Day Eleven - Pencil

Hearing an incessant scratching noise downstairs, I’m up early this morning. Not recognizing the sound, I put on my house coat and slowly make my way into the lobby.

There is the dim glow of a light coming from the sitting room. I walk in and see Mary sitting cross legged in the middle of the room. The completed citrus puzzle is behind her.

She’s hunched over a sketch pad, boxes of coloured pencils surround her and she’s looking at a photo of a forest in a book. Her hand moves quickly across the page. The scratching noise I had heard was the sound of the pencil touching the paper.

Her drawing is a bit crude, as if she’s been experimenting with different pressures on the paper. With all the greens on the page, it looks like she experimented with all the green pencils she has.

“You can sit down and watch me if you want, Evie.” Mary says without looking up from the page.

I creep quietly through the room, as if my movements might startle her. I sit still on one of the couches and watch her, amazed at the speed at which she draws. She then flips to another page.

“I never had the chance to do much art growing up,” Mary offers to me. “My parents only wanted me to focus on my studies and when I grew up, it was too late for me to try.”

I stay quiet for a moment and take in her words. Mary was known as the top student at our school, she was valedictorian and even got into the best universities around. She left our town and went out into the world. The last I heard of her while she was alive was how proud her parents were of her. Their daughter had grown up and was working a good paying job in the city.

But I rarely ever saw Mary do anything fun outside of the academic extracurricular activities she was put into to round out her university applications.

We were both social outcasts, me, the girl who could see ghosts, and Mary, the girl who was too busy with her studies. And despite us both having no social lives, we never made an effort to talk to each other.

Mary’s pencil snaps, and she lets out a grunt of frustration, sending the split pencil pieces across the room.

She dramatically flops backwards on the floor, as if her body still weighted something.

“No matter how hard I try, I’m just not getting better at this.” She says with a sigh.

“I don’t think art is something you can improve that quickly on.” I say, and stand up to collect the pieces of pencil.

“Everything else came easy to me. If I put in enough time to studying something, I could learn it quickly. If I got my work down quickly, I could do more work. I finished the puzzle quickly. So why isn’t it the same with learning how to draw?”

I hold the pieces of pencil in my hand, “I don’t think everything is meant to be done, or learned, quickly. Some things take time and are meant to be enjoyed, that’s the fun of it all.”

Mary exhales sharply with her nose. Ghosts don’t need to breathe, but making noises with their breath is a human habit they don’t often break.

“I thought I had all the time in the world when I was alive. And I just rushed through it all, I rushed through it so quickly I didn’t even make it long enough to have a quarter-life crisis. Am I having one now?” Mary asks me and drapes her arm over eyes.

“You have all the time you want now, there’s no need to rush anything.” I say to her and add the pieces of pencil the pile of wood scraps that have been forming in the room with the word Teddy and William have been doing together. “How did it feel when you were sitting in your room, here, alone for all that time?”

“I don’t know.” She says with a groan, “It’s like my brain didn’t know what to do, I think I just shut off for the first time in my life. I don’t even remember myself passing away, or if I saw my funeral. One day I was working, and the next day, I found myself back in my childhood bedroom. And I was no longer, me. Then I didn’t want to stay there, and then I remember what people had said about you and Whispering Woods. So, I came here, and here I am.”

I take my time to think of a response, I’m not sure how to form the words to respond to what Mary said. I think she needed to let it out.

“I’m glad you’re here.” I say, “It’s a shame I didn’t get to know you better in your lifetime.”

Mary lets out a laugh, and uncovers her eyes. “Well, I guess I have all the time to get to know you better now. And to break more of your pencils.”

I smile. “It’s true, and you have all the time you want to learn how to draw a tree.”

“Is that even what I want to do?” she asks me.

“That’s up to you to decide. How did it make you feel when you were trying to draw the trees?”

Mary sits up and flips through her sketchbook. She flips through it so quickly I just see a bunch of green blurs go by. She’s clearly been drawing a lot.

“I don’t know. Maybe I’m doing it wrong.” She says, and then stops at the very first tree she drew.

A bunch of green lines scribbled onto the page, a very spiky looking tree. She smiles. “This one made me feel lighter, I think? Like I had no expectations of what I’d draw, and so I drew this.”

I hum and study the page. “It sounds like you were letting yourself just be with that first drawing. Instead of trying to draw the perfect tree, you just drew a tree.”

She studies the page with me and nods thoughtfully. “Yes, that’s exactly it! A drawing without expectation. Yes, I should do more of that.”

“If that’s what you want.” I say, and hand the sketch pad back to her.

“I think I’d like to try it.” Mary says with a new determination in her voice. “But for now, I should rest.“

“Sounds like a plan,” I say, and let her drift past me.

“Goodnight, Evie.” She says, and vanishes into a dark corner, probably taking herself quickly to her room.

I turn off the light and make my way through the darkness off to my own room to get a few more hours of sleep.