Behind the Canvas (8 page)

Pim nodded enthusiastically. “Yes, the Art Institute of Chicago will be perfect.”

“Good, good!” crowed Granny Custos. “Go. Go now!”

“Now?” Claudia asked. “But it's eight thirty at night. The museum's already closed. And it's downtown.”

“Small obstacles for a girl taking on Nee Gezicht,” the old woman replied. She struggled to her feet, leaning hard on the table. Once she found her balance, she twisted up all of the loose strands of hair back into her bun. Then she removed the pipe from her mouth and stuck it into the bun to hold it in place.

“Perhaps you're right,” she continued. “My bones are old. Time for bed. You'll find the door, and your grandfather, I suppose, where you left them.” Granny Custos pulled her bulky shawl tighter around herself as she headed down the hallway. She paused for just a moment to turn and say, “Break the staff. Break the curse. Break Nee Gezicht.
Buona fortuna
.”

Claudia watched her disappear down the hallway, wondering if Granny Custos always dismissed her guests like that. She wondered if she should shout a thank-you after the old woman. She looked at the tray of scattered ingredients and the goopy blender. She looked at the yellow mustard bottle in her hands. She looked at the boy in the painting. And she wondered what in the world had she gotten herself into.

 

C
HAPTER
7

“T
HREE PAIRS
of underwear? Mom, I'll be gone for two nights.”

“Underwear is one thing in life you can never overestimate, sweetheart.” Claudia's mom stuffed the underwear next to the other clothes in her backpack.

“Okay. Sure. Great. I think I probably have everything now.” Claudia pulled the zipper over the bulges.

“One more thing.” Her mom grabbed the set of twenty-four colors of nail polish complete with a bonus bottle of nail polish remover and handed it to Claudia. “Take it with you. At least pretend to like your aunt's present when you visit her.”

Claudia rolled her eyes. She had never been a schemer. A visit to Aunt Maggie was the best she could come up with during the late—way too late—hours of the night, but it wasn't a bad bit of scheming. She could make it to the Art Institute downtown without her parents and she would have several days to get in, get it done, and get out. (The details of that part were still a little fuzzy.)

It had taken some sweet-talking to convince her mom to let her spend the long weekend with “that sister-in-law.” But in the end, in her mom's eyes it was better than Claudia's sitting alone in the library or the art museum. Claudia had called Aunt Maggie that morning, and the express bus to downtown Chicago left at noon—in less than an hour.

Claudia looked at the nail polish. “Do I have to take it?”

“Of course you do. Besides, you'll probably need it. All twenty-four colors. If there's anyone who knows how to turn things into a party, it's your Aunt Maggie.”

Claudia crammed the nail polish into her backpack. “Okay. Now I have enough stuff for a trip to Africa. I think I'm good.”

“Socks?”

“Three pairs. Same as the underwear.”

“Toothbrush?”

“And toothpaste.”

“Cell phone?”

“Check.”

Her mom kissed the top of her head. “You're going to have so much fun. We leave for the bus stop in a few minutes.”

As her mom headed down the hallway, Claudia took most of the clothes out of her backpack and stuffed them in her drawers. She tossed the nail polish onto her desk. She replaced them with her art history book and an assortment of sketch pads and pencils and a box of cereal bars she had snuck up from the kitchen. She had no idea what to expect, but she wanted to travel light—only the essentials. Finally she packed Pim's painting—it was empty for now—and the yellow mustard bottle.

“Mom!” she called as she headed for the front door. “Let's go!”

She especially wanted to leave before her grandpa decided to come by. The walk home last night had been awkward. He had peppered her with all sorts of questions on what she had talked about with Granny Custos—was it interesting, and did Granny Custos mention him at all? Claudia had deflected most of the questions pretty well, but he pressed for details toward the end, and she was all too happy to run up the stairs to bed when they got home.

