Free Absolutely Almost by Lisa Graff Page A

said, but then I sat up, because all of a sudden I felt silly. “How come I can’t draw as good as you?”
    â€œAlbie.” Calista set down her marker and looked over at my paper. “Yours is good!”
    It was not good. “That’s what teachers say when they don’t want to hurt your feelings,” I told Calista. Then I grumped, crossing my hands over my chest. I was feeling particularly grumpy.
    Calista glanced at me sideways. Then she leaned in close to look at my drawing a little harder. “All right,” she said after a while. “It’s awful.”
    At first that made me mad, because that was not the thing a not-a-babysitter was supposed to say, especially a nice one. But when I saw the look on her face, a scrunched-up half smile, I couldn’t help but laugh. Because Calista was telling the truth, and I knew it—my Donut Man drawing
was
awful.
    â€œIt’s horrible!” I said, still laughing.
    â€œWretched!” Calista added.
    â€œGross!”
    â€œPutrid!”
    â€œTerrible!”
    â€œAn abomination!”
    I shook my head. “I guess I’ll never be an artist like you,” I said.
    Calista thought about that. “Oh, I don’t know that
that’s
true,” she said. “I’ve had a lot more practice that you have. I could teach you a couple tricks, if you want.”
    â€œReally?”
    â€œSure.”
    So Calista took out a fresh piece of paper and gave me a new marker, one where the tip wasn’t all mushed-up used. “We’ll start easy,” she said. And she drew one line, straight down the paper. She told me to draw one just like it, right beside it. So I did. I copied her like that, one little step after another, and when we were done and we pulled our hands from the paper, wouldn’t you know it—Calista had shown me how to draw a whole person. Head, legs, feet, everything. It wasn’t a superhero yet, just a person. Actually it was a little bit like a stick figure, like in hangman, but with more details. Then Calista showed me how to make changes, whatever I wanted, like giving the man muscles or a fat belly, or bending his arms or making him run, or anything. By dinnertime we had tons of people, all different kinds, crammed all up and down and sideways across the paper. I’d even drawn a better version of Donut Man.
    He looked pretty okay.
    â€œSee?” Calista said as she got up to put water on for spaghetti. “I told you you could do it.”
    I looked down at the paper. You could tell which people were Calista’s and which ones were mine, because Calista’s were better. But mine weren’t
awful.
    â€œDo you think I could ever get good enough to be an artist one day?” I asked Calista as she turned the heat on under the pot on the stove.
    â€œI don’t know,” Calista said. “Do you want to be an artist?”
    I looked at Donut Man some more. For a long time. “I want to be something I’m good at,” I said.
    â€œAlbie.”
    Calista walked over and leaned her elbows on the counter by the table. I looked up at her. She looked more serious than normal. “You should do something because you
love
it, not just because you’re good at it.”
    I wrinkled my nose, thinking. “But you’re good at art, and you love it,” I told her.
    She nodded. “Did you ever think maybe the love part comes first?” I guess she could tell I was confused, because she kept talking. “Find something you’d want to keep doing forever,” she said, “even if you stink at it. And then if you’re lucky, with lots of practice, then one day you won’t stink so much.”
    That sounded good. But . . .
    â€œBut what if I’m not lucky?” I asked her. “What if I
do
find something I love, and then I always just stink at it?”
    Calista smiled her thoughtful smile. “Then won’t you be