She walked to an easel, then began pulling supplies and sketchbooks out of her tote and arranging them on a small shelf beneath her easel. I took the one beside hers.

“You’ll keep your easel for the year,” she said, arranging empty baby food jars and cups of pencils and brushes. “So you can unload your stuff and come back after study hall. The TAs usually keep a still life ready so you can practice drawing forms, or whatever.” She inclined her head toward a table at one end of the room.

“What’s a TA?” I asked, pulling out my own bag of pencils and sketch pads.

“Teaching assistant. They usually get an art major from Northwestern or Illinois Tech or whatever to teach the class.”

With great care, she organized her supplies, creating a little nest of tools around her easel. I didn’t have much to arrange, but I placed everything within arm’s reach, put my bag on the floor, and took a seat on my stool.

The room filled after a couple of minutes, the rest of the small studio class taking their own easels. Just like in any other high school, the room was a mix of types. Some looked preppy, some looked average, and some looked like they were trying really hard not to look preppy or average. There were girls I didn’t know, who I assumed were in the classes behind and ahead of me.

And when everyone had taken an easel and arranged their things, he walked in.

I kept blinking, thinking that my eyes were deceiving me, until he walked by—as if in slow motion—and gave me a tiny nod.

Daniel was my studio TA.

I bit back a grin as he walked to the front of the room, and began thinking of ways to break the news to a very jealous suitemate. And she wasn’t the only ones with eyes for His Blondness. The other girls’ gazes followed him as he moved, some with expressions that said they’d be happy to spend an hour drawing his form.

He turned to face us, then stuck his hands in his pockets. “So, welcome to studio art. I’m Daniel Sterling. I’ll be your TA this year.”

“There is a God,” whispered the grateful girl beside me.

“We’re going to spend the first few weeks on some basic representational exercises. Still lifes. Architecture. Even each other.”

Lesley and I exchanged a flat glance. It looked like she was as thrilled at the idea as I was—namely, not at all. I was perfectly happy with my body, but that didn’t mean I needed it to be the source of other people’s art.

“Today we’re going to start with some basic shapes.” He began to pick through a plastic milk crate of random objects, then pulled out a small lamp and its round lamp shade, a couple of wooden blocks, and three red apples. He draped a piece of blue velvet over the table, setting the blocks beneath it to create areas of different heights. Then he put the lamp and apples on the table and organized them into a tidy arrangement.

When he was done, he turned back to us. “All right,” he said. “Use whatever media you choose. You’ve got two hours. Let’s see what you’re made of.”

Drawing was a strange thing. Probably like other hobbies—basketball or cello playing or baking or writing—there were times when it felt like you were going through the motions. When you put pencil to paper and were aware of every dot, every thin line, every thick shade.

At other times, you looked up from the page and two hours had passed. You lost yourself in the movement, in the quiet, in trying to represent on paper some object from real life. You created a little world where there’d only been emptiness before.

This was one of those times.

Daniel had come around a couple of times to offer advice—to remind me to draw what I actually saw, not just to rely on my memories of what the objects looked like, and to remind me to use the tip of my pencil instead of mashing the lead into the paper—but other than those trips back to the real world, I spent the rest of the time zoned out, my gaze darting between the stuff on the table and the sketchbook in front of me.

That was why I jumped when he finally clapped his hands. “Time,” he said, then smiled at us. “Great job today.” When everyone began to pack up their supplies, he held up a hand.

“You didn’t think you were going to get out of here without homework, did you?”

There were groans across the room.

“Aw, it’s not that bad. Before we meet again, I want you to do a little Second City appreciation. Find a building in the area and spend an hour getting it on paper. You can use whatever materials you want—paint, ink, pencil, charcoal—but I want to see something representational when you’re done. I want you to think about line and shadow. Think about positive and negative space—what parts of space did the architect choose to fill? Which parts did he decide to leave empty?”

We waited for more, but he finally bobbed his head. “Now you’re dismissed.”

The girl beside me grumbled as she stuffed a small, plastic box of watercolors into her bag. “I liked him a lot better when he was just the pretty new TA.”

“Ah,” he said, suddenly appearing to walk past us. “But that’s not going to make you a better artist, is it?”

She waited until he’d passed, then raised hopeless eyes to me. “Do you think that’s going to hurt my grade?”

I glanced back at Daniel, who’d paused at the threshold of the door to talk to a student. He held her sketch pad in one hand and used the other one to point out various parts of her drawing.

“I think he’s going to be pretty fair,” I decided. What I hadn’t yet decided was whether he was here by accident . . . or on purpose.