Grandpa definitely had a thing for Granny Custos—which was just plain weird. But did he have any idea that the lady he'd crushed on from way back when was really hundreds of years old? That was just plain weirder.

Her mom came down the stairs with the set of nail polish in hand and fixed Claudia with her freeze-ray look. She pushed the nail polish toward her. “Nice try, kiddo. You're taking them.”

Claudia sighed and shoved them into her backpack.

*   *   *

It wasn't the first time Claudia had ridden the express bus downtown by herself. She had visited her aunt before, and also her dad at his office. But this was the first time she'd taken the bus as part of a deceptive scheme to enter another world. She took a seat near the back of the bus and pulled the cell phone from her pocket, her hands shaking just a little.

“Hi. Aunt Maggie?”

“Hey,
chica
. You on your way?”

“Well, no, not exactly. Something's come up. Something important. I'm really sorry.” Claudia winced with guilt as she said it. “Maybe we can do this another weekend.”

“Oh. How sad. You're not dumping me for a boy, are you? Just asking…”

“Well, no. Not exactly. It's complicated.”

“If boys are involved, it's always complicated. You owe me a rain check. Soon.”

“I promise.”

Claudia tucked the phone back into her pocket and unzipped her bag. The painting, with Pim next to the willow, rested on top of her things. He looked up and smiled.

“How did it go?” he asked.

She nodded. “We're on our way.”

There was no doubt that if her parents found out about this whole excursion, she'd be drowning in trouble. There were so many things that could go wrong—even before she entered the world behind the canvas. What if she couldn't remember how to get to the museum? What if the museum was closed on Saturdays? What if they didn't let kids in on their own? What if Aunt Maggie called her parents?

She leaned back in the narrow seat and watched the scenery fly by like smeared paint. It was hard keeping her eyes open—she could have kicked herself for not getting more sleep the night before. The suburban streets turned into freeway and the fields became shopping centers. The Chicago skyline appeared ahead of them. It stretched its arms wider and wider before the bus and then finally embraced it.

Claudia pulled Pim's painting from the backpack, unable to resist giving him a glimpse of the towering buildings. She tilted it upward and heard him gasp.

“I've seen city streets from gallery windows,” he whispered. “But I've never looked
up
at a city.” Claudia smiled. She had worried that nothing would impress her friend more than the supermarket.

The woman in the seat across from her stood up as the electric sign at the front of the bus lit up with the name of the stop.

What was the street they wanted? Claudia felt a surge of panic as her mind went blank.

What stop was it?

East. East something. Why hadn't she written it down? Her eyes bounced between the buildings they passed and the sign at the front of the bus.

EAST LAKE STREET
scrolled across the sign. That didn't sound right.

EAST RANDOLPH STREET
came next.
Oh, great. They're all
East
streets.
She almost jumped out of her seat, but lost the nerve when no one else stood up to exit the bus.

EAST MONROE STREET.
That's it! I think
. Claudia leaped to her feet and threw her backpack over her shoulder, clutching the painting tightly in her hand. “This is my stop,” she shouted.

“No rush, darling,” the driver said as Claudia bustled past. “We got plenty of time.”

You might,
Claudia thought.
But I only have three days
.

She stepped down to the sidewalk and was immediately swept up in a sea of people. From every direction came a roiling tide of bodies that mesmerized and disoriented her. Frantically she looked around for something familiar as she tried to picture the street map in her head. The stream of bodies broke for a moment and she saw it, half a block away: an immense white stone building stretching out parallel to the street. She recognized it immediately from the visits with her parents.

The Art Institute of Chicago.

Two bronze lions, green with age, guarded the wide stairway that led up to the building from the street. Claudia stared at the closest one as she approached. Her watercolor painting in Granny Custos's house the night before came to mind.
Courage
. That's what the old woman had told her to paint.
One can always use more courage
. Claudia wondered if her mom had left enough room in her backpack—somewhere between the nail polish and the underwear—for a hefty amount of courage.

