Inkling

Ethan Rylance wakes up feeling stressed about his upcoming group project. He and his friends—Soren, Pino, and Brady—must create a graphic novel. Because Ethan’s dad is a great artist, his friends think that Ethan must be a genius at art, too. However, Ethan does not like drawing and is not good at it. Unfortunately, his friends have already voted for him to do the art. Ethan’s stress is heightened further because his father is always too tired to teach him to draw. Ethan reviews his work from the night before and realizes that it is worse than he remembers. Some parts have been erased, and there is now a big splotch in the middle. When Ethan pokes the splotch, it spikes around his finger and hides under the bed. Ethan yells, thinking it is a tarantula, and calls for help.

Ethan’s almost nine-year-old sister, Sarah, ignores Ethan’s distress and asks for ice cream in the third person. Sarah has Down syndrome. Peter enters, looking tired and not fully awake. Ethan tells him about the “bug” in his room, but in his sleepy state, Peter cannot understand his son. Peter leaves with Sarah to get her ice cream, and Ethan sarcastically thanks them for their help. To avoid embarrassment, Ethan leaves the illustration board at home and walks with Sarah to school. Dropping Sarah off with her assistant, Ethan feels sad when she says goodbye like his deceased mother used to. Ethan’s friends are upset that Ethan left the illustration board at home, but they decide to work on other parts of the project. Ethan explains that a weird bug messed up the project, and the boys wonder what happened. Ethan catches the eye of his nemesis, Vika Worthington, who is also the daughter of his father’s publisher. She warns him not to copy her work, and they trade insults. The two children harbor a mutual dislike because when Vika insulted Ethan’s art one day, Ethan responded, and Vika kicked him into a trash can. However, because Vika’s father, Karl, is also Peter’s publisher, they must see each other often. Today, they keep arguing until the teacher redirects them.

While Ethan is at school, the ink explores. It peeks into Peter’s studio, where he works on his sketchbook. The ink is still afraid of the sketchbook, which tried to absorb the ink when it first coalesced and became aware of itself. Now, Peter struggles to draw anything and grows frustrated, pounding his fist on the sketchbook. The ink moves on to explore Sarah’s room, soaking up the ink in her colorful alphabet book and leaving the book blank. It absorbs several other books, swelling with all this new ink. Returning to Ethan’s room, the ink explores various items before settling on a picture of Ethan with his mother. The splotch erases the picture. It realizes it has something to do, something to find, but it is unsure of its purpose. The ink moves back to the illustration board, which holds the first page of the script that Soren wrote for the graphic novel. The ink absorbs the script, erases the entire illustration board, and begins to draw.

Back at school, Ethan worries about the project. He wants to ask his dad for help but worries that Peter will become impatient and disappointed in him. Looking at his math book, Ethan realizes that something has completely erased several parts of it, and he suspects the bug he saw this morning. The teacher asks Ethan a question, and he tries his best to answer, but that part of his book is wiped out. Ethan’s teacher sees the erased pages and tells him to stay after school to fill in all the missing words and numbers. Meanwhile, Soren worries that everyone else is further ahead on their projects, but Ethan reassures. him. Suddenly, Ethan’s crush, Heather Lee, walks over and takes out an envelope. Ethan is overjoyed until she asks if he can deliver the envelope to Peter.

It takes Ethan over an hour to fill in the missing parts of the book. When he gets home, Peter asks Ethan if he cut two pages out of Peter’s sketchbook. Ethan denies it, but neither father nor son understand where the pages went. Ethan realizes that his dad is too grumpy to help him today. Ethan hands his dad the envelope from Heather, hoping that it will cheer Peter up, but Peter immediately throws it out, claiming that he knows what it is about. Ethan opens the letter and reads it. Most of Heather’s comments are about the finished “Kren” series, which ended with Kren’s death. While Peter’s fans and publisher want him to resurrect Kren, Peter refuses. When Ethan asks if Peter has considered returning the character to life, Peter says, “Sometimes people die. That’s just the way it is” (29).

Even though Ethan has a lot of work, he takes a break to play a video game because he feels frustrated with his dad and the project. When he looks at the project, he sees that the entire first page is drawn and inked just like Ethan envisioned it. He believes that his dad did it and feels happy at the idea that Peter helped him. Suddenly, the ink splotch emerges from under his bed. Ethan grabs his hockey stick and asks the splotch what it is. The splotch turns into a question mark to indicate that it doesn’t know.. Ethan asks the splotch where it is from, and the splotch draws pictures, acting out the whole story.

Ethan likes the splotch’s drawings and names it Inkling. Inkling says it can see and hear Ethan, even though it does not have eyes and ears. It draws a picture of Ethan by copying the photo of Ethan and his mom. Realizing that the original photo was ruined, Ethan gets mad and tells Inkling to “put her back” (38). Inkling explains that it needs ink, but it redraws the photo. Ethan states that some things should not be erased and explains that his mother died. All that afternoon, Ethan allows Inkling to illustrate his graphic novel for him, feeding the splotch with newsprint to replenish its ink. Peter and Sarah return, and Ethan plays with Sarah while thinking about Inkling. He worries that Peter has forgotten the invitations for Sarah’s upcoming birthday. Later, Ethan finds Inkling drawing on the blank newsprint. The drawing looks like a bed, but Inkling erases it before Ethan can see. Ethan asks what it was drawing, and Inkling confesses not to know. Ethan asks if Inkling will stay and help with his drawings, and Inkling agrees.