by Shiloh White
“Nah, living painting sounds stupid. But rest assured, Lucy—I’m really here right now.” A bazillion questions skittered around in my head.
“How are you inside my paintings?” I asked.
“That's not important now, although I'm definitely not possessing your art supplies. After this, your equipment will go back to normal.” Lucy wonders if that means her painting skill too.
“Now listen, I was trying to tell you this earlier, but we need your help.”
“With what? What could you possibly need my help for?”
“It's Dart, from the Depression Force. He's in trouble!”
“What happened? Is he hurt?” Mr. Reggie paused for a moment, and then sighed.
“I couldn't tell ya. One minute he was helping with a task, and the next, he was—What?!” Mr. Reggie looks over to the right, turning the whole painting until I could only see the side of his head.
“Wait, they're on their way here?” Mr. Reggie asked someone apparently off-canvas. “How much time do we have?"
“Who's on their way here?” I asked, panicking a little. “Who are you talking to?”
Before he could answer, there was a knock at my door.
I looked up like a deer in headlights. Who the heck was at my door? And of all times, right now?
“Just a minute!” I told them, trying not to sound as frazzled as I was.
I wondered if I put another canvas next to Mr. Reggie, if I'd be able to paint the person he was talking to and hear what he had to say too.
“That's it? Are you kidding me?” he said to his off-canvas friend before turning back to face me.
“I have to go, Lucy.” Mr. Reggie sighed. “But we'll—"
“Wait, don't go!” I told him. “At least tell me what I can do to help. The Depression Force hasn't contacted me at all and—”
The knock at the door came again, stronger this time. Whoever was outside was growing impatient. I decided not to answer them this time. Little bit more important thing happening.
Meanwhile, Mr. Reggie was making a face like what I told him wasn't the most helpful info.
“Well, if the D.F. does contact you,” Mr. Reggie finally answered, “then don't tell them anything about this."
“What? Why?”
“Because—” Mr. Reggie looked over to the side again and shouted, “Keep your shirt on! I'm comin'!” Then he turned back to me. “Sorry, Lucy. I'll be in touch.” Then he looked down—or at least I think he did. I didn't paint any eyes, but the whole of his skull sort of leaned forward for a moment. “Soon.” he added, looking back up at me. I stared at him, but couldn't find any words to say before any sign of him being a live, moving and talking painting was gone.
To recap, I'd been driven to draw a painting that talked to me, telling me my friend was in danger, and I couldn't do anything about it until my next meeting with said painting. What was I supposed to do? Lug the painting around until he re-appeared or something? What if it happened during school? Or sometime in the car? And it'd only be a matter of time before my family thought I was crazy again. (Which never seems to take very long...)
AUGH! Who did Mr. Reggie think he was, dropping this bomb on me anyway? I picked the canvas up off the easel and began shaking it around. “Talk to me, dang it! You can't just leave like that! I need something to do!” I was holding it above my head, about ready to throw it at the ground or smash it over my knee—either option worked—when I heard a voice outside the door.
“It's been more than a minute; I'm coming in!”
Before I could protest, Alice popped her head, followed by her shoulders and then the rest of her through my bedroom door, hanging onto the door handle for support. Which was fair. I was pretty frazzled, and in the perfect mood to maybe—just maybe, mind you—throw a painting at someone.
“I just wanted to tell you that dinner's—” she stopped and I watched as her eyes traveled to the painting above my head, and my probably-flustered face.
“That bad, huh?” she asked, obviously trying to connect with me over some common interest or something. But I wasn't having that. Time to go typical-teenager mode.
“Oh, this?” I shrugged, glancing at the painting. “I'm just trying to get a different perspective on my art.”
Suddenly, Alice's cheerful expression disappeared behind eyes that spoke volumes. I couldn't hide anywhere from them. (It doesn't matter who your mom is or how horrible she is, you know she can disarm you with this look. It's a mom-superpower.) It made it worse knowing that I got my green eyes from her.
