Blue first. The wax is flattened down to the paper label so when he tries to draw, pressing the crayon obliquely, there is only the faintest bluish smudge on the creamy beige of the construction paper. He scratches at the label until it rips and manages to tear away a shred of it. He pushes the crayon against the paper again—nowhere specific because he doesn’t remember where he was and so he can’t know where anything else was either—and makes a little blue spiral. He pauses and stares at the blue shape. He draws again over the spiral, trying to fill in the beige space in between the lines with more blue. He finishes his first blue circle and then makes another one, further off, and the another one. He’s almost used up all the wax above the paper. He pauses again to look at the constellation of blue swirls. He tries to remember what the lakes looked like, what they must’ve looked like from above, in between the rows and rows of houses and the spaghetti streets. He’s only drawn blue circles, all the same, so when he starts drawing again he varies the shapes and the sizes. A blue oval. A blue peanut. A blue mickey mouse. A smaller oval. A bigger circle. He rips off another shred of paper on the crayon to keep going. He’s drawing faster now. The lakes aren’t lakes anymore so much as smudges of blue. He drops the blue crayon back into the box.
He looks up and glances at what the others at his table are drawing. Suns and houses and trees.
He picks up the red crayon. The tennis court where his parents were playing was red. The tennis court is a rectangle, he knows that. He draws a red rectangle, very carefully. He draws a line that cuts the rectangle in half. That’s the net. Then he draws a few crisscrossed lines in both halves. He knows he doesn’t quite get them right, but he isn’t sure where they’re supposed to go exactly. When his parents play tennis he likes to ride his tricycle around the court. He needs to be careful when he gets close to where his parents are jumping and running around, sending the ball on the other side or else waiting for it to come back to them. First he rides outside the lines, once. The second time he rides with his left wheel on the line. The third time he rides with the line right under his middle wheels. The fourth time—
“What are you doing, Adam! Get off the court!”
He cuts right through he court and peddles away. Goes through the gate of the tall fence that surrounds the court. It’s tall enough to catch the balls that go ballooning up towards the sky and fall back down again, almost in a straight line. He Peddles onto the sidewalk of the deserted street in front of the tennis courts. Takes a right. Follows the sidewalk of the curved street. Peddles on.
He draws the houses in green. The houses are all the same. There are so many of them, all packed along the streets, around the lakes. Rows and rows of little green squares between the blue lakes.
Then he draws himself. He draws himself as far away from the red rectangle of the tennis court as he can. He draws himself with a purple crayon because he remembers that he was wearing his purple shirt the day he got lost. He draws himself in the maze of houses and lakes.
Imagine the guilt his mother will feel when she comes to pick him up at the daycare and the counselor will show her the drawing.
