From my box, I took out a little plastic dish which must be for mixing the paints. I squeezed out a few centimetres of bright blue paint and a bit of white, and I used my brush to swirl them together. It was quite thick so I added a splash of water from the bottle. The blue lightened, just like the colour of the sky, then I pressed my brush against the canvas and began to paint.
Handprints
I was aware of the distant chatter of my classmates and the sound of Marika’s heels tapping on the wooden floor as she walked around the room, but for most of the lesson I was utterly absorbed in what I was doing. The white vapour trails in the sky faded quickly so I had to try and remember what they looked like as I dabbed my brush on to the canvas. It was now entirely blue apart from the two wispy white lines cutting across the middle.
“Is that it?” said Niall, looking over at my picture. “That’s so boring.”
“You can’t just paint the sky,” said Kiki. “You’ve got to put something in it!”
I could see Marika walking around the class, nodding and smiling at everyone else’s work. This was a disaster.
I picked up my picture and held it out at arm’s-length to get a better look. This was the first proper painting I’d done in high school. We’d spent most of the term making a woodland collage using scraps cut out from magazines. I decided to quickly paint a tree on one side, but when I put it back on the floor, I realized that I’d accidentally made handprints in the wet paint on either side of the canvas. You could clearly see my thumbs and the outline of my hands.
I’d ruined it.
I grabbed my brush and dipped it into the blue paint, and was just about to paint over the handprints when someone shouted:
“Stop!”
I froze, my brush poised in the air. I looked up as everyone turned around to see what was going on. Marika stood in front of the window, staring directly at me, the sunlight behind her making a yellow, heavenly glow around her head.
“Don’t touch it,” she said, her eyes wide and bright. She lowered her voice. “H-have … have you … painted before?”
I shook my head. A great blob of paint fell off my brush and on to the canvas. I went to rub it in but she waved her hand at me.
“Leave it. Leave it just as it is. Put your brush down.”
I looked around the class. Everyone was watching.
“What’s your name?” asked Marika.
“Cole,” I said.
“Cole?” she repeated, crouching down to study the picture more closely. Her wide-legged trousers brushed against the side of my picture, leaving a streak of blue paint near the hem. Those trousers probably cost more money than my mum earnt in a month.
“Yes. Erm … Cole Miller,” I said, gulping.
“I can see it. I can see exactly what it is you were trying to do,” she said.
“You can?” I croaked. I looked down at the canvas again. The canvas covered in bright blue paint with two handprints on either side – a totally wasted hour. I braced myself for a telling-off and for everyone to start jeering.
Marika nodded.
“This is you, isn’t it? The blue is you. You’re holding your life … your world in your hands.”
I looked back at the painting. She must have been talking about my fingerprints on the sides.
“Oh, that’s just where I picked it up and accidentally g—”
“It’s … it’s …” interrupted Marika, placing her hand on her heart. “It’s incredible. It’s telling me a story.”
“It is…?” I said. She nodded. I could see Niall’s face behind her, his chin practically dangling down to his chest.
“It’s a picture that really speaks to me. It makes me want to ask questions.”
“Right.” I swallowed.
Just then, Marika’s PA walked into the classroom. Marika stood up and clicked her fingers, and he hurried over.
“Declan. Get this painting into the car. We’re taking it back to the gallery.”
Declan looked at the canvas.
“We are?” he said, frowning.
“You are?” I said. Marika looked at me.
“Yes. But first, you need to sign it.” She pointed to the left-hand corner of the canvas.
“What do I put?” I said. I’d never signed anything in my life. Marika smiled at me.
“Just put what comes naturally,” she said.
I stared at the painting, dipped my brush into a darker shade of blue and did a curly C in the corner.
“That’s perfect,” Marika said, still smiling. “Would you like to give it a title as well?”
I swallowed and stared at the picture.
“Um. ‘A Sky in Blue’?” I said, gritting my teeth. It sounded like a dreadful title to me.
