Volume 1, Flashback 5: A Practical Lesson in Being Impractical (Patreon)

Link to previous flashback: https://www.patreon.com/OneDropRain/posts/volume-1-4-is-to-169127699/

Seven years and four months before The Event

Leaning with my back against a tree, I was painting her portrait from memory when she finally appeared in my field of view.

Sasha walked with a spring in her step, dressed in cargo pants and a long hoodie, carrying a backpack. She wasn’t looking around in any obvious way, probably so she wouldn’t draw attention to herself. As students of the school, we were allowed to move freely across the entire grounds, but leaving the dormitory around dusk could still be seen as suspicious behavior.

“Hey!” she shouted when she got closer, waving at me and smiling broadly.

I liked her smile, because whenever I saw it, I forgot why I had come here and was left with only her.

“Hey, Sash,” I replied, glancing at my watch after closing the sketchbook and putting it into my own backpack. “Fashionably late?”

“I was waiting for the guard at my dorm to stop staring at the wall by the exit, which apparently wasn’t written in the stars today,” she replied, holding out her hand to me.

I took it, and she helped me to my feet before we started toward the abandoned house.

“So I had to give fate a little help and convinced a few girls to go running.”

“Running? You were supposed to meet me, and you went jogging?”

“Do you see me running anywhere? I convinced them to go and then backed out. But when they left the dorm dressed… in workout clothes, the guard’s eyes followed them, and I was able to slip out unnoticed.” She told the story grinning as though she had just outsmarted the devil himself.

“Good thinking,” I replied, bumping my shoulder lightly against her arm, then immediately gritting my teeth when I wondered if I might have hurt her.

She took it without complaint, though, and even turned toward me and nodded.

“My thinking is always at least good, Julian.” She walked in silence for a moment after that, lost in thought. “You’ve been gone a lot in the afternoons lately.”

“Yeah,” I replied, stretching the word as far as I could and adding a sigh so she would know I would rather be doing something else. “Not a lot, but yeah. After the headmistress punished me last month for getting involved in that fight and made me help her choose pieces for an exhibition for a week, I apparently caught her attention so much that now, from time to time, she takes me to her estate so I can help her decorate it.”

Sasha gave me a suspicious look.

“It’s nothing special. Usually she sits me down in her ballroom, because yes—she has a ballroom, because why wouldn’t she, right?”

“I wouldn’t, even with that kind of money. Balls aren’t really my thing,” she replied, lifting her nose slightly. Maybe it was jealousy, but with her it was hard to tell.

“Right. Anyway, I sit there and go through catalogs full of different pieces, choose what I think would work best in her house, and then, under the supervision of her staff, I walk around and point out where I think each one should go. So far—and I’ve already been there five times—she’s followed exactly one of my suggestions, so I’m not entirely sure what the point of any of it is,” I said that even though I knew perfectly well.

Elise Harrow was grooming me, making sure that in the future it would be easier for her to hold power over me.

“Just be careful, please.”

“What do you mean?”

“She’s a woman, and people generally don’t suspect us of things like that, so it’s easier for us to stay in the shadows while doing things we shouldn’t.”

“You mean something predatory?” I asked, wanting to find out what she knew about that subject.

“I mean you should be sensible, that’s all. Boys and their hormones…”

“What’s that supposed to mean? You think that if she made a move on me, I’d just throw myself at her?”

“I think it’s better not to fly too close to the sun if you don’t want to burn your wings,” she replied as we reached the plank leading up to my white room. This time, she climbed first, and I found myself watching the way she moved as she made her way up.

“You’re absolutely right. I’ll be careful,” I replied, following right behind her.

The moment I came through the window, I rolled forward and quickly got to my feet.

Sasha was standing directly in front of me, her backpack dropped onto the floor, her eyes fixed on mine.

The light of the setting sun streamed through holes in the ceiling and fell across her vivid green irises, making them shimmer like stars submerged in jade. Her lips parted slightly, and I felt her warm breath against my face.

I was just raising a hand toward my mouth when Sasha suddenly stepped closer, took my cheeks in her hands, tilted her head to the side, and pressed her lips to mine.

Caught completely off guard, I stood there like an idiot for a moment while she kissed me, her tongue searching for mine. Undeterred by my lack of response, she gave my lip a light bite, and the shiver that ran through me was the spark I needed to finally kiss her back.

I placed one hand against the middle of her back and pulled her closer.

We stayed like that for several heartbeats before she finally pulled away, looked closely at my face with trembling lips, then rested her head against my shoulder and leaned into me.

“That was nice,” she whispered.

