Chapter 12
Ten Weeks Ago
“Merde!” I said, scrubbing with the pick into the padlock Noor had fastened to the park bench.
I’d been trying for twenty minutes to get all the pins to align along the shear line for just long enough to turn the cylinder and unlock the stupid thing.
Noor and Martine had shown me a video of how it looked when the pins lined up.
I understood what I was supposed to do. I could see it in my mind; the mechanics were simple, but I still couldn’t make it work.
“How come this is so easy for you and Martine?” When they’d shown me how to do it, they’d both picked it in about ten seconds, as smoothly as if they’d used a key.
Noor looked up from her sketchbook. “You must fail many times first.”
“That’s not really useful advice.”
She did a one-shoulder shrug, like, Sorry, that’s all I got.
“You are teaching your hands to think how they must manipulate the pick,” Martine clarified. “The more you do the actions, even if they are not successful, the more your hands become comfortable making the motions. Then one day you pick a lock.”
“When you’re sixty,” I grumbled.
“Perhaps sooner,” Noor said. “When I started to learn, I watched every lock-picking video I could find. I practiced for hours with my ear against the lock so I could hear how it sounded when the pins move into place.”
Martine rolled her eyes. “It doesn’t sound like anything.”
Noor smiled wryly. “Yes, I learned that. Finally, I asked Youssef to teach me. He is very good at locks, and he is a patient teacher. He would say, ‘Do this and do that,’ and then tell me a story about someone he knew or one of his teachers while I did what he had said. Then he would say, ‘When you do that, try it this way,’ and he would tell me another story. It was nice. He did not make me feel stupid, and his stories distracted my brain so that my hands could learn what they needed to do.”
“Maybe a story would help me.” I said, pulling the pick and wrench out of the lock and shaking out my hands. Noor tipped her head up and stared at the sky through almost-closed eyes. I rolled my head and shoulders to loosen them, then put the wrench back into the lock.
“Okay.” She paused, thinking. “I had my first affair of the heart when I was six.”
I burst out an incredulous laugh. “That is such a French thing to say.” I loosened my grip on the pick and kept raking the pins. Noor raised an eyebrow at me, and I said, “Don’t tell me: Your eyes met across a crowded playground, and he toasted you with his juice box.”
Martine laughed as Noor shook her head. “No no no.” She smiled. “He was not real. You know Astérix et Obélix?”
I continued to noodle the lock. “The graphic novels, right? With the smart little Gaulois warrior guy and the little dog and the big strong friend who likes to carry huge rocks around? Nick’s little sister loves them.”
Noor nodded.
“Don’t tell me you had a thing for Astérix.”
She shook her head. “Panoramix.”
It took me a minute to remember which one he was. There were a zillion characters in the series. “The druid?”
“His beard and mustache are very satisfying to draw. I liked that he made magic potions. I spent many hours teaching myself to draw him and all the others. I would make up stories and draw my own bandes dessinées.”
“That’s how you got started? Drawing fan-art graphic novels?”
She nodded. “I put people I knew into the stories. I gave Panoramix an apprentice who looked like me—Remix. My friends liked her better than him, so I gave Remix her own adventures.” She glanced at my hands, which had stopped scrubbing the cylinders. I gave her a guilty smile and got back to work.
“How did you start doing street art?” I asked, keeping my hands moving.
She sighed. “Some boys from my school pulled the scarf of my friend and called us names when we were walking home. People saw them do it, but nobody told them to stop. We were so scared. Those boys could have hurt us, and no one would have done anything. It is normal. That summer, I went to a street-art festival, and I saw people making big art about important things. It was a lightning bolt. I thought that if I could make big art about girls in headscarves, we would feel strong instead of scared.”
My phone buzzed with a text. When I saw who it was from, I shivered and shoved the phone back into my pocket without reading it.
Martine noticed my shiver. “What is it?”
I made a face. “Le Bec. He keeps texting. He said he was joking, and then he said I hurt his feelings, so of course he lashed out. And then he did a piece on the side of our building and texted me a photo of it and said it was an apology, but it’s just…
” I grimaced. “It’s just too much.” He’d painted an enormous, cinnamon-colored pigeon version of me.
Its eyes were the exact hazel color of mine.
Its smile was my selfie smile—slightly aloof, not too wide, with the corners barely turned up.
It clutched a phone with my green-and-yellow U of O hard case, and the shoes on its pigeon feet were my favorite platform Vans.
I didn’t like knowing he’d been observing me so closely.
I didn’t want to be one of his pigeons. “He keeps asking what I think of it. I know he wants me to say I love it, but it looks just like me, and it feels creepy, not apologetic.” I sighed.
“I don’t know; am I missing some cultural cue—”
“No,” Noor said.
“What he did was terrible,” Martine agreed. “You were having a discussion, and he attacked you. That is not a joke or a misunderstanding. It is not how you say, ‘You hurt my feelings.’ ”
Noor snorted. “He is not apologizing, Tosh. He never apologizes. He says he is sorry that you have made him apologize to you until you begin to believe that you are the one who has hurt him. And he ‘apologized’ with a big, public piece that will bring him more publicity. This is not about you. It is about him.”
I scrubbed viciously at my lock. “I should block his number.” The girls nodded, like, Wise choice, just as my lock clicked open. I’d done it. “Look—” I said as Noor’s phone buzzed.
She looked up from it, grinning. “Youssef finished the video.”
“Show it to us,” Martine said. We clustered around her, and she pressed Play.
He’d done a beautiful job, interspersing time-lapsed footage of us working—so you saw the image grow in front of your eyes—with lingering shots of some of the pieces that made up the installation.
