The Art of Running Away by Sabrina Kleckner

Author:Sabrina Kleckner
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: North Star Editions
Published: 2021-09-08T21:29:47+00:00

Chapter 16

Museums Don't Always Suck (Then Again, Sometimes They Do)

June 28, 3:05 p.m.

Alicia: Are you around?

Alicia: I’ll show you a tennis pic over FaceTime.

Alicia: It’s super embarrassing so there’s no way I’m texting it to you.

Alicia: But trust me when I say you’ll be laughing about it for days.

6:45 p.m.

Me: I want to see!!!

Me: I promise I’ll let you knowas soon as I’m free to chat.

It’s been a week, and Calum still hasn’t admitted to me that he likes art. But on Friday, when I suggest going to a museum for our nightly activity, he agrees.

Museums can be super boring. You’re supposed to stare at a bunch of stuff you aren’t allowed to touch and read tiny captions about dead people. Even art, my one true love, can feel dry when you’re looking at it from the confines of a spotless, air-conditioned building. However, there is also something really cool about getting up close and personal with a painting that was created four hundred years ago. It’s probably as close as I’ll ever get to traveling in time.

Calum takes me to a museum called the V&A, where we stare at paintings for a solid hour. Fun fact: Unlike in New York, a lot of museums in London are free. You can pop in, marvel at a few paintings, and leave without feeling like you lost money. Which is exactly what we do.

I focus mainly on the art, but occasionally I look over at Calum. When he catches my gaze, he rolls his eyes like he’s just here for my benefit. But when I watch him from the corners of my vision, his eyes travel from the detail work of each piece to the layout to the background. I know he’s analyzing the painting like I do, filing the imagery and techniques away for future inspiration. I may have only seen one of his street art designs and thoroughly failed to find his web comic, but Calum’s an artist. It’s obvious he loves it, which is why I finally decide to bring up Glenna’s again.

Calum is staring at a framed picture of a stained glass window. It’s beautiful: colored with a kaleidoscope of blues and greens, the brushstrokes fading into each other until they all but disappear. I can almost see the sun shining through the panes, even though they’re made of paint, not glass. I step beside him, watching him cautiously. There’s no way to ease into this, so I don’t try to. “You know how Benji approaches random people and asks them what they want painted on the streets? I’ve been going with him and filming those random people for a project.”

Calum snaps his head toward me, the peaceful spell woven by the museum broken by a sentence. “You’ve been doing what?”

“I’m making a video that I think will save Glenna’s.” I hope this information will distract him from the whole approaching-potentially-hostile-strangers-on-the-street thing.

Apparently I judged right, because instead of yelling some more, he slowly says, “What do you mean?”

“Benji’s art is similar to what we do at Glenna’s.

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