Marie
I would get this sketch right. I would. I would.
Very, very carefully, I traced the lines of the elf boy I was drawing with my pencil. I couldn't mess it up. I couldn't mess this one up...
I had spent fifteen minutes on this drawing already. I wouldn't usually spend that long on what was only a small sketch at the edge of my page, but this one was special.
This was the boy.
The boy was a tall, dark haired Native American guy I had seen in a photo we were sent a while ago, hanging out with my cousin Bella in some kind of garage. The photo had been sent to my dad by his brother Charlie, because dad had complained he always sent Charlie photos of us and Charlie never sent any back. So from the looks of it, Charlie had just walked out and snapped a bunch of random pictures, mostly of his daughter Bella. I was glad Bella lived with Charlie now. Even though he was solitary by nature, I thought he'd been lonely before she came along, but now...
Anyway, the boy. Yes. He was in just one photo, that one showing him and my cousin perched in a garage I didn't recognise, working on a battered old motorbike, but somehow...somehow I couldn't get him out of my head. His warm smile, his rough hands, his messed up dark hair...
I couldn't get him out of my head. I knew it was crazy, and believe me I felt like a stalker, but every time I looked at that photo all I felt was...I wanted to meet him in real life.
I knew that wasn't a good idea, and it wouldn't be possible anyway.
But nothing could stop me from at least drawing him. Drawing him as an elf, so my parents and brother wouldn't recognise him, but that didn't change the fact it was him I was drawing. I knew it was him.
I really was turning into a stalker.
"Dominic, look!" I said, holding my drawing up for inspection to my brother, who was playing video games on the sofa above me. I was trying hard not to be distracted by the noise of it. My brother looked at the drawing and smiled and I thought how much I loved him. He was taller than me now and it was just slightly annoying, but he was still my little brother. He always would be.
Bang. Bang. My brother and I both turned our heads, wondering where the noise was coming from. I only realised it was someone knocking on the door when I heard my dad say
"Yes, what is it?"
"It's the bailiffs."
"Bailiffs? We-we don't owe any money." I could hear the confusion in dad's voice.
"Maybe not, but we're still here to collect your stuff."
I looked at Dominic and he looked back at me. What? What was going on?
One of the boys, a tall blonde guy, barged through the door, pushing my dad aside, and marched into the room where we were sitting.
"These your kids?" he asked. There was something odd about his accent – he was either foreign or from another state – but I was too distracted to work it out.
"I think you should leave", I said, standing up.
"Oooh, sassy, this one." He smirked and his friends came to stand behind him.
"Get out", I whispered.
"Wait a minute", he said, holding a finger up as if to silence a two year old. Then he turned and, with one swift motion, unhooked all the wires form the telly and dropped it into a bag. It was surreal. The bag was a huge, dark sack just like you'd see a burglar with in a kid's picture book and I wondered for a moment if this was a dream. Things like this didn't just happen in the lives of people like me. But I could see the guy looking at me, and then he winked and said, "see you later, sweetheart", and walked out, his cronies on his heels.
That was the first time the boys came to our house.