Chapter 19
Irun faster when I see him.
“Noah,” I cry as I slam into his chest.
Then his arms are around me and he’s spinning me in a quick circle before the brush of his lips sends a kaleidoscope of butterflies fluttering in my stomach. I haven’t seen him in over a month, since my last night at home before I left for Lizbeth. Being in his arms again feels practically divine.
“I’ve missed you,” he murmurs against my lips.
I pull back far enough to flash him a smile. “Ditto.”
“Where’s my family?” I ask, noticing he’s alone. “You took them up on their offer to carpool for the festival, right?”
“Yeah. Everly had an accident on the ride here, so your parents are changing her. They’ll be here in a minute.”
“Good.” I smirk. “Then we have a minute to ourselves.”
I push him against the cold concrete exterior of my dorm building and kiss him until I feel dizzy. When I finally pull back, Noah’s ears are pink and his blue eyes are sparkling.
“Are you excited for the festival?” he asks breathlessly.
Evading the question, I answer, “I’m excited you’re all here.”
“I can’t wait to see your painting for the competition.”
My stomach drops.
Even though Remi is expelled now and my friends successfully helped me express myself through art again, I found I was still uneasy while painting the piece for the competition.
The composition planning didn’t come as naturally as it usually does.
I labored over it. Second guessing every decision, every color, every brushstroke.
It wasn’t like me, and it didn’t feel good.
I found myself asking, in the dark of night, if I really want to do this anymore.
I don’t even know why I’m pursuing this dream. In retrospect, it seems like every choice I’ve ever made has been motivated by other people and how they perceive me. Never for me or for what I want.
What do I want?
I honestly don’t know.
But I don’t dwell on it now, not with my family rushing to greet me. I peel myself out of Noah’s arms and drop to my knees to hug Gideon and Everly.
“We’re going to video call Grayson when the competition winner is announced later,” Dad says against my hair as he embraces me next. “He has his midterms this week, so he couldn’t get away to come visit.”
“That’s all right,” I reply as I hug Mom.
She says, her cheeks pink from the cold, “Sweetheart, we’ve missed you so much.”
“I’ve missed you too. I’m so glad you’re here. Let’s go eat before the festival starts, then we can change into our costumes.”
“Yay!” Gideon and Everly squeal in unison.
When we get to the quad a few hours later, it’s unrecognizable to me. The typically bare, sprawling green lawn is now packed with people, carnival rides, game booths, and rows and rows of display walls and pillars, currently home to over a hundred works of art.
Despite the merriment of it all, my chest tightens at the thought of seeing my painting again.
“Let’s start with the game booths,” I suggest, looking toward Gideon and Everly, knowing they’ll agree to anything involving games.
“Yeah,” Gideon says, tugging on his Spiderman mask. “I wanna play ring toss!”
I laugh, letting him grab my hand and take the lead.
I glance askance at Noah, dressed in his homemade Halloween costume.
He’s dressed as a painter, in a stained smock with a paintbrush tucked behind his ear and a wooden palette in his hand.
He planned my costume to match and brought all the materials with him.
My face is covered with bright swirls of face paint and I’m wearing a long-sleeve black shirt with the words ‘work of art’ printed on the front.
The dainty wooden picture frame that Noah had spray-painted gold dangling around my neck completes the look.
It’s adorable he put so much effort into our costumes this year. It shows how much he cares. But with the uneasiness I feel about painting right now, I just feel uncomfortable. I’d love nothing more than to go back to my dorm and change into literally anything else.
The rest of my family is dressed up too: Everly as Wonder Woman, Mom as a cat, and Dad as a mouse.
“Let’s not lose track of time,” Mom tells Gideon, her glued-on whiskers wiggling with her words. “We want to make sure we have enough time to see your sister’s painting.”
“Okay,” he calls back to her, thoroughly distracted by the ring toss booth that had just come into sight.
For hours, we play ring toss, balloon pop, bean bag toss, and spin the wheel.
We ride the rickety old Ferris wheel and the pendulum ride twice each, then we stuff our faces with candied apples and funnel cake.
By the time I’m wiping powdered sugar off of Gideon’s face, the night sky is pitch black above us apart from the silvery glow of the moon, not a star in sight.
A familiar voice rings out over a loudspeaker, making my jaw clench, “This year’s winner of the Lizbeth’s Halloween Festival Art Contest will be announced in five minutes.”
“Oh, we have to hurry,” Mom urges, stuffing the kid’s prizes into an oversized tote bag.
“It’s okay, Mom,” I say. “We don’t have to rush. I don’t think I’m going to win anyway.”
“Nonsense,” Dad dismisses. “Let’s go!”
A rising sense of searing dread seeps into my core, like lava slowly bubbling over the mouth of a volcano.
The prompt for this year’s contest was ‘opposition.’ That’s it. One vague, useless word.
I have no idea if anyone will get the message I’m trying to convey with my painting, and that frightens me. I’ve never been so self-conscious about a painting before. It’s like the events that went down with Remi completely zapped my self-confidence.
As we near the rows of display walls, there’s a small wooden stage to the left of the rows, and Daniel, one of my painting professors, is standing on it with a microphone in hand.
“All right,” he says into the microphone. The screech of electronic feedback reverberates loudly through the crowd, making me wince. “Let’s announce this year’s winner.”
Dad squeezes my shoulder in excitement as Noah grabs my hand. It takes everything in me to keep it from trembling in his grasp.
“After careful deliberation, the judges chose to award the first-place prize to the artwork they felt embodied this year’s prompt, ‘opposition,’ with the most creativity and skill,” Daniel says before a dramatic pause.
A hush descends upon the quad in the wake of his words, and the crowd seems to hold their breath in anticipation.
