Splat! Another Messy Sunday

by Lin Oliver

  Chapter 9

  The cart bounced and rattled over every single cobblestone. David weaved in and out of carriages and pedestrians. Every time he turned the horse even slightly, Luna and I nearly toppled out the side. I could see little fibers of the clothesline starting to snap off. We were hanging on by a thread.

  People were diving out of the way. The police were chasing us, blowing their whistles.

  “Hee ya!” David yelled, spurring the horse on with his heels. The horse shifted into light speed. The air was coming at me so fast, I could barely open my eyes.

  But I could smell. And I’m not kidding, I smelled water. Stinky water.

  As David turned the corner, I caught sight of the river.

  “Over there, by the tree,” I hollered. “We left a boat there.”

  David galloped up to the bank and pulled on the reins sharply. We stopped so suddenly that Luna and I flew out of the cart. We landed in the squishy mud.

  The good news was that our boat was still there, tied to the tree. The bad news was that four policemen had turned the corner and were galloping toward us.

  Luna and I dove into the water and made our way over to the boat.

  “Come on, David!” I cried out.

  “I’ll lead the police away,” he called out. “You guys just get back to the island.”

  “No!” Luna and I both yelled.

  “I’ll come with you another time. Tell my mom to paint something American. I’ll need a hamburger and fries after this!”

  With that, he kicked his horse and cried out, “Hee ya!” The horse reared back on its hind legs and galloped into the streets of Paris. The policemen followed him. David turned back and waved to us. He looked like he was having the time of his life.

  Luna and I jumped into the boat. She picked up the oars and started to row. I flipped over onto my stomach and put my hands in the water, paddling in the same rhythm as Luna. I’m not sure how much it helped, but at least I was doing something. The wind was blowing and there were dark clouds overhead.

  “I think it’s going to rain,” Luna called out. There was a little panic in her voice.

  “No, it won’t,” I called back. “It’s not raining in the painting. The sun is out.”

  The island was not far now. As I looked at it, suddenly it seemed like it was made of little dots of color, just like the painting. I blinked hard and looked again. The river, the sky, the grass—everything was a swirl of tiny dancing spots of paint. I hadn’t noticed any of that when we first landed. I guess I was too focused on finding David.

  The current was very strong, and my arms were burning from paddling. I pulled them out of the water and shook them—and that was when I noticed that my skin looked strange, too. My arms were covered in spots! Pink and gray and brown spots that blended together to look like skin.

  I remembered what David had said in our prison cell. The window is closing. Was that what was happening? Was it five o’clock? Were we becoming part of the painting?

  Out of habit, I looked down to check my Batman watch. It was gone. All I saw was my spotted arm. We reached shore and pulled the rowboat onto the sand.

  “We’re here,” Luna panted. “Stand still and let’s go home.”

  We stood perfectly still and waited. Nothing happened.

  “Oh no!” she said. “Is it after five? Maybe we’re too late!”

  “Let’s try going back to the exact spot where the painting ripped open,” I said.

  We crept over to the grass. There they all were, strolling and eating and relaxing, just like when we’d dropped into the painting.

  “We can’t freak anyone out this time,” I whispered to Luna. “Everything else has to be the same as we found it.”

  “We’ll cover ourselves with these,” Luna suggested.

  She handed me branches that had fallen from a tree. We threw them over us and scooted farther onto the grass, heading to where the black dog and the monkey were standing.

  “This is the spot,” I whispered. “I got a good look at it when Viola was kicking and screaming.”

  Luna and I crouched down next to the monkey and stood very still. The colors were swirling in my eyes. I smiled at Luna to show her I wasn’t afraid.

  “Tiger,” she gasped. “Your face … it’s covered in dots. Is mine, too?”

  I didn’t want to tell her that it was.

  “Hold still,” I said. “Maybe the dots will disappear as soon as we’re home.”

  “But, Tiger,” she cried. “What if they don’t? What if …”

  I didn’t hear the rest. The world started to spin. I saw a monkey’s razor-sharp claw reach out, one nanosecond away from slashing me.

  Time froze. I felt myself fall backward, away from the island, out of that world.

