Free Drawing Amanda by Stephanie Feuer

will you train?
    The mud colors in Inky’s mind lightened.
    Picasso2B: IDK. Didn’t have the grades to get in to the special high school. I messed up pretty bad last year.
    Megaland : That’s too bad. Your talent should be nurtured. Can you reapply? Or find another school?
    Inky appreciated that here was an adult who wasn’t telling him what he had to do, but was asking him about alternative plans—even if he wasn’t ready to admit that this was his Plan B.
    Picasso2B: It was a one-shot. I blew it.
    Megaland : I messed up once, too. But now it’s time for a comeback. I’m gonna make Megaland a big success. Phoenix rising and all that. You can too.
    Picasso2B: not likely. I blew it at school and my friends are gone. Everything sucks.
    Megaland : Like a light was turned off and you’re left alone in the room?
    Picasso2B: exactly that.
    Inky again had the sense that the Megaland dude was talking about himself. He wondered if he should ask, or say nothing. This guy seemed pretty open to sharing, and their conversations made him feel better.
    Picasso2B: how do you know? You seem pretty together.
    Inky wondered what the guy on the other end was like. Maybe he should ask him which of his drawings he most resembled. The cursor blinked. He was beginning to think it was wrong to ask when text started to appear.
    Megaland : I had it all once – a happening New York recording studio booked 24/7. Gold records on the wall, a smart, pretty wife, great apartment. Like the movies.
    Picasso2B: Sweet
    Megaland : Then the world changed. The digital revolution. Home studios. Everybody was a producer. In a couple of years I lost it all - the apartment, the wife. Dark times. I can’t even tell you how dark. This game – it’s my chance to rise again.
    Inky so totally understood. He could feel the regret and the hope. It stirred up feelings inside of him. All the times in grief therapy when they’d gone around in the circle, they were supposed to say how they were feeling. Hawk could always come up with some angry emotion. But into the second year, Inky was still numb. “Tell us what you’re feeling now,” the leader would say, but there were no words, only colors, and they were all muddy, like the mix of colors in the runoff wash on his palette at the end of the day.
    Megaland : And maybe it’ll be your chance too. No more darkness. A bright new path. We’ll make this game rock. Nothing’s better than success. Whatd’ya say? You in?
    Inky sucked in his breath. In three words this guy got it. No more darkness.
    Was he in? Did the sun rise in the east in a cool mute of color? There was never anything Inky wanted more to be a part of.
    Picasso2B: In all the way. I can draw anything you want.
    Megaland : Thank you, Picasso2B. I think you will be a great asset. You can call me Woody, since we’re working together and all. Hey, do you want to check out the new parts of the game?
    Picasso2B: Save that for the real testers. I feel like drawing now. Good night, Woody.
    Megaland: Good night, Picasso2B.
    Inky felt the green of spring buds. He took out his colored pencils and started to sketch.

    He recreated the face and body of the girl he’d drawn for Megaland, the girl based on Amanda. He thought of her at the cafeteria table, smiling her shy smile. There was something so natural about her.
    Inky swatted a straggle of hair away from his face, scrunched up his eyes and tried to conjure up the exact green of the iceberg lettuce in Amanda’s bowl. He concentrated as if everything depended on it.
    He wanted his drawing of her to be perfect, and focusing on the right shade helped. He knew he was rusty. The caricatures for the school newspaper and quick sketches of his friends, that was before. Last year he filled his notebooks with abstracts, a mad rush of color, emotion running like muck. Rivers of his guilt traversing the page in each mad drawing.
    He started working on her hair. He sketched a string of leaves flowing down toward her