two
The first thing Vera noticed when she and Nixie came into the Longwood Elementary School library on Monday afternoon with the rest of the third-grade after-school comic-book campers was that both comic-book camp teachers had tattoos.
Big tattoos.
Bright tattoos.
Lots of tattoos. Covering their arms and what she could see of their legs, as if they were walking, talking comic books themselves.
Vera felt a prickle of worry. What if her mother saw these teachers and their big, bright tattoos? Vera’s mother did not approve of tattoos. By tomorrow, Vera could be whisked off to a science class instead.
Colleen, the head camp lady, checked everyone in on her attendance sheet. Colleen had run the cooking camp, too. She wasn’t a cook or a comic-book artist herself; she was the person who kept everything and everybody organized and orderly. It was comforting to see her taking charge again here.
“Grab a snack and sit anywhere,” Colleen told them.
Vera and Nixie found seats at a table near the window next to Nolan Nanda and Boogie Bass, who had been their cooking teammates at the last camp. Nolan was serious like Vera and full of fascinating facts about everything. He was already telling Boogie that Superman was invented by two high-school kids who sold their idea to a big comics company for only $130. Boogie was the opposite of serious—funny in a klutzy, good-natured way.
“All right, campers,” Colleen said, once everyone was seated at a library table. “I’d like to introduce our comic-book teachers, Brian and Bee. They’ve collaborated on fifteen comic books and right now they’re making a new one for kids about…yes…how to make comic books! Can you give them your best After-School Superstars welcome?”
Vera joined in the enthusiastic applause, and the two comic-book teachers each waved a tattooed arm and smiled.
Brian had a thin gray ponytail hanging halfway down his back. Bee’s hair was short: green-tinted spikes like newly mown grass growing out of her head.
Vera’s fingers itched to try drawing Bee. What would be a good name for Bee if she was a comic-book character? Maybe Buzz-Bee. Was it mean to give someone a comic-book name and draw her head looking like a bowling ball with grass sprouting on top? Probably not, Vera concluded. Not in a comic-book camp.
Brian spoke first. “We could start by telling you the long history of blah-blah-blah, and the seven most important rules for blah-blah-blah, then more stuff about comic-book blah-blah-blah, or we could jump right in and draw a bunch of cool stuff. Who wants to draw?”
The other fifteen campers cheered their approval. Vera must have been the only one who wanted to know: Well, how did comic books get started? And what were the seven most important rules for making them? Maybe Nolan already knew those things and could tell her later.
Brian and Buzz-Bee took their places in front of two easels, each bearing an oversized pad of paper. Without a word, they started making bold black marks on each blank page. And then Vera didn’t care about anything else.
Two dots became eyes. Two squiggly lines became eyebrows. Noses, chins, a few tufts of fur appeared, until suddenly a mischievous squirrel popped out from Brian’s easel and a shy bunny peeked out from Buzz-Bee’s.
How did they do that?
How could so few lines, drawn so fast, make something so alive and so real?
The other campers burst into applause as Brian and Buzz-Bee laid down their markers and gave their bows. Vera was too amazed to do anything but stare.
“Okay,” Buzz-Bee said. “Your turn.”
Colleen passed out sheets of paper and dropped a handful of markers on each table.
“Later on, we’ll talk about creating your own characters,” Buzz-Bee said. “First we just want to get your hands moving over the page so you’ll see for yourselves how the simplest lines can express every feeling known to humankind—or squirrel-kind or bunny-kind. The simpler the drawing, the more everyone can look at that character and see themselves there.”
Brian ripped the squirrel from his pad of paper and let the page flutter to the floor like a piece of litter. Vera thought it should be framed and put in a museum of the world’s best squirrel pictures.
He turned to the new blank page. “Start with two dots, like this, for the squirrel’s eyes.”
Vera tried to copy his dots, but before she could check if hers were spaced too far apart on her small sheet of paper compared to his eyes on the big sheet of easel paper, he was already on to the nose, mouth, and eyebrow squiggles. Eyebrow squiggles were hard. The slightest difference in a squiggle turned excitement into fear, or fear into irritation.
Wait! she wanted to call out.
All around her, the others were drawing ten times faster than she was. Nolan copied every stroke of Brian’s marker as if he were a photocopy machine. Vera could already see Nixie’s cartoon eyes were too far apart, but Nixie didn’t seem to care. Boogie’s eyebrows made his cartoon squirrel look as if it had been electrocuted. The other two kids at their table, who were from the other two third-grade classes—a girl named Harper and a boy named James—seemed to be keeping up just fine. Only Vera was still agonizing over how to draw the eyebrows while Brian was already sketching the two curvy lines that caused a squirrel’s tail to spring into existence.
“Is everyone with me?” Brian finally asked, laying down his marker for a minute.