  Everything around me dissolved into tiny points of light. As darkness fell over me, it looked like glitter tossed up into the night sky.

  Chapter 10

  It’s hard to describe what it’s like to return from the painting back into the real world. I can only remember it in little bits and pieces. A flash of color whirling in the darkness. The smell of paint. The feeling of climbing and falling at the same time.

  The first thing I remember clearly is seeing a hole with an orange snout peeking through. Then I saw a black hat with red flowers. And was that a gray bustle I was heading toward?

  Yes. It was Viola and Chives, reaching out to us from the real world.

  Luna and I catapulted out of the hole and into Viola’s living room. I wish I had a video of the whole thing, because I’m sure that I did some gymnastic moves that I’ll never be able to do again. Luna followed me, doing some pretty fantastic moves herself.

  “Where’s David?!” Viola asked the moment we hit the floor.

  Luna reached up and touched her face.

  “Mrs. Dots, do I have dots?” she asked.

  “Of course you don’t,” Viola said. “Now stop talking nonsense and answer my question about David. Is he with you?”

  “We saw him,” I said, checking my own arms. They were dot-free, too.

  “Where did you see him?” Viola asked. “Is he in the painting?”

  “He’s in Paris,” I answered.

  “Why is he there? Why isn’t he here?”

  She ran her hands over the entire surface of the painting, looking for the hole. But the painting had closed back up. It was the same as it had been before the hour of power.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Dots,” Luna said. “But—”

  “But what? What did you do to him?”

  “Madame, let them explain,” Chives said. “Come, sit down.”

  He led her over to a couch. She tried to sit, but the bustle kept getting in the way. She ripped it off and threw it at the wall.

  “David saved us,” I told her. “We were being chased by the police, and he led them away from us.”

  “He saved you last week, too,” Viola said. “You both require too much saving.”

  “He wants to come back,” Luna said. “I know he does. He just couldn’t make it this week.”

  Viola let out such a sad little moan. Luna walked over and sat down next to her on the sofa. I felt a hug coming on, and I wasn’t wrong. Luna got really close to Viola and put out her arms. Viola slid away. It looked like the Luna Special wasn’t going to work this time.

  “I ask you to do one simple thing,” Viola said, “and you can’t do it.”

  “It wasn’t easy in there,” I said, pointing to the painting. “It might look all peaceful and friendly, but it was very dangerous. There were police and mean boys and, at the very end, we almost turned into dots ourselves.”

  Viola clutched her chest. “And what about David? Is he safe? Is he eating enough?”

  “Yes,” I said, “but he misses hamburgers and fries. He wants you to paint something American next time.”

  “Of course. Anything that will bring him closer to home. Anything at all.”

  “We’ll try again, Mrs. Dots,�
� Luna said. “We know how much you want him back.”

  “Tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Whoa, not that soon,” I said. “My head is still spinning from all that time travel.”

  But Viola wasn’t listening.

  “Hamburgers and fries,” she was muttering. “Ah, I know just the thing.”

  She stood up and clapped her hands.

  “Chives, fetch my painting supplies. Stretch a fresh canvas. And, of course, make me my tea, not too hot, but not too cold, either.”

  She barely even noticed when we left the house. We were very tired, so tired that we had both forgotten all about Cooper Starr. But he hadn’t forgotten about us.

  Cooper was sitting alone on the curb by Viola’s house. He looked bored, just tossing pebbles into a puddle by the curb. I wondered what he would think if he knew we had just had the most exciting adventure in the whole world.

  “You know who Cooper reminds me of?” Luna said. “Marcel.”

  “No way. Marcel has brown hair and no braces.”

  “Not the way he looks, Tiger, but the way he acts. All tough on the outside. But sad and alone on the inside.”

  I thought about that. It was Sunday at five o’clock. I was heading home to my family. Every Sunday, my dad cooks his amazing spaghetti and meatballs. I wondered if anyone ever made spaghetti for Cooper.

  “Maybe his life’s hard, too, and he’s sad like Marcel,” Luna said. “I’m going to try to be kind to him.”

  “Can’t hurt to try.”

