THE PICASSO PROJECT

by Carol Anne Shaw

  "Hurry up," he tells Maya, who is finally awake. "School in half an hour."

  "Oh joy," Maya says, rolling her eyes. "English with Baker. Be still my heart."

  "Maybe," Eddie says, drying his feet on an old army blanket from the trunk, "if you stopped whining long enough to listen, you might actually learn something."

  "Oh, come on, Eddie. Shakespeare is so boring! Nobody likes reading that crap."

  Give thy thoughts no tongue, Eddie thinks. Hamlet. Polonius said it to his son just before he left home. Sometimes Shakespeare just nailed it.

  "Just hurry up," he tells her. "We gotta go."

  ***

  The Buick is a tank, and because they've gone to The Arms twice recently, Eddie needs to get gas again. He hates taking off at 3 a.m. but it's the only time that's safe for such tasks.

  The parking lot of All Tech is the prime place to get fuel, so that's where Eddie always goes. It backs onto a scruffy area near the ravine, and some of the parking spaces are partially hidden by three big metal dumpsters, all sitting side by side.

  By 3:20 a.m. Eddie is already there, the length of hose stuffed down the front of his jacket, the jerry can hidden inside a big cloth shopping bag. He makes a quick scan of the parking lot and decides on an older blue Chevy Malibu. It's nondescript and non-threatening. Generic as frick. Perfect.

  He's done this plenty of times. It isn't rocket science but the whole process makes his mouth taste like shit and he wishes he had some gum or something to chew on the way back to the clearing because no matter how good you are at siphoning gas, you're going to get a mouthful at some point.

  Eddie has half-filled the jerry can when he feels the hand on his shoulder. He freezes.

  "Well, well. Hello, again."

  Eddie looks up and sees the face, partially illuminated by the streetlight at the far end of the parking lot. The eyes are even smaller and more sunken than before but the face is just as red. Maybe redder.

  Eddie blinks and clears his throat.

  "You're a sneaky little bastard, aren't you?" But the man doesn't sound pissed. He sounds like he's trying not to laugh.

  "I...uh..."

  "I think I know what you're doing, son."

  "Is this...is this your car?"

  "Mine? No. Not mine. Good thing by the looks of things here. You leave some gas in there at all?"

  "Oh. Sure," Eddie says. "I...I'm not an asshole."

  "Didn't say you were, son. Didn't say you were."

  Eddie screws the cap back on the jerry can and stands up. There's no one else in the parking lot but he knows that if this little gnome of a guy tries anything, he can easily take him. The dude is soft as bread dough.

  "Well," Eddie says, turning away, "I gotta go."

  Randall grabs hold of his arm. "Not so fast."

  "What?"

  "There's no need to panic, son. I just want you to hear me out."

  Eddie's heart thuds in his chest, but he stays quiet.

  "I'm thinking you could probably use a friend right about now, am I right?" He lets go of Eddie and smiles. The skin on his forehead is white and flaking like maybe he has psoriasis or eczema or some kind of skin condition. There is spittle in the corners of his mouth.

  Eddie shrugs off his arm. "I'm fine, thanks."

  "Hey. No shame in being short on cash. Been there myself a few times."

  "Okay."

  "Listen. Don't let your pride get in the way, okay? About the money thing. You need some?"

  Eddie blinks. Who is this Randall guy, he wonders? And why does he keep showing up wherever Eddie happens to be?

  "I can help you out," Randall says, stepping a little closer. His breathing is heavier now. Audible. "And I'm not gonna lie, son. I was watching you just now. You're pretty good with that hose. That's a fine skill you have. I could pay you well for your talents...I'm sure you catch my drift?"

  Eddie looks at him. It takes a second for him to get it. When he does, he wants to puke.

  "Hundred bucks, my friend. A hundred bucks for you to show me some of that fine skill. How does that sound?" He digs into his coat pocket and brings out his wallet. He opens it to reveal a neat file of fifty-dollar bills.

  How does that sound, Eddie thinks? How does that sound? Eddie would like to tell him exactly how that sounds! It sounds like maybe he should grab the dude so tight around his fat, spongy neck that those piggy eyes pop right out of his skull. It sounds like maybe he should lay the guy flat on the concrete with one swift kick to the side of his bald and boiled head.

