COMPLEMENTARY [GxG]

Chapter 13 | Her Perfect Forgeries

Paintings. Paintings all around me. Paintings stacked against one another, hung up on the walls, half-finished on tables and easels and floors. Mostly landscapes, still-lifes, a few portraits. Bottles of varnish and tubes of paint litter the room.

"So this is where you commit art fraud," I say to Eris. "I can't believe you have a whole studio to yourself."

It's nearly the size of my house. I recognize a few rip-offs of some obscure Dutch painters and even a Monet.

Eris makes a face and runs her hand through her hair. She's back to her usual grimy, just-rolled-out-of-bed, definitely-didn't-wash-off-yesterday's eyeliner look. Her posture is slouched, her gaze on the ground—is she embarrassed? Ashamed? She looks like a teenager again, not the mafia boss from Friday putting a gun to Javier's head. 

"No one else comes up here other than my siblings and my dad," she mutters. "This is weird as fuck."

Does anyone else know she's a forger? I still have no idea why she told me.

This time coming to her house, I thankfully didn't see Iker or Axel downstairs. Earlier Eris told me Iker was pissed when he found out that not only did she take me to that art show, but we're still planning on working together. "Me dio un regañazo," she'd muttered, then grinned. "But he wants me winning the Olympiad no matter what, and it's too late to find another partner. So I win."

Except he'd taken the keys to her car as punishment for taking me to the show. And today we had to get a ride to her house with her bodyguards.

"Okay," I say. "This round's theme is past and present. And as per our agreement, I'm letting you decide what we'll paint."

"I've been thinking about it," she says. "And fuck, I think you have a point with all my landscape paintings being lame. I wanna do something different. If we're gonna have the finals in Mexico then let's make this shit Mexican. Past and present. We do your little triangle design, and within the triangles we split the past and the present. Past is a corpse. Bullet wounds, slit throat. But it's not any corpse. It's the virgencita. Virgin Mary, Virgin of Guadalupe, whatever you wanna call her. It's like a metaphor for all the feminicide shit in Mexico, all the mothers who've been murdered. But then you have present. And she's not the virgin anymore. You ever heard of Santa Muerte? That's what millions of people worship nowadays. She's the saint of death. She's like Mary except for the new generation. The lost causes, the criminals, the oppressed. The corpse is now just bones, but she's more powerful than ever."

I stop my mouth from opening in shock. Is Eris actually putting thought into a theme? This is more elaborate than even what I come up with. My paintings are based on my internal landscape, my feelings, my anguish. But she wants to paint something real. Not that I believe in the Virgin Mary or whatever Santa Muerte is, but other people do. There's power in symbols. Is this why my art isn't landing as of late? Does it lack relevance to others, symbols they would recognize? This could just actually work.

"That seems... almost brilliant actually," I say.

Eris' tired face lights up. "Wait, really?"

I nod. Where was this type of thinking during the first round of the competition? I feel a sudden pang of regret for ruining her work—maybe we could've come up with something even better. Too late now.

She grins, showing the gap between her teeth. The dreary cloud hanging over dissipates with her excitement. "Well, shit, let's do it then."

"I know what the Virgin Mary is supposed to look like," I say. "But not the death saint."

"Let me show you something."

I follow her out of the art studio. We walk down a few hallways until we reach a door. And as soon as I step inside, I know it's her room because it's a total mess. Elaborate, bejeweled crosses are hung up on the walls. Instead of band posters, she has pictures of various saints. Bags of marijuana on the nightstand. Rings and necklaces everywhere like they're worth nothing. A rolled-up stack of bills. A polaroid camera. Several trinkets that look like they're from a tourist shop somewhere in the tropics. Sneakers thrown across the floor, piles of clothes accumulating in corners, and in the center of it all—a black, lacy bra.