When she got to art class, Evel was waiting for her in the hall outside.
“Did you know that someone punched a Monet painting once in Ireland?” asked Evel.
“No way that’s true,” argued M. It hurt her to think that someone could be so careless with priceless art. “What did that painting ever do to him?”
“Totally true,” said Evel. “He strolled up to it and punched a hole right through it. He split the canvas and all. But want to hear the weird part?”
“Wait, there’s a weirder part than someone knocking out a masterpiece?” asked M.
“Believe it or not, there is,” said Evel. “It wasn’t the first time a Monet painting was punched!”
“And you think that’s going to be on the test?” M asked.
“No, but it caught my eye,” admitted Evel. “And it made me excited to not be a Monet painting.”
As they entered the classroom, Ms. Ohlmsted wasn’t sitting at the front desk. Instead, the same monstrous bald guy from earlier that morning sat leaning back with his feet perched and crossed, watching each of the students as they entered the room.
Their eyes met and the stranger’s stare followed her all the way to her seat. Other students filed in after M, but the man ignored them all and kept his gaze trained on her. Evel took the desk behind M, so she turned around to face him instead.
“Don’t look now, but you’ve got a fan,” Evel whispered. “Did you do something to his Monet?”
“I don’t know who that is,” M said. “But he nearly took my arm off this morning slamming open a door.”
As if on cue, the man rose up from behind the desk. The suit he wore was so tight it barely contained him. The class quieted down immediately in his presence. Stepping toward the front of the room, the man cracked his knuckles and rolled his neck around, which let out a resounding pop that made the students cringe.
“Ms. Alls-Ham is under the weather today,” he announced in his heavy British accent.
“That’s weird. I saw her this morning and she seemed fine,” said a girl in the front row. “Hmm, I can see her car in the teachers’ parking lot. And, not to correct you, sir, but her name is Ms. Ohlmsted.”
The giant whirled his head around to face the girl. “It is a pity,” he said slowly. “See, unfortunately Ms. Alls-Ham came down with a case of too many questions and needed to see the school nurse. The nurse then hopped her right in a red-light cruiser to the hospital so’s they can figure out what’s up, doc. Ergo, I’ll be your substitute today. Are we all understanding now? Or is there anyone else who needs a visit to the nurse?”
The class all shook their heads silently. No one wanted to ask this guy anything.
“Excellent, then,” he said. “My name is Mr. Dartsey and today we will begin with a roll call. Now, as I say your names, please raise your hand. Gotta tick this off for the jolly ole prince-i-pal.”
Dartsey pulled a list from the desk and began reading the names aloud. As he went through them in alphabetical order, hands went up and hands went down.
“Meredith Foreman,” Dartsey called out.
M raised her hand. This piqued Dartsey’s interest.
“Now, Meredith,” said Dartsey with relish in his voice, “I see a note here that states you never use Meredith but that, in fact, you go by the letter M. That true?”
“Yes, sir,” answered M.
“Well, ain’t that a kick in the head,” said Dartsey. “I used to know another M, from another time, but this M, he was a gentleman type. I thought he’d be the only M I ever met. And now, in the middle of nowhere, I meet you. Another M! Hah, life’s funny that way, I s’pose.”
He paused and nodded carefully at M again, but she didn’t have anything more to add. After a few moments, Dartsey continued with the other names until he finally reached the last one. “Hold on now. Is there someone in this class named Evil?”
Evel raised his hand. “It’s pronounced Evel, like level, actually.”
“Of course it is,” said Dartsey. “My mistake. Say, yours doesn’t seem to be a popular last name, but it’s one I’ve seen in my past. Tell me, do you have a sister?”
“No, sir,” said Evel, who squirmed to sit up straight in his seat.
“Well, I s’pose that’s another interesting circumstance,” Dartsey said with a smile that turned into a sneer. “Okay, students. That ends the ticks, so let’s get to the tocks. Most of yous came in expecting a test, but there’ll be no Monet today. I’m afraid I’m not the biggest fan of Monet’s blurry studies of our wondrous surroundings on Earth, and I’d rather you made your own informed opinions about his work. Woe be to me if I were to transfigure your take on something as intensely personal as personal taste. So’s instead, we’re going to take a look at key-ara-skewr-ya.”
