The Art of the Swap

by Kristine Asselin

  There’s someone out there!

  We’ve had exactly three false alarms in the several hours we’ve been hiding back here. (Yes, hours. If my sneezing doesn’t give us away, my rumbling stomach might.) The first was a maid doing a quick straightening up of furniture and a run over the wooden surfaces with a feather duster. (I felt like whispering, “It’s the curtains you should really think about dusting!”) The second was a different maid, watering Mrs. Berwind’s potted ficus. And the third was a footman passing through on his way to the conservatory. Other than that the room has been as quiet as my middle school on a snow day.

  But this is not a false alarm, and it’s not the butler looking for the jar of silver polish. It’s a man creeping up to the sideboard, where the landscape filling in for the real portrait is propped behind a white sheet.

  OMG, ART HEIST IN PROGRESS!

  My yawning boredom disappears in a split second because there is a man putting grabby hands on the painting, only two feet to my left!

  It’s really, actually happening!

  I don’t recognize him, but I know he’s not a servant, because he isn’t in uniform. He’s wearing a white button-down shirt, but it’s loose, and the sleeves are rolled up and there are streaks of red on his arms, almost like—

  Like blood! Is he a murderous art thief?! No one said anything about that being a possibility, and I would like my money back, please. I didn’t sign up for this!

  I’m scared to turn my head to look at Jonah next to me, because what if that makes a sound? Just knowing that he’s here with me is comforting, at least. (Although, I would actually prefer if it were maybe more like thirty-seven Jonahs, who were all wearing shirts with the letters FBI stamped across their backs.)

  The man has his fingers on the edges of the painting, still wrapped in the sheet. Is he gonna just walk out with it? I mean, that’s basically what Jonah and I did earlier, and we didn’t encounter a soul, so I guess it’s as good a plan as any, but is it really this easy to steal precious masterpieces?

  Jonah’s foot nudges mine again, and this time I chance turning my head toward him. His eyes stare pointedly at the camera on the windowsill next to me. Oh! Right! I’m supposed to be getting photographic evidence.

  I found this Brownie camera in Maggie’s room when I was killing time there this morning, and although it takes pictures more slowly than a website loads in the Wi-Fi dead zone of my bedroom, if I act carefully, I should be able to catch this dude in the act. I wonder if this is Maggie’s prized possession or if it was the one thing she begged for at Christmas, like me with my iPhone. Or maybe she’s got twenty of these, one for every house she visits. As much as I always felt like Maggie and I would have so, so many things in common if we ever met up, being mega-rich isn’t one of them.

  Wow, I get rambly when I’m nervous. My thoughts are skittering all over the place, just like the pulse in my wrist. Focus, Hannah! Get the picture!

  I ease the camera out between the opening in the curtains and try my best to hold it steady in shaky hands. I practiced snapping a shot of Jonah earlier (he blushed like crazy, as if it were the first time anyone took his picture or something), but I only took the one because I can’t tell how much film is left in the camera. I already know it doesn’t take pictures anywhere nearly as fast as my phone does. But I have to work with what I’ve got and cross fingers that a fuzzy picture combined with Jonah’s and my witness statements is enough to do the job.

  The man slides the painting off the sideboard. He struggles to get his hands around both sides of the giant frame and staggers backward a little under the weight of it. One step, then two. I hear the tiniest cough from Jonah, urging me on.

  CLICK!

  I take the shot. The noise from the flash bounces off the walls and echoes against the high ceilings, and the man freezes.

  I lower the camera.

  The man swivels and stares dead into my eyes.

  I can’t swallow or breathe.

  Jonah steps out from behind his curtain, and the guy’s gaze switches to him. Jonah squares his shoulders and returns the gaze, hard. (Go, Jonah! Go, Jonah!) After a second the man swallows thickly and turns back to me. He sets the painting, still wrapped in its sheet, on the ground at his feet and smiles brightly. Too brightly to be believable.

  “Je l’avais tout simplement amené à Mademoiselle Cassatt pour une retouche de dernière minute,” he says.

  “Say what, now? Try English, buddy,” I order.

