Riley

Chapter seven: Secrets

Mr. Bennett had cooked excellent steaks: flavorful, slightly spicy and cooked to the right temperature. Riley filled and cleaned her plate three times; as luck would have it, he had cooked about ten small and medium-sized steaks. Theo was the one who ate the least out of all of them; he justified himself by saying that he did not have much of an appetite.

Lunch finished, the two friends helped Mr. Bennet clear the table, after which he left them on his way to his office. Theo explained to Riley that his father worked from home on certain days of the week, and today was one of those days. It would have been nice if her parents had that chance too, the little girl thought to herself.

Three o'clock in the afternoon. The two eleven-year-olds were already at work on their couple's project in the kitchen, the only space in the house large enough for them to work on.

The week before, Mrs. Towers assigned their class a job to do in pairs: draw a city where the real stars were the buildings. No streets, just buildings and the sky. She would grade all the work and give both components the same grade. She left the barbaric task of creating the pairs to the students, who, in addition to generating chaos, formed balanced pairs. Riley and Theo balanced each other well. She, an excellent art history student and bad artist, and he, a good art history student and very talented artist.

Theo came up with a definite idea of how to make the city, the object on which their delivery was based. Four skyscrapers arranged in the shape of a trapezoid, the two forming the minor base in the foreground and the other two - making up the major base - following and well away from the sides of the sheet; surrounded by other buildings with windows colored in colors other than yellow, intended to color all the windows in the trapezoid. Riley, art denier that she was, approved of the idea, but on the condition that they make an informed choice of colors.

And there they were, passing the colors around and coloring the multitudes of white squares that remained. Yellow windows (the first ones the duo colored), reds, oranges, pinks, greens, blues, magentas, purples and many other colors caught the attention of anyone who looked at them. The sky was still white with gray insignia of the Moon and the clouds passing in the midst of those black towers, they told themselves that would be the last part they would color.

They had set a list for themselves: draw the buildings and skyscrapers with windows; color the windows; draw the clouds; and finally, color them together with the sky.

Compared to the time in the classroom, Riley was more relaxed and more confident in coloring the white spaces. Moreover, the silence that enveloped the kitchen room kept her glued to her task. From time to time, she cast glances at her friend to make sure he was doing his part. It wasn't necessary; Theo was devoting his heart and soul to coloring buildings and windows and, every few seconds, supervising their work.

It's definitely coming along nicely. Theo and I are not a bad team after all.

An hour later, Theo put down the purple marker and gave a tired sigh. Then he asked his friend, "How many windows do we have left?"

Riley finished coloring the last window with red and announced it contentedly in a very high tone of voice, after realizing this she apologized.

Theo raised his arms to the ceiling in victory. Exhausted, he said, "We are almost at the end."

At that point, Riley got up from her seat. "Where's the bathroom, Theo?"

"Up, turn left and first door to the left," he answered her in the same voice. "While you go to the bathroom, I'm going to stop and recover too. I'm beat!"

Riley walked out of the kitchen and headed for the stairs. She went up to the second floor and turned to the left, as Theo had told her moments earlier, and looked for the bathroom door with her eyes. There it was!