Dartsey went over to the whiteboard and wrote down the word chiaroscuro. He underlined it with a quick, surgeon-like slash of the marker that made the entire class shake in their seats.
“Chiaroscuro is a brilliant little painting technique perfected by the Masters back in the sixteen hundreds … though it has a conceptual lineage that reaches back to the fourteen hundreds.”
The class all looked confused.
“Which is to say,” continued Dartsey in a huff, “that although other artists in the fourteen hundreds were using chiaroscuro, it didn’t become an official technique, which is just a fancy word for ‘way of painting,’ until much later, when an artist named Rembrandt came along.”
M’s eyes grew wider at the name Rembrandt. She gripped her pencil tightly as she wrote the name and the term in her notebook. Another disturbance was taking hold.
“The word chiaroscuro itself is Italian for ‘light-dark,’ ” said Dartsey. “In this painting style, artists use a mixture of light and darkness in their scenes to highlight the important moments in their artwork.”
He turned on the overheard projector and an image appeared on the whiteboard. It was a painting of a man holding a candle and reading a book. The only light in the painting came from the candle in the man’s hand, and it faded into gloomy shadows in the background.
“As you may or may not know, people’s eyes will naturally always go to the light and ignore the darkness, which is exactly what the artist wants to happen. In this particular piece, you’re meant to look into the light, because the artist wants you to notice only what’s in the light.”
M studied the painting. Within the light cast by the candle were several objects that artists from Rembrandt’s time were obsessed with: an hourglass, a globe, books, the candle itself, and a statue of an angel in the background. She put the pieces of the puzzle together. The hourglass signified the passing of time and life. The globe signified the world as we try to understand it. The open book represented the pursuit of knowledge. The candle, which wouldn’t last forever, was another reference to time passing. But it was also a reference to man-made light, or fire, or creation. Then behind it all, barely seen in the shadows, was the statue of an angel, watching over the man like a celestial being.
“Most people think that the light is the spark for this painting,” asserted Dartsey. “But most people’d be wrong. See, the light doesn’t work without the darkness. That’s where the art form comes in. It’s how the two work together that matters.”
The presentation switched from painting to painting as Dartsey continued his lesson. Each image showed a play between the light and dark choices of the artist. They created shadows that added drama, perspective, fear, and honest emotions in the artwork.
Then one painting flicked onto the screen that stirred a deep, dark feeling in M. Her chest expanded like a balloon was inflating inside of her. The painting was of a group of men dressed like Pilgrims huddled around a dead body. One of the men had dissected the arm of the body, revealing its interior veins, muscles, and bones. M knew its title without having any recognition of seeing it before.
“This,” said Dartsey, “is The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp. Painted by Rembra
ndt in, oh, say, 1632, give or take, this work shows how the Master played with light and dark … and the in-between. Now, class, we are looking at an honest-to-life doctor giving his class a surgeon’s peek under the skin of this corpse.”
Dartsey let out a chuckle as some of the class squealed with whispered ewwws. “All right, all right, it’s just a painting of a dead body, not a real dead body. Let’s keep our heads on straight, then, shall we? And don’t blame the doc for the gross scene. He’s just doing his job. S’pose I’m doing the same thing with you, teaching and dissecting this picture for you, my eager minds.”