  His forehead wrinkles. “Je ne comprends pas. You spoke French so perfectly during the sitting.”

  Okay, so:

  Of course Maggie speaks flawless French. I’ll bet her tutor has been drilling it into her since she was in diapers.

  Are diapers a thing in 1905?

  Focus, Hannah!

  Sitting. He said “sitting.” Is he—

  “Who are you? Are you involved with the portrait somehow?” I ask.

  His eyes squinch up. “Mais oui. We have been working together for weeks now. How is it that you do not recognize me? I am Mademoiselle Cassatt’s apprentice.”

  I dart a glance at the red streaks on his arms. Not blood. Paint. Um, phew! I exchange a quick look of relief with Jonah, then turn back to Mr. Frenchy Pants.

  “Of course you are. I knew that. But—but why are you stealing a painting of hers, then?”

  “Stealing? Non! I’m bringing it to Mademoiselle for a last-minute touch-up. Stealing! Ha! You have quite the imagination, young miss.” He barks out a laugh that sounds faker than fake.

  I’m not buying it. And the “young miss” thing is so . . . demeaning. I always assumed Maggie would get mad respect for being an heiress, but I guess, even here, money doesn’t trump age. Kids never get any credit from adults for having actual, functioning brains in our heads.

  I sneak a peek at Jonah. When I catch his eye, I raise my eyebrows to silently ask him what he thinks of this guy’s flimsy excuse. He shrugs, but I can see a whole lotta doubt on his face. I’m guessing he doesn’t feel like he can speak up, seeing as he has neither age nor money on his side.

  But the thing is, it’s not like we can prove anything. My gut says this guy is lying, but that plus a nickel . . . leaves me with a nickel.

  The man can tell I’m hesitating. He takes advantage of my indecision and picks the painting back up. “Au revoir. I must deliver this to Mademoiselle Cassatt.”

  He hoists the frame higher in his arms and peeks around its side to see his way to the door.

  Uh-oh. Not only have I not stopped a heist, but now there’s going to be deep trouble when Mary Cassatt whisks off that sheet and discovers that the portrait she worked on for months is not there. We were careful, but what if someone saw me and Jonah sneaking around this afternoon and puts two and two together? Maggie will kill me if I ruin her life in a matter of one afternoon!

  I’m just standing with my mouth open, watching the empty doorway that Mr. Apprentice Guy disappeared through, when Jonah puts his hand on my sleeve. “Excuse me, miss?”

  I snap, “Maggie! Call me Maggie.” When he fumbles back a step, I realize what a jerk I’m being to literally the only person who’s been nice to me in this entire century. It’s not Jonah’s fault I’m a total fail at foiling art heists.

  “Oh my gosh, I’m so sorry,” I say. “I didn’t mean to say it like that. It’s just that it feels weird to have you call me something so . . . so . . . formal. I mean, we’re both kids, so . . .”

  He looks confused. “What does our age have to do with anything?”

  I know what he’s getting at. We’re the same age, but he and Maggie are not of the same social station, and that matters a lot here. A lot a lot. He’s probably been trained since the day he started not to address the occupants of the house unless spoken to first. Most likely he’s been told to even avoid eye contact with me. For him to have agreed to help me today wasn’t just nice of him. It was taking a big risk with his job. And here I repay him by being totally rude. Nice
one, Hannah.

  “I really am sorry. Please. I know it might not feel natural to say, but it would mean a lot if you could call me Maggie instead of ‘miss.’ If you could, well, maybe think of me as”—I give him a small, hopeful smile before continuing—“a friend?”

  His eyes grow wide at that, and I offer, “I know that’s not really normal for two people like us, but . . .”

  I trail off, and it’s a second before he answers. “But it would be nice. To have a friend, I mean. I don’t have much free time to spend with the others my age in my neighborhood. Most of them work too, and our days off rarely match. Of course, I’m friendly with all the kitchen staff, but they’re so much older and it’s not the same thing.”

  Once again my heart hurts for him. What kind of a childhood is that? I can’t help asking, “Doesn’t that bother you?”

  He shrugs. “It’s simply life as I know it.”

