Chapter Five – The Girl with the Sketchbook
She wasn't like anyone Darius had dealt with before.
Maya didn't move like a customer. She didn't linger for clout, didn't act thirsty, and didn't try to impress him. She just showed up—quietly, consistently, like gravity.
One week, she brought him a sandwich wrapped in foil.
"Figured you don't eat much besides backwoods and blunt roaches."
Another week, she pulled up with a fresh pack of RAW papers and a half-used bottle of rubbing alcohol for cleaning resin off his scissors.
He didn't ask for any of it.
But he didn't say no either.
They'd sit sometimes, legs dangling off the edge of a roof behind the motel. Maya sketching in her notebook, Darius quietly rolling up. The smoke drifted above them like lazy thoughts while trains rattled in the distance.
"You ever think about going legit?" she asked one night, flipping to a clean page.
"What you mean?"
"Like… dispensary. License. Packaging. Tax ID and all that official grown-up shit."
"I'm grown now?"
"You sell $30 joints with a brand name and strain labels. You're two steps from printing business cards."
Darius gave a half-smirk but stayed silent.
He had thought about it. A lot.
But there was no way a reincarnated ex-street dude with no real ID and a body that technically belonged to someone else was gonna pass a background check.
"Nah. That ain't for me," he said finally.
"Why not?"
He glanced at her. "'Cause I'm not supposed to be here."
She stopped sketching.
"What does that mean?"
Darius hesitated. Looked at the joint burning between his fingers like it might answer for him.
"I mean…" he exhaled. "I wasn't supposed to make it this far."
Maya closed her book. Leaned forward.
"Okay. Real question."
"Aight."
"Who are you, Darius?"
That caught him.
He could lie. Could make up some half-story about growing up hard, losing people, trying to flip his life through weed. But she'd see through it. She always did.
So instead, he deflected.
"I'm the guy with the best weed in Brooklyn."
She didn't smile.
Didn't blink.
Just nodded slowly, like she understood something he hadn't said out loud.
When she left that night, she handed him the sketchbook.
"Keep it. I can make another."
"Why?"
"'Cause sometimes, people need help seeing themselves clearly."
Darius didn't open it for an hour.
But when he did… there were pages of him.
Rolling. Thinking. Smoking. Watching.
One sketch showed his hoodie pulled up, eyes low, but a small bloom growing from the pocket of his jacket like a symbol.
In another, he stood in front of a massive tree with joints for branches and smoke rising like a halo.
At the very back, a full page read:
FROM THE DIRTGrown different. Just like you.
He stared at it for a long time.
No music. No blunt.
Just that sketch.
And a weird pressure in his chest he hadn't felt in two lives.