No! Vera wanted to cry, but she couldn’t bear to be the only one admitting defeat.
Buzz-Bee and Brian started circulating from table to table to check everybody’s squirrels so far. Vera had no squirrel, no anything, just two eyes and a nose she wasn’t sure were exactly like they were supposed to be.
As Buzz-Bee approached Vera’s table, Vera felt herself stiffening with dread.
“Nice,” Buzz-Bee said to Nolan.
“My nose looks weird,” Nixie complained to Buzz-Bee.
Buzz-Bee studied it. “Let’s try adding another line, like this.” Sure enough, with one stroke of Buzz-Bee’s marker, Nixie’s nose looked much much more nose-like.
“Your little fellow had quite a scare!” was all she said to Boogie.
To James she gave a nod of approval. To Harper, whose squirrel looked the most squirrelly of all, she said, “You’ve done some drawing like this before, haven’t you?” In reply, Harper gave a shrug.
Vera wanted to cover hers up so Buzz-Bee couldn’t see it, but she knew she couldn’t do that, so she just sat completely still, sick with shame.
“You froze up,” Buzz-Bee said matter-of-factly. “It happens.”
“He went so fast,” Vera managed to say.
“Fast is good,” Buzz-Bee told her. “Turn off your brain. Let your eyes and hand do their thing.”
Buzz-Bee stood waiting, for what Vera didn’t know.
“Remember: don’t think,” Buzz-Bee said. “Just draw.”
“Now?” Vera asked.
“Now.”
But they were all staring at her—Nixie, Nolan, Boogie, Harper, and James, who seemed to be hiding a grin at Vera’s predicament.
“The rest of you, go get another snack.” Buzz-Bee waved them away.
“I’m not hungry,” Harper said.
“Yes, you are,” said Buzz-Bee.
Nixie shot Vera a sympathetic look as she turned to follow the others to the snack table. Once they had departed, Buzz-Bee repeated her command: “Draw!”
So Vera did. Sixty seconds later she had a squirrel!
“There!” Buzz-Bee patted her on the shoulder. “It doesn’t have to be perfect. It just has to be.”
Tell that to my mother, Vera wanted to say. My mother has to think it’s perfect or she won’t let me stay.
But the last thing in the world she wanted was for the comic-book teachers and her mother to ever meet.
The comic-book part of comic-book camp ended at five. After that, kids who needed to stay longer could do homework or pretty much anything that wouldn’t bother anyone else, until the program ended at six. At cooking camp, Vera’s mother had been one of the come-at-six parents.
Vera was relieved that by the time her mother arrived to collect her that afternoon, Brian, Buzz-Bee, and their tattoos had already departed. She grinned at her squirrel, chicken, and elephant drawings. They were good, they really were! But even if they were as amazing as Brian’s and Buzz-Bee’s, they would probably still look silly to her mother. So she tucked them safely out of sight inside one of her library books for her report on the life cycle of baboons.
“How was it?” her mother asked once they were buckled into the car.
“Great! There are two teachers, Brian and Bee”—Vera was glad she hadn’t let “Buzz-Bee” slip out—“and they can draw anything.”
“What did you do?” her mother asked.
“We did a bunch of drawing, too. Lots of drawing, actually. Of different kinds of animals.”
“So it’s really more of an art class,” Vera’s mother said, apparently trying to reassure herself that this new camp wasn’t a waste of time and money, after all.
“Yes!” Vera agreed happily.
“So that’s the only thing you did for the whole time? For two entire hours?” her mother persisted. “Just sat there drawing?”
“Well, we also saw a video.”
Too late Vera remembered her mother didn’t believe in after-school programs that parked kids in front of a TV. “Screen time” at Vera’s house was limited to half an hour a day.
“It was an educational video,” Vera added. “On the history of comics as an art form.”
Her mother gave a snort. But Vera had liked the video. It had covered the blah-blah-blah on the history of comic books that Brian had skipped in an entertaining way, with animated characters doing the narration.
So far she had liked every single thing about comic-book camp. Well, she wasn’t completely sure she liked Harper and James. Harper was mega-talented at drawing and clearly knew it. But maybe Vera was just jealous. And James had a smirky kind of face. But maybe that was just the way his face looked. Unless she made a special effort to smile, Vera knew her own face tended to look serious, even sad.
“Did you finish up your homework?” her mother asked then.
Vera nodded. She always used her free time after school to get her homework done.
“Well, do your piano practice, and then you can help me make dinner,” her mother said. She added, “I wouldn’t mind curling up in bed early tonight so we can read some extra chapters of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry.”
Even though Vera could read perfectly well on her own, her mother still read to her each evening before bedtime, and it was the best part of the day.
Though maybe today it would be the second-best part of the day.
The best part was when she had drawn her squirrel and could almost feel his fluffy tail waving at her.