Polly Shulman - The Grimm Legacy

“Stop it, Aaron!”

He didn’t seem to hear me. He went on staring with an expression like someone watching his house burn down. In the painting Marc and Anjali came up for breath and he began kissing her neck.

“Don’t watch that!” I shook his shoulder, but he ignored me, so I covered his eyes with my hands and yelled at the painting, “Much too frank! Please go blank!”

It obeyed slowly—so slowly it seemed to be taunting me. Marc’s lips melted into Anjali’s throat; her hair blended with his hands.

Aaron gripped my wrists tightly as if to pull away my hands, but instead he held them still against his face. I felt his eyeballs roll beneath my hands under their thin lids, the lashes tickling my palms; it was disturbing, embarrassing, almost like the amorphous shapes in the painting. His hands felt hot on my wrists. I thought I felt his pulse race, but maybe it was mine.

He let go of my hands and pointed at the picture. “What is your social studies teacher doing with this?”

“I have no idea. He must have borrowed it from the GC. I’m sure he has some good reason. He’s the one who got me a job at the repository. He’s a friend of Dr. Rust’s.”

“Oh, is he the one who got Marc the job too? Maybe he’s the real thief, and Marc’s just working for him!”

I lost my temper again. “You don’t know what you’re talking about! Look, I’m sorry. I’m sorry Anjali doesn’t like you. I’m sorry she likes Marc instead. I’m sorry he’s tall and handsome and popular and a fantastic athlete, and I’m sorry you’re not. But why do you have to be a jerk about it? It’s not like I’m all that pretty or popular either, and you don’t see me taking it out on Anjali, do you? I’m nice to people. Why can’t you just be nice?”

“Nice!” he said. He made it sound like a curse. “You, nice—not pretty but nice ? You don’t know the first thing about yourself. You think it’s nice to make me like you and trust you, over and over again, and then every time you turn out to be lying and covering for that—that liar? You think it’s nice to break Doc’s trust and help people ruin the one true place of magic we know? Is your teacher behind it? Is that who you’re working for?”

“I’m not working for anybody!” I protested. “I want to catch the thief. That’s what Anjali wants too. So does Marc. So does Mr. Mauskopf, I’m sure.”

Aaron snorted. “We’ll see about that.” He turned to the painting. “Masterpiece beyond belief, show the Grimm Collection thief . ”

I didn’t think it would work. Otherwise, Dr. Rust could have just asked the painting who was stealing the objects weeks ago. Sure enough, the painting had a mind of its own. The shapes flowed and the murk paled into a brightly lit art gallery crowded with people. They clustered around gesturing at paintings or stood in groups with their mouths moving, nodding and sipping from glasses. There were dozens of them. If the thief was there, it was impossible to tell who he or she was—the room was too crowded to see most of the faces.

“Oh, that’s helpful!” said Aaron.

“It is, actually,” I pointed out. “Marc and Anjali aren’t there. We just saw them hooking up in the hallway.”

“So maybe Marc’s not the actual thief. Maybe he’s just working with him.”

“Can’t you ever admit you’re wrong? Maybe instead of accusing our friends, we should try to figure out who the crooks really are.”

But the painting gave us no clue, so after watching people mill around and sip wine for a while, Aaron told it to shut down. He waited while I texted Anjali that I’d gone home and put the scattered papers back on the desks.

“Look,” he said when I was done. “I . . . I’m sorry I said all that. I have my suspicions about Marc, but I don’t actually think you . . . you and Anjali, you’re just so . . .”

“That’s okay,” I said quickly, before he could say something terrible and make me lose my temper again. “I’m sorry too. I shouldn’t have said all those things either. I don’t actually . . . I don’t really believe those things about you.”

“Peace, then?” Aaron held out his hand. “Or,” he said wryly, “maybe I should say World Peace?”

“Peace,” I agreed.

We put on our coats, turned out the light, and locked the door behind us. Aaron followed me as I followed the exit signs out. They took us to the back door behind the cafeteria, but at least we weren’t stuck wandering endlessly around the building.

“See you next week,” he said as the big school door swung shut behind us.

“Wait—would you mind—can you walk me to the subway?” I asked. With my lost sense of direction I was afraid it would take me all night to get home on my own.

Aaron looked surprised, but he didn’t object, even when I took his arm.

He didn’t say much on the way to the subway station. He watched me go down the stairs; I saw him still standing at the top until the wall blocked my view.

There was a message from Anjali waiting in my voice mail when I got off the train. I listened to it as I turned toward my building (after walking half a block in the wrong direction first). Sorry! I didn’t mean to ditch you. Marc and I just got a little . . . caught up in stuff, and then when we got to the library, I guess you’d gone home. I hope you’re not mad! Wasn’t that a great game? I like your friends. Thank you SOOOOO much for inviting me, I really owe you. Well, see you next week.

That night I dreamed about the scene in the painting, the scene with the kiss. The dream had the same sickening intensity as the shifting picture, the same over-intimate embarrassment when the kiss moved from mouth to neck, and even the same sense of dissolution when the image blurred into darkness. Only instead of Marc, the guy in the dream was Aaron.

And even more disturbing, instead of Anjali, the girl was me.

When I got to work at the repository the next morning, I went to Doc’s office to return the mermaid’s comb.

The door was open. I knocked on the door frame and stuck my head in.

“Hello, Elizabeth. Come in, come in—what can I do for you?”

“I brought that comb back, from the GC.”

“Oh, good. I hope everything went well? Now, where did I put the kuduo ?” Doc rummaged around and found it in the corner of the room behind a rather sad-looking ficus tree. “Let’s see—what was your deposit again? Your sense of humor?”

“No, direction.”

“Yes, of course.” Doc lifted the kuduo lid, and I got the comb out of my bag.

As soon as I touched it, I knew something was wrong. It felt different. I lifted it to my nose and sniffed. A faint smell of scalp but nothing else. No magic. Just a comb.

“What’s the matter, Elizabeth?”

“I don’t know. The comb’s weird. I mean, it’s not weird. It smells wrong.”

“Let me take a look.”

I handed it to Doc, who sniffed it, held it to first one ear and then the other, plucked each tooth, and finally, shockingly, delicately licked the back.

I watched Doc’s freckles. They seemed to be moving faster than usual. A butterfly shape floated by quickly, followed by a triangle.

I waited anxiously.

“Are you sure this is the right comb?” said Doc at last.