“That’s perfect,” said Marika again, nodding to Declan, who reached down and picked the canvas up using just the tips of his fingers. It looked like he was used to handling wet paintings.
“Be careful, Declan. That picture is very precious,” said Marika before he headed towards the car park. I was stunned. My painting? Precious?
“Um … what’s going to happen to it?” I said.
Marika placed her hand on my shoulder and whispered into my ear.
“We’ll see, shall we?” she said with a mysterious smile.
The Butterfly Game
When I got home from school, Dad was putting on his coat to leave.
“Could you mind Mabel for an hour, Cole? Your mum has got a meeting after work and I need to go and talk to the bank about something.”
I was too afraid to ask what he needed to discuss with them. I guess with Mum losing her job it was probably going to be something about not having enough money in our account.
“Do I have to?” I said. I really didn’t like having to look after Mabel. She could be quite funny at times, but she could be scary if she had one of her tantrums. When Mabel lost it, she really, really lost it. And she always wanted to play this game that she got for her third birthday over and over again. She called it the Butterfly Game. I thought it was stupid and babyish.
“I won’t be long,” said Dad, putting his jacket on. “And Mum will be back in an hour, but until then, don’t answer the door. Don’t let Mabel eat any biscuits and don’t leave her on her own. OK, Cole?”
Mabel danced beside me on tiptoes. She knew what was coming next: an hour with me in charge meant she could get away with more than she ever could with Dad.
Dad kissed the top of Mabel’s head and managed to plant one on me too as I was too slow to duck out of the way. As soon as the front door closed, Mabel grabbed my hand and pulled me towards the kitchen.
“Biscuit, Cole. Biscuit!”
“Dad just said you can’t have any biscuits, Mabel. Didn’t you hear him?” I said. She ignored me as she dragged a stool to the tall cupboard where all the sweet stuff was hidden out of her reach. She climbed up and managed to prise open the door with her tiny fingers. I stood beside her, ready to catch her if she fell.
“Mabel, are you listening to me? Dad said no biscuits. You’ll get told off.”
There was a packet of ginger nuts sitting right at the front. Mabel’s face slowly spread into a smile. It was the kind of smile that the Joker did when he knew he’d lured Batman into a trap.
“Look, Cole. Ginger nutters!” she said. “They’re open! Please?”
We both knew that she couldn’t reach the pack and needed me to get them for her. I stared at her for a moment and her face began to morph into a scowl. She started to breathe fast, sniffing in and out through her nose. If I didn’t let her have a biscuit soon then she was going to go into a full meltdown.
“OK,” I said, grabbing the packet. “You can have one. But don’t tell Dad, OK?”
Mabel nodded, her fingers scrabbling inside the plastic. She managed to get a biscuit in each hand and clambered down from the stool.
“Butterfly time, Cole! Butterfly time!”
She ran to the bottom of the stairs as I put the
biscuits back. I did it as slowly as I could but it didn’t take long for Mabel to reappear with soggy crumbs around her mouth.
“Come on!” she said, grabbing my hand. I wrenched it free from her sticky grip.
“Aren’t you bored of that game by now?” I asked. Mabel’s face dropped and she looked up at me through her dark lashes.
“Not bored,” she said. She stuck out her bottom lip and screwed up her eyes.
“Just one game then, OK?” I said. “And I really mean it this time.”
Mabel grinned, then turned and charged to the hallway and up the stairs.
When I got to Mabel’s room she was already tipping the battered cardboard box upside down on to the floor. When she’d opened it on her birthday I knew straight away that it had come from a charity shop. The box was bashed up and there was a rip on the top where someone had picked off a sticker. Mabel didn’t care. We were both used to second-hand things.
I sat cross-legged on her thin carpet.
