Behind the Canvas (2 page)

The girls turned to look at her. “What do you mean?” asked one.

Claudia felt her tongue turning numb. “In … one of the paintings. Really cool eyes.”

She braced herself—one of the girls looked on the verge of giggles. But Megan shrugged and said, “Sure.”

Claudia felt a nervous excitement bubbling inside her. “Um. Okay. This way.” She had joined a conversation! She had suggested something and they said
sure
!

She retraced her steps back to the gallery. “It's in a Dutch painting,” she said over her shoulder. “With these guys and their swords and big floppy hats.”

Nate and Christian were still goofing around as she entered the gallery. She ignored them and walked over to the painting of the three Dutchmen. She waited for the girls to catch up, and then she motioned to the painting with a flourish, like they do on game shows.

She watched the girls study the painting. “Which guy?” one of them finally asked.

Claudia turned. In the painting were the three Dutchmen, their hats, their swords, and the table. And nothing more.

There was no boy.

“Their eyes are all green,” said another girl.

Claudia's mind whirled. “But there was a boy right there…”

“What are you guys staring at?” Nate asked.

“Claudia can't tell blue eyes from green ones,” a girl said.

“And she thinks those old geezers in the painting are cute.” Everyone laughed, including Megan Connell.

“I'm serious,” Claudia said. “He was there.”

“What's going on here?” Mrs. McCoy rushed into the gallery, followed closely by Mr. Custos. “These are
not
museum voices.”

Claudia snatched up her notebook. This was crazy.

“Claudia's telling lies about the paintings,” a girl said.

“I am not.”

Mrs. McCoy looked at her expectantly. “I thought you were supposed to be sketching.”

Claudia huffed and reluctantly held up her notebook sketch. It wasn't finished, but it distinctly showed three men with wide-brimmed hats and a boy in the upper-left corner. “There was a boy in that painting earlier. A boy with blue eyes. And now he's gone.”

The kids in the gallery snickered again.

Mrs. McCoy folded her arms. “Is this supposed to be funny, Claudia? No one is going to laugh when you get a zero on your assignment.”

Claudia stared at her sketch, fighting back the burning in her eyes that would inevitably be followed by tears. “I'm not lying.”

Mrs. McCoy clucked her tongue. “Everybody back to your paintings, right now! Get your assignments finished up.” She pointed at Nate and Christian. “You two aren't even supposed to be in here. Get back to where I put you, please.”

As everyone filed out of the gallery, Mrs. McCoy paused by Claudia. “I need to see how the class is doing. Just answer those questions on your own, okay?”

The questions. Who cared about the stupid assignment? She'd made a complete fool of herself. Everyone had laughed at her. And there was the definite possibility that she was going crazy.

Claudia stood in the empty gallery and stared at the painting of the three Dutchmen. She hadn't imagined it. The image of that boy with his crystal-blue eyes was as clear in her mind as anything. She had seen it. She had
talked
to it, for crying out loud.

She took a few steps toward the painting. The patch where the boy had been was now a muddy black, unremarkable and blending in with the rest of the background. She reached her hand up toward that corner of the painting … and stopped.

She spun around.

Mr. Custos stood in the gallery exit, his three-piece suit immaculate, his shoes shiny. He looked at her as if she had done something completely surprising.

They stared at each other for a moment. Then he flashed her a fake toothy smile and a wave, and ducked out through the exit.

She sighed and plopped down on the cushy purple bench.

Once again, she was alone.

 

C
HAPTER
2

T
HAT EVENING
, after the table had been cleared, Claudia secluded herself in the large chair by the window. She pulled out her notebook sketch and added some details from memory. A few lines here, some shading there. She filled in the hat for one of the Dutchmen and strengthened the slightly annoyed look on another. She tried to ignore the boy altogether, but she had drawn his eyes in the museum, and now they stared at her relentlessly.

She needed insight. Illumination. Inspiration. Like the old man with the orange cloak and the angel in the Caravaggio painting.