  But Eddie shuts up. He wills himself to keep his cool. He's the one breaking the law right now. This dude could easily blow the whistle.

  "Well?" Randall says quickly.

  The words feel stuck in Eddie's throat, but he gets them out. "No. I mean. I'll keep that in mind. But, like I said, I gotta go." He backs away slowly, shoving the now-coiled hose down the front of his jacket and placing the full jerry can back inside the cloth shopping bag.

  "You think about what I said, son," Randall says. He turns up the collar on his jacket and then pushes his hands deep in his front pockets. "You're a fine-looking young stud. I like the way you look, and a hundred bucks could buy you a few bags of groceries now, wouldn't it?"

  Eddie steps sideways, but Randall blocks his way. "Hey. It's not polite to ignore someone when they're talking to you, son."

  "I said I'm not interested," Eddie says flatly.

  Randall places a meaty hand on Eddie's shoulder and grips hard. "Well, I don't think you've given this idea enough consideration."

  "Is that so?"

  "Yeah. I'm not sure you fully understand how this could be good for both of us, son. Real good."

  Eddie peels Randall's hand from his shoulder. "I understand fine," he says as he walks off. "And I'm not your son."

  When Eddie is out of the parking lot and away from Randall, he crosses the road and breaks into a jog. He doesn't stop until he reaches the woods.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  JOURNAL ENTRY

  "What might be taken for a precocious genius is the genius of childhood. When the child grows up, it disappears without a trace."

  - Pablo Picasso

  A few days after they took Mom away, I found a scrapbook. It was under her bed, and it was filled with these funny little drawings and homemade birthday cards that I had made when I was little. There were lots of smiley faces and big yellow-crayoned suns in the corners of the pages, and a couple with apple trees and rainbows that filled up the sky. There were a few poems that I'd written too, which surprised me. I don't ever remember writing any poems. There must have been about ten of them. There was one was about an alien planet; one about life after death, and one about how animals are smarter than people if you take the time to stop and notice. I think I was about seven when I wrote that one.

  I must have read those poems ten times. I memorized them all. I wish I knew what happened to them. It would be cool to look at them from time to time, just to prove that I actually wrote them

  I couldn't write shit that good now. I wouldn't even know where to start.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  (Flashback)

  Pentimento Beach. It is actually called Pentianimo Lake, something to do with a First Nations legend, but their Mom calls it Pentimento anyway.

  They go there the summer Maya is four and Eddie is nine. They even stay in a cabin near the beach. It isn't anything like the fancy cottages on the sunny side of the lake—the ones that have flush toilets and glassed-in porches and lush green lawns with Adirondack chairs on them. Their cabin is on the other side, where the light only peeks in from between the mountains for a couple of hours before it disappears again.

  It doesn't matter, though. It is a real vacation. Maya and Eddie spend every waking minute in the water while their mother lies on a Mexican blanket, reading magazines. Their father spends most of his time at the pub, but when he's around, he tries (unsuccessfully) to get the old speedboat up and running—the one
that came with the place.

  In the evenings, Eddie and Maya sit out on the grass on plastic lawn chairs while they count shooting stars and tell ghost stories. Sometimes Eddie draws the pieces of gnarled wood he finds on the beach, and Maya tries to weave together the reeds and grasses she collects, determined to make some kind of basket to take home with her. They never work out, the grass breaks or she gets frustrated and ends up making sand castles instead. It doesn't matter, though. It's enough to be away from the dark apartment block they are living at the moment—the one where the landlord coughs up a lung every morning and the man upstairs has sketchy people visiting him at all hours of the night.

  It gets really hot on their last day at Pentimento Beach. Scorching. Maya and Eddie spend the day in the water. They don't know where their parents are. Lately, their mother and father have taken up with another couple a few cabins down and like to spend time smoking and drinking gin and tonics with them. The night before they hadn't come home until just after dawn.

  Eddie floats around on a makeshift raft in knee-deep water when he hears his sister's blood-curdling scream. He paddles over to find her standing in a crimson pool of water surrounding her foot.