“Right,” she said sarcastically, “and pigs can fly.” She walked over to me and held out her hands for the painting. I hesitated to hand it to her, half because it was the only way I would ever be able to get back to the Dust, and half because I just didn't like her.
“I taught you everything you know, Lucy,” she assured me. “Let me have a look.” I handed her the painting and slumped down on my bed. Every second Alice stared at the painting felt like an eternity. I wished she'd just hurry up and say something—or better yet, just leave.
“It looks real nice, Luce. I like your aesthetic,” she finally said. “Why do you think something is wrong with it?"
“It just doesn't speak to me,” I quipped, smirking at my own humor.
“Maybe you need to look deeper at your inspiration,” she offered, setting the painting back on the easel. “I have the weekend off, if you want any help.” Her smile told me she genuinely wanted to help me with this painting. I couldn't stand it.
“No,” I told her, “it's fine. I got it.” I grabbed Mr.-Reggie-Painting from her and set it back on the easel and—wait. Did it just twitch again? I wasn't sure, but if it did, maybe soon to Mr. Reggie meant like, two minutes. If that was the case, I needed to get my mom out of here quick.
“You sure you don't want my help?” she asked. “I literally have the next 72 hours off."
The most help you could be to me is if you walked right back out that door, and didn't come back for the next 72 hours. Or longer. I don't mind either way. Just leave.
“No, I uh, might not have much time to paint after all, since I still need to prep for my trip.” I said, hoping she would catch the hint.
“Alright,” Alice said, “I suppose you'll be pretty busy for now, then. But how about after you get back? We can go down to the park. Just the two of us; like when you were young. If that's too much, we could always just do a picnic or...” she trailed off, looking for a hopeful answer. Which was not what I gave her.
“A picnic? Are you freaking kidding me, Mom?"
Alice. Not Mom. Alice. Old habits die hard.
“Hey,” she chided, “You watch your mouth. This is still your parents' household."
I stood up and backed away from her, eyes wide and mouth agape.
“You haven't been a parent in this household since I became a teenager, and now you want to come back and be Mrs. Super-Mom, like what you did never happened?"
“Lucy, what is your problem? I don't—"
“My problem?” I scoffed. “You drove Lucas to suicide! I still see him every time I think about you."
“I wasn't the one who drove that car away that night."
“You might as well have been! You got scared and ran away, abandoning the rest of us in the process. Now after years of silence, you invite me on a picnic?” I threw my hands up for added effect. “Why not? I might even join you for dinner."
Alice sat there quietly, taking in my short-lived rant. As upset as I was at her, the silence was a bit unnerving. I was pissed, and I knew I had every right to be...but she was technically still in charge of me. I hoped she wasn't planning to kick me out or something.
Finally she reacted, with a slow nod. Then she pursed her lips and got up off the floor, walking across the room. She stopped in the doorway to look back at me.
“Lucy, I love to argue, but I can tell my words won't get through to you now. I'll leave you to pack for your trip. Dinner's downstairs i
f you want it."
And with that, she walked out of the door.
I walked across the room and closed the door, leaning against it and shoving the air out of my lungs all at once.
Just who did she think she was, saying her words wouldn't get through to me? Just a moment before, she'd seemed ecstatic to offer me painting advice.
That was part of the reason I was so pissed at her. Everything about Alice was flighty and fickle. Most of my memories of her were of her either getting angry or simply doing things out of the blue. Moving back in definitely took the cake. And yet, part of me felt bad for what I said to her. It was all true, but I still felt disgusted with myself sounding so vile. I didn't mean to blow up like that...
No! I had to shake off those thoughts. I had more important things to think about—the painting. I ran back over to the easel, to see if Mr. Reggie had returned, hopefully with more instructions to distract me.
5. Yes, I’m Painting Skulls. No, It’s Not A Phase
No such luck.
I found the painting just as dry as any other non-moving painting. I slumped down on my bed and growled into my pillow. Then, a minute later, I looked at the painting again. Still no answer.