As she drew, another possibility occurred to her. What if she wasn't going crazy? What if she had seen a ghost? Ghosts could appear anywhere, even in a painting. Right?

Except that she didn't believe in ghosts.

Finally she couldn't take it anymore. She flipped her pencil over and scrubbed the eraser against the face of the boy.

A hand slipped in from behind her and lifted the notebook, rescuing the boy and spilling eraser dust into her lap.

She twisted in the chair to see her grandpa studying the sketch.

“Hmmm…” he rumbled. “Wonderful detail. Fine shading. Perhaps even a hint of chiaroscuro. You have such a talent,
mi prodigia
.”

“You always say that. Even when it looks like chicken scratch.”

“This is hardly chicken scratch. You're getting better all the time. Any talent worth having takes time to develop. But I can see it in everything you draw. You have a magic all your own, Claudia.”

Her ears pricked up.
Magic
. It was just a passing comment, but if anyone knew, it was her grandpa.

“Do you really believe in that, Grandpa? Magic? Ghosts? That kind of thing…?”

A speck of humor leaped into her grandpa's eyes. “Ghosts? Of course I believe in ghosts. Why, when I was a
pequeñito
, we had a ghost that lived in the outhouse on our farm. He mostly hibernated during the winter, but in the summer you'd be doing your business out there, when suddenly…”

He paused and studied her. Perhaps he saw the disappointment in her eyes. “But that's not what you're really asking me, is it?” He sat on the edge of the sofa across from her. “You're asking me about things you can't see but that you suspect might be there. Hidden worlds. Magical powers. Beings who are completely invisible unless you know where to look.”

Her eyes grew wide. She caught her breath.

Grandpa held up the notebook. “Yesterday this paper was blank. No one knew that it contained three men with beards and swords. No one but you.
Magic
.”

Claudia huffed. “That's not magic, Grandpa. That's just art.”

He smiled. “You say tomato, I say
el tomate
.” He placed the sketchbook in her hands and stood. “Keep up the good work,
mi prodigia
.”

She rolled her eyes. So much for age and wisdom.

After a quick round of good-nights with her parents, Claudia made her way upstairs to her bedroom. She passed through the motions of her bedtime routine, thinking about ghosts in the outhouse, and ghosts in a painting, and what the heck happened to her today?

She absentmindedly organized objects on her desk—nearly all of them were birthday presents from several weeks ago. The art history book from her parents. The white canvas and tubes of oil paints from Grandpa. And a set of twenty-four colors of nail polish complete with a bonus bottle of nail polish remover from her Aunt Maggie. It was still wrapped in cellophane.

Claudia picked up Aunt Maggie's birthday card.
Hey, chica. What artist doesn't need a bazillion colors to express herself with, right? Happy birthday. I'm back in town—come visit me.
She smiled. Her aunt was the kind of person who would probably wear all twenty-four colors at the same time.

Placing the card back on her desk, she turned and climbed into bed. On the wall beside her hung the other present from her parents. A painting—real oil colors on real canvas in a real frame. It was a painting of a meadow full of brilliant wildflowers and a blue sky. A creek cut through one corner and a willow tree stood off to the left. Her parents had brought it back for her from a trip to Canada, which made it an international work of art. It was tiny, about the length of a pencil, but it was all hers.
Her
painting on
her
wall. It meant that she wasn't just a kid who thought art was interesting. It meant that she was an art collector.

Claudia closed her eyes and pictured herself sitting in the meadow, the breeze blowing her hair, the whisper of the creek tumbling by. She breathed in and almost caught the scent of wildflowers.

Who cared about what happened at the museum? It would all be behind her tomorrow.

She lay down on her pillow and snapped off the light.

*   *   *

Claudia awoke with a start. Her breathing was heavy and her heart thumped against her ribs. She glanced at her clock. It was the middle of the night. Her sheets and comforter were wrapped tightly around her. But something had woken her up. She listened in the darkness. Nothing.

