I took a deep breath, facing the glass sliding doors in front of me. The glare of the midday sun bounced off of the doors harshly, obscuring everything inside. I shook my head, pushing through the doorway. I had to try this at least once.

When I stepped into the studio, I was immediately overwhelmed. People rushed around me almost frantically, arms covered in paint, clay, and charcoal. There were stations set up along the wall, with different activities set up at each one. I once again remembered how I had no artistic talent, and gulped, suddenly not able to remember why I was even here.

I almost turned around and walked right out of the place, but before I could, a girl with green paint on her cheek and frizzy red hair appeared in front of me.

"Hello, are you Will?" The redheaded girl smiled.

"Um, yeah. That's me."

"Great! I take it it's your first time here?" I stared around the busy art workshop, identifying at least twenty tools I didn't even recognize.

"Yup."

She laughed a little. "No worries! We welcome beginners. I'm Rachel. I'll show you around, give you the basics of everything we have here. Maybe we'll find something you like!"

And so, twenty minutes later, I was sitting in front of a table near the front of the huge room, listening to Rachel talk quietly about which shapes and lines to start with when sketching faces.

I tried, I really did, but I just couldn't do it. My hand wouldn't stay still; my lines were shaky even using a straightedge. When I tried to copy what Rachel did, the features came out warped and disproportionate. My drawing looked like if hers had nuclear acid splashed in its face before being featured. And it didn't help that I couldn't focus at all on what Rachel was saying, because of a certain boy in the corner. He was working on a pot of some kind, moving his hands up and down the spinning piece of clay sitting in front of him. When he used the back of his clay-encrusted hand to wipe his dark bangs out of his face, I got a good look at his face. Dark, intense eyes, with brows furrowed in concentration on the clay. Sharp cheekbones and jawline, dark bags under his eyes, just a hint of some freckles peeking through his olive skin. He looked almost otherworldly.

"Will?" Rachel was looking at me. Quickly, I gulped, pushing thoughts of the beautiful boy to the back of my mind.

"Y-yeah?" Her eyes followed where I'd just been looking.

"You were looking in the pottery section. Do you want to try that?"

"Y-yeah. Yeah. Sounds good."

She walked me over to one of the pottery stations, and started going over the basics of the equipment. While she was talking, the boy decided that he was satisfied with his pot and started heading to what I presumed was a kiln.

Once I'd started on my own hunk of clay, Rachel said "Can I ask you a question?"

I thought for a moment. "Sure, but I get to ask one in return."

"Deal. Why are you here? I mean, I'm not judging or anything, I'm just curious. You don't seem to enjoy… any of this."

I was grateful for the activity in front of me. It meant that I didn't have to maintain eye contact. "My therapist suggested I try… like, art and stuff. To help communicate my feelings or some therapist-y stuff like that. And I've heard about this place, and I thought it was pretty cool. Like, you can just come in here and use the equipment to make stuff whenever you want, and it's pretty cheap. There's not many other places like it. And then I saw that one-on-one intro class, and, well, here I am."

Rachel looked at me for a moment. "It's not that cheap."

"Well, relatively speaking," I said, relieved that that was her only comment.

"Hm." She nodded. "So what was your question, then?"

"Oh." My cheeks felt warm. "Do… do you know who that boy was? The one who was standing there?" I asked quietly, nodding over to where the boy had been standing.

"Oh, Nico? Yeah, I know him. He comes here a lot. He's a painter, mostly. He comes over to this building to clear his head, when he's frustrated on a project or something."

Nico. That's a pretty name.

"Wouldn't he already be in this building? The painters are right here." I gestured to a group of people painting on canvases.

"There are beginning painters over here. This is the beginners zone; you come here if you don't know what you like or if you're not very good at a certain thing. Nico's much too advanced to be painting here. There are specific rooms and areas for each skill. But, well, he's a painter, not a potter or a sculptor, so he comes here when he does those things, because he's not as good at them."

"Makes sense."

"Why did you want to know about Nico?"

I shrugged, anxious to come up with a sufficient lie. My nerves were clearly showing, making my hunk of clay blotchy and uneven. "Uh, he- he looked familiar. I was wondering if I knew him from somewhere. But that name doesn't sound right, so- uh- I guess not."

Rachel gave me a suspicious look. "...Right. Okay."

"U-uh, anyways!" I was eager to change the topic. "How do I make the pot all, like, curvy?"

"You're wondering about concavity?" Rachel's eyebrows were furrowed; she clearly wasn't going to forget my interest in Nico. "Well, alright…" She pulled up her sleeves, preparing to show me what to do.

I glanced over at the door that Nico had disappeared through. Perhaps I would come to this place more often.