Part 7
"Moment of Truth"
There was only one problem with trying to put the encounter with the broken display out of Lewis's mind, as he soon discovered. The trouble with trying to forget it was that, the harder he tried to shrug it off, the more it kept cropping up in ways that he couldn't ignore!
The very next day after the broken-glass fiasco, Lewis dutifully swept around the corners to prepare for a few hours of guests coming in the afternoon, when he reached the corner of the room and stopped.
Two or three frames hung on this side of the free-standing wall, but when he glanced around the nearest corners, he saw no cameras in sight. He even inspected the walls themselves closely, in the off-chance there might be a hidden camera in the wall itself...
Nothing. If there was ever a perfect location in the entire exhibit hall to satisfy his curiosity without being discovered, this was it!
A chill raced down his spine, and Lewis ducked around the wall just in time to see Adolf step through the doorway.
He quickly gripped his broom and commenced sweeping along the outer wall of the exhibit hall, with his back toward the display he'd examined. He heard the burly guard sniff a few times (allergies, perhaps?) and as Lewis dumped the pan of dirt into the trash can on his cart, Adolf loomed over him.
"Are you nearly finished?" he growled in Lewis's face. "There's a group coming any minute."
Lewis nodded, unable to make a sound.
Adolf left the room as suddenly and silently as he had entered.
Lewis let out a relieved sigh once he was alone. Maybe, if he timed it just right, he could use the group as a cover for taking out one of the art displays on the blind wall--but which one?
He made his way over to the corner to make his selection.
The upper frame contained several small figurines with very plastic-looking wings and ridiculous clothing--Lewis could picture all sorts of complications with trying to secure that one. The middle frame, at least, had one subject, a womanly figurine in a flowing dress with a small pail of some sort of dust in her hands. Lewis noted the plaque displaying the title: Spring Fairy Wakes The Flowers. He couldn't see the wings on this supposed fairy, but there were a lot of stalks and blossoms glued down in the background.
The third frame had only one figurine as well, but she dangled in midair by the wings (which didn't look as fake this time) and Lewis could tell that it was more of a shadow-box sunk into the wall itself, rather than just a frame hanging from it. No, the middle frame would have to be the one to pilfer.
"Mr. Grant!" Mr. Gilroy's voice bounced off the walls of the exhibit hall.
Lewis stepped around the wall and waved his hand. "Here, sir!"
Gilroy beckoned to him. "I'm afraid you'll have to take a short break during your shift just now. There's a private party who paid to have the space to themselves until six o'clock. You can wait in the Janitor's room till then."
Lewis packed up his cart and obediently crossed the foyer into the little hallway. At least he had some of his class materials in his backpack, so he could do some studying while he waited.
He flipped open his Art History textbook, but found that staring at the different paintings given as illustrations only reminded him of the "moving" artwork--now he couldn't even look at an actual painting without wondering what it would be like if the subject suddenly began moving on the canvas. Lewis slammed the book shut and shook his head.
"Maybe math would be a better choice," he muttered, pulling out the workbook to practice some of the trickier formulas and techniques.
This proved to be an improvement, and adequately time-consuming, because Lewis had only just completed a lesson in the workbook when a polite knock sounded on the door.
Gilroy opened it and poked his head into the room. Over his shoulder, Lewis could hear Krasimir Schlimme's voice shouting and cursing about something.
Gilroy trembled so badly that his thick glasses went bouncing down his nose. "Ehrm, the party has left," he stammered to Lewis. "You can clean the exhibit hall now."
Lewis grabbed his gear and pushed the cart into the exhibit hall. Crossing the threshold, he saw at once what had enraged the European artist so.
Whatever party had been in there had not done a very good job of respecting the displays. Frames were crooked, some of the tiny sculpted dishes and accessories were broken, and there were bits of confetti and even what looked like cake crumbs strewn everywhere on the floor. Lewis quickly swept up the confetti and did his best to carefully straighten the misaligned frames. In the midst of cleaning up the mess of the floor, Lewis worked his way back into the blind corner. Working quickly, he lifted the middle frame--the one with the figurine holding the bucket--and slipped it gently into his cart. A few pan-fulls of crumbs and confetti, plus a few piles of pottery shards effectively concealed the frame's presence in the cart.
