“That’s nice.”
Dae is startled from his trance. He’d been lost in the vision that he sketches with a pencil on rough paper in the prison library. He brandished his pencil like a weapon in the direction of the voice that he didn’t recognize. It isn’t Father Lavalle, and no one else ever bothers him in the library.
“Whoa,” the young man says with his hands up. “I’m sorry. I just saw your picture. I think it’s nice. I’m Carlos.”
Dae eyes him suspiciously. The young man holds out a hand of friendship and Dae sizes him up. He could be offering real friendship, or it could all be a ruse to humiliate him with violence. Dae isn’t a fighter, but he’s learned to defend himself since he’s been locked up and he knows that he can hurt Carlos if he needs to. He tries to ignore the young man and get back to his drawing, to the vision that had held him.
“I know you don’t know me,” Carlos continues from a distance, “but I’ve seen you in here before. I know you haven’t noticed me, you always so into your drawing and I never bothered you. But I just wanted to tell you that I like your work. I draw too.”
Carlos reaches for something behind him and when Dae notices out of the corner of his eye, he stands quickly, brandishing his pencil again. He stands ready at a distance while Carlos stands still.
“I just wanted to show you my work,” Carlos says, his voice trembling and his eyes filling with sadness like he is on the verge of tears.
“Why?” Dae asks roughly.
“I don’t know man, I just…” Carlos does cry, despite trying very hard to hold himself together. “…I been here for three years and it ain’t been easy for me. I just want a friend. I thought we could be friends.”
“Leave me alone,” Dae says angrily, and he doesn’t watch Carlos leave the library in tears, but he does see the rolled up sketch paper that he’d meant to show Dae hit the floor and bounce.
Dae tries to slip back into his deep trance to complete his work, but his mind has already been distracted and now curiosity consumes him. He picks up the rolled paper on the floor and holds it in one hand as it unfurls just enough for him to see that it is a portrait of himself sitting in the library. The portrait is primarily his face and he is focused down, presumably concentrating on his own work.
The drawing is photorealistic and Dae unrolls the entire thing on the table as he sits. It is him, but he looks different somehow. He sees himself through the eyes of someone else and he notices things that he doesn’t normally. His nose is wider and flatter than he remembers his mother’s, his cheek bones aren’t as pronounced, and his eyes were bigger than he thought.
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