Molly’s paper dress crackles.  The stiff, waxy material creates white looming cliffs and shadowed valleys, and she explores them with her fingers, reading the anatomy charts on the wall. The Muscular System.  Personal Hygiene.  Silky streams of cold air snake around her arms. 

“Molly!  How’re you doing?”

Molly jerks her back straight, glasses falling down her nose.  She turns the corners of her mouth up, giving the doctor her polite, one-word answer. 

The doctor shakes her hand and settles into her round of questions.  Yes, she eats regularly.  No, she hasn’t felt any odd pains.  No, she hasn’t started her period.  She hopes she never has to.  Her head starts hurting; the office is so cold. 

A flashlight shines into her eyes, nose and throat; a hammer taps her knee. 

Weight, check.  Height, check.  Please stick your tongue out, check.  Looks good; we’ll let your mother know.  You are good to go!    

 When the door closes, Molly hops into the corner and pulls on her pants and favorite T-shirt.  The paper dress flattens in her hands, just another piece of doctor’s office trash.  But it is clean, with an interesting grain and texture to it, and looks like it might take pastels well. 

She smooths out the remaining puffs and ridges, unzips her backpack, and puts the paper dress inside.

Wandering the halls, she hears voices and the TV news blaring, spots the doctor standing next to her mother. 

“…generally alright!  Although she is a bit overweight for her age …”

“…well, I’m pretty skinny, so I’m sure she’ll turn out fine.  We’ve just got to keep her from taking after her father, him and his after-work Burger King habit…”

Molly steps up behind the doctor before her mother can finish. 

“…and she eats normally.  I guess I can’t complain.  My friends have kids who won’t even touch the crust on sandwiches.”

Her mother sighs, bringing Molly close and fluffing her hair.  She leans in carefully, heart thumping whenever her backpack rustles.  Her mother doesn’t seem to notice.

Molly and her mother and father sip slow-cooked lentil stew.  Her mother hunches over the newspaper, her father is on his armchair laughing at Homer and Bart.  Molly is somewhere between them, taking care not to splash, clank or slurp. 

Her mother pounds the table, face tight.  Molly lowers her head towards the bowl, closes her eyes.

“Dave, please.  I’m trying to read.”

“You’re not the only person living in this house,” Molly’s father murmurs.  But he adjusts the knob a few notches softer. 

Molly lets out her breath.  Explosion avoided, for now.  She knows they’re trying – there are books on the back of the toilet, about marriages and providing good role models for the smiling kids on the covers.  They all have bookmarks in them, but they’ve never moved past the first few pages.

 “Moll!”  Her father heaves himself out of his chair.  Something thick and square is set in front of her.  For a moment it looks like the charcoal pencils that were on sale in last Sunday’s newspaper.  She adjusts her glasses, falling off her nose again.  Gulliver’s Travels. 

“Congratulations on another great report card,” her father grins. 

She read that last year. 

“Was that the only thing they had at the store?”  Her mother is suddenly squinting over her shoulder.  “She’s more a Harry Potter girl, aren’t you Moll?”

“Well she’s reading that herself already, isn’t she?  There’s nothing wrong with expanding your worldview.”

Molly sips air.  As her parents start bickering, she slips her bowl into the dishwasher and glances at her report card, forgotten on the countertop. 

Still the same Excellent Progress.  She re-reads the scrawled comment at the bottom.

Quiet.  Doesn’t talk much with other students, but doodles extensively and appears to want more for a creative outlet.  Private art lessons might allow her a means to express herself. 

Private art lessons have been suggested for the last three report cards, but Molly’s parents have already told her that they’d rather put the money towards healthier food or more books to make sure she keeps excelling in reading or math.  It’s the one thing they agree on, so Molly has stopped mentioning it.

She slips upstairs to finish her extra-credit watercolor, which is going to be a whimsical scene of two birds wearing raincoats, playing in a puddle.  She’s spent hours trying to get the anatomy and feathering just right.  Her parents don’t notice her leave.  They’ve changed the subject again, to who pays what bills and whether Molly should start playing a sport. 