She slipped from bed and peered out the window. The neighborhood below was silent. Silent and dark, except for the occasional pocket of light on a front porch that somehow only accentuated the darkness. Like a scene in a Caravaggio.

She stared at the porch lights a while longer until her heart slowed to a more familiar rhythm. Maybe it was a nightmare that had woken her up. She was glad she didn't remember it.

The dark room begged her to sleep, and she was happy to oblige. She stumbled into bed and pulled up the covers, her weary eyes aimlessly searching for the outline of her painting on the wall. She found it just as her eyelids started to droop. In the back of her mind, she heard a car driving down the street. It passed, filling her room with light like a slow-motion flash from a camera.

And in an instant she was sitting up, entirely awake.

There was
someone
in her painting.

In the blaze of headlights she had seen
someone
there. She was sure of it.
Someone
in a meadow that was supposed to be empty.

She jumped out of bed and snatched a flashlight from her desk drawer. She spun around and clicked it on, her arm pointing straight out toward the painting.

The circle of light landed on the canvas. There, next to the tree, a tiny figure threw up its hands to shield its eyes from the blinding beam.

Claudia shrieked and dropped the flashlight. There wasn't just a
picture of someone
in her painting—there was a
real someone
in her painting.
Someone
who moved.

On an impulse, Claudia launched herself onto her bed. She grabbed the painting by the wooden frame and spun it around on its wire, slamming it face-first against the wall.

She stood there for a few moments, pushing against the back of the painting as though it might recoil off the wall on its own. Then she tentatively let go. The painting remained still.

Claudia snatched up the flashlight and ripped the comforter from her bed. She huddled on the far side of the room, the flashlight shining on the back of the canvas. It looked innocent and ridiculous hanging crookedly on the wall.

Her breath was ragged. What was going on? Two paintings. She had seen people now in two paintings who didn't belong there. Could she really be going crazy? But crazy is what happens to old rich people, not kids in the prime of middle school.

It was ghosts, then. She was being haunted by artistic ghosts. But who would want to haunt her? Nobody paid attention to her.

She pulled the comforter around herself in the darkness, listening to her heart pound in her ears.
I could go sleep in my parents' room,
she thought, but immediately scolded herself.
I'm not five
.

This was absurd. What was she going to do—sleep on the floor all night? Because of … what? Headlights flashed through her window? She imagined something in the shadows of the night?

She slowly stood up, the comforter falling to the floor. No. She had seen something.
Someone
. She raised the flashlight and took a step toward the painting.

Was it the boy? Had it been the same boy just now whom she had seen in the museum?

Another step.

She couldn't just leave the painting there with its face to the wall. The curiosity would drive her … well, she already might be crazy.

Another step.

What if the painting was empty? Would she need to see a shrink? Wouldn't a shrink just try to convince her that this was merely a thought followed by a daydream followed by a nightmare?

Another step. She was close enough to reach out and touch the painting.

And what if it was the boy and he was waiting for her right now in that painting? What would a ghost want with her? Maybe she should wait until her grandpa came by the next day. If he was there when she turned the painting around and they
both
saw the boy …

“No,” whispered Claudia. “This is
my
painting.”

Her chest tightened as she knelt on her bed and reached a trembling hand toward the painting. Panic inched its way to the surface. She swallowed, trying to force it down. But a strange giddiness accompanied it, too, like stepping into a haunted house on Halloween.

Her fingers tingled as she lightly touched the wooden frame. Then in a slow, methodical motion, she turned the painting on its wire.

There in the glow of her flashlight stood the willow tree, and the meadow, and the stream … and that was all. There was no boy. No one at all.

She closed her eyes and placed a hand on her forehead. She let out a long breath. Relief and disappointment shared a place in her otherwise empty stomach. She grabbed her comforter from off the floor and forced a laugh, a quick one, with a shake of her head. She would sleep. She would sleep and forget the whole silly thing.