Page 37 of Lance

“Well, I’m gonna need to seethat.”

He looks sadly toward his bag. “I didn’t have room to pack my coloringstuff.”

“No worries.” I go to my own purse and pull out my moleskine sketchpad and a slim case of colored pencils. “I always have these onme.”

“Wow, you must really love tocolor.”

I smile. “You could saythat.”

I rip out a few pieces of sketch paper for him and we spread the pencils out on the coffee table in front of the TV. I grab the remote. “You want to know another cool thing about hotels?” I ask him, pressing some buttons. “You can rent movies right on yourTV.”

“Noway!”

“Way.” I scroll through the options, trying not to wince at the price tag. Lance can afford it. And it’s the least he can do for the kid tonight. Then I grin. “I thinkWinter Solideris a pretty appropriate choice, don’tyou?”

“Awesome!”

As the opening scene of the secondCaptain Americamovie starts up, Simon begins drawing, his face screwed up in concentration. He really takes his time with it, carefully drawing concentric circles with the red pencil. “This is the hardest part,” he informs me. “My circles always want to go kind ofwobbly.”

“Mine do too. I like straight linesbetter.”

I bend over the notebook and start sketching a pretty passableCaptain America. We both work on our pictures in silence for a few minutes while the movie plays in thebackground.

“I love this part,” Simon says suddenly, glancing up at the TV as Nick Fury begins his car chase battle. “Fury issoawesome.”

“The mostawesome.”

He turns to smile at me and then glances down at my paper. “Cool!” he cries. “How’d you dothat?”

“Lotsofpractice.”

“Can you teachme?”

“Well, we can try. But it takes some time to get it right. Why don’t you finish your shieldfirst.”

His coloring gets quite a bit messier after that as he hurries to finish. “Okay, I’m ready,” he says, pushing the shield drawing away. “Will you teach menow?”

I laugh. “Okay, but you have to remember to be patient. Drawing people can be really hard so you just have to try your best.” I turn to a clear sheet of paper. “Let’s just do his face first, okay?” I show him how to break the face down into basic components to start—a grid to make sure our proportions are right and the simple outline of his head. Simon watches everything I do very carefully, hardly blinking as he stares at the paper. When I tell him to copy what I’ve done next to it, he tackles the task with the same concentration he showed before. I get the feeling he wasn’t joking when he called himself “crazysmart.”

After several attempts at the Cap’s face, Simon starts yawning. “What time do you normally go tobed?”

“Oh,” he says breezily. “Aroundmidnight.”

“Really?”

He looks up, smiling. “No. That was fib. My bedtime is 8:30.”

I glance at the clock under the TV. It’s well pastnine.

“But I’m not all that tired,” he continues, ruining the bravado with a hugeyawn.

“How about we get you in your PJs and then we can watch some more of this movie until you gettired.”

He agrees without complaint and I help him to find pajamas in the duffle bag in Lance’s room. “Do you need help brushing your teethor…”

He rolls his eyes. “I’m not ababy.”

“Go for itthen.”