  "It hurts, Eddie! It really really hurts!"

  Eddie carries his four-year-old sister up the beach and sets her down at a picnic table. Her foot has a big gash on one side; she's stepped on a jagged piece of glass. It gushes bright red blood but Eddie knows enough to wash it clean and then tie his T-shirt tight around it to add some pressure. He learned that at school.

  "Where are your folks, kids?" A man at a nearby picnic table with four kids asks him.

  Eddie shrugs.

  "Looks like your sister could use a couple of stitches in that foot."

  "I can take her home," Eddie says. "My parents will know what to do."

  He piggybacks Maya the whole way over the dried brown grass, along the sandy path through the pine trees, and then down the trail to the collection of brown ramshackle cabins at the edge of a field. He carries her all the way cabin #4. Then he cleans her foot again, bandages it with a sanitary napkin out of his mother's toiletry bag, and waits for their parents to come back.

  He tells Maya stories while they wait. He makes one up about Chief Pentimento, who had once lived at the beach with his family. He'd been a great ruler, Eddie says, and had had three beautiful daughters. When rumours of another tribe's planned ambush became known, Chief Pentimento turned his daughters into beautiful pieces of polished beach glass to keep them safe.

  Eddie tells Maya that she has cut her foot on Princess Little Star, the most beautiful daughter of all. His sister smiles, and ever since, Eddie calls her this whenever she is sad or sick.

  When their parents finally show up they are drunk, and when they leave the next day they don't stop at the walk-in clinic in their neighbourhood to get Maya's foot stitched up. Instead, Eddie looks after it. He keeps it clean and bandaged for days, until it forms a scab first, and a nasty, ragged scar second.

  They never go back to Pentimento Beach again. They never go anywhere after that. Someday, Eddie thinks, maybe he'll go back, just him and Maya—so she can weave a beach grass basket, or maybe just make another sandcastle. If she wants.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Halfway through the week, Eddie spots Maya sitting with a group of girls on the bleachers. They're laughing and as they pass around a big bag of potato chips. Immediately, Eddie is nervous. He wanders over to where they're sitting, tight fists stuffed in the pockets of his jeans, . When he gets there, they all stop laughing and study him suspiciously.

  "Hey," Eddie says.

  "Hi," one of them says—she's a pretty girl with honey-coloured hair. "You're Eddie, right?"

  I am," Eddie says. "Who are you?"

  "Oh," Maya jumps in. "Eddie? This is Shelby. She's in my French class, and you know Paige and Nicole. Nicole is totally into horses; she actually has two, right Nikki? What kind are they again? Hungarian Goulashers?" Maya falls sideways against one of the girls, giggling and clutching her sides.

  "Hungarian Warmbloods," Nicole corrects. "God, Maya? You are such a tard!"

  "Maya!" Eddie says sharply.

  "Whaaat?" She sits up and rolls her eyes at the other girls.

  "Come on," Eddie orders.

  "Come on, where?"

  "I need to talk to you," he says, walking away.

  "Whatever!" She gets up and shrugs to the girls on the bleachers, "I'll catch up with you guys in a sec. My brother does this stuff all the time. He's a total control freak. It's no biggie."

  When they're out of earshot Eddie turns to her and says, "Do we need to have that same conversation all over again?"

  She flushes. "God, Eddie. We were just hanging out. It's not a crime to have a conversation with people!"

  "Yeah, well, you know the drill, right?" Does he have to remind her about the last time she broke the friend rule with Jessica Irving? "You do remember what went down with Jessica, right?"

  "It won't be like that, Eddie. You're so paranoid!" She kicks at a stone with her shoe. Her shoes are haggard. She totally needs new ones. Add it to the list, Eddie thinks. There's always something.

  "I'm just trying to keep things together, Maya. I just don't wanna see you get hurt again."

  "Well, quit worrying. I'm not an idiot, okay? And besides, we were just talking about fucking horses."

  "Hey! Watch your mouth!" Eddie can't believe how much he hates it when Maya drops F-bombs—she's been dropping them a lot lately.