“It is with immense pleasure that I announce the winner: submission number forty-seven, painted by artist Maeve Johnson, of Lizbeth’s sophomore class!”
Stars flash before my eyes as every molecule of air evaporates from my lungs.
I won?
I can’t move or speak. All I can do is stare at the stage as they carry my painting up the steps.
Wait? Why are there two panels up there? I only submitted one.
The painting I submitted is hanging on the left side of the display wall, now placed at the center of the stage.
My piece depicts an incomplete oil painting of a lush, mountainous landscape wrapped in an intricate golden frame, being pawed at, ripped, and shredded from three sides by a wave of greedy human hands.
But the canvas hanging on the right side of the display wall, right next to mine, is completely alien to me, and yet it’s almost a direct mirror image.
The second painting completes the image of my cut-off landscape portrait, only the hands that are touching this side of the painting are depicted as being burned, frozen, and decayed.
As if this half of the portrait was magic, injuring anyone who dared touch it.
Alone, my painting is interesting, perhaps, or at the very least adequate. But together . . . Together, the panels fit like two pieces of the same puzzle. If the shock hadn’t already taken my breath away, these paintings would have.
“Oh, darling,” Mom murmurs in my ear, finally reminding me to breathe. “It’s magnificent.”
“I knew you were talented, Bug, but this is extraordinary,” Dad agrees, holding his phone up over the crowd to try and show Grayson, who I guess Dad had video called at some point over the last minute.
“Pretty,” Everly squeals from her position barnacled against my knee.
“I—but, that’s not—”
“Maeve, everyone’s waiting for you,” Noah says as he urges me toward the stage. “Go up there.”
Dazed, I comb through the mass of people, climb the stage steps, and approach Daniel.
“Congratulations, Maeve.” He’s positively beaming. “Your two-piece submission blew the judges away. If anybody deserves this honor, it’s you.”
“Thank you,” I mutter, my mind moving too slowly to fully process the scene unfolding around me. I risk a glimpse at the crowd and am partially blinded by the spotlights, but the few folks that I can make out are clapping and cheering wildly.
My mind continues to shut down as Daniel concludes the rest of the competition announcements, and when he’s finished, I stagger back toward my family and Noah on autopilot, clumsily bumping into strangers.
I accidentally stumble into someone particularly hard, and it only takes me a moment to realize I recognize them as I lift my gaze to apologize.
A black mask with a white-lined smile. One eye green, one blue. The student from the dorm roof.
I startle, almost tripping in surprise.
I thought I’d never see them again. This is it. My second chance.
The not-so-strange stranger reaches out to steady me, their skin warm against my cool wrist. The contact sends jolts of nervous electricity shooting down my spine.
“Careful there,” they say, tone swinging low.
“I know you,” I murmur hoarsely.
“You do?” they ask.
“I—”
Their gaze floats toward the stage. “That’s a beautiful painting up there, on the left.”
“Thank y—”
On the left?
“Do you know something about the painting on the right?” I ask in a hushed tone, stepping closer to ensure they’ll hear me. Our faces are mere inches apart. Without the mask, I’d be able to feel their breath on my cheek.
Faster than seems possible, the cool air between us heats; goosebumps erupting along my arms at the sudden change in temperature. “Oh, I know everything about the painting on the right.”
My breath hitches, my chest still too tight to breathe right.
“After all,” they continue, the warmth between us slowly seeping into their words, “I’m the one who painted it.”
“You painted it?” I ask in a rushed whisper.
The flash of pride in their two-toned gaze is confirmation enough.
“Why?” I croak.
“The painting you submitted was only half done. You were hesitant. That’s unlike you. I wanted to show you that you have no reason to feel that way. Your art is stunning, Maeve.”
I blink, nearly blinded by the sincerity shining in their gaze. “Who are you?”
I know who I want it to be. I know who I need it to be. Please. Please be them.
“Name’s Phantom.”
Disbelief numbs my senses; I don’t even register the rowdy crowd anymore. All I hear is them, all I feel is the heat of their proximity.
I was right all along, and I found them again. I can’t mess this up. I have to get to know them. I have to thank them. I have to—
My legs buckle beneath me, and I fall gracelessly to the cold, hard ground, bruising my kneecaps.
Phantom drops down with me, their hand still on my wrist. “Woah, you okay?”
“Phantom?” My voice is nothing more than a squeak.
“Yes?” they ask, the tense set of their hooded eyes unreadable to me.
“You know me,” I say incredulously.
When their eyes flash wider, a joyful spark igniting a fire in those blue-green depths, I can read the emotion there.
They’re smiling at me.
“Yes, I know you. Your paintings speak to me. Have for a while.”
“I—”
I’m cut off by Phantom breaking eye contact, the absent weight of it instantly making me dizzy. They scan the crowd until they pause, their pupils dilating. I follow their line of sight to find Noah heading straight toward us with a screwed-up expression on his face.
“We’ll meet again soon,” Phantom says before helping me rise to my feet one moment and disappearing into the crowd the next, like a phantom in the night.
How appropriate.
My legs are still unsteady when Noah reaches me. “Maeve? Who was that?”
“Just—just a stranger. I tripped and they helped me up,” I lie easily. Too easily.
“Then why are you shaking?” he asks while briskly rubbing my arms. “You look like you’ve seen a ghost.”
That’s because I have.
Without answering him aloud, I take Noah’s hand and pull him through the crowd. When we reach my family, his face has softened and his smile comes easy again. But my mind can’t stop spinning.
I met Phantom. In the flesh. They actually introduced themself to me.
We’ll meet again soon.
Screw the festival and the competition and the first-place ribbon. I’m smiling tonight because I officially met them. I thought I knew what a dream coming true felt like before tonight—when I went viral, when I got into Lizbeth, when Mom and Dad told me they were proud of me—but I was mistaken.
This is how it feels.