I prop my chin up on my fist and stare at the painting across from me. A porcelain-pale woman hefts a baby boy. She’s supposed to be the Virgin—I’ve never been to church or anything, but the cloak and tiny Bible give that much away—so I guess that makes her kid Jesus. Except since this is the Renaissance Art of Northern Europe and Italy wing, he’s painted in that Renaissance style where it’s obvious none of the artists took a child-development class. None of them understood the head-to-body proportions of a baby. Take Jesus, who looks like a grim-faced elf, with a long body and dangling sausage limbs and a head the size of a tennis ball. In all these paintings, it’s as if the kids were never young; they were born miniature adults. Like instead of growing older, they just increased in length and height and weight. Which I bet would be a lot easier if it were true.
When the wave of nausea peaks and passes, I push myself to my feet and keep moving through the interconnected rooms. The museum map shows me where I want to be, and after a few wrong turns I find the long room labeled Drawings and see it: just a little thing compared to the big art around it. Though my head is bobbing with the tiny boat in its inky water, I plant my feet and stare.
Beside the drawing, the plaque reads:
The Miraculous Draught of Fishes
Gift of the estate of Mrs. Sarah Wyman Whitman through Mrs. Henry Parkman; acquired June 1909
Artist: Eugène Delacroix, French, 1798–1863
Medium: Pen, brown ink, and washes on paper
According to the Gospel of St. Luke, Christ chooses the poor fishermen Simon, Peter, and Andrew as his first Apostles. They have been fishing unsuccessfully in the Sea of Galilee when Christ appears and tells Peter to let down his nets into deep water. They make a miraculous catch, so their boats overflow with fish. The tale of the fishermen has long been a popular subject among artists, many religious, but some with humbler motives. The Miraculous Draught of Fishes has been re-created by more than one painter living in poverty, poignantly expressing a starving man’s wistful dream of plentiful food.
The fishermen’s shadowed faces don’t have much in the way of features, but they don’t look awestruck or burning with god fever. The slashes of their lips are straight, their squiggly muscles straining to haul in the catch while dark clouds billow in from the left. They seem nervous, in a hurry to gather the fish before the storm hits and everything they have is washed away forever.
I’m leaning in as close as I can get to the canvas without bells or alarms or just a strained museum guide sounding off, when fingertips brush my arm from behind.
“I wasn’t touching it!” I jump back, turning so fast it takes the room a second to catch up with me. But it isn’t a museum guide.
It’s Jessa.
“What the hell?” I press my hand against my thumping heart. “What are you even doing here?”
“Ugh, don’t shout,” she groans through dry lips. Now that my vision has refocused, she does look rough, a whole rainbow of unhealthy colors. Her skin is practically green, and there are purple smudges under her eyes, red-rimmed and bleary. She pulls at the strings on her oversize sweatshirt, drawing the hood in like a noose. “Morning-me is really not feeling night-me. I thought I was gonna upchuck the whole train ride.”
“You took the train in?”
“Well, yeah. You wouldn’t text me back. Then I went to your house and saw your car was gone, so I got Chad to drop me off at the station on his way to work. And it was horrible. I’m not even kidding. The lady next to me was eating this sandwich out of a paper bag, so I asked if I could borrow the bag, you know? Just in case? And she gave me the stink-eye like I tried to rob her. Like, I was just asking.”
“And you’ve been wandering around trying to find me?”
She shrugs. “I just asked someone in a vest about a fish picture.”
“Oh. I guess that would’ve been easier. . . .” I turn back to the drawing on the wall.
“Any clues here?” Jessa asks.
“Not so much.” Swallowing back a swell of nausea—maybe I’ve been staring a little too closely into the rolling waves of The Miraculous Draught of Fishes—I make for the bench in the middle of the room and collapse onto it, trying to tell myself this isn’t the end of the trail. It’s just the part in the mystery when the answers seem really far away; the depressing part that makes it all the more inspiring and kickass when the detective picks up the trail again. But I’m a little too hungover for that bullshit. “Being here just . . . helps me think,” I finish lamely.
“I’m really sorry,” she mumbles, “about telling Jeremy. When you and Chadwick were busy measuring each other, Jeremy was whining about me not spending any time with him on my break. Because he wanted me to go to this college thing with him today, but I said I was helping you with something really serious, and he should shut up about it. And then he was like, ‘Is it herpes?’ He was being such a tool and I wanted him to feel like a tool, so I told him the truth. I shouldn’t have, but I didn’t think he’d blab to the entire room and I’m so, so sorry. I’ll talk to my brother. Tell him to forget about it.”
“Whatever.” It’s out of the bag already, and it’s too late to put it back. “Why are you going out with that guy if he’s such a tool?”
She winces as a little girl across the room screams at a glass-splintering decibel, then sighs. “He’s not always. Like last semester, when I was fighting with my mom a bunch? And freshman year, when my dad was having stomach problems? And we thought maybe he had, you know, the C-word or something, so Chad was applying to Boston schools only? Jeremy was so sweet. He was always coming around to play stupid video games and make Chad feel better, and me too. That’s kind of when we started dating.”