Molly runs to the city library two blocks down, where she always waits until one of her parents comes.  Today, she settles beneath the Japanese cherry.  The bench is still damp from the morning thunderstorms.  Most of the spring blossoms have fallen off, flattened into a heap of wet pink angel feathers around her. 

Mrs. Abrams had sighed that morning, after Molly updated her on the status of the art lessons.  “Girl, you’re already beyond what I can teach you.”  For a precious two minutes, she looked at Molly’s watercolor, pointing out some areas where she could improve her contrast and lines.  Then she had rushed off to help another kid who was stabbing worn-out pastels against paper.

Molly pulls her colored pencils out, starts doodling on a blank page.  She spots a beautiful woman waiting at the bus stop, body wrapped in tailored black wool, head wrapped in bright orange and red cloth.  Her head is high, and she looks as though she has someplace to be. 

In place of the black wool, Molly makes a patchwork coat with all sorts of bright colors.  As she continues shading, she imagines the woman as the princess of an exciting African story involving Joseph and his twelve dancing brothers, wonders how she should tell that story through her pictures.

“Lovely.”

Molly’s pencil case falls from her lap, pencils spilling across the wet mulch.  A young man’s leaning over her shoulder, his brow wrinkling as he scans her drawing.  He looks like he’s from pictures of Sweden, wrapped up in a grey puffer, a shock of spiky blonde hair peeking from beneath his big hat.  She doesn’t remember ever seeing him before. 

He reaches his hand out, finger pressing through her notebook, and she can feel him tracing the outline of the woman’s face on her lap, a sharp pressure on her thigh. 

“The nose could be a bit smaller and closer to the eyes, but other than that you’ve captured her expression.  The multicolored coat is marvelous.”  He turns to look at her, through light green eyes. 

 “How old are you?”

“Twelve.”  Her voice cracks from not speaking for most of the day.  He raises an eyebrow. 

“Really?  I’d think you were older.  You seem highly developed, just like your art.”

Molly isn’t sure what to say.  She bends down to pick up her pencils, fingers cold as she brushes the dirt off, face flushing hot.

Her glasses fall off her face.  Before she knows it, he’s caught them and is wiping the lenses on his shirt.  The tortoiseshell frames, picked out by her mother last year, look small and plain when he hands them back.  Her face flushes a second time.

“Do you take lessons?”

“I do a lot on my own.”  Molly replaces the last pencil in her case.  It’s still light outside, and there are librarians and people still wandering around.  She eases back onto the bench and touches her puffy jacket, unsure whether to zip or loosen it.  “Are you an artist too?”

 “Yeah.  My roommate’s always working so I’m alone in the house most of the time.  Use the basement for my studio.”  He extends his hand.  “I haven’t introduced myself.  I’m Jesse.”

“Molly.”

“That’s a really pretty name.” 

Oddly, she feels herself wanting to smile.  Jesse squeezes her hand again and scoots closer.  He hands her a wide sketchpad from his shoulder bag.  “I’m very much a portrait artist.  People are the most varied and beautiful creatures on this earth.”

He has photographs and sketches; standing, lounging, dancing.  Not all of them are detailed and contained; some are wild, a few lines that intersect on the page to make up the mere form of a person.  She sees a lot of girls her age.  They wear airy light dresses and are doing things like dancing or reading or staring contemplatively out into space.  Molly lingers over one of them, a girl sleeping peacefully on a park bench surrounded by flowers, one arm lifted above her head, the other one tucked beneath her neck.  Her hair is dark and she has freckles and a snub nose, but Jesse’s made her look almost fairylike.

“They’re really good.”

“It’s all about technique,” Jesse smiles.  He runs his finger up along the girl’s leg tentatively, then closes the notebook. 

“I’ve been trying to find more artist friends around here to work with.  That way you can see the imperfections in each other’s craft, critique it and make it better.”