The rest of the weekend carried on like this: waiting for the Mr.-Reggie-Painting to move again, and every time I would look, there'd simply be a painting of a skull staring me back with soulless, empty eye sockets. I began to do more to get him to appear and talk again; touching up the painting; drawing new separate ones in different colors; I even tried repainting the small one in the same green paint on my left arm—all with no success.
Sometime on Saturday, I found myself lying atop my bed wondering what kind of trouble Dart was in. Namely, if it had anything to do with Damian. That guy gave me the creeps. But, if he was up to his tricks again, getting the Depression Force involved this time, maybe her friends had been too busy to contact her. Heck, the first time, I had to practically jump into the middle of the problem in order to help solve it.
And rightfully so, I thought. Damian was a crazed young Depression Agent who I had the misfortune of bumping into last November. The real crazy part was that he wanted to unleash Disorder, this big nasty thing that all depression and mental illness stems from, which was currently locked up, thanks to the Depression Force.
Now, in order to set it free, he single-handedly tried to kill both me and my siblings...and almost succeeded. Chloe walked away with a coma on her health records and the strange gray streak of hair on her head. I barely survived, myself, probably becoming just a little more crazy in the process. And my brother Lucas...well, I wasn't really sure. The last time I saw him, he looked like a ghost. I ran into him while coming back from the Dust to Earth. Since then, I had no clue what happened. I hoped Damian hadn't gotten to him.
I shivered, finding an image of his insane green eyes staring at me. If he could do all that to us on his own, I feared for what he'd do if he had Dart in his possession and no one else knew...
Nope. Not gonna think about that, I decided. If I couldn't help right now, then there was no use driving myself mad about the possibilities. I mean, maybe Dart just had some top-secret Depression Force Officer mission. But then, how would Mr. Reggie of all people—err, skulls, know about it?
With that question, I felt my head start to produce steam. It was time to take a break.
I went to the restroom and washed my face. I could hear Chloe laugh downstairs. A moment later, Dad joined in. I dried my face with a towel and stood at the top of the stairway, smiling like an idiot. I was just glad they'd ended up spending time together. For a second, I thought about joining them. Then the sound of Alice's laughter weaved into theirs, and it was enough to push me across the second-floor hallway and into my room.
I was about to pick up my paintbrushes and have another go at Mr.-Reggie-Painting, when my backpack buzzed on the floor near my bed. I grabbed it and fished around for my phone, pulling it out to take a look. Staring back up at me were a bunch of missed texts from Anna. Each one was prefaced with the same message: “Lucy, I need your help! Please, it's urgent!” Then the rest of the message trailed off the three little dots.
I sat down on my bed and quickly opened to one of the texts, getting about halfway through before I found myself gritting my teeth. I closed the phone screen and threw the device at my pillow before I could get any madder.
Anna wanted advice on her boyfriend.
Just for your sake, I won't explain the million-year-long version of Anna and Zeke's meeting. It's totally mushy and fake and honestly, pretty disgusting. I will tell you that Anna has been dating that guy at least five weeks now, so she had four weeks and five days more experience than I did. (That's a story I really don't feel like re-telling, so I won't.)
Honestly, the more I thought about it, the more flustered I got. Anna could have asked literally anyone else for relationship advice and get a better answer. I didn't have answers, and I didn't want to. The best advice I could offer was no advice. Which wasn't exactly a bad idea. She dared to ask me for advice on a topic way too sensitive for me to bring up, just like me disappearing. Why should I answer her?
With this newfound energy, I picked up my paintbrush from the stand underneath the easel. But before I began to paint, I did a mental double take of my phone. I was pretty sure I noticed something that didn't sound right. I dove across the bed, digging the phone out from the pillows and looking at the screen again, and sure enough. It was seven at night. On Sunday.
I'd been so obsessed; I'd painted the whole weekend away. Which meant I totally neglected the other phenomenon that had happened on Friday: the field trip to D.C.
