What the Map Left Out

By Wednesday, Leila had collected twenty-three bus tickets, most of which were useless as records because the ink had begun to fade. One showed only half a date and the price. Another had picked up a smear of green nail varnish from the inside of her bag.

She laid them out on the art-room table and tried to decide whether they were material or rubbish.

“Both is possible,” Mr Olson said, passing with a stack of mountboard.

“I didn't ask.”

“You were making the face.”

He put a large grey sheet beside her. It had a damaged corner that could be cut away.

“Before you buy anything,” he said, “look in the offcuts.”

Leila had not intended to buy anything. She had intended to spend an afternoon worrying about what she could not buy, which was less productive and took longer.

Armitage came over near the end of the lesson. Leila showed her a narrow strip of drawings arranged in order: hotel window, delivery yard, railway bridge, garages, school field, interchange. They were accurate individually and dull together. She knew that before the teacher asked anything.

“What's missing?” Armitage said.

“The other stops.”

“Possibly. What else?”

Leila looked at the strip. “It looks like instructions for reaching college.”

“Is that what you want it to be?”

“No.”

“Then what happens to you between the first picture and the last?”

She thought of leaving Mum asleep after a late shift, of being annoyed by someone blocking the aisle, of the small relief when she reached streets that still knew her. She thought of the return journey, which used the same roads but felt nothing like the morning.

“I get ready to be somewhere else,” she said.

Armitage nodded. “Show me something from that.”

After class, Leila stayed to work. She drew the inside of her bag from above: the spoon she had returned, a bus ticket, the gallery confirmation printed on a corner of paper, the green varnish. Then she drew her hand on the pole near the bus door. She made the hand too adult the first time and started again.

Outside the window, the groundskeeper moved a wheelbarrow across the courtyard. Leila watched the wheel catch on the same uneven slab twice. She wanted to draw the pause in his movement. Not the wheelbarrow itself. The moment when a simple journey required an adjustment.

Her phone rang at half past four.

Mum.

“Could you collect Toby from Janice's after his club? My last visit's been moved and I'll be late.”

“What time?”

“Five fifteen. I've asked Janice, but she's got to leave at half past.”

Leila looked at the drawing in front of her. She had just found a way to make the hand seem like hers. She knew that leaving now meant losing the particular attention she had gathered around it.

“Yes,” she said.

“Are you sure? I can ring his coach.”

“It's fine.”

She packed without letting herself become angry until she was on the bus. Then she was angry at everything: the call, the drawing, the fact that Mum had given her a chance to say no and she had ignored it. The journey to Janice's required getting off before her usual change and walking through two streets of houses with front gardens large enough to contain entire bad decisions about ornamental gravel.

Toby was waiting on the step with his football bag.

“She's gone next door,” he said. “She said you knew.”

Leila checked her phone. Janice had sent a message two minutes earlier. She replied to say she had arrived.

Toby kicked a loose stone towards the gate.

“Are you angry?”

“No.”

“You shut the gate like you were.”

“It sticks.”

“It doesn't.”

She stopped walking. He stopped too, but kept his eyes on the stone.

“I was working on something,” she said. “I'm not angry with you.”

“You always say that when you're angry and I'm there.”

The accuracy of it made her want to argue.

“I'm sorry.”

“Okay.”

He kicked the stone again. It landed in a hedge, ending the game without his agreement.

They walked to the stop. There were twelve minutes until the next bus. Toby opened his bag and took out an apple that had been wrapped in a tissue. He offered it to her first.

“No, thanks.”

He bit into it, then asked whether being at college meant she could leave whenever she liked.

“Not whenever. I stayed after lessons.”

“Why?”

“To use the room.”

“We have a room.”

“Not that kind.”

He chewed thoughtfully. “You can have the desk tonight.”

“It isn't about you giving things up.”

“I won't be giving it up. I'm watching the match.”

She looked at him. He had offered something simple, and she had nearly made it carry more than he intended.

“Thanks,” she said.

On the bus, he put his bag between his feet and rested his head against the window. Within three stops he was asleep. Leila drew his hand holding the unfinished apple. She kept the drawing small enough to finish before he woke.

At the hotel, Mum had left a voice message saying she would be later than expected. Leila heated dinner, helped Toby find his homework and moved the cereal box off the desk. When he turned on the match, she asked him to keep the volume low. He did, without making her negotiate.

She worked for forty minutes. The drawing was not as good as it had been becoming at college. It was still hers, and it existed now instead of waiting for ideal circumstances.

Mum came back after ten. Leila showed her the timetable Miriam had helped make.

“I need two afternoons,” she said. “Until the exhibition. Not every afternoon. Tuesday and Thursday.”

Mum sat down on the bed.

“All right.”

“I keep saying yes when you ask, and then I get angry. That's not fair on you. But I need the time.”

Mum took the timetable. “We'll plan it properly. You can help sometimes without being the person everything else has to fit around.”

“I know you didn't ask me to be.”

“Sometimes I have. Not in those words.”

They looked at the week together. Mum would ask Janice about one collection and speak to the club about the other. There were gaps they could not fill that night. They marked them instead of pretending they had disappeared.

After Mum went to wash, Leila opened the message from Micah that she had missed earlier. It was a photograph of a seedling with one leaf bent sideways.

Gran says this one is developing character. She doesn't mean it kindly.

Leila sent back the drawing of Toby's hand. Micah replied that he could tell Toby had fallen asleep before finishing the apple.

That pleased her more than being told it was good.

She added the drawing to the strip of bus pictures. The route began to look less like a set of directions and more like a journey someone had taken.