He smiled with satisfaction at the connection he’d made. “No, if you blame anyone, you blame the Master for having this much talent to show life the way it really looks. Now, compare the corpse to the other men in the piece. I know it seems kooky, but notice how his face looks against the lively doctor and his students that are full of life. That’s a technique that Rembrandt used to refine chiaroscuro and bend it to his will. It’s not light or dark. It’s just gray-ashen and used up. And that technique was called a —”
“Umbra mortis,” M said in a quick inhale. Clips of her true past came rushing back in patches, like plunging her conscience into ice-cold water. Crash-landing at the Lawless School. The glass house at the Fulbright Academy. Joining the Masters. The black hole. Her real name. Her dead father. Her missing mother. Her real parents. The last night in her house when her friends, her real friends, had been captured and taken away from her. John Doe, the bloated, pasty leader of the Fulbrights with a mad plan to live forever. Jonathan Wild, the creator of the Lawless School and a mysterious person from ancient history who was reaching forward into her life somehow. The details were hazy around the edges and mysterious, hidden in her mucked-up memories like a song melody just out of reach. But she knew two things for sure. She didn’t belong in Harmon …
And this Dartsey was bad news.
“Wha’s that, Ms. Foreman?” the substitute asked with a diabolical grin. “Did you have something to share with the rest of us? Or shall I continue the lesson?”
Lesson. That’s exactly what this was. A lesson. A lesson to M, so that she knew her place. She was the hunted, and Dartsey was the next thug in line to catch her.
“Rembrandt called that technique the umbra mortis, or ‘shadow of death,’ ” she replied, showing no concern or fear. The other kids almost broke their necks turning to look at her. “You see, during Rembrandt’s career, he worked for doctors in order to understand the human body, because to understand it meant he would be able to paint it better, in theory. Lots of artists did this. Leonardo Da Vinci was said to have performed autopsies himself, and he was one of the greatest artists of all time.”
“Well, well, well, I’ll be well,” said Dartsey. “Ms. Foreman knows her stuff. Color me impressed.”
“I could go on, if you’d like,” bragged M.
“I’m sure you could, but …” Dartsey held up his monolithic finger and, eerily, the final bell of school rang. “We … are out … of time. Class, it’s been a pleasure to serve you today. Do be balanced academics and read pages one hundred through one hundred ten in your textbookies for homework tonight. That was Ms. Alls-ham’s request, not mine.”
The class raced out of their seats and went to escape their behemoth substitute teacher. Already some of the kids were on their phones, posting about their insane class experience. M knew the news about Dartsey would be out soon, but she didn’t know what that meant for her. But now she realized that Harmon was an unharmonious place. She was not supposed to be here.
“Oh, and one last bit,” said Dartsey, and the students stood deathly still. “I needs to have a quick one-on-one with Ms. Foreman.”
If there were allegiances in the classroom, they weren’t with M. The rest of the class hightailed it out.
Except for Evel. “I can stay,” he offered nervously.
“No,” M said, steeling herself for what came next. “Wait for me outside. And whatever you do, whatever you hear, don’t come back in here.”
Evel, to her surprise, didn’t blink twice at her order. He even left his books behind and was out the door.
“How did you find me?” she asked Dartsey once they were alone.
“Funny thing,” he said, chortling. “I didn’t come looking for you, I was looking for your pal Evel. See, he owes me a thing or three. Like two broken arms and a disjointed leg if my appendage-to-financial-debt ratio is spot-on. And believe me, it’s always spot-on.”
“If you came for him, then what do you want with me?” she asked.
“Well, when you break into a place with every intention of doing some vandalizing and you unexpectedly find a diamond,” Dartsey reasoned as he cracked his knuckles again, “my dear, you always grab the diamond first.”
“Careful there, jolly giant,” said M. “Diamonds can do a lot of damage.”
Dartsey slid a dagger out from his sleeve and hurled it at M. She flinched to the left and heard the blade whiff by her ear. He had been aiming for her head. This was a take-no-prisoners dustup, then. A second dagger flipped toward her, but M grabbed one of Evel’s books and blocked the shot. The tip of the knife pierced the cover and stopped inches from her eye.
M ducked down and pulled the surrounding desks on top of herself for shelter. She opened her backpack and found nothing but books and a small mirror. More knives carved into the desktops above her. “No wonder they call you Dartsey,” she yelled. “But you keep missing your marksy!”
“I ain’t missing, dearie,” he stressed. “I’m just playing pretend.”
“Pretending you can win this fight?” M asked boldly.
