Page 41 of Drawn Together

But the problem with being unproportional, in all areas, is that nothing ever seems to fit just right.

Too tight in the rear, too loose in the waist. Too long in the torso, too short on my legs.

It’s why I’ve had all my jeans altered. Anyway, the point being: when I tried on the Christine Daaé costume, I was thoroughly shocked that it was perfect.

It hugged my waist and flared out at my legs with these gothic, creepy drapings on my arms—just like the girl we saw on stage two weeks ago.

My hair was already just like hers, not a single need to touch it.

Lennon happened to slide into the apartment just as I was eyeing myself in the tall mirror in the hallway and said that my, and I quote, ‘boobs look like they were propped on a shelf.’ Which, I took as the highest compliment.

I am not about to say those words to Fletcher, though, so I settle on. “It fits.”

“I’m glad?” He scrunches his nose in a confused way, and I take in his own clothes.

Jeans, a white tee, and a burgundy button-up that’s open.

There’s a little pocket in the shirt that holds a mechanical pencil, and something about that image is really cute to me.

Like he never knows when he might need to write something down.

He’s got his glasses on again today and every time he looks down at the balloon arch, they slip so he has to wiggle them back up with a couple nose scrunches.

He leans across from me, grabbing the tail end of the arch’s plastic holder to slip his balloon into, and the movement has my eyes catching on his belt buckle again.

I bet he’s never had to have clothes altered.

I bet they come specially made for him. Like, some designer in Sicily thought of what a tall, skinny nerd would need to wear on a Thursday night in his apartment while prepping for a Halloween party, and boom, there came Fletcher and his very cute clothes.

“How many more do you think we need?” He eyes the arch, and I’m forced to look away from his pants again.

It’s mostly full, an array of light and dark oranges and black with a few white ghosts popped up here and there, but the middle section is lacking some.

“Maybe ten? I can do the rest if you’re over it.”

“Nah, I’m finally getting the hang of it. I can do the rest, just tell me where to put them.”

So, I do. I watch his fingers tug at the end as he ties them, the ring on his right hand occasionally getting in the way, but other than that, he’s right. He is finally getting the hang of it.

“I read your article the other day,” I say, pointing to where he could put the small sunset orange one.

“You did?”

There’s something there in his voice. Amused and shy, and maybe a little anxious too.

“I did.”

“And? Do you think I passed for a romance reader?”

“I think you might have sounded like more of a romance reader than I would.”

“Alright, well now you’re just pumping up my ego.”

“I’m serious.” I laugh when he throws a balloon at my hair, it sticks to it from the static, and I use the charge to shock his forearm. He pulls it into his chest, feigning hurt. “I think you nailed it. Did your boss seem alright with it?”

“I don’t think he’s even reading them anymore, so I assume he’s okay with it.”

“Good. You’re on your way to being the next Nicholas Sparks.”

“Let’s not push it.”

I snort.

“How’s it going with, uh, author guy?”

“You know his name.”

“Sure. How’s it going with him?”

“Honestly, better than I thought. He’s been…easy? Like, he’s agreeing with me on all these massive updates, and last week I sent in a new scene where I put some bunnies on Evie’s socks, and he didn’t even mention it.”

“You did?”

“Yup.”

“Maybe he didn’t notice.”

“Well, I’m certainly not going to bring it up now that he’s approved it.

” I reach for my iPad and bring up the newest sketch I started this morning.

“This is the next scene. Here, she crawls out of the Threadbare basement, her hands scraping against the rough stone.

I wanted to retain that sense of unease, so I modified the pen's format, making it sharper, and kind of darkened the shadows for a more ‘haunting’ effect.”

Fletcher’s fingers trace the edges of the locked image, like he could crawl into it and pull at the edges of the splintered wooden door.

Tiny chill bumps run across his forearm, like he could hear the eerie voice of the Threadbare lady behind him, calling out Evie’s name in a whistled wind. I like to think I hear it too.

“You’re so talented.” He lifts his glasses up to rest on his hairline and squints at the details of the floorboards I added last minute. Little fingerprints of the evil woman's previous victims. “I mean it. I can’t even imagine how you do this.”

“You can. You’ve watched me do it before.”

“Yeah, but you…I don’t know. I know you said you read the manuscript then go into it but…it’s like you bring everything you touch to life.”

I take in the compliment and store it in my back pocket to get out later, listening to it replay over and over. I’ll use it as a positive affirmation to tell myself in the mirror each morning. I bring everything I touch to life.

Fletcher clears his throat and tosses me another finished balloon, I’m so busy studying those words that it bounces off my nose and there’s a little indent of my makeup on it that makes us both snort.

After squeezing in the last balloon, we stand back and look at our masterpiece—a pretty great arch if I do say so myself.

“So, uh, the book clubs worked then, bunny socks and all.” Fletcher leans back on his couch and I collapse next to him, my stomach churning at my response.

“I guess there’s not much of a need for us to have bi-weekly meetups, then.”

We both soak in my words for a moment—I don’t like it—like a warm bath turned cold that you’re ready to jump out of.

“Or, maybe if we stopped meeting it would stop our creativity.”

I jump on the off chance he’s right. “Yes.” My head is nodding like a madman. “It could shut off the flow.”

“We can’t have that.”

“It would be horrible.”

“Detrimental.”

“What would Cedric Brooks say?”

“Probably the word detrimental.”

“I bet he wears sweater vests.” I smile at the thought of my squishy old friend.

“I bet he likes tuna salad,” Fletcher counters.

“I bet he named himself Cedric Brooks after a man he fought in World War Two with.”

“I…don’t think he’s that old.”

“Fine, a more recent war, then.”

“I bet he pays for things in quarters because he thinks it’s good for young cashiers to know the importance of hard work.”

“I bet he reads War and Peace for fun.”

By the time we have named off every impossible thing that Cedric Brooks does on a daily basis—involving denture cream and yelling at kids playing hopscotch on his street—we are wheezing with laughter, keeled over with stretched cheeks and sore abdomens.

Lennon and Stephan pop in on us laughing, which somehow makes us both laugh harder, tears pricking Fletcher’s eyes behind his glasses.

“Is it something we did?” Stephan asks Lennon.

She shakes her head. “No, it’s probably some weird line they read in their erotic novels, like succulent belly buttons or something.”

“Gross.”

They both walk off with their grocery bags into the kitchen, meanwhile Fletcher and I are heads down on the floor gasping the word ‘succulent.’