“That’s . . .” I shook my head. “That’s the most clichéd thing I’ve ever heard.”
“You think that’s a cliché?”
“It’s like you don’t watch movies,” I said. Either that or his entire personality was nothing but a patchwork quilt of characters from movies he’d watched.
“I watch movies,” he said defensively.
“Are you kidding?” I said. “It’s completely clichéd. But I guess it’s not entirely your fault — anything else you could have said (under the circumstances) would have been a cliché, too.”
He opened his mouth, closed it, and opened it again. “So you’re not afraid of me.”
I raised my eyebrows. “I never was afraid of you.” Put off by his bluntness and quirks, sure, but not afraid.
He seemed slightly disappointed. He folded his arms. “So . . . what, then?”
“I don’t know.” I shrugged, arms still folded. “The readers. The critics.” Children’s books had critics, right?
He glared at me. “I wouldn’t expect an artist to be so cautious.” He said it like he was implying that I wasn’t actually an artist.
I stood up, offended. “I’m young,” I snapped, “and I was raised by accountants.” Well, actually, my dad wasn’t an accountant anymore, he was the manager of a bank. Joy was still in accounting, though.
But still.
He cocked an eyebrow, Stephen Colbert-style. “You’re telling me that two accountants produced a kid that draws memories in brains?”
“Produced,” I said, “like a car on an assembly line.”
Labels: january brings few faces
