Free Behind the Canvas by Alexander Vance Page A

finally embraced it.
    Claudia pulled Pim’s painting from the backpack, unable to resist giving him a glimpse of the towering buildings. She tilted it upward and heard him gasp.
    â€œI’ve seen city streets from gallery windows,” he whispered. “But I’ve never looked up at a city.” Claudia smiled. She had worried that nothing would impress her friend more than the supermarket.
    The woman in the seat across from her stood up as the electric sign at the front of the bus lit up with the name of the stop.
    What was the street they wanted? Claudia felt a surge of panic as her mind went blank.
    What stop was it?
    East. East something. Why hadn’t she written it down? Her eyes bounced between the buildings they passed and the sign at the front of the bus.
    EAST LAKE STREET scrolled across the sign. That didn’t sound right.
    EAST RANDOLPH STREET came next. Oh, great. They’re all East streets. She almost jumped out of her seat, but lost the nerve when no one else stood up to exit the bus.
    EAST MONROE STREET. That’s it! I think . Claudia leaped to her feet and threw her backpack over her shoulder, clutching the painting tightly in her hand. “This is my stop,” she shouted.
    â€œNo rush, darling,” the driver said as Claudia bustled past. “We got plenty of time.”
    You might, Claudia thought. But I only have three days .
    She stepped down to the sidewalk and was immediately swept up in a sea of people. From every direction came a roiling tide of bodies that mesmerized and disoriented her. Frantically she looked around for something familiar as she tried to picture the street map in her head. The stream of bodies broke for a moment and she saw it, half a block away: an immense white stone building stretching out parallel to the street. She recognized it immediately from the visits with her parents.
    The Art Institute of Chicago.
    Two bronze lions, green with age, guarded the wide stairway that led up to the building from the street. Claudia stared at the closest one as she approached. Her watercolor painting in Granny Custos’s house the night before came to mind. Courage . That’s what the old woman had told her to paint. One can always use more courage . Claudia wondered if her mom had left enough room in her backpack—somewhere between the nail polish and the underwear—for a hefty amount of courage.
    She reached up and placed a hand lightly on a lion’s paw.
    â€œClaudia.”
    She jumped at the sound and lifted the painting to see Pim staring at her.
    â€œWe can do this,” he said.
    â€œWe can do this,” she repeated.
    She swung her backpack around and zipped Pim’s painting into the mesh pocket in the front so that he was looking out. Threading her arms through the straps so that the backpack rested against her chest, she glanced at the bronze lion above her. We can do this . Then she took a step forward.

 
    C HAPTER 8
    O N THE stairs in front of the museum, Claudia pulled out the cell phone and called her mom. She kept the conversation as brief as possible, letting her mom know that she had “made it there okay.” Her mom told Claudia to give Aunt Maggie a kiss for her. The pang of guilt twisted in Claudia’s stomach again as she ended the call and slipped the cell phone into her pocket.
    She walked through the doors of the Art Institute of Chicago 11 and joined the line of people waiting to buy tickets. She scanned the information board above the ticket booth. Children under fourteen were free, which was good. She didn’t want to spend her return bus money on a museum ticket. But the board also said she needed to be accompanied by an adult. She didn’t have one of those.
    She stepped out of line and stood by the glass doors. How was this going to work without drawing attention to herself? She couldn’t just ask a random grown-up to help her get in. But she needed to be with an adult to