  My throat aches. He doesn’t even sound upset, so much as . . . resigned. I spend so much time back home surrounded by the glamorous side of the Gilded Age and daydreaming about the outrageous parties and the elaborate dresses and the ridiculous wealth, but it wasn’t golden for everyone. Not even for most people. Definitely not for Jonah, and hearing it in person really drives it home in a different way than just reading about it.

  The thing is, he’s right. This is life as he knows it, and it won’t change for him either. He may work his way up to chef someday, but otherwise this is probably how his whole future will look. Working here or somewhere just like it. People like Jonah didn’t have the luxury of big dreams. Which is also true of lots of people—even kids—in my time too, and that sucks just as much.

  But actually, even some people with all the luxury didn’t have the freedom to dream big. Like Maggie. Sure, she’s as pampered as can be and will never want for anything material, but she’s a girl, which means she’ll never get to decide for herself what she wants to be when she grows up. She already knows she’ll be a wife and maybe a mother (who only sees her kids an hour a day, because that’s the custom), and a society woman who spends time visiting only with other people from her same class.

  The reality is, if I actually did live here, chances are next to zero that I’d be able to be friends with Jonah. Even if he weren’t a servant, he’s still a boy, which means we wouldn’t be allowed to hang without a chaperone. (But the servant thing would kill everything first.)

  Of course, I don’t live here. I won’t even be here in a couple of hours. Maybe it’s not fair of me to offer Jonah friendship.

  My shoulders slump. I’ve made a mess of things. What was all this for, if it wasn’t to solve the mystery of the stolen painting? I should have just gone exploring Gilded Age Newport, instead of lurking for eons in a dark coal tunnel and hiding out for even more hours behind a dusty curtain and involving someone who was minding his own business. Great. Just great.

  And all for nothing.

  If anything, I made things worse. As soon as Mary Cassatt finds the dummy painting, the whole house will be in an uproar over the missing one, and I’ll have to expose Jonah’s secret break spot to show them where the real painting is hidden, and that’s going to take some major explaining, and what if Jonah gets fired for helping me and he can’t help his family put food on their table and they—

  “Maggie?”

  Jonah’s voice snaps me out of my spiraling thoughts, and it takes me a second to realize he’s used my (well, Maggie’s) first name.

  “Hey, you called me—” But I break off when I see his face and how urgent his expression is. “What is it?”

  “I just thought of something. Is the paint an artist uses very different from other paint?” he asks.

  “Different how?”

  “Is it oil-based?”

  “Not always. There are watercolors and acrylics and others, but yes, the portrait was done with oils. Why?”

  Jonah fidgets with his hands and glances away. “I’m just a kitchen boy, so I don’t know anything about fancy things like portraits . . .”

  “But?” I urge him on.

  He takes a deep breath and locks eyes with me. “But last winter I helped paint some shelves in the wine cellar, and we used an oil-based mixture. It took three solid days before the shelves dried enough to replace the bottles. Do you think—that is to say, would it be likely that the artist would truly chance a touch-up only hours before the unveiling? I wondered if perhaps the paint would still be—”

  “Wet!” I interrupt. “Jonah! You’re right. She would never, ever do that.” Just like that, my bad mood evaporates and my head is back in the game. “They’d put the sheet back on to hide it until the big reveal, and the paint would definitely stick to that and it would be a giant mess! Mary Cassatt wouldn’t chance that. Meaning, that guy was lying through his teeth! I knew he was. You really are a genius. I don’t care if you don’t know who he is yet—I’m calling you Einstein from here on out. We have to find that man and confront him again. Let’s go!”

  I take two steps toward the hallway, but Jonah doesn’t follow.

  “C’mon. We have to hurry if we want to catch him!” I urge. “I know he doesn’t have the real painting, but I still want to bust his smug old liar-liar-pants-on-fire face.”

  Jonah is frozen in place. “I cannot be caught out there,” he says, eyes wide. “Not on this floor of the house. Not on my day off. There wouldn’t be a plausible explanation I could give for any of it.” He looks genuinely scared, and my heart hurts for him.

