Total pages in book: 124
Estimated words: 117415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 117415 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 587(@200wpm)___ 470(@250wpm)___ 391(@300wpm)
A distant cluster of slightly-off violins turns my head. The doors of the music building have been thrown ajar, releasing a group of giddy students, likely having finished some final exam, now eager to fly home and be free from all responsibility. I watch, for a moment feeling my soul galloping after them—a naïve little puppy at their heels, wondering what kinds of families they’re returning to, what matters of homemade apple pies and motherly affection, of freedoms and friends, of boundless laughter …
My parents should feel lucky. I could’ve studied abroad. Gone to a school in London. I had a scholarship offer for a school in New York. Instead, my cozy campus is a mere handful of hours north of Spruce, easily drivable. Guess I couldn’t even get out of Texas.
And this road trip will take me farther than I’ve ever gone.
“Project Spruce Jailbreak …?”
I fall out of my thoughts as if from a tree, smacking the earth hard as I twist around. Oh, it’s Professor Patel. I slap the notebook shut against my chest. “Just a road trip thing with my bestie,” I tell him. “No relation whatsoever to breaking anyone out of prison.” I reconsider that. “I mean, other than myself. From a prison I’m … not yet in.” Then I reconsider that. “Sorta not yet in.”
“I won’t ask,” decides the professor, then adopts a kind smile. “I was wondering if I might trouble you to … help me move a thing or two from the art room? My aide was supposed to be here an hour ago and is sadly nowhere to be found, and—”
“Your injured back, of course.” I’m off the bench, notebook tucked away into my satchel. “What can I do to help?”
A “thing or two” was clearly a punchline that went right over my head. I end up lugging thousand-pound bags of clay. Buckets of slip. Boxes of plaster. I enjoy three trips of hauling jugs of gesso, acrylic medium, and mineral spirits from the first floor studio to the supply closets on the third. It’s possible he originally did only have one or two things to move, but seeing as I’m here and his aide is very much not, he rightfully took advantage of my goodwill. I probably would have done the same, given the circumstances. He took a fall some time ago and no one ever helps him out.
On the last trip, he insists on chipping in, as it involves a not-particularly-heavy but long and awkwardly-shaped piece of art he explains is a “bold statement on the theoretical quantification of love and loss”. And it gives us no trouble on its brief journey down a long hallway until we reach the narrow door of its destination.
“A tad to the left,” I croak.
He scoots to the right.
“Other left, sir.”
His arms shake as he corrects himself. “Got it!”
“Just a couple more steps, and we’re through the—”
He stumbles forward. I’m thrust back. The bold statement on the theoretical quantification of love and loss catches one of my fingers in the doorframe, and I suppress the mightiest of screams I might’ve ever made, had I actually made it. Professor Patel shouts his apologies, asking if I’m okay, and for some reason I can only squeal, “For the love of licorice, yes, yes, I’m fine, yes, oh god!!”
A minute later, I’m standing across from him at a desk, where he’s gently tending to my battered finger, opening a kit he keeps in a drawer. “So many accidents in an art room,” he sighs. “It does one good to keep help within reach, I always say. By the way, are you not an artist? You are here so often, I can never tell whether it’s friends that keep you coming back or just nagging intrigue. As far as I’m aware, you’re not enrolled in any classes here?”
“Nope.” I pat my satchel with my free hand. “I just doodle.”
He chuckles. “Can I be so lucky as to see one of your ‘doodles’? I’m so often struck by the untapped talent of our student body and marvel how so many deny themselves the divine endeavor of—”
My notebook is slapped open before his eyes, revealing my latest doodle. He draws silent.
To be fair, I never claimed to be Van Gogh.
“It’s a … a lovely … lovely little monster,” he decides to call it.
“Chihuahua,” I correct him. “With a banana gun. And this one is a cat eating a chocolate pie. It’s me and my bestie AJ.”
After troubling over a few choice adjectives, he looks up at me with a smile so tight, his eyes are gone. “Charming.” He clears his throat and frowns. “What was your actual major again?”
“Something my parents chose for me at birth.”
“I … somehow understand perfectly without understanding a thing at all. Timothy, if I may. The vastly more important aspect of art is putting yourself into what you do. That way, a bit of your soul is left in anything you create. Keep with these doodles if they bring you joy, even if … life takes you on a different path. As it so often does. It isn’t the result that matters. It’s the adventure.”