  When we opened the creaky gate, Cooper sprang to his feet.

  “Hi, Cooper,” Luna said with a big smile. “You’re looking very nice right now.”

  “Hello, loser,” he answered. “How’s your bugs?”

  “On the other hand,” Luna said, “like David says, sometimes a jerk is just a jerk.”

  We laughed all the way back to our duplex.

  When I got home, dinner was ready. We sat down at the kitchen table. My dad brought us each a plate of spaghetti and meatballs. Just as I was taking my first bite, I glanced out the kitchen window. In the shadows I saw Chives, peeking out at us through the curtains of Viola’s house.

  Maggie saw him, too.

  “Look,” she cried, jumping to her feet. “It’s the orange pig!”

  “No such thing, squirt,” I said with a mouthful of meatball. Across the way, I saw the curtain close.

  Maggie was so excited, she jumped up and knocked her plastic plate off the table. The spaghetti went splat, all over the kitchen floor.

  “Oh well,” my mom said. “I guess it’s just another messy Sunday.”

  I laughed to myself. She had no idea how true that was!

  About the Painting

  A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte by Georges Seurat

  Photography © The Art Institute of Chicago

  A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte is a large and beautiful oil painting by the French artist Georges Seurat. It’s the size of a wall mural, measuring over six feet high and ten feet in length. The artist worked on the painting for two years before it was first exhibited in 1886. He continued to make changes to it for another three years after that.

  The painting shows a Sunday afternoon scene on the island of La Grande Jatte. The island is in the Seine River, which flows through the middle of the city of Paris, France. In Seurat’s day, the island was used as a public park for the people of Paris. They would go there by boat, then stroll and picnic and relax. You’ll notice that in the painting, there are many different kinds of people: boaters, soldiers, children, women in fancy clothes, and men in top hats. There are forty-eight people, eight boats, three dogs, and one monkey—so much to look at and enjoy!

  But what is most famous about this painting is the way it is painted—its technique. It uses a style called pointillism. Seurat did not invent the word, but he did invent the technique.

  The traditional painters that came before Seurat used a palette, a flat surface on which they arranged and mixed colors. For instance, they might mix together red and white to make pink, or blue and red to make purple. Then they would take the paint from their palette and apply it to the canvas with brushstrokes or other kinds of marks.

  But Seurat did something quite different. He applied small, separate dots of pure color to the canvas. The entire painting of A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte—every bit—is made up of tiny dots of pure color. It is our eyes and our brains that mix the colors together to form a new color. (By the way, this is also the way a computer screen works; the picture you see on the screen is made up of tiny pixels which your eyes put together to form an image.)

  For example, if you look closely at the scene in the park, you can see that the trees are not just green. They are made of tiny dots of green and blue and brown and yellow and black. Each color is a separate dot. But when you stand back and look at the trees, your eyes blend the colors so that what you see is shades of green. Seurat was known as an artist-scientist because of the scientific way he chose and applied his colors.

  Georges Seurat was born in 1859 in France. He went to art school, and then dropped out to join the army. He was twenty-five years old when he began painting A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte. He died when he was only thirty-one years old. His career as an artist was very short, yet he left behind one of the greatest art masterpieces of all time.

  A Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte hangs in the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois.

  About the author

  Lin Oliver is the New York Times best-selling author of more than thirty books for young readers. She is also a film and television producer, having created shows for Nickelodeon, PBS, Disney Channel, and Fox. The cofounder and executive director of the Society of Children’s Book Writers and Illustrators, she loves to hang out with children’s book creators. Lin lives in Los Angeles, in the shadow of the Hollywood sign, but when she travels, she visits the great paintings of the world and imagines what it would be like to be inside the painting—so you might say she carries her own Fantastic Frame with her!

  About the Illustrator

  Samantha Kallis is a Los Angeles–based illustrator and visual development artist. Since graduating from Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, in 2010, her work has been featured in television, film, publishing, and galleries throughout the world. Samantha can be found most days on the porch of her periwinkle-blue Victorian cottage, where she lives with her husband and their two cats. More of her work can be seen on her website: www.samkallis.com.

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