The SketchBook

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Ren left his sketchbook at the park on Thursday.

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I found it on the bench after school. I was walking home and I saw it lying there, black and worn and stained with coffee. I picked it up and meant to give it back to him the next day.

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But I opened it first.

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I know I shouldn't have. I know it was an invasion of privacy. But I was a writer and writers are the worst kind of thief. I opened it.

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The drawings were good. Really good. The lines were quick and confident and they made you feel something. A tree with roots deep in the earth. A bird in mid-flight. A house with a light in the window. A boy sitting on a bench, looking at the sky.

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But they were all unfinished.

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Every single one. The tree had no branches. The bird had only one wing. The house had no door. The boy had no face.

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I turned to the back of the sketchbook.

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There was a letter tucked into the spine. It was crumpled. It had been folded and unfolded a hundred times. The creases were worn white.

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I opened it.

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Dear Mr. Sato,

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We are pleased to inform you that you have been accepted to the Tokyo University of the Arts preparatory program for the upcoming academic year. Your portfolio was among the strongest in this year's applicant pool...

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The letter was dated three months ago.

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I closed the sketchbook.

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───

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I gave it back to him the next day.

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He was sitting on the roof, drawing in the margins of a notebook he didn't care about. I sat down next to him and set the sketchbook on the ground between us.

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"You left this," I said.

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He looked at it. He didn't pick it up.

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"Thanks," he said.

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"You're welcome."

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He didn't ask if I'd opened it. I didn't tell him I had.

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We sat in silence for a while. He drew. I looked at the athletic field. The maintenance worker was pushing his cart again.

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"Hey," he said, after a long time.

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"Yeah."

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"Do you ever feel like you're wasting your life?"

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I thought about it.

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"No," I said.

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"Why not."

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"Because I'm not doing anything with it."

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He stopped drawing. He looked at me.

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"That doesn't make sense."

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"It makes perfect sense. You can't waste something you're not using."

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He stared at me for a moment. Then he looked back at his notebook and didn't say anything else.

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But he was drawing something new. I couldn't see what it was. 132Please respect copyright.ＰＥＮＡＮＡ0lIDhshUC1

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