Free Waking by Alyxandra Harvey-Fitzhenry

instinctive thought that she wasn’t talented enough to draw the cover. It didn’t matter if she was or she wasn’t. She was going to do it.
    â€œOkay,” Beauty said. “Do you have any pencils?”
    Luna snorted. “Are you kidding? My mother has cupboards full of pencils and pastels and all that stuff. And she’s got drawing paper too. We could rip the edges of your drawing and then glue it on the cover so it looks old.”
    â€œCool. On one condition though.”
    Luna glanced up at her. “What’s that?”
    Beauty picked up Luna’s phone, which was covered in sequined cloth, and handed it to her.
    â€œCall Kennedy.”
    Luna shrank away. “What?”
    Beauty had to grin. “My turn to be the bully,” she said. “I’ll draw and stand up in front of the class for this project if you call Kennedy right now.”
    Luna swallowed. “Geez, get a load of you,” she joked. “A new outfit and suddenly you’re the queen of the castle.”
    Beauty looked briefly proud of herself. “That’s right.”
    Luna groaned. “I created a monster. All right,” she continued in a rush. “Give me the phone before I lose my nerve.” She wiped suddenly damp palms on her jeans. “Mom’s studio is downstairs, turn left. It’s the purple door covered with stars. Help yourself to whatever you need,” she added, not looking away from the phone. She thought it might be laughing at her.
    Beauty smiled to herself and closed the door behind her. Luna had already helped her more than she would ever know. She could at least try and return the favor. She went down the stairs and peered at the doors until she found the one she was looking for. The windows were dark, the gardens swallowed by night. More candles burned in bowls all over the empty studio. Beauty was beginning to think Star either couldn’t afford electricity or that her best friend made candles for a living. Either way it made the comfortably shabby house even more beautiful.
    Beauty stood at the drawing table and ran her fingers over its scarred surface. She wanted a table like this so badly she could taste it. It felt good to want something that badly. Maybe she’d ask her father to build her one.
    She found a pad of thick drawing paper, loving the feel of the heavy stock. Tins of pencils and brushes lined the back of the table, in front of the wide window. There was a half-empty box of Conté-crayons by her elbow. She was sure the armoire behind her was full of pastels and watercolor pencils and perfectly sharpened charcoal pencils, but she felt weird going through Star’s stuff when she wasn’t here.
    She didn’t resist the urge to stand there in the thin shadows and sketch on the paper, first thinking of the journal and then of nothing except the pleasure of Conté scratching against white paper.
    Her eye was caught by a postcard of a painting of a woman lying back in a river choked by bushes and weeds. Her hands were pale as lilies and opened to the sky. Her mouth was partially open as if she had drowned reciting a favorite poem. Her white lace dress was covered with poppies and violets, and her hair was the same color as the brown water. Beauty glanced at the back. “J.E. Millais Ophelia.” She thought of the painting she’d been struggling with for weeks, the one of her mother. The one she’d torn apart in a fit of temper.
    This was what she’d been trying to capture, this tragic beauty, this pause between before and after. The accident somehow made mythic, made to be a story she might understand. Ophelia, La Jeune Martyre, The Lady of Shalott .
    This was how she would paint her mother—asleep in her white wedding dress and crowned with roses. It might make sense then.
    She turned to a fresh page and began to sketch her ideas, surrounded by the warm glow of candlelight. She went through several sheets and it