Always Approach Sketchy Vans on the Beach

She sighed and moved back to her seat in the front grabbing the pack of crackers.

"Yeah yeah...it is whatever." She sighed, reaching into her bag pulling out a sketchbook. "Just...I have a bubble okay? I know..wouldn't guess that someone who just invites themselves into your van would have personal space issues but yeah."

She opened to a blank pages in her book and then dumped a few crackers onto the page.

"No cheese." Said passing the crackers back to him.

She pulled out a pen and started tracing the crackers, eating them as she nommed her way through them.

She looked up at him, seeming unimpressed, "Dark and moody is kinda my MO." She said as she finished the crackers. She looked around for his ash tray as the blunt only had one or two hits left.

"I'm probably the one who should say sorry. Like you said..I'm the dweeb who just climbed into your van and is now screwing with your vibes. I will leave soon...I just have to record this."

She reached in her bag and pulled out a different pen. She started to fill the shapes.

"The bubble is I don't like to be touched. I have it because I don't like to be touched. And yeah. I draw." She shifted her positioning a bit, as if slightly uncomfortable with having someone see what she was working on. Which she was. But she also knew she would be way more uncomfortable outside in the cold.

Live paused...her brows knit together as her eyes narrowed. Something about his words made her think about more about her usual state of existence but she was pulled away from this train of thought by his question about her drawing.

"I uh...I try to draw whenever I'm high. It's kind of my thing. I like to record my high's so I do it in artwork. I guess you could say it's the only thing I get happy about..."

Live was very secretive about most of her drawings. They really ranged in medium and subject matter. She would draw in pencil sometimes and pen others. Another favorite was water color but she also really like to make collages. There was a reason her sketchbook looked like it was about to break out of its binding.

"And clinical depression makes it hard to be happy..." Live wasn't really sure why the words came out of her mouth but they did and there was no putting them back in.

"I have one friend I hug. I don't do handshakes cause of germs. And no one has ever wanted to give me a high five."

She shrugged. "Draw. Take notes. I just record them. What has me thinking, I try to get it down somehow. It's kind of a..." She paused looking up at him, her dull gray eyes looking into his at a seemingly awkward and random time, "Active mediation." Her gaze held for a moment before returning to her sketch book page.

She had created a fairly simple page. She had overlapping circles and had filled the created shapes with what looked like black. It was well balanced and simple.

Live sighed, "Happy really isn't an emotion I can experience very well. There are things that make my existence bearable. Art is one of them."

It wasn't often that she opened up a finished page of her sketchbook to someone but she could tell that not giving this guy something would be more trouble than it was worth. "Fine. I'll show you a drawing."

She flipped to a page about halfway back in the book. At the top was a date and a to do list. The rest of the page was a watercolor composition with pen. "There." She said holding the book up for him to see, kind of blocking her own face from view as she did so. She kind of just ignored the high five..

"Would you ask a fish to climb a tree?"

He really wasn't letting this happiness thing go. Honestly, yes, she had felt happiness before but she preferred people to think that she was only dark and moody all the time. It was kind of an image thing. And most of the things had made her happy before were very personal and Live didn't really like talking about her personal life. But she could tell he wasn't going to budge so she decided to throw him a bone.

"When I got the letter from Starlight that is probably the closest I've ever gotten to won the lottery happiness."

The list of things that made Live's existence so terrible was quite extensive. First, there was everything with her family. That in and of itself took up a majority of her complaints. But, all of that was behind her now and had been behind her for a year and a half.

She sighed and reluctantly gave him his high five. It was solid enough though it was fairly obvious that Live lacked enthusiasm about it. That was how she was about most things.

"Well, then let me explain it this way. There is a fish. Not a magical fish that can change forms. Just a plain old fish. Except, it was raised by squirrels. These squirrels expect the fish to be able to climb trees with them and have forced the fish to live in a little fish bowl next to a tree so that once it finally decide to, it can climb the tree."

She took her sketchbook back and returned to the page she had been working on, "Of course, that will never happen. Every now and then the fish will splash around and play in fish bowl, even jump up a few feet in the air. The squirrels don't understand why, if the fish can jump up three feet in the air, it can't just jump 20ft to the top of the tree and live up there." Live had started to draw in squiggles and more shapes at the bottom of her page, this time with a light blue pen.

She looked back up at him, her eyes locking in for a moment again, "Does that make sense or do you need me to break it down for you?"