Mister Impossible, Maggie Stiefvater [uplifting novels txt] 📗

Matthew thought, without hesitation: I’m going to climb that.

He did. He clambered onto the body and then onto the boom, up and up and up. He thought how annoyed Declan would be. Good, he thought. Good, good. But I told you to stay in the house, Declan would say, confused. You’re supposed to stay exactly where I put you, like a toy.

He kind of wished he’d never found out he was a dream.

At the top of the crane boom, Matthew closed his eyes. He used to imagine that air was a hug that was always happening, but he couldn’t seem to conjure up that happy thought right then.

It had taken Matthew a long time to understand that he was a boat anchor in Declan’s life.

“Crumbs!”

Opening his eyes, he realized there was a tiny person looking up at him. A tiny Jordan. Well, a regular-sized Jordan, far below.

She shielded her eyes. “Yeah, I thought that was you!”

“You can’t make me come down,” Matthew told her.

“I sure as shit cannot,” she agreed, “but it is harder to talk this way, you up there, me down here.”

“Don’t talk to me like a kid. I can tell you’re talking to me like a kid and I don’t like it.”

Jordan crossed her arms, a posture readable even from up on a crane. “All right, here you go, then: Climbing up on a stick into the sky is a stupid way to process any kind of problem, but stupid’s your right, so if you want to stay up there, just lemme know how long it’ll be, so I can know if I have time to get a drink, or if I should just hang here.”

“Why do I need to be watched at all?”

“Because you climbed a crane, mate.”

Matthew considered this and then considered it some more and then, with a sigh, climbed down to where Jordan waited. “How did you know I was here?”

“You walked right by my studio. You didn’t recognize it?”

He hadn’t. Stupid.

“What’s the deal here?” Jordan asked as they began to walk back the way he’d come. “Are you giving rebellion a go? Is this about your brothers lying to you?”

Because she just said it instead of mincing around it, Matthew told her. He told her everything. All the things that were bothering him, from big to small and back to big again.

“That all sounds truly fucked up, and I’m sorry,” Jordan said, opening the door to Fenway Studios. Together they walked down the hall toward the studio she stayed in. “The problem as I see it is that some of that shit’s about being a dream, but some of it’s just about growing up, and honestly, both are sorry situations if you ask me about it.”

“I did,” Matthew said.

“You did what, mate?”

“Ask you about it.”

She laughed her enormous laugh as he smiled at her. She lightly high-fived him and then pushed open the door to let them into the studio. “Ah yeah.”

“Whoa,” Matthew said. “This is good.”

Since he’d been last, Jordan had accomplished huge amounts of work on her copies of El Jaleo and Madame X. Each canvas had a separate, smaller easel sitting in front of it, with reference photos and jotted palette notes and instructions and business cards taped all over them. But what he was looking at was the work she’d done on the portrait of Sherry and her daughter, the one he’d helped her with at the very beginning. It was still coming together, but their faces were very good and the colors were as understated and lovely as the John White Alexander paintings she had taped on the easel beside it.

“Thanks,” Jordan said.

“They’re way better than this other weird stuff.” The rest of the studio was full of the ordinary studio occupant’s work—colorful, elongated nudes with cucumber-shaped breasts.

“Not really,” Jordan said. “I mean, Sargent’s better than Sir Tits here is, obviously. That’s why Sargent’s famous and this guy is just, you know, this guy. But these paintings of mine are copies. At least this guy is making original stuff. That’s part of it, I think. I don’t know much about sweetmetals, but I know I’ll never make one painting Sargents.”

Matthew moved Jordan’s pillow to sit on the bright orange couch. “So what do you think will do it?”

She perched on the arm. “It’s what that guy said, isn’t it? Boat fellow, the one your brother took us to see. The art’s got to do something to the artist. It’s more about making it than what gets made. It changes them, I guess. If you’re a bang-up artist who always paints great work, it doesn’t mean anything when you make another great work. It’s got be something else, not trauma, exactly, it’s more like … energy and movement. One makes the other. There’s movement in their life, their technique, somehow, that captures that ley energy, its movement. I guess. I don’t know, really. I’m talking out my ass, and if my voice sounds desperate to you, it’s because of that, it’s coming from my ass.”

Matthew liked that she was talking to him like he was a real person. “So you think making an—a not-copy, a, uh, an original, will make a sweetmetal for you? Because you always do copies?”

She pointed at him, snapping her fingers. “Right. Right. That’s what I’m hoping. But I just won’t know if it works until I need it, will I? I’ve been working on an original, that painting of your brother, but I can’t tell, sitting here, if it’s working. I can’t feel any of the sweetmetals the same way these past few days, actually, because of whatever Hennessy and Ronan are doing with the ley line. Have you noticed that? Have you noticed you’ve had fewer of the episodes?”

Matthew was so relieved to hear her say it, like it was just a normal, commonplace thing. “I haven’t been wandering!”

“Right? When I first got here, I felt the sweetmetals so strongly. I could feel El Jaleo doing something