He captured Noor as she was building Mona Lisa’s face out of chess pieces, cups, an old handheld video game, and an assortment of scarves.
The slow sideways look Noor turned on the camera just before she took out her spray can and made it come alive was a clear challenge to other artists. Top this, it said.
We applauded when we saw the closing sequence.
We’d finished our sections one after another and stepped back in a kind of extended reveal, leaving the focus on Noor.
She made a last pass with the spray paint, putting a glint in Mona’s eye.
Then she stepped back, took a long look at her creation, nodded to herself, and turned to face the camera.
Youssef held the shot for a triumphant moment, then the screen faded to white.
“Formidable!” Martine said.
“So amazing,” I agreed as we hugged Noor.
“It looks so big, so important,” Noor said, sounding pleased and also stunned. “I did not think it was this powerful.”
“It is,” I said. “You have to post this right away so everyone can see it.” She nodded, already uploading.
Then we took her to the nearest patisserie to celebrate, treating her to her favorite pastry: a decadent, chocolaty opéra.
We watched the video’s viewer count climb until we finally had to tear ourselves away and head home for dinner.
I didn’t realize until I got home that I hadn’t given Noor back the lockpicks she’d lent me.
The “Mona Lisa (Headscarf Version)” video went viral Sunday night, racking up several million views. On Monday, Paris Match contacted Noor for an interview. Even I knew how big a deal that was. The magazine had a prominent spot on every news kiosk in the city.
“Do you think this interview will help you to get a spot on Le Mur?” I asked. I’d gone to meet Nick after school, and she’d exploded out of the building, waving her phone, so excited she was babbling. It had taken a few minutes before we could get anything comprehensible out of her.
“I think,” she said, “that Le Mur is not so important now. I will get more exposure from even a small article in Paris Match. But the best thing is that now so many people will know that the most famous painting in France is a portrait of a woman wearing a headscarf. I made a difference. I made people see us.” She was laughing and crying, and Nick, Martine, Youssef, and I engulfed her in a huge hug.
The magazine interviewed her Monday, and two days later, she was on the newsstands and the Paris Match website.
Youssef suggested taking some publicity shots of her in front of the installation for her social feeds.
After the success of the video, he was coming up with all sorts of ideas to raise her profile.
Noor bounced up and down, delighted by his suggestion.
We all wanted to go see the installation again, so we went with them.
While Youssef photographed Noor, we stood nearby and watched the reactions of passersby.
My favorite reactions were from the girls and women wearing headscarves: their double-takes when they saw it, their squeals and selfies; their smiles; the way they walked a little taller after seeing it.
An image of Le Bec brandishing a Champagne bottle the night he was celebrating his piece on Le Mur swam unwelcome into my mind.
It had been fun, being there while he celebrated his triumph, but it was more fun standing here watching people see Noor’s piece for the first time.
When Youssef finished the shots with her and with the strangers who hugged her because she’d made them feel big, he gestured us in front of the piece.
We slung our arms around each other, full of the joy of having helped Noor make this amazing thing.
Someone shouted, “Qu’est-ce qui se passe?” Noor’s smile collapsed, and Le Bec stomped up the sidewalk toward us, pale with anger. I felt a sting of guilt, as though my thinking of him had conjured him, and I faded behind Nick, my heart racing.
“What is going on?” he demanded again.
“We are taking photos of the new piece that Noor made,” Martine said. “Did you see the article about her in Paris Match?”
“Yes,” he snapped. “And the video, and all the comments on her TikTok.” He glared at Noor. “You now have more followers than I do.”
“It is not a competition,” she said.
He stuck his finger in her face. “You are not more important than I am. In fact, you are nothing. You would not be an artist without me. I taught you everything you know.” His voice rose. “Without me, you would be invisible.”
“Yes, you taught me everything you know,” she said. “You did not teach me everything I know.” I was amazed at how calm she was.
He inhaled as though she’d slapped him. “The only reason Paris Match interviewed you is because you are exotic. That is all. You are a mediocre artist taking attention away from the real artists. Nobody would look at your work if you did not wear that thing.” He snatched at her scarf, yanking it askew.
Noor gasped and flinched away, and we circled her protectively.
“Do not touch me.” Her voice shook with anger.
“Take it down.” He pointed at Noor’s piece. “Take it down or I will.”
“No,” she said. He stepped closer, his face reddening.
“I will break you,” he said.
Youssef and Nick put their bodies between the two of them.
“You need to leave,” Youssef said. “Now.” Martine and I flanked Noor, and I hoped she didn’t feel me trembling.
I reached up and took hold of Madame Dupuy’s pendant for reassurance.
Le Bec scowled back at us. I was afraid he’d turn this into a fight.
Finally, he took one step back, then another, his eyes locked on Noor.
People jostled him, but he ignored them.
Noor stared back at him, confident. When he’d retreated a couple of meters, he turned suddenly and waded into the flow of pedestrians, pushing them aside roughly.
I was still nervously sliding Madame Dupuy’s pendant back and forth, but I couldn’t hear the zing it made as it rode the chain. I pulled my hand away. On either side of the silver heart I held, the two ends of the chain dangled. My anxious yanking had broken the clasp.
“He did not have to be happy for me,” Noor said softly. “I do not expect that. But he did not need to attack me.” I felt horrible for her. He’d ruined her moment on purpose. “I think I will go home now,” she said. “I have to get ready for work.”
As we said goodbye, I whispered, “You did something amazing here today. Don’t let Le Bec ruin it.”
She just gave me a sad smile.