  "Look who's talking," she argues, but she's half smiling, gazing just over his head and twisting a lock of her hair around her fingers. Eddie looks over his shoulder and sees Mark Johnson and some other guy leaning against the side of Mark' black Trans Am. They're both dressed in their rugby kits, and they're both watching Maya. Maya continues to play with the curl of hair. "Come on, big brother. Please don't be mad at me, okay?" She juts out her hip and flashes Eddie a full-on smile. Eddie frowns. Does she think he's an imbecile? She's totally putting on a little show for those dickwads.

  "Maya," Eddie hisses. "Cut it out!"

  "Cut what out?" She gives him a playful shove and laughs much louder and much longer than she needs to.

  "Look," Eddie tells her. "We gotta go."

  "I'll be home by 4:00, okay Eddie?"

  Eddie sighs. "Not a second later, okay?"

  "Yeah, no worries, brother. See ya at home," Maya says as she runs to join up with the girls again.

  Eddie rams his fists back into his pockets.

  Home. What a joke.

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  The following week, Nicole invites Maya to go to the mall with Mark Johnson and a couple of his friends.

  "We're going during lunch hour tomorrow. Are you in?"

  "I don't know," Maya tells her. "I barely even know Mark." She quickly looks around for Eddie but there's no sign of him. There's still ten minutes before she has to meet him. "Why would he want me to come?"

  "You moron!" Paige squeals. "Mark is totally into you, dude. Didn't you see the way he was staring at you when you were at your locker at break? He's been staring at you for weeks!"

  "No way," Maya says, but she did notice. She also noticed Mark near the water fountain this morning, with Sean Talbot and Brody Bates. They were all looking in her direction, but she had figured they were talking about Nicole. She has learned that everybody likes to talk about Nicole.

  "Well, you're more stunned than I thought, then," Nicole says, hip checking Maya hard enough that she gets caught off balance and lunges to the right.

  "So," Paige says, "you'll come with us tomorrow then?"

  Maya thinks about this for a second. There is no way Eddie will give her the thumbs up for this. But there's also no way she isn't going. She's tired of her control freak brother. He's not her parent. She can have friends, even if he chooses not to.

  "Of course," she tells her.

  "Good."

  "Where should I meet you guys
?"

  "In the parking lot, stupid. Where else does Mark park his car?"

  But that won't work, because if Eddie finds out, he'll wreck everything. "No," Maya says to the girls. "Just pick me up a block away? You know, because of my brother. I'll tell him I'm going to study block or something."

  Paige and Nicole nod their heads and roll their eyes. "Right, Eddie the Freak. Got it."

  Maya spots Eddie waiting near the cafeteria and begins walking toward him. "Okay," she says over her shoulder. "I'll see you guys later. I gotta go."

  "Okay," Nicole says, "Oh, and Maya?"

  Maya stops. "What?"

  "Wear something, you know...hot, tomorrow. This is your big chance with Mark, right? You've got the stuff. You should totally flaunt it, girl!"

  Mark Johnson: Eddie's nemesis. But maybe he isn't as bad as Eddie makes him out to be. Maybe he just gives Eddie a hard time because her brother is such a huge buzz kill. God, Eddie totally sucks the fun out of any room these days, Maya thinks. Besides, Mark is seriously good-looking, and he's in grade twelve. And best of all, he does seem interested in her.

  But she doesn't have any sexy clothes, and she's already wearing the top that Jess gave her. There's no way she can wear it again tomorrow.

  She hugs her backpack closer to her and runs over to meet her brother.

  ***

  "So, are we still going to the library tonight to use the computers?" Maya asks Eddie back at the car. They're sitting in the back seat, eating cold ravioli out of a can and pulling apart a dry, crusty French loaf with their hands. It's a little stale, and there are a million crumbs everywhere, but if you soak the bread in the ravioli sauce, it doesn't taste too bad.

  "Sure," Eddie says.

  Maya nods. She thinks her plan will work. The library is big—it's three stories high. Eddie usually holes up in the art history section, and once he gets his nose in a book he'll forget about her until it's closing time. The mall is right next door. It's perfect.