Just as Lewis swept up the last of the crumbs at the front of the room, Krasimir Schlimme entered. His keen eyes swept the room, seeing that everything was just so, and nothing was out of place as it had been.
He nodded curtly to the young janitor. "Well done," he said simply, and stalked away from the room.
Lewis felt his heart hammering in his chest as he realized that Krasimir hadn't even glanced toward the trash cart containing a perfectly intact piece of his "irreplaceable" artwork. He wheeled the cart toward the Janitor's Closet, and once inside, he carefully slipped the display in its frame out of the cart, brushed the crumbs and confetti off, and slid it between a couple textbooks in his backpack. He'd done it!
Lewis took several deep breaths to calm himself down, and made every effort to walk casually out the front door of Moulton House with his stolen artwork.
He almost made it, too.
"Hey, Lewis!"
"Yipes!" Lewis flinched hard at the sudden sound of his name. Perhaps his nerves were a little more high-strung than he wanted.
Quincy blinked at him and took a step back. "Sorry," she muttered. "Didn't mean to scare you."
Lewis quickly shook off the tension. "Oh, no, it's fine. I just wasn't expecting anyone to be here."
The dark-haired girl snorted. "Yeah right!" she said. "As if you forgot that Saturday is the day we all meet in your dorm commons to study. We've got that Chemistry quiz coming up, remember?"
Lewis's nerves began to creep up on him again. How was he going to study for an hour around his friends with a piece of stolen artwork in his backpack? They were going to catch him, for sure!
"Oh, right," he replied to Quincy. "Well, um, you didn't have to wait for me."
Quincy grinned. "It's no big deal. I realized when I left the library that the museum was on the way. We can walk back to your dorm together."
Lewis forced himself to smile and hoped it looked relaxed and genuine enough. "Great..." he grunted.
Walking next to Quincy should have been an enjoyable experience. She rambled on about interesting topics, she often stopped to ask questions when she'd been talking for a while, and Lewis enjoyed listening to her voice.
Today, of all days, he found his pulse pounding in his ears so loud that he could hardly hear her, and his mind wouldn't focus on the things she was saying because all he could think about was that frame sitting between his Ancient History textbook and the Literature workbook in his backpack. He did his best to make the appropriate noises as Quincy prattled about some thrilling interaction she'd witnessed during her shift at the library.
"... and then they started talking about the merits of certain specific battles mentioned in the book, and then a third guy joined the conversation, and it was literally a miniature nerd-fest right there in the reading corner!" Quincy gushed, skipping happily over a crack in the pavement as she recalled the scene. "That's the thing I like best about books, is they can be enjoyed by people of different backgrounds, tastes, and personality types."
"Mm-hm," Lewis muttered, focusing on keeping his pace even, and not tripping over his own feet.
"By the way," Quincy mused, glancing over at him. "I noticed you returned all those folklore books I helped you find, not just some of them. Does this mean you're finished with that assignment for Teeger?"
Lewis's mind jerked from the paranoia about the stolen artwork to a fresh anxiety over missing an assignment from one of his teachers. "Um, what assignment?" He blurted, just at the same time his brain dredged up the vague memory of mentioning some sort of written assignment to Quincy the other day...
"Duh, that paper you said you had to write?" Quincy scoffed. She wagged her head. "You come in, all desperate for research materials about fairies, of all things," she lifted her fingers to make air-quotes around "research", "but then you're bringing the books back only a few days later because you didn't need them after all... What was that all about?"
Lewis's mind raced. Yes, he'd told her a lie, but now how was he going to play it off? "Well, um... Turns out Teeger had just given me that assignment as a prank," he said. "When I came back to him with some questions, and he saw what I'd checked out as reference material, he told me that the whole thing had been a joke. So yeah, there's not actually a paper, and I don't need those books anymore."
Quincy stopped in her tracks and squinted at Lewis, her mouth pursing into a frown. He worried she might want to call his bluff, because he had no further lies to back his first one.
However, after a tense silence, Quincy merely shrugged and kept walking.
All through the group study, Lewis fought hard to pay attention. Chemistry had been one of his weakest subjects by far, and he needed all the support he could get. Luckily, Henry had a stock of flashcards that he let Lewis copy down for his own use, and Quincy helped explain some of the more complex concepts that were bound to be on the test, come Tuesday.
Too soon, the clock in the front hall struck nine.
