    “How about this?” Starling says. “The abridged version.
    Wanderlove is about forgetting the bad things and focusing on the good. Out with the old and in with the new.” Silently, Rowan slides the coin across the table to Starling.
    “No matter what he says, that’s Wanderlove,” she tells me. “That’s how he lives it. Isn’t that right, Rowan? The only way to escape the past is to keep moving forward.” Starling slides the coin back to Rowan. Harder, so it makes an audible scrape. But Rowan doesn’t touch it; he just lets it sit there on the table, unclaimed.
    Art: The Wonder Drug
    When I was little, drawing wasn’t just for fun. It was my panacea, my cure-all for all kinds of heartsickness.
    My dependable happy-maker.
    Like if my mom bawled me out for something—spilling pomegranate juice on my dad’s papers, or running through the house with muddy sandals—I fled to my room and curled around a notepad, the repository for all my grief. If I got an answer wrong in class, I scrawled on a scrap of paper hidden in my lap. By junior high, those papers had turned into knockoff Moleskine sketchbooks I kept in my backpack. When I waited for Reese to join me at lunch, or when Olivia got talking and talking, I pulled it out and sketched. I was the sketchy girl. You know the one. But I wasn’t showing off—I was making myself happy. It was like a magic power.
    And then I gave it up.
    With a pathetic whimper instead of a bang. It wasn’t this great big temper tantrum I threw, or a resolve I made, or anything even slightly so dramatic. After we got the results of SCAA’s fast-track admissions, art slowly shifted from the light of my life to the bane of my existence. It meant fights and shame. It hurt to talk about. It hurt to think about. Before Toby and I broke up. And after, when I told my parents I wasn’t going to art school after all.
    So for months, I didn’t draw, and didn’t, and still didn’t. Until I found I couldn’t—even when my heart was the saddest and sickest it’d ever been. Giving up my art made me need it more than ever. That’s the worst part of all.
    ~ July 16, Santa Lucía, Guatemala
    In the evening, I sit in a striped beach chair in front of La Casa Azul, my sketchbook on my lap. It’s been ages since I’ve drawn, but the absence of my art has never felt this physical.
    A longing that aches like a Pacific cold-water swim. I blame Starling and all her talk about love.
    I just can’t understand why it’s so difficult to do the thing I’ve done an infinite number of times, especially when I’m surrounded by sketchworthy scenes. The colossal black dogs Osa and León. An anonymous backpacker girl