Observe.

A Story by Maya Lin

There is this boy in my art class. His name is Tom he is always reserved and quiet. When the art teacher is talking to us about our next assignment, everyone is talking to the person next to them or dozing off, but not him. He sits with his hand resting on his chin in awe of the lesson. He not only pays attention, he also draws small doodles and examples of what the teacher describes. A lot of the other kids go on their laptop whenever they have the chance. Tom only uses his laptop when he has to research ideas other than that, he is always working on his projects or free drawing in his notebook that has random little drawings all over the cover. You can tell he loves art just by watching him hold a pencil, so carefully and calculated. Not only does he love art, he is really good at it.

Tom has these light curls in his short dark brown hair. His eyes are a simple brown theres not much to them besides that they match his hair. Tom is not an incredibly attractive guy but he also isn’t ugly. His eyebrows are bushy, and he has quite a bit of acne but also when he smiles he has this one dimple on the right side of his mouth which adds to his warm smile. When he smiles it makes me want to smile, he tends to smile when he looks at his art when he is finished with it.

One time when the bell rang, everyone was packing up and leaving. I was putting my laptop into my backpack when I saw his notebook open. There was a detailed drawing of this other girl in my class. It made me wonder if when he is drawing in that notebook of his, he is drawing pictures of all of us. So I decided to talk to him for the first time instead of just observe him.

“Hey” I said trying to speak up, “This is really good!”

Tom looked up at me then quickly back down to his notebook. He suddenly looked terrified as if I had just threatened his whole family.

“You won’t tell anyone will you?” He looked scared, “I just like drawing people, you know?”

I suddenly felt bad for intruding on his secret drawings.

“No, I won’t tell anyone. I understand completely I love to observe people,” I blurted at him.

He smiled shyly at me then packed his notebook safely away in his bag. He sat in his seat for a second and stared at the ground. He looked as if he was about to say something but didn’t. He got up looking discouraged then gave me a half hearted smile and walked out of the room.

I wanted to be nice and compliment him on his art it must have seemed like I was making fun of him though. Tom is a shy boy and I guess I ruined something special to him, because after that day I never saw that notebook again.