I felt myself curling back into turtle pose as I used my big eraser to get rid of the horribly embarrassing first attempt. Thankfully, Izzy was so into his book that he didn’t see what I’d done. I tried to reset with breathing again, but after drawing, erasing, and redrawing Izzy’s nose three more times, I gave up and moved on to his lips. What ended up on the page was a tragic flattened heart. I erased those and drew his eyes, which were reasonable, but when I tried to re-create his eyebrows, it looked like twin porcupines had taken up residence at the top of his face.

Izzy was super normal-looking . . . nice-looking . . . even striking. But I’d made him look like a disaster!

“Ugh!” I said, slamming my notebook shut.

Izzy looked up at me and frowned. “Not going well, huh?”

“I can’t draw,” I said, frustrated.

“Yeah, digital’s more my thing, so I get it,” Izzy said, clearly trying to be nice. “It doesn’t have to be perfect, though.”

“No, that’s not what I mean,” I said. “Drawing is my thing. But I can’t . . . I can’t do it.”

He set his book on the table. “Oh, I get it.” He drummed his thumbs on his book a couple times. “You’re probably just having an off day. You do seem, you know, maybe not totally focused?” He drummed a couple more times. “Do you want me to draw first? And you can try it again after lunch?”

“Sure,” I said. “Thanks.”

“Eh?” Izzy asked, holding up his book. A sliver of tension seeped out of my shoulders; he really seemed like a nice person. I agreed, and he slid the book across the table like we were playing air hockey. “Don’t lose my place.”

“I won’t,” I said, grateful that I could just sit and read and didn’t have to try to draw again right away. The sound of Izzy’s pencil scratching around his sketchbook was relaxing, too.

Before I knew it, I’d read forty pages of Artemis Fowl and Karly announced that it was time for lunch.

“Want to see?” Izzy asked. “I’m not finished, but you can check out what I’ve done so far.”

“Okay,” I said curiously.

“Okay, don’t get mad,” Izzy said, turning his sketchbook toward me. “I took a manga class, but I’m not the best.”

The girl had oversize eyes, heavy lidded, miniature lakes near the bottom lids. Her eyelashes fanned out like wings, and her neat eyebrows sloped down toward her ears. Izzy hadn’t added tons of detail yet but there was dark shading under her eyes and a heart-shaped tear rolling down one of her cheeks. Her lips were pressed together, like she was holding something back. Her hair fell in tiered curtains to her collarbones. Mine was longer, but the center part and neglected layers were right.