  “I’ll take full blame,” I promise. “I’ll say you were helping me. That I ordered you to do it. They can’t get mad at you if you were following orders from a lady of the house, right?”

  Jonah shakes his head slowly. “It wouldn’t be honorable of me to allow you to lie on my behalf.”

  It wouldn’t be honorable? Boys in my century could learn a bunch from this kid. I kind of like this guy at school, Ethan, but I can tell you right now he’d never worry about something like honor.

  “Well, then I do order you. There. Now it’s not a lie,” I say, but he doesn’t look any more convinced. I puff my bangs out of my eyes and force my voice to stay soft. “How about this, then? How about we just don’t get caught?”

  I barely know the guy, but I’m already onto his tell. It’s that tiny twinkle in his eyes when he thinks about having an adventure. I watch him closely, and grin. “So you’re in?”

  He keeps me in suspense for a second, but then he nods sharply. “I suppose it would be even less honorable to allow you to go after him on your own. Let’s find this cad.”

  I’m gonna have to give him a pass on that “allow” thing because he’s living in this century. And also because, even though I fully believe girls are just as capable as boys, if I’m being totally honest, I definitely would feel better about confronting the “cad” with a backup at my side. But I’m so taking the lead on things, just to prove a point.

  Jonah sticks close behind me as I peek out into the wide marble hallway that connects all the rooms on this level. Empty. I figure we’ve wasted at least two or three minutes talking since Apprentice Dude disappeared with the painting. He could be anywhere by now.

  “Which way?” I whisper.

  Jonah thinks for a beat and then whispers back, “He has a head start on us, but he also has that big painting to wrestle with, so he’s not moving fast. He thinks he has the real portrait, so he’ll be looking to make a quick getaway, but he still has to keep up his cover story until he gets off the grounds, in case he runs into anyone else.”

  I nod along, and he continues, “The artist is staying in the guesthouse closest to the stables; I heard Mr. Birch instruct one of the footmen where to deliver a telegram that came for her last week. So my guess is that her assistant will keep to the path toward her cottage until he hits an opening in the estate wall that will let him out into the street. I know just where that is; it’s not far from the servants’ entrance.”

  I turn to gape at him. �
�Okay, forget Einstein. Your new nickname is Sherlock. Have you read any of those?”

  He ducks his head and murmurs, “No. I—I don’t read very well.”

  Drat, Hannah. You should have anticipated that. Now you’ve embarrassed him, when it’s so not his fault that he doesn’t go to school. I keep my voice light. “Well, he’s a brilliant detective, but I think you might be his match. We have a thief to catch. Ready?” I swing the camera around to my back, peek into the hallway again to make sure the coast is still clear, and then signal for Jonah to follow me. I do my best Catwoman impression as we dart from doorway to stairwell, then slip out the front door. We edge along the exterior wall until we turn the corner.

  “There!” Jonah says, pointing to a skinny man wobbling under the weight of a sheeted painting, far in the distance at the edge of the estate grounds.

  “Run for it!” I shout, taking off down the path. Jonah follows, and if he thinks it’s weird that a girl is keeping pace with him, despite all the layers of fluffy stuff underneath my dress and a camera slapping against me, he doesn’t say a word. He just huffs and puffs alongside me, pumping his arms as hard as I am.

  Apprentice Dude doesn’t even sense us coming. All it takes is one teensy nudge by me from behind, and he goes toppling over, getting all tangled in the sheet that comes loose as he drops the frame.

  “You!” he gasps. He struggles into sitting position, then spots the exposed painting on the ground. The one that is NOT of Margaret Dunlap. “The portrait!”

  His eyes dart back and forth among Jonah, me, and the canvas. Finally he sputters, “I—I don’t understand.”

  “That’s right, you don’t, buddy,” I say, jabbing my finger into his face. It’s two against one, I’m exhilarated from my run, and he’s all twisted up in a sheet; the combination makes me extra brave. “But we do. Mademoiselle Cassatt’s not doing any touch-ups hours before an unveiling. That would be crazy. So you lied. Because you were trying to steal the painting. Just admit it.”

  He ignores my order and asks, “But where is the portrait?”