Henry stood up and stretched his lanky frame. "Well," he sighed, "We've done about all we can. Good luck on the quiz, all!"
Quincy's hand strayed near Lewis's open backpack, as she reached for her own book bag, and his heart leaped into his throat. She only picked up the strap of the canvas bag that proclaimed "I'M NOT A BOOKWORM... I'M A BOOK DRAGON" and said happily, "Yeah, I think I've got a better handle on the last couple lessons now--it's so handy to study all together!"
Lewis couldn't get his racing heart to relax. His hands twitched and jerked more than he meant to, and he couldn't keep his feet still... he barely heard the polite "goodnight"s exchanged by his friends as they left the commons.
It felt like an eternity he waited, until his own shaky breathing was the only sound in the building. Only then did Lewis dare to lift his backpack and carry it gingerly perched on two hands all the way to his dorm room.
Once he was alone, with the door as secure as he could make it, he settled in the folding chair in front of his small desk that was the largest flat surface in the room, and set his backpack on the desk. Reaching in, Lewis slid the gilt frame and its mysterious contents out from between the textbooks.
The glass pane was cool to the touch, and smooth. Examining it this closely, Lewis could see that everything had been painted over, giving the effect of a dimensional painting--while at the same time, he could clearly see where the "effect" was actually physical objects layered over one another. The thickness of the frame also gave away the fact that it was more than just a flat surface under this glass.
"Moment of truth..." Lewis muttered under his breath as he carefully reached under the frame and released it from the backing and the contents of the display.
Grass clippings, a few stiff leaves, and a puff of the glittery dust fell around his fingers as he set the frame and the glass pane aside. Peeling back the array of twigs and leaves arranged to represent "trees" in the display, he could barely distinguish the edges of some sort of shape behind the painted layer of "sky." The more he peeled away, the more he revealed of their shape.
Wings? he thought to himself.
The bucket of dust came next. Lewis wasn't at all sure what sort of material Krasimir Schlimme might have used, but it did seem like a mix of glitter, ground crystals, and some kind of other substance that made the whole mix light and airy. He set it carefully on the glass pane to keep it out of the way.
Now that most of the decor had been stripped away, he could definitely say that those things behind the stiff subjects body were indeed wings. Her dress draped in a filmy, ethereal way, even laying flat as she was--and when Lewis went to move the silky folds, he saw the thing that made his stomach turn a little: thick silver staples holding the back of the skirt in place.
The skin of her legs felt cool to the touch, even if the limbs were still very stiff, as he reached in with a staple remover to dig those things out. Once her dress was free, he slid his fingers behind her legs to gently lift her--
A piercing sound lanced through his head, causing Lewis to cringe and pull his hands toward his ears.
He froze and held his breath, looking around the room to try and discern where the sound had come from.
Nothing else stirred, so he returned to the strange, and possibly living, sculpture laying on the canvas in front of him. A stirring caught his eye, and Lewis bent closer--blinking! She blinked! She was alive! Nothing else of her body moved, so he resumed his attempt to separate her from her artistic prison. He dared not turn the paper over, but a blind exploration with his fingers revealed the existence of at least two more staples on either side of where her body lay--so, concealed under layers and layers of paint, it seemed.
Lewis pried the staples open from the back, and gingerly pushed them off the paper through the front--and the moment he did, the lithe creature exploded toward his face in a flurry of paint, fabric, and movement.
"Argh!!" Lewis yelped, rocking backward in his chair. He overbalanced and came crashing down with his legs straight up in the air as the back of his head connected with the low-pile carpet.
He rubbed his head and tried his best to prop himself up on his elbows and regain his balance. A brilliant orb of light materialized on his desk and floated into the air. Lewis tried in vain to find its source, when it veered dangerously close to his face!
Lewis let out a gasp and haphazardly crab-walked backward till his shoulders connected with the nightstand behind him. The light still glared in his face, blinding him like a floodlight. He drew up his knees to his chest and shielded his eyes with his hand. The brilliance faded slowly, and Lewis heard the soft tinkling of wind-chimes. He lowered his hand and looked around, hoping that the sharp sounds and creepy floating light had all been part of some bizarre hallucination brought on by--stress, perhaps?
Instead, the meager glow of his desk lamp gave him just enough illumination to see the lithe figure only six inches tall in the gauzy blue dress standing on his knee.
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