“See’s, I’m the cat and you’re the mousey,” said Dartsey. “And what you’ve failed to realize is that I’ve had your tail under my claw the whole time.”
She listened to his boasting and rolled her eyes. Frantically, she loosened the straps to her backpack and wound them around several desk legs. Don’t fire until you see the soles of his feet, she thought. Then Dartsey made his move and stepped closer. M saw his shiny, buckled shoes start to tread across the floor and she yanked on her backpack with all of her might. The desks around her flicked over with a brilliant crash and came down on his five-thousand-dollar patent leather shoes like a guillotine.
“GAH!” screamed Dartsey as he kicked the desks aside.
His eyes flew open in rage. He found M and lunged at her. But M grabbed Dartsey by his white goatee and pulled. Without the feeling in his toes to support him, the giant substitute fell hard against the ground and conked his head on the hardwood.
Dartsey rolled over. He was clearly stunned by the turn of events. His eyes were unfocused, but slowly the situation came back to him as he stared up at M, who was holding a thick book over her head.
“I am the cat,” she whispered to him before bringing the book smack down on him, knocking the thug out cold.
She flipped the Art Appreciation textbook over and smiled. “How’s that for an art history lesson, scumbag?”
The room was torn to shreds, with small blades covering the desk like porcupine quills. Splinters of wood were all over her and scattered on the ground. She dusted them out of her hair and off her clothes before grabbing her backpack and heading toward the door.
She stopped to look at the attendance list on Ms. Ohlmsted’s desk. The name on the paper read Meredith Foreman, but M realized that person had never existed. This Meredith Foreman character was no more.
M Freeman, for better or worse, had just come back from the dead.
Sneakers squeaked in the hallway as students left for the day. Laughter and teasing echoed outside the windows as parents waited in a patient row of cars to gather their children. Those kids probably had snacks waiting for them at home. They’d fool around online for a while, maybe play some after-school sport, then do their homework before dinner and eventually be off to bed. But not M. She had to make a move and make it fast.
She breathed heavily and
steadied herself, trying to calm her adrenaline rush before racing home to face her fake parents. If she wasn’t thinking straight, there was a real danger that she could disappear from herself again. And she didn’t want to be lost anymore.
M’s hands shook as she took the attendance sheet for a memento. A physical memory in case she forgot who she was again. Who knew what else was waiting for her beyond that door?
As she folded the paper in half, another name on the list jumped out at her. A name that didn’t have any business coming back into her life. Zoso. Just the written name made M’s skin crawl as she recalled her violent history with the venomous Devon Zoso. Devon Zoso, who stole the necklace her father gave her. Devon Zoso, who set off the black hole and destroyed the Lawless School. Devon Zoso, who was working with John Doe. But the Zoso name on the attendance sheet wasn’t attached to the young phenom double agent.
It belonged to Evel. Evel Zoso. Suddenly Dartsey’s question about him having a sister made sense. M had never heard of Devon having a brother! The hope she felt from Evel’s arrival earlier had been knocked out as cold as the unconscious Dartsey on the floor behind her. M squeezed her fists tightly and crumpled the sheet of paper. She counted to three and then let go of all the pent-up negative energy inside her. If Evel had come to Harmon, he did it for a calculated reason and M had a pretty good idea what that reason was. To finish what his sister had started.
“M,” came Evel’s voice from the hallway. It was barely a whisper that shook with real anxiety. “Are you, um, are you okay in there?”
M slipped through the open door and locked it from the inside before she closed it. “We need to get out of here. Now.”
“And Mr. Dartsey?” asked Evel with an audible gulp in his throat.
“He’s done substituting for a while,” M answered as she pulled Evel along with her. She wanted to get out of this school before any more surprises showed up. Walking briskly, M continued talking to Evel while keeping an eye out for other attackers. “Listen, I don’t know what you did and I don’t care. Whatever is between you and dagger-throwing Dartsey stays between you and him. As far as I’m concerned, I was in the right place at the wrong time. I didn’t save you, okay? I don’t know you and I don’t care about you one bit.”
Mayhem Page 2