He was always a little different. A little too loud, a little too blunt with his opinions. A little too sensitive, awkward with his stringy bangs and large hands. He would get teased by the bigger guys at school for the way he cried so easily, gushing tears that left him breathless, after we dissected a frog in biology or finished Beloved in English class. How he would collect garbage—plastic straws, coffee cup sleeves, rubber bands, blackened Eberhard Faber eraser stubs. Later, when I went to his apartment, I saw that he used them for his art, human forms assembled out of someone else’s trash. Of course, he’s matured as an artist. But back then, his style never seemed adolescent or gimmicky to me. Gavin seemed like a visionary, a genius, still misunderstood and unrecognized.

We re-met in a ceramics class after college, taught by our former high school art teacher, and then he’d invited me to use his uncle’s studio. Unlike me, who had given up any real aspirations of being an artist once I got to college, Gavin had gone to art school. Afterward, he moved to Puno for a year to live with extended family and focus solely on his craft. Now, he makes next to nothing working at a gallery, living at home with his parents and spending nearly all of his wages on supplies for his own art.

Sometimes I’d see his uncle here, a bearded man with expertise in the Quechua artist Martin Chambi and eyes that always seemed on the verge of tears. He had been a prominent photographer himself, years ago, but had shifted to figurative drawing later in life, tossing off short, quick pencil lines, almost like metal filings, that quickly morphed from mass-less blobs into nuanced portraits of recognizable people.

I’m so involved in my sketch that I don’t realize how much time has passed until I feel Gavin behind me again, studying my canvas. “Whose house is that?” I pull back, studying the clean, ninety-degree angles, the porch I plan to paint in greens. The wildflowers that reach up to the chimney.

“Where I used to live as a kid, before we moved to the city.”

“You remember it or are you making it up as you go along?” He peers closer.

“I’m not sure. I usually don’t like thinking about it because it’s where my mom died. But I’m trying to associate happier memories with it. I think I loved the house. It was only tainted afterward.” I stretch and check my phone. It’s already almost 3:00 p.m. and my stomach feels hollow. I’d never had breakfast.

Gavin studies my composition for another gratifying beat before turning back to his welding tool. A small thrill runs through my body, knowing that my work in progress has distracted him from his own.