Amber Waves

            Jaycen Dover was a senior in high school. He had been given an assignment in his art class to draw a group of children playing in a natural setting. The idea was to capture the kids in a carefree and joy filled activity. His teacher said that the emotions should be obvious in the expressions on their faces as well as the positioning and actions of their bodies. Jaycen didn’t think it would be too difficult. The hard part was to find a group of children playing together. He didn’t want to seem like a voyeur so he took his dog along on the assignment. He kept Rufus on his leash. Most parents weren’t too keen on a dog running loose without supervision. You never knew about kids and dogs together. Rufus would never hurt a fly but some kids could be pretty aggressive and down right nasty. He tied Rufus’ leash to the leg of the wooden table and got out his tools. He sat on the attached bench and got out his large tablet of paper and soft leaded pencils. He propped the sketch pad on his knee and proceeded to draw in the background of trees and grass. He was idly watching a group of kids playing tag. They were mostly boys around the age of eleven or twelve. There were a few girls in the area but they weren’t playing with the boys. They were, however, watching the activities and giggling to one another. Then he saw her. A jolt of electricity went through his entire body. He sat there stunned and couldn’t understand what had just happened to him. When the sun lit up the girl’s hair, it looked like liquid fire raining down her back.  The lines of the song came to mind from ‘America the Beautiful’ – Amber waves…  His immediate thought was that it would be such a rush to try and capture that beautiful hair on paper, but it was more than that. He couldn’t understand his physical reaction to this young girl. She looked to be a little older than the boys, but then girls matured faster than boys so it was really hard to discern. His next thought was about the college classes he was looking into. One of the classes described drawing nude and semi nude models. He was embarrassed when he read it but knew he had to get used to the idea. He had gotten an art scholarship and he would be a college student soon. His face felt hot and he wondered why that thought had come to him just now after seeing the girl with the red hair. He hoped he was looking at her with an artist’s eye and nothing else. He was reacting in a totally unexpected way. Maybe he was just excited about a new project. He hoped that was the explanation.

            “Well, this is kind of creepy,” he said to himself, blushing with his head bent down. He was almost afraid to look back up at the scene in front of him, but he couldn’t draw the group if he didn’t look at them. He raised his face and scanned the crowd of kids but he didn’t see the girl with the red hair and he felt sad. Another weird reaction he couldn’t understand.

            “Where did she go?” he said under his breath.

            “Where did who go?” a voice said behind him.

            “Busted,” he thought to himself. He turned to reply to the disembodied voice and it was the girl with the red hair. He was so shocked; he just sat there and stared at her. Rufus had stood up and was wagging his tail at the new person.

            The girl tried to smile then pet Rufus on the head but became uncomfortable and started to apologize for interrupting him.

            “No, no,” he sputtered to keep her from leaving. “You’re not interrupting me; I just didn’t know you were behind me.”

            “I’m stealthy,” she said smiling again. “I love art and I wanted to see what you were drawing.”

            She was smart. How many kids used the word, stealthy? Her smile was as radiant as she was. He would love to draw her. It was so much easier to draw something that pulled you in and grabbed your attention. It was much more difficult to draw a bowl of fruit just sitting, static on the table.

            “Do you take art at your school?” He asked politely. He was trying to get her to talk to him so he could watch her face and her eyes.