“I wasn’t expecting that after the way our last conversation about this went in here.”

“Don’t imagine anything more is going to happen,” she replied, still pressed against me as though she didn’t want to pull away. “Not yet. Maybe never. Maybe someday. But not now.”

“I understand. Why did you do it?” I asked, and she finally pulled away from me, taking my hand and moving it away from her.

“I felt like it,” she replied, crouching beside her backpack and opening it. “I usually try to take what I want when the opportunity presents itself.”

She dumped most of the contents onto the floor. Along with the rolling cans, candles of various sizes scattered across the floor. She set the spray cans away with a swipe of a hand and started gathering the candles up.

“What if I hadn’t wanted to?” I asked without thinking, crouching beside her and helping clean up, setting the cans upright and collecting the candles as well.

“That would’ve been pretty awkward, wouldn’t it?” She gave me a roguish smile and began arranging the candles across the floor a bit closer to the wall opposite the window, lighting them one by one so they would cast some light into the room.

“I don’t know why I asked that. Maybe my brain wasn’t getting enough oxygen, huh?” I joked, but she gave me a patronizing look.

“Come on. I’ll show you how it’s done.”

In the light of the dancing candle flames, she picked up the spray can and drew the first line across the wall, painting something resembling a horizon. The line came out surprisingly even. The black paint stood out against the white wall in a broad stripe with slightly ragged edges, and Sasha finished the motion before stopping her hand completely. I quickly realized that this kept a darker blotch from forming at the end.

“First rule,” she said, shaking the can. The metal ball inside rattled so quickly that the sound blended into a single continuous clatter. “Don’t treat it like a pencil, or even a brush. Those touch the paper or canvas directly. Here, between you and the wall, there’s air, pressure, and paint that has a mind of its own.”

I turned the can over and read the warnings printed in tiny letters on the back.

“You do realize our lighting involves open flames?” I asked, smiling at her.

Sasha froze for half a second, then looked at the candles.

“Okay. Point for you.”

She blew them out one by one, leaving us with only the remnants of daylight coming through the holes in the ceiling. Then she pulled a small flashlight from her backpack and placed it on the floor, angled toward the wall.

“I was trying to set the mood, not blow us up. If you start feeling dizzy or your throat starts burning more than it should, we take a break.”

“Romantic,” I muttered, teasing her a little.

“The kiss was romantic. The candles were supposed to be… Never mind. I was complaining about hormones, and apparently mine are playing tricks on me too, huh? This is a lesson and apparently for both of us. Focus, Julian.”

“I am focused, but maybe you need to relieve a little more tension?” I folded my arms across my chest, enjoying the opportunity to turn the question back on her.

She stepped closer to the wall, ignoring my comment with a sigh, and pointed at the line.

“Distance changes everything. Close to the wall, you get a narrower, sharper line, but you have less time before you put down too much paint and it starts to drip. Farther away, you get a wider, softer cloud and more overspray. The speed of your hand matters too. Too slow—it drips. Too fast—the wall shows through. And if you change the distance halfway through the motion, the line gets thicker and thinner even if you’re using the same cap.”

“Cap?”

She smiled as though she had been waiting for that question. From a side pocket of her backpack, she pulled out a small plastic bag filled with colorful nozzles.

“Tip. Nozzle. Cap. Different openings give you different flow rates and different spray patterns. A skinny cap is for thinner lines and details, a fat cap is for filling larger areas. There are ones in between too. But even the best cap won’t do you any good if you don’t know how to control the can.”

She removed the nozzle from her own can, snapped on a different one, and made three short lines beside the first.

The first was thin and relatively sharp. For the second, she pulled her hand farther back, and the same motion left a wider, softer mark. She deliberately made the third one too slowly. After a few seconds, a drop formed at the bottom and began to run.

“That part I could probably manage without any training,” I observed.

“I believe in you. Now try a straight line.”

I stood in front of the wall, held the can maybe four inches from the plaster, and pressed the nozzle. A dot appeared first, then I started moving my hand.

“Stop.”

I released the cap at her comment.

“Already wrong?”

“Already. Start moving first, then give it paint. And release the cap a little before the end of the motion. Otherwise every beginning and ending will have a lump. Lead with your arm, not just your wrist. For a longer line, your elbow and shoulder should maintain the speed. Save your wrist for small corrections.”

I tried again, deeply excited both by what had happened earlier and by the advice she was giving me. This time, I started moving my hand before pressing the nozzle and released it before finishing the motion. The line still wasn’t perfect, but it was definitely better.

“Now one more. Don’t look at the nozzle. Look where you want to finish.”

