Read Online Sketcher by Roland Watson-Grant - Free Book Online

being a jerk and not using his powers much at all. So – guess what – I decided to try some magic sketchin’ for myself. Yeah, you heard me. You can laugh, but see, I figured me and Frico, we shared the same womb and all, so maybe I had the same powers but I just didn’t know it yet.
    So I tried sketchin’ myself a few times, but then I got scared, cos only the kinky, red-hair part of that left-handed drawing looked like me, and I didn’t want to get stuck as a stick man for the rest of my life. Well, I stepped it up. A few days after that, I got this eyebrow pencil and locked myself in the bathroom and reckoned I could just sketch a moustache and beard on my reflection in the mirror to see if I could grow them real fast. I figured my powers would be weaker than Frico’s, so I doubled up. I did the moustache-and-beard sketchin’ every single day until Moms, she started asking who the hell kept smudging up the bathroom mirror. So one morning I was using some vaseline to clean that smudge off the glass when Moms, late for work, barged into the bathroom and caught me with one hand holding an eyebrow pencil and the other hand in her jar of vaseline. She took the Lord’s name in vain, and Doug and Tony came running.
    Of course, after that the mirror-sketchin’ had to stop. I figured I was prob’ly going about it all wrong anyhow. Maybe Frico sketched with only magic pencils or somethin’, or maybe he said some secret words before he did the drawing. But man, I was as confused as the very first bug to hit the very first light bulb they ever invented. I didn’t know where I was going with this sketchin’ thing, and the longer my powers took to kick in, the more my bigger plans were gettin’ delayed.
    Well, after Prize-Giving that year, the guidance counsellor at school wrote to Moms and asked her to take me over to see this lady doctor in New O’lins proper, right by the Lake. Apparently, this lady would see me for free. I wasn’t quite sure why we had to go to this doctor lady, cos I felt OK. But I figured on the way there that it might have something to do with that eyebrow pencil I’d borrowed from Miss Lambert’s handbag. Or the whole vaseline incident, or me taking all of Frico’s pencils and then lyin’ about it. Well, whatever the crime, I didn’t mind doing the time, cos man, this lady doctor looked like she was in her thirties and she was fine .
    â€œHi there, I’m Dr Barton. You can call me Lisa.” She had a dusty, baby-powder voice and the cutest, slightest gap between her two front teeth. Wow.
    â€œHi Lisa. I’m Skid. I’m nine... almost ten.”
    Moms told Dr Barton I wasn’t gettin’ along with the girls at school. Hell, it was just one girl. The doctor asked me to talk about that. She sat forward and smiled and looked at me with her eyes all soft and bright, like two full moons over Lake Ponchartrain. Aww man.
    Now, I decided I wasn’t going to start off with some immature story about Suzy with this fine lady, so I said: “Well, my mother’s right. I don’t like girls. I like women.”
    Lady doctor nearly died laughing. After that, things got less funny. She kept asking me how I felt about my mother and Pops and a bunch of other serious stuff I can’t recall or can’t see why they were important.
    Then she asked me what made me afraid. To be honest, even with all that junk about the Loogaroo and Couyon and whatever else, the only thing I was really afraid of was not havin’ any cash at all in my pocket. But before I could tell her that, she gave me this big ol’ sheet of black paper and some neon-coloured chalk and asked me to use my left hand to draw “whatever it was that protected me from what I was afraid of”, or some such thing. Of course, I could only think of drawing my bigbrother Doug, cos look, the poor guy would give me all of his lunch money every