The bus left in...twelve hours from this minute and I didn't even pull out a suitcase yet. I dropped the paintbrush and the phone and went to the closet, laying out a bunch of outfits. Among them, I found the DPHQ hoodie Halsey gave me. I stared at the red & gold letters, before deciding to bring it. At the back of my closet, I found a dusty purple suitcase big enough to hold everything.
From there, I moved on autopilot; folding and setting things into the suitcase. All the while, I couldn't help but returning to the Dart problem and getting upset all over again. He was out there in trouble while I folded a pair of black jeans.
I lugged the suitcase over to the door of the room, laying Halsey's hoodie on top of it. Then I slumped into bed, wondering how I would even catch a lick of restful sleep with the emotions swirling inside my head: fear, worry, anger...and wonder.
6. Too Early For Teen Drama? Psh, As If.
Somehow I knew I managed to get some sleep because I was tore away from it by a tremor. Chloe had her hands wrapped around my arm, shaking me back and forth and whispering “wake up” over and over.
“I'm up, I'm up!” I told her, rolling over and pushing myself up into a sitting position. Did I sleep through my alarm? Was that why Chloe was here? I grabbed my phone off my nightstand to see what time it was, and it read 5:00a.m.
A whole half-hour before my alarm was primed to go off.
“Chloe,” I said through my teeth as calmly as possible, “why did you wake me up so early?”
“Because we're going to see you off for your field trip,” Chloe answered. “Duh.”
Duh isn’t bringing back my half hour of sleep, I thought. I slowly rose to my feet and stretched, my mouth opening in a wide yawn.
“What about Ali—I mean, what about Mom?” I asked. When I remembered, I tried to refer to her as Mom around Chloe. No need for her to pick up my habits when she could barely remember Mom leaving.
“That's why I came to wake you up now,” Chloe said.
“Well,” said a deeper voice, slowly pushing himself into my room, “That's why I told her to come wake you up.”
“Yeah, yeah, I guess part of it was Dad's idea,” admitted Chloe.
“What was Dad's idea?” I asked, staring at Dad lean against my bedroom doorway. He opened his mouth for a moment to yawn. Chloe snickered to herself. When he was d
one, he began to explain.
“Your mother has the day off, and if we're quiet, we can leave without waking her up.” I broke into a melancholic smile. A whole gaggle of emotions swarmed me; the crankiness of losing sleep, the appreciation of my family looking out for me, and just a little bit of guilt leaving my mom home. But that last one quickly diminished. No, I'm not heartless. If you knew her like I did, you wouldn't want to have her seeing' you off anywhere.
“Okay,” I decided, “let's go."
✽✽✽
In order to be as quiet as possible, the process of getting ready to go and putting all of my luggage in the car took about fifteen more minutes than it needed to. 6:11a.m., we rolled up at the school parking lot.
A lot of the class was already there, either saying goodbye as their families drove off, or leaning against the bus waiting to board. I grabbed my art bag and opened the car door.
“Thanks for the ride,” I said. “I'll see you next week.” Then I rose up out of the car, my art bag in tow, and went to open up the trunk, but Dad hopped out of the car and opened it first.
“Let me help with that.” he said.
“Thanks,” I said as he handed it to me. Then he shut the trunk with a sigh and looked at me with tired eyes.
“Lucy, I know you've been...solid lately, but please be careful out there.” he said. “A different environment can either do wonders for a person's mind, or it can freak them out, you know? I'm not saying that you'll freak out. I'm just saying...” he stopped, trying to find the right words.
“I'll be okay, Dad. I promise.”
He smiled at me, the same tired look in his eye, and pulled me into a hug. After I got him to let go, he said goodbye and got back in his car to get Chloe to school. I waved as they drove away, and then lugged my suitcase over to the trunk of the bus. Waiting to meet me there was an upset Anna.
“Why didn't you return any of my calls or texts?” she asked, the anger in her voice strong. “Did you run away for the weekend and leave your phone behind again?” she jabbed. “Or was it—"