I knew that rule. Penrose and Torque had drilled it into me countless times during different physical exercises. When jumping, you didn’t look at your feet, but at where you wanted to land. When throwing a knife, you didn’t watch your hand, but the target.

That unwanted thought immediately spoiled some of my enjoyment. Sasha must have noticed something, because she stopped looking at my line and looked at me instead.

“What?”

“Nothing.”

“You lie better at school.”

“That’s not very flattering. And what exactly is that supposed to mean?” I asked, irritated and scared that she had seen through my persona.

“It wasn’t meant to be. I know that at school you act like the same overconfident asshole as every other boy… and girl, if I’m being honest. But unlike most of them, you actually care about being here and learning something.” She held my gaze for a moment, then waved one hand. “Come on. I’ll show you stencils too.”

She pulled out a piece of thin cardboard with several lines cut into it, forming a symbol shaped like a fox’s head. Narrow bridges had been left inside a few of the shapes, connecting otherwise separated sections of the material.

“If you want to repeat the same symbol or need a really clean edge, you make a stencil. You can use cardboard, plastic, thin film. Anything that holds its shape works. You just have to remember the bridges, because the middle of an O or an A isn’t going to float in midair,” she added, but stopped explaining when she saw the look on my face. “Okay, you get it. Sorry. You press the stencil against the wall, keep the can more perpendicular, and use several light passes instead of flooding the whole thing at once. If you put down too much paint, it bleeds under the edge and all that precision goes to shit.”

She held the stencil against the wall to demonstrate, but after a moment lowered her hand.

“You’re not going to use it?”

“I could. But why?” She put the cardboard away. “A stencil gives you repeatability. In exchange, it takes away some of my freedom. If I start freehand and halfway through decide the line should go higher, I can take it higher. I can change the proportions, add a flare, a shadow, widen the outline, use a crack in the wall. A stencil tells me in advance where I have to end up. I don’t like doing what I’m told by nature… I’m definitely not going to start creating my own restrictions too, right?”

She said the last part with a smile, but despite how lightly she delivered it, the words stayed with me for the rest of the evening, weighing on my mind.

Sasha returned to her horizon. She brought the can closer for sharper edges, pulled it farther away for shading, and when filling a larger area, she moved in parallel passes with a slight overlap between them. She didn’t try to achieve full coverage in a single pass, but instead built it up in layers.

“Your turn. Paint something.”

“What? The thing we designed earlier?”

“No, first just whatever comes to mind. It’s practice.”

I looked at the wall.

“You don’t know what to paint?”

“I could do a hand study.”

“You do that all the time.”

“A face.”

“All the time too.” She looked at me with what seemed like either embarrassment or disappointment. “Julian, what you paint doesn’t have to serve some function. Hands train precision. Faces help you remember people. You paint rooms like you’re always wondering where something waiting to get you is hiding. Don’t treat art like a tool.”

I didn’t answer, because she was right, which was exceptionally irritating.

“Paint something useless. Something you want only because you’d like to see what it looks like, when it is freed from the prison of your own mind.”

For a moment I just stood there. The first thing that came to me was a hand. The second, a face. The third, a window. The fourth, the arrangement of rafters above us that might come in handy for climbing. Everything had a purpose.

At last I looked at Sasha’s black line dividing the white wall in half. I placed my can a little above it and started drawing upward—first straight lines converging at a single point to suggest perspective, but then I began connecting them to each other until they started to resemble a spiderweb.

I let my mind, unprompted by any conscious thought, guide my hand, and in that way I created something entirely new.

Sasha just watched as I reached for blue and began sketching a sky that partly covered the web, then white, and clouds. Then a spider emerging from behind them, wearing a mask that only faintly resembled a human face—just two black eyes on white porcelain. But it still didn’t feel quite right to me, so I started coloring one of the eyes, changing the colors one after another until the iris looked like a rainbow.

I stepped back. I wasn’t practicing perspective. I wasn’t trying to memorize any place. I wasn’t creating an escape plan or a tool for deception. The image wasn’t going to bring me money, praise, or an advantage over anyone. It was completely, wonderfully useless.

“Well?” Sasha waited, watching my face for an answer.

I stared at the wall much longer than I needed to.

“I want that spider rising from behind the clouds to look like a flaming sun,” I said, reaching for orange and red.

“Then add it.” Sasha’s smile returned immediately, and it drew the same response from my focused face.

For the first time in a very long while, I wasn’t thinking about what use I could make of what I was learning. I just wanted to see that damn spider, shining with sunlight, in my sky crisscrossed with webs.