THE CONSTRUCTION WALL is up and we’re outside sketching our superheroes on it. It’s cold out. My fingers feel like chalk, but the sun is beaming so bright that it makes the white-washed wall look like it’s shining all on its own. I hold my pencil above my head, drag it sideways an inch and stop. In my other hand I’m holding the piece of paper with Tony’s Creative Woman on it. I thought I’d think of something better on my own, but it’s been hard to shake Creative Woman out of my head. She keeps out-supering my other hero ideas. I press so hard on the pencil that the tip breaks off. I reach in my pocket for my sharpener.
“You’re taking up the whole wall. Where are the rest of us supposed to go?” I hear Tim whining around the corner.
“Don’t have a weasel,” Clara says. I look down the wall at Tony to see if he’s listening, but he’s smudging a line with his thumb.
“Don’t have a weasel? What does that mean?” Tim says. “What are you drawing that you need that much space for?”
“Your oversized head.”
Sharpening my pencil, I wander round the corner to take a look. Tim takes me by the shoulders and positions me in front of Clara’s spot on the wall.
“Talk to her,” he whispers, and walks away.
Clara’s drawing is the size of a baby elephant. It’s a mountainous lump of...
“I thought you were doing a singer?”
“It’s just the outline,” she mumbles to the wall.
“The outline of what?”
“Me. The singer.”
I stand back to look. Clara’s standing in the middle of it with her head against the wall. The outline is bigger than her by about a foot on either side.
I have an idea.
“Put your arms by your side and stand still,” I say. Clara shrugs and puts her arms down. I squat down and blow the sharpener shavings off my pencil. I start at her left foot and run the pencil alongside her body. I go up under her arm, around her fingers and over her head. When I’m done, I tell her to step back.
“Look.”
Her real outline is about two hundred pounds lighter than the one she drew. She stands there staring.
“Big difference, huh?” I fish her eraser out of her pink pencil case, push it into her hand and leave her there.
I go back and stare at my space on the wall. Soon I can hear Clara humming around the corner. I turn my ear to listen to her and feel a warmth hit my face. It reminds me of a dream I had a long time ago. It was one with my mother in it, where I found her in the park and she stroked my hair as the sun rose.
I lift my pencil to the wall and start to draw. It seems to move almost on its own, like it knows where to go and what to do. I draw hair blown back by the wind. I draw arms opened wide. I draw a long robe with a sun on it. In the middle of the sun I draw an eye.
I line the hem and sleeves of my robe with question marks. Around my waist I draw a chain and on the end of the chain I draw a key. It is the key to everything. Then, because it looks lonely, I draw another key beside it.
I step back and look at my handiwork and notice Tony and Clara standing behind me.
“What is she?” Clara asks.
“She’s a see-er and a questioner,” I say.
“I’ve never heard of that,” says Tony.
“She is what she is,” I say.
“The Quester,” says Clara. I nod. I have to put one more thing on my picture. I step forward and draw a line on the side of the robe.
“What’s that?” Tony asks.
“A pocket,” I say.
“What’s in it?”
“It’s a secret.”
Clara swings her arm over my shoulder. I know she won’t ask, but she’s the only person I’d tell. Or maybe she’s already guessed that deep in the black-velvet pocket of her sunlit robe, the Quester keeps the pieces of the box she once lived in.