COMPLEMENTARY [GxG]

Chapter 1 | Wilt

▴ Act One | Lumière et Obscurité ▴

The paintings surrounding me are all, to put it as nicely as possible, some of the worst I've ever seen.

Messy lines, colours that don't go together, no originality whatsoever. They look more like class assignments to me, which I can't blame any of these "artists" for. They're amateur, after all. I almost feel bad for crushing their chances at winning when my perfectly geometric painting puts them all to shame.

There is no way any of them can win.

Except for one.

My jaw clenches at the thought. No, not today, I tell myself.

Because this year has been different. This year, I have tried harder than all the previous years combined. This year, I have calculated angles and sides, proportions and lines, everything to get the dimensions just right. This year, my book of color theory has been my bible for the past month, lying on my bed stand for me to look at every night.

This year, it doesn't matter how good people think her painting is, because my efforts have paid off. The only proof I need lies in the canvas in front of me. After I leave with the $1000 first place prize, I'll easily sell it to a gallery. And soon enough, my work will have a place of its own in the contemporary art museums my father's paintings have also found their homes.

I take a deep breath and let it out, allowing any stray doubts to go with it, and scan my surroundings.

The judges are here.

They walk around the assembly hall—stuffy despite the blasting AC—and inspect each painting, making notes on their clipboards. The "artists" stand around nervously, smiling until the judges quietly pass them over, no reaction on their bored faces.

I'm calculating how long until the judges get to me when I see the devil herself, probably on her way to the bathroom. My chest tightens, posture straightening—the visceral reaction I have when it's been a while since seeing her in person. And by a while, I mean two days. There's a lot of things I loathe about high school, but attending the same one as her has to make the top of the list.

We are supposed to be dressed nicely for the art fair, and I have obviously done so, but of course, her being her, she looks like she has just crawled out of a sewer. Her white tank top shows way much more skin than what is appropriate for the occasion, accentuating her lack of boobs, and to top off her whole homeless person ensemble, she's paired her hideous top with her usual uncomfortable-looking skinny jeans and dirty boots. Typical.

"Persephone Baines," someone says, and my eyes land on the white, middle-aged man in front of me. One of the judges. Two more judges stand behind him, nodding in approval. I smile.

"Very nice," the first judge says, and my smile falters a little. My painting is not very nice; it is beautiful, it is perfect, and it is going to win.

"Thank you," I say anyway. The theme for the California Youth Artists Fair this year is "spring". How unoriginal. As if there's such thing as spring in this soulless wasteland called San Diego.

Anyway, for my painting, I thought I'd pay homage to the springtime of Ottawa—the city of mine and my late mother's birth. Clouds hover over the parliament building. Tulips dot the hills. Buildings and trees coalesce into triangles, fragmenting the scene into a beautiful abstraction.

It's more than a static landscape. The sky splits into various times of day. The glow of morning. The promise of a thunderstorm which only fades into a brilliant golden hour. The murky pinks and greys of twilight. The only constants are concrete and brick—human-made structures. The image runs on its own time, each shade and triangle bleeding into the next, blooming and alive.