Always Florence by Muriel Jensen

“Wow!”
    “Isn’t that cool? You should work it in your hands when you start. I do it while I’m looking at a sketch and planning what I’m going to do next.”
    Dylan looked up at Nate in obvious delight. Then, realizing what he’d done, he glanced away again.
    “Cool,” Nate said simply. He put a cup of steaming coffee in front of Bobbie. “Cream or sugar?” he asked.
    “No, I drink it straight,” she replied. “Thank you.” She took a quick sip and set the cup back down.
    Sheamus sat across the table from Dylan and beckoned her over to look at his project. She saw that a sheet of drawing paper was attached to a board with stationery clips. “This is cool,” she said.
    “Uncle Nate made them for us.” Sheamus reclaimed his art. “I haven’t gotten very far,” he complained, tapping his pencil against the same head and trunk circles he’d drawn in her class.
    “We just have to think about this.” She leaned toward his drawing. “So, we know he should have hair. What do you think his hair looks like? What color is it?”
    “Your color,” he said.
    She found the black pencil in the array spread beside him and handed it to him.
    “Is it curly?”
    “No. It sticks up. Like punk hair.”
    “Okay. Give him some hair.” She peered closer. “Make it just like you see it in your mind.”
    He made large, irregular spikes atop the head circle. “Like that?”
    “What about his nose?”
    With the same pencil, Sheamus drew a big circle in the middle of the monster’s face. He added dots for nostrils.
    “Very good,” she declared. “Does he have lumpy ears, too?”
    The boy shook his head. “Pointy ears.”
    “Okay. Let’s see what they look like.”
    Sheamus carefully made bat ears, then leaned back to study his work. “Yeah. That’s about right. And he has big shoes with a big buckle on them.” He drew the feet, one considerably larger than the other, then added straps and a lopsided but clearly defined buckle on each.
    “All right. He’s really taking shape.”
    Sheamus turned to her and said gravely, “He needs a tool belt.”
    “Really. Why a tool belt?” she asked.
    “Because I heard him working in there.”
    “I thought he was humming.”
    “That’s what I thought at first, but maybe he’s using power tools.”
    “Is he building stuff? Is there anything new in your closet that wasn’t there before? Like another shelf, or something?”
    He looked at her with a “duh!” expression. “I don’t know. I can’t go in there, remember?”
    Flawless logic. She nodded in apology.
    He handed her the pencil. “I don’t know how to draw a tool belt. Can you do it?”
    “Sure.” She took a long pull on her coffee, then moved the board toward her, considering a minute before she began to draw. She created a belt with dangling pockets around his bulky middle, a power drill sticking out of it, and a power hammer dangling from a loop. Bobbie had both tools in her own arsenal in the garage.
    Sheamus was delighted. He stood and leaned over her shoulder to watch her work. She could feel his little heart beating against her arm.
    Nate came to stand over them. “Handsome dude,” he said. “But he doesn’t have eyes.”
    “We’re getting to that.” Bobbie handed him her half-empty cup. “That’s really good stuff. May I have a warm-up?”
    “I’m on it. Anyone want cocoa?”
    Sheamus shook his head. “I want to finish Shrek first.”
    Bobbie looked up, completely distracted by Sheamus’s reply. Her eyes met Nate’s. She could tell they shared the same thought. Shrek was seriously nonthreatening as monsters went. That seemed like a good sign.
    “You want to finish your monster instead of having cocoa?” Nate asked with a smile. “Does that mean you’re getting to like him?”
    “Uncle Nate, Shrek is an ogre,” Sheamus corrected.
    “What’s the difference between the two?” Bobbie asked.
    “Um...” Sheamus thought.
    Dylan, hard at work on his own sketch, looked up to