Her lip twitched and again she wasn’t sure what was more annoying—that he hadn’t followed her to ask about her parents, or that she still sort of wished he had.
“So, other than squiggly dinosaurs and bracelet clasps”—she glanced at the sketchpad—“what sort of things do you like to draw?”
He hummed in thought, sketching in a blur of shrubbery around the library’s foundation. “I draw a lot of tools and weaponry for the Renegades. Armor pieces. Handcuffs. Things that might come in handy when we’re out patrolling. Not just for our team, but for everyone. It’s really made a big difference in the things we can accomplish.”
“I bet it has,” said Nova, trying to keep any resentment out of her tone.
“But when I’m left to my own devices,” said Adrian, “I like to draw the city.”
“The city?”
He set down the pen and turned back the pages of his notebook. A number of them were blank and she wondered if there had been drawings there before—drawings that had since been brought into reality—until he arrived at a series of dark, detailed images. Unlike all the marker drawings she’d seen, these were done in charcoal. He handed Nova the sketchbook and she took it delicately, feeling her breath hitch.
The first image was of the beach at Harrow Bay, shadowed by the monumental Sentry Bridge. A couple was seated on the rocky shore, sharing a newspaper as they huddled beneath a single raincoat.
She turned the page and saw Ashing Hill—a neighborhood of cobbled-together shacks and ruddy houses that had been a hot spot for drugs and crime during the Age of Anarchy. Probably still was, for all Nova knew, but in this picture Adrian had captured three children harvesting bouquets of dandelions and clovers from the edges of the overgrown sidewalk.
She flipped on, seeing a street musician strumming a guitar on the corner of Broad Street, two huge dogs curled around his ankles. Then a sketch of the ticket booth outside the old Sedgwick Theater, most of the lightbulbs burned out on the sign and the posters on the wall still promoting a musical act from years ago. Then a view of the crowded flea market on North Oldham Road, where people came from all over the city to sell everything from hand-crocheted baby mittens to broken clocks to garden-grown zucchini.
Nova turned another page and paused.
She was staring at a scene of a shadowed glen surrounded by a low stone wall and thick, crowded trees. In the center of the glen stood a single statue, half covered in moss. It was an elegant figure, covered head to toe in a long cloak, with a hood that fell so far forward as to completely cover its face. All that could be seen of the person within the cloak was their hands, which were held just slightly apart in front of the figure’s stomach, as if they were holding an invisible gift.
Nova exhaled and flipped past the drawing. She reached the end of the notebook and started to turn back through the pages again. “These are extraordinary.”
“Thank you,” Adrian murmured, and though he must have known they were extraordinary, she still detected a hint of self-consciousness in his voice.
“Could you bring these to life?” she asked. “If you wanted to?”
He shook his head. “I have to intend to bring it to life as I’m drawing it. Otherwise it’s just a drawing. Besides, even if I could, they wouldn’t be any bigger than the page they’re on. It would be sort of like making a super-ornate pop-up book.” He paused, and added, “Though someday I would like to try making a life-size mural—a landscape that I could make real. It’s been something I’ve been thinking about for a while.”
Nova flipped back to the drawing of the statue. She traced her thumb beside the hooded figure, careful to keep it hovering above the page so she wouldn’t smudge the lines. “This is at City Park, isn’t it?”
“You’ve been there?”
“My parents used to take me to the playground when I was little. One time I wandered off without them realizing it, and I ended up here.” She tapped her finger against the page, where the hooded figure stood serene but imposing. “My parents were in such a panic when they finally found me, but … I loved it. I felt like I’d just stumbled onto something no one else knew about. I even remember…” She hesitated as filaments of memories spun through her thoughts. She frowned and glanced down at the drawing, then shook her head. “You’re really good.”
“I’ve had a lot of practice,” said Adrian, taking the sketch pad as she handed it to him. He fidgeted with the pencil, but didn’t turn the page. “But enough about me and my extraordinary artwork. What sort of hobbies do you have to occupy your extra fifty-six hours per week?”
Nova looked across at the library. It was far past midnight and the building was dark as a tomb, its single lamppost by the sidewalk dim and flickering. Seeing it this way, the place might have been abandoned these past ten years, just as it might have been if Cronin hadn’t chosen to keep it operating even during the Age of Anarchy. Even if that philanthropic cause had been a cover for his black-market dealing … it had to count for something, right?
“Mostly I train. And study. And … tinker.” She cast him a sideways smile. “Some of us can’t just draw up a tool and get to use it. We have to actually invent it.”
“I invent things,” he said, tapping the eraser side of his pencil against his temple. “In my mind.”
“It’s really not the same thing.”
He grinned.
“But I guess I’ve taken up lots of hobbies over the years. Not many stick, but I’m always trying to find new ways to keep busy.”
“Like what sorts of hobbies?”
“I don’t know. I took up knitting for a while, but never progressed beyond really ragged scarves. Then there was bird-watching, juggling, embroidery, astronomy—”