“Cole help Mabel?” my sister said. I huffed and fixed the nets together while she fiddled with the little blue elephant. It had a long plastic trunk, and inside its body was a fan. You pressed the top of the elephant’s head and the fan began to whir and lots of fabric butterflies shot out of its trunk and up into the air. The idea was to catch as many of the butterflies as you could in the nets. Like I said, it was a stupid game.
Mabel bashed the elephant on the head to turn it on. Every time a butterfly appeared from its trunk she’d say, “Another one!” as if she was seeing it for the very first time, rather than the millionth. She jumped around and tried to catch as many as she could in her little net. I stayed where I was and caught any that floated near me. I had to be careful not to win. If I did then that would also mean a meltdown. Eventually, butterflies stopped appearing from the trunk, so Mabel whacked it on the head to turn it off and the fan stopped whirring. She peered into my net, then into hers.
“Mabel won!” she shouted, giving me a huge grin.
“Yay,” I said weakly. “How about we watch TV now?”
She shook her head and her blonde hair fell in front of her eyes.
“No,” she said firmly. “More butterflies.”
An hour and seventeen games later, I heard the front door open.
“Mum’s home, Mabel! Come on, let’s go and see her!”
Mabel stared at me for a second, then threw her net on to the floor and trotted out of her room. Freedom at last. I put everything back into the battered box and followed my sister downstairs.
“Hi, Mum,” I said. Mum smiled as she pulled her shoes off.
“Hello, you two. Having fun?” Mabel did a little dance and then skipped off to the kitchen.
“How’s everything? Have they changed their mind about the museum closing down?” I asked. The weird art class with Marika Loft had taken my mind off Mum losing her job for a while, but seeing her now brought it all flooding back. My stomach began to tighten.
“I’m afraid not,” she said, sitting on the bottom of the stairs. “We’re looking into finding new homes for all the exhibits now. It’s so sad.”
She rubbed at the sole of her foot. She looked very tired.
“Are you sure there isn’t something you can do to keep it open?” I said.
“Yes, Cole. The decision has been made. Although Dr Sabine suggested a lifeline: she said that all we need to do now is to decipher ‘An Enigma in Oil’. That’ll solve all our problems!” She gave a halfhearted smile and took a long breath.
“ ‘An Enigma in Oil’?” I said. “What’s that?”
“It’s an old painting that was given to the museum back in the early 1900s by an artist called Basil Warrington-Jones, who was one of the main benefactors back then. There was a great deal of excitement at the time because it came with a message: whoever solves four hidden clues in the painting will find an incredible treasure. Everybody went crazy, trying to work out where the treasure was hidden, but no one ever managed it.”
“When was the last time someone tried?” I asked. Mum frowned.
“Ohhh, it must have been decades ago. The 1960s, I think. The trouble is that no one really knew where to look for the treasure: there wasn’t a first clue to start people off on the trail. It could be anywhere! I reckon it was just an elaborate hoax thought up by the artist to drum up publicity for his painting.”
Mum sighed and got up.
“I’m going to start dinner,” she said, squeezing my arm. “Try not to worry, Cole.”
Mum and Dad stayed up late that night. I could hear their voices murmuring beneath my bedroom floor. I couldn’t make out what they were saying, so I slowly made my way out on to the landing.
“The bank said they can’t help,” said Dad. “I’ve been to the job centre but there’s nothing.”
“What will we do, Doug?” said Mum, her throat catching. “I can’t face another winter in this house without any heating. It’s not fair on the children.”
When our boiler did decide to work, the radiators only ever got lukewarm. Last winter an engineer had said that the whole heating system ideally needed replacing, which would cost thousands.
I could hear the sound of Mum beginning to cry and Dad’s soothing hushes. I didn’t want to hear any more so I crept back into my room.
I got into bed and shifted lower down my mattress to where the bedsprings didn’t dig in quite so much. I closed my eyes and thought about the old painting in the museum. The one that led to treasure. I felt a small fizzle of excitement deep down inside my churned-up stomach.