Molly stares at his hands.  She wonders if she owns a dress like the one that the girl on the park bench wore, wonders if Jesse could draw her like that.  Could he make her look that pretty? 

 “Maybe.  We could practice drawing each other.”  Her voice cracks and she bites her lip hard, hoping he didn’t think she was silly.

“That would be fun,” Jesse says.  He picks up her hand again, rubs his thumb in circles across her palm.  “Listen, let’s work on some pieces in our spare time – and try to make them bigger than your notebook sketches, okay?  Then we’ll meet here again and go over them.”

He pulls out a blue pen and writes small neat numbers beneath the foot of her African woman.  “Call me whenever you’re finished, I won’t disrupt your creative process.  Then when you’re done, maybe we can practice sketching each other, too.  You’re really a beautiful girl.” 

“Molly!  Let’s go!”

Her mother’s rushed voice calls out to her from the curb.  Jesse glances up and steps back a few feet.  Her mother’s brow furrows, but before she can say anything her cell phone rings, and for a couple of minutes she forgets she has a daughter.

She looks back at Jesse one more time.  He flashes her a quick grin.  She suddenly has an urge to punch him to make sure he’s real, ask him again whether he really thinks she’s pretty.  But her mother is here and she has to leave.

“We’ll keep it a secret.  You have my number.”  He winks.

Molly whirls around and runs to the car. 

“Who was that?”

“An artist I met at the library.  He said my drawings were good.” 

“Well you shouldn’t talk with random guys you don’t know.” Molly’s mother squints at her through the rearview mirror.  “Don’t do that again.”

Molly looks out at the shadows on the orange buildings, thinks about the way Jesse touched her hand.

She locks her bedroom door and slips into her pajamas.  Her parents’ voices crest and fall in distant waves.  Did he really say she was beautiful? 

She opens her box of art supplies – the Faber-Castell pencils Mrs. Abrams got her last Christmas, the soft pastel remnants rescued from the school trash can, the watercolors she’d bought with her birthday gift card to Barnes and Nobles.  The paper dress has been underneath her bed since the doctor’s appointment.  She takes it out from hiding now, spreads it flat on the floor.  It’s bigger than she remembers, and she wonders what she should draw on it; what sorts of visions Jesse wants her to capture. 

Molly takes one of her pastel remnants, makes a shape on the dress.  It’s not perfect or smooth.  It’s an oblong red blob right in the middle, and she won’t be able to erase it or ever make the dress go back to the clean, crisp white that it was before. 

She closes her eyes and feels around the tray for a random pastel.  It’s purple, and she forms another shape next to the first, working with the edges so that the colors blend and combine with each other seamlessly. 

Maybe Jesse is working in his studio right now too, creating his own piece that will take him all night.  She pushes up her sleeves and chooses another color. 

She feeds quarters into the library basement payphone.  The dress is finished.  She’d put on the finishing touches well after her mom went to bed and her dad started snoring on the folding couch.  Her fingers shake as she dials Jesse’s number, tiny numbers on her wrist.

She wonders if he remembers her at all, whether he’ll still be friendly and kind when he picks up, whether he’ll remember that he called her beautiful.

“Hello?”

She swallows hard, hoping her voice doesn’t crack.  “It’s me, Molly.”

“Molly!  Have you finished your artwork?”

He remembers her!  “Yes.”

“I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you for the past few days.  Do you have time now?  Where are you?”

She glances at the grandfather clock behind her.  It’s Thursday, and her mother always works late.  “The library.” 

“I’ll be over in ten minutes.  Look for the green Camry.”

She hangs up the phone and goes outside, to the cherry tree where they first met.  The sky glows pink, and soon it’ll be dark.  Deep inside her backpack, the now colorful paper dress rustles again, waiting to be let out.  She wonders if he’ll think it’s beautiful too, wonders if he’ll want her to wear it.

– Phoebe Yeoh