Drawing through time

She had seen him on the train more than a few times, always with his backpack. Sometimes he was reading a library book, sometimes sketching in what appeared to be a calendar or datebook type of book. This time, he was been in such a rush to leave that his datebook fell out of his backpack, onto the floor of the train. She was frozen, the way being too long around strangers often froze fellow public-transit goers as the rhythm of thevtrain lulled them into laziness, but by the time most people who had gotten on at the stop she had had goten off, she picked up the datebook. Curiousity seized her, alongside the guilt she felt since the book had fallen at not having tried to chase and follow the guy, so she opened the book. Maybe there would be contact information she could use to reach him. That wasn't where she had opened it to first, though. Curiousity had beaten guilt, as the book fell to where it's owner had been sketching last.

He had been sketching... her? She saw a sketch of herself reading, seated alone, partially obscured by the train seat railing and another passenger's hand. The sketch was surprisingly detailed, although he got off a few stops before her. And as though thinking about getting off caused it, her stop was reached, the train was braking, she had to leave, so she stuffed the book in her own bag.

She would give it to him the next time their paths crossed, she told herself. She would just steal looks at a few more pages before that happened though, and thankfully the boy hadn't drawn twenty something sketches of only her, but many strangers from the train. She had seen maybe too many true crime youtubers describe a victim as the criminal's muse to not be scared if he had drawn only her, but he hadn't, so she was likely safe. And maybe she found herself absentmindedly adding more shading to the shadows, or wrinkles to one of the old geezers, or more volume to her own hair, but was there any harm in that? The guy would likely never even notice, assuming she returned it to him.

Our unnamed protagonist didn't see sketchbook boy, as she had taken to thinking about him as, on her commute to work the next morning. Or, at least, not on the train ride there. She had looked for him, had chosen to stand so she could intercept when he got on, but his stop passed without his entrance.

She resigned herself to that fact while waiting for the boring workday to end, worrying maybe he hadn't been on the train because he was questioning MBTA staff about the missing datebook. He had scheduled stuff recorded in it alongside pigeon sketches, written down doctor's appointments and friends' birthdays, and plans to go to the Fells a few Saturdays, whatever that was. Our unnamed protagonist began feeling guilty, or moreso than she already had, but she wasn't about to try to find a public transit authority person when she could just as easily find the guy on her ride back home from work. And indeed, he was at the station she always waited at following work.

"Hey, uh, I found this on the train yesterday and I think it's yours."

"Yes! Thank you so much, I've been worried like crazy about it! I hope you didn't find it weird I sketched you for practice; I never share these anywhere."

"I didn't find it weird, I actually got bored and added some shading to the portrait of me, and also some of the other pages. That was weird of me, way weirder than you making the sketches with your free time trapped on a train."

As though saying the word train had summoned it, their train pulled up, interrupting their conversation with its screeching to halt. The two boarded the train alongside the others who had been waiting, and found a free two-seater.

The two talked about their art, why they both preferred traditional pen-and-paper drawing to digital (he had never learned how, she didn't see herself as an actual artist at all so why waste electricity? Paper was in abundant supply, as the boy's (re)use of his planner made obvious.) The conversation shifted to where they were headed, why the boy hadn't been on the train that morning. The boy tore a page out of his datebook with his email and phone number on it. The girl entered it into her phone as he left, his datebook in his backpack, unlikely to be written in by the girl ever again.

The pair texted each other that evening, worried if they didn't, the other might forget about their existence, the boy more anxious about that than the girl, since he had the datebook she had drawn in and she just had her mind, which could easily be filled to the brim with story ideas (she was a writer), the latest television show her family was watching, work worries - but she didn't forget about sketchbook boy, not that evening and not in the days that followed.

No, she looked for him and he looked for her when they boarded trains, and days they boarded the same one were happy days. It was weird, how quickly strangers became friends capable of enjoying companionable silence when the train felt too overwhelmingly loud to talk. She gave him permission to sketch her, and soon his datebook was mostly sketches of her. He gave her recommendations and links to YouTube videos that wouldn't keep her up at night, since she admitted to trying to cut True Crime out of her media diet. They would then talk or text about said videos, sharing opinions they weren't brave enough to risk entering the YouTube comment section to share with the video's creator (and fans). Before long, the two were one another's best friends. And it all started because one dude liked drawing people on the train rather than scrolling his phone.