Maybe the time had come for someone new to try and solve “An Enigma in Oil”? And maybe that someone was me?
Getting Mason On Board
The next morning, I woke up to Dad thumping on the boiler again. I texted Mason to knock for me on his way to school, and then I had a really quick, cold shower. It’s surprising how quickly you can wash when the water is so freezing it hurts.
Mum had left for work already and Dad said she would be really busy for the next few weeks, trying to find new homes for all of the exhibits.
At ten past eight the doorbell rang and I shouted bye and ran out the door. Mason was late, so we’d have to walk quickly.
“Sorry. I overslept,” he said, as we headed down the road. “Dad didn’t get back from Tokyo until midnight and I stayed up to see him. He was tired though, so he wasn’t very chatty.”
I took a sideways look at him but he was just staring down at the pavement.
“He got me this. Look!” He pushed up the sleeve of his coat to reveal a jet-black glossy watch. He tapped the face and it flashed neon-blue.
“Cool,” I said. “Haven’t you already got a watch?”
“Yeah… But this one’s a newer model,” he said, pulling his sleeve back down. I glanced at my own wrists. I wasn’t wearing a coat and my school jumper was frayed at the cuffs. I quickly rolled the sleeves up to hide them, even though it was cold. Mason watched me.
“I’ve got a couple of jumpers I’ve grown out of if you want them?” he said. “I can check if Mum has thrown them out or not.”
“Nah. Don’t worry about it,” I said.
“It’s no big deal,” said Mason. “I can bring them in tomorrow.”
I could feel my face beginning to burn.
“It’s fine,” I said sharply, looking away. Mason didn’t say anything else and we walked in silence for a while. We turned down the road where our school was.
“Hey, Mason,” I said. “When was the last time you went to the museum?”
“Where your mum works?” said Mason. Not for much longer, I thought. “Not since the time we went in primary school. About six years ago? Why?”
“It’s closing down. Mum is going to lose her job.”
Mason frowned. “Oh no. That’s too bad. Sorry, Cole.”
I shrugged. “I know. But I’ve got an idea. Do you remember seeing an old painting in there? One with things to solve hidden in it?”
Mas
on thought about it for a bit.
“Nah, I just remember the mummies and the gift shop,” he said. “I bought a flashing yo-yo.”
“Well, my mum told me about the painting yesterday. It’s like a treasure hunt and there’s a prize at the end.”
Mason frowned.
“And no one’s solved it?” he said.
“No. Lots of people tried years ago,” I said. “But now everyone has just forgotten about it.”
Mason laughed. “There’s probably a reason for that. Like maybe it’s impossible?”
“Or maybe it isn’t?” I said, smiling.
Mason sniffed. “What’s this painting called, anyway?”
“ ‘An Enigma in Oil’,” I said. “And I’m going to solve it.”
“Ha! Of course you are,” he scoffed, but he stopped laughing when he saw my face. “Seriously?” he asked as we walked through the school gates and into the playground.
I nodded. “Why not? And you’re going to help me.”
“Am I?” he said. “What makes you think we can solve it?”
There was a thump from behind us.
“Ooopf. Watch it, Mozart!” shouted Niall.
“Sorry!”
It was Isla. It looked like she’d accidentally crashed into Niall. She had her school bag over one shoulder, her PE kitbag on the other and her cello case in her arms. As she walked towards us, the cello slipped and she had to duck down to stop it falling to the floor.
“The handle’s broken on the case,” she said. “Sometimes I wish I played a piccolo rather than this huge thing!” She started to laugh, but it came out like a snort. Mason stared at her and I smiled. She wasn’t someone that we hung around with, and she quickly put her head down and rushed off.
Mason turned back to me. “She’s so strange. Anyway, about that painting…”
“Someone’s got to solve it, so why not us?” I said. “I need to find that treasure, Mason. I need to help Mum and Dad.”
The Boy Who Fooled the World Page 4
