Gods & Monsters

Abel and Evie for the win!

We can’t see each other much during the day, but after school, I see him almost every afternoon up at my treehouse. Thank God, Mom hates going into the woods so my treehouse is a safe area. In fact, we do our homework together. Well, I do mine; Abel draws.

One day I find out that almost every drawing in his sketchpad is of me.

For an entire minute, I don’t move. I can feel my heart beating and those darn butterflies kicking up a racket inside my body. I can feel the rush of my own blood as it raises goosebumps, running along my veins.

“This is me,” I whisper stupidly after a while.

“I told you, you just have one of those faces.”

Our heads are bent over his sketchpad, and together we see every little drawing he made of me. Me. Evie Hart. I mean, no one has ever paid me much attention. Of course, I’m not neglected but I’m also no one’s muse. I wish I could think up synonyms for that, but my brain is mush.

God, he’s so talented. An artist.

In most of the pictures, my hair flows in the wind, my dresses have pretty flowers on them, my calves are streaked with mud and I’m barefoot. In some, I’m surrounded by corn fields and in others, I’m at school bent over a book, or inside the treehouse, writing in my journal.

Abel tells me that the one in the cornfields is inspired by the first time he saw me. I was out in the fields, all wild and pixie-like with flying yellow hair.

“Your skin was red like apples,” he says and then, he goes ahead and takes a bite of the apple in his hands, sucking up all the air and leaving me to choke on my butterflies.

For my thirteenth birthday, he gives me a sketch of myself. But his real love isn’t sketching, no. Abel Adams’s real love is photography. He has hundreds of photos on his phone. He always carries his camera with him wherever he goes. He has shots of the fields, the school grounds, the church and so many other places that I’ve never even visited, even though I’ve lived here forever.

I tell him that he’s the most amazing photographer and he’s destined to be the greatest artist ever. But all he does is laugh, sadly.

“I guess, it makes me feel invisible. Being behind the lens. It makes me feel that no one can see me. No one can know where I came from, how I came to be. Who my parents were and what they were to each other.” He shakes his head, his eyes almost on the verge of leaking but somehow, hold the water in. “It’s stupid.”

I hug him. Tightly. So I can absorb all his pain. So I can make him see what I see. An artist and a strong boy.

“But Abel, you stop time.”

“What?”

The other day we got a ton of rain. The mud path leading up to the woods looked like a running stream of dirt. I’ve never been a fan of rain; I like the sun better. When it was over though, the world was so much brighter. The green, the brown, the blue. I wished it stayed that way forever – without the rain, of course. And it did. Because Abel captured it all through his camera.

“You do. Look…” I pull him forward so he can see what I see. “You stop time. I don’t think you can ever be invisible. You’re too talented for that. It’s like you froze the world in this moment and it’s going to stay like this forever and ever and ever.”

I feel him smirk, his cheek extremely close to mine. “Ever and ever, huh?”

I nod enthusiastically, looking at the photo, even though I want to look at him. I want to study those darn lips again.

Why do I keep thinking about them?

But he’s so close. I don’t know if I can handle looking at him.

“Maybe I’ll stop time now,” he whispers, his warm breath blowing across my skin and waking up goosebumps.

“Why now?” I whisper back, like we’re in church and aren’t allowed to talk any louder than this, which is stupid because we’re at the treehouse.

“So you never leave me.”

I don’t say much after that because I’m fidgety and blushing. Though, I do realize something. Something pretty epic.

Abel Adams is a god.

Because only gods can stop time and freeze moments, if they want to. Only gods can do what he does with a camera.

Today’s a sad day. I’m leaving Abel.

For an entire month.

My nana, Mom’s mom, she’s sick and Mom wants to go see her while school’s still out for the summer. If I’m being honest, I hate going to see my nana. She’s like my mom, only worse. Every time we visit her, she tells me all the things that are wrong with me. My wild, unruly hair; my running legs; my penchant for the colors pink and yellow and red; my love for the outdoors.