She reached up and placed a hand lightly on a lion's paw.

“Claudia.”

She jumped at the sound and lifted the painting to see Pim staring at her.

“We can do this,” he said.

“We can do this,” she repeated.

She swung her backpack around and zipped Pim's painting into the mesh pocket in the front so that he was looking out. Threading her arms through the straps so that the backpack rested against her chest, she glanced at the bronze lion above her.
We can do this
. Then she took a step forward.

 

C
HAPTER
8

O
N THE
stairs in front of the museum, Claudia pulled out the cell phone and called her mom. She kept the conversation as brief as possible, letting her mom know that she had “made it there okay.” Her mom told Claudia to give Aunt Maggie a kiss for her. The pang of guilt twisted in Claudia's stomach again as she ended the call and slipped the cell phone into her pocket.

She walked through the doors of the Art Institute of Chicago
11
and joined the line of people waiting to buy tickets. She scanned the information board above the ticket booth. Children under fourteen were free, which was good. She didn't want to spend her return bus money on a museum ticket. But the board also said she needed to be accompanied by an adult. She didn't have one of those.

She stepped out of line and stood by the glass doors. How was this going to work without drawing attention to herself? She couldn't just ask a random grown-up to help her get in. But she needed to be with an adult to enter.

No … she needed the people at the ticket window to
think
she was with an adult. She started to watch the people as they entered the museum. An older man with a handlebar mustache. A few college students. A single middle-aged woman. Some tourists speaking in another language.

There. A couple approached the museum entrance, a baby strapped to the man in one of those baby backpacks. Claudia casually fell in line behind the couple as they entered. She glanced around, but no one seemed to pay her any attention.

Their spot in line came closer and closer to the ticket booth, until finally the woman was at the counter, paying for the tickets. Claudia waved at the baby, making exaggerated faces as though she played with the kid all the time. The baby cooed and reached for her with sticky hands. Claudia stayed close behind as the couple walked by the ticket booth, smiling at the ticket lady as she passed. The ticket lady smiled back and looked at the next patron.

Score a point for our team,
Claudia thought as she moved through the front lobby, past the chatting patrons and the coat checks. She paused for a moment at the foot of an elegant staircase. The modern stairs marched upward, arriving proudly at a platform where they split in two separate directions. On the platform rested an ebony sculpture of a torso, lit gently by the white skylight above.

Despite her stomach tied into knots, she couldn't help but feel a little giddy. She was back in one of the great art museums of the world.

Claudia grabbed a map of the museum layout and climbed the stairs toward the second floor. The landing opened up into room after room of paintings and sculptures.

“Well, Pim,” she whispered. “We have plenty to choose from. How do we decide?”

“To make that decision, you need to understand a little more about this world.”

The world behind the canvas
. Claudia had spent the past weeks trying to pry information out of Pim. Now she wasn't entirely sure that she wanted it.

They passed a security guard speaking with another patron as they entered a large gallery. With a nervous glance over her shoulder, she surveyed the paintings on the wall as Pim spoke quietly. “Each painting that exists here in your world also exists in my world but in reverse.”

“In reverse?”

“Right. Although, it's more of a window than a painting, really. There are hundreds of thousands, even millions, of paintings in your world; there are just as many windows in mine. Each window has a specific location. If I wanted to look out of that painting there of a rainy Paris street, then I would need to leave where I am and travel—walk—to where that window resides. Does that make sense?”

Claudia shrugged. “I guess so. You told me that last night with Granny Custos.” She motioned to the painting filled with French people in long coats with black umbrellas. “And if I enter this painting, am I going to come out behind the canvas in the middle of Paris?”

“No, no. The window-paintings are usually found in random groups, hidden in out-of-the-way places. You would come out where the window-painting is physically located. Places and things are usually located in the same region as their window-paintings, but it's an enormous world. If you went through this painting, you would still have a long walk through my world before you came to this Parisian street.”