When Cedar walked into the museum the day after they finished drawing Van Gogh’s poppy flowers, they didn’t expect to see yellow tape at the front door. Joel was standing guard at the front door, as usual, and he had a solemn look on his face that slipped off his face when he saw Cedar.
“Cedar! You got here right in time. The police are just about to leave,” informed Joel as he received the bag with his daily croissant from Cedar.
“The what?”
Joel glanced around to make sure nobody was watching before lifting the yellow tape and gesturing for Cedar to step inside. As he led Cedar to the exhibit, Joel explained, “The painting of the poppy flowers was stolen last night, which is super weird considering that it’s a replica. The police are investigating it, but it’s not too serious. They’re thinking that it’s probably a prank or something.”
Huh, that’s the same painting I’ve been drawing these past few days, Cedar thought to themselves. It has to be a coincidence. There’s no other explanation for it.
When Cedar and Joel arrived at the exhibit, one of the policemen at the scene noticed Cedar and pointed an accusatory finger at them. “What’s this person doing here?”
“Officer Stanley, this is Cedar. They’re a regular at the museum. They’re good to be in here,” Joel reassured. Officer Stanley gave Cedar a once-over and nodded, even though his shoulders were still tight with tension.
“Ah, Cedar! I’m Detective Bennet, the investigator assigned to work on this case.” A man in a brown trenchcoat hurried over to Cedar, his eyes lighting up with enthusiasm. He had a cartoonishly thick British accent that Cedar would’ve laughed at had they not noticed how serious the scene was. Cedar barely had any time to react before Bennet grabbed their hand and shook it. Officer Stanley rolled his eyes at Bennet’s ecstatic attitude, but Bennet hardly noticed the officer’s contempt. “You must know something about this painting, correct?”
“Um, what makes you think that?” Cedar asked as Bennet dropped their hand. How could Bennet have known they had been drawing the painting? Did Bennet think they had stolen the painting?
“Well, just a guess. Joel mentioned you’re a regular at this museum, so I figured you must know something about this exhibit, right? What’s so special about the painting? Or about this exhibit? And do you know of anybody who would want to steal the painting?” interrogated Bennet as he took out a cartoonishly small notepad and an equally small pencil.
Stifling a laugh, Cedar did their best to take Bennet seriously. “I don’t know anything special about this painting specifically, but Van Gogh is a pretty popular artist. Somebody probably thought this painting was the real deal and figured they could sell the paintings on the black market for a high price.”
Bennet’s eyes lit up at Cedar’s suggestion. “Ah, excellent theory! I’ll write that down.”
As Bennet furiously scribbled down the theory, Stanley glanced at the detective warily and stated, “I think we’re done here for the day. To be honest, this isn’t too big of a deal, but we’ll come back again tomorrow.”
All the officers nodded in agreement and walked out of the exhibit, looking bored. Stanley had to grab Bennet, who was so engrossed in writing in his notepad that he didn’t notice everybody had left, by the arm and pull the detective out of the exhibit. Joel mouthed “It’s all yours” to Cedar before he turned around and followed the officers out of the exhibit.
Once the room was empty, Cedar stared at the blank spot on the wall where the painting had been. They knew that they shouldn’t interfere with the scene of the crime, but they couldn’t help themselves as they gently traced the outline of the frame. The painting had been removed stealthily, so this wasn’t the work of a common prankster.
Cedar shook their head to get themselves to stop thinking about the possibility of an art thief breaking into their haven and took a seat on the bench facing the painting of sunflowers. When they set down their messenger bag on the bench, Cedar felt something brush against the back of their leg.
Reaching under the bench, Cedar frowned as they grabbed onto something solid and pulled it up to look at it. To their surprise, the object nestled under the bench was a bundle of flowers — poppies, like the ones in the stolen painting. Cedar turned the bundle over in their hands, inspecting it carefully, and noticed a note attached to the ribbon that tied the stems of the poppies together.
Isn’t it ironic how the poppy flowers in the paintings are yellow, the color associated with happiness, but Van Gogh had painted his paintings when he was depressed? Maybe all artists seem happier in their art than they seem in real life, but I know that your artwork is as beautiful as you are.
Cedar blushed. Was this the work of a secret admirer? If so, this person was going to great lengths to win Cedar’s affection.
They knew that they should run to find the officers and the quirky detective to show them this new development that could potentially help solve the case. Instead, they chose to carefully tuck the bundle of flowers with the note into their messenger bag and pretend that nothing out of the ordinary had happened.
After Cedar spent an hour sketching the sunflower painting into their sketchbook, they decided to call it an early day and head back home. As they walked out of the museum, Cedar passed by a woman in brown, baggy hipster clothing who blended in so well that Cedar didn’t even glance in her direction.
Lorena was watching Cedar carefully as they left the exhibit, and she chuckled to herself when she noticed a sliver of yellow peeking out from the corner of their messenger bag. She turned back to face an abstract painting of a vase and adjusted her beige newsboy cap with a self-satisfied grin.
Cedar returned to their shared dorm room to find that their roommate, Aaliyah, was sitting in front of her desk with her feet propped up on her desk. She was painting her nails a bright shade of mint green, and she glanced over at Cedar, who dropped their messenger bag on their bed and took out the bundle of flowers.
A few loose yellow petals drifted to the ground, and Cedar hurriedly knelt to pick them up. Some part of them hoped that they could stick the petals back on the flower, but Cedar knew that once the petals had fallen, they had been separated from the flower for good.
“Woah, somebody’s got a mystery lover,” Aaliyah commented and blew on her nails to dry the paint, observing Cedar forlornly discarded the petals into the trash can out of the corner of her eye.
Cedar scrunched up their nose as they tried to think of a better way to describe the strange situation. They certainly couldn’t say “I don’t know if somebody stealing a painting I was working on would count as a declaration of love” so they settled with shrugging and replying, “I guess it’s something like that.”
They reached into their messenger bag again to take out their sketch of the poppy flowers that they had ripped out of their sketchbook and scrutinized it, wondering what they could do with it. As Cedar silently debated with themselves, Aaliyah kicked her feet off the table and spun around in her chair to face Cedar. “Can I see your art?”
Nodding, Cedar handed the drawing to Aaliyah before taking out their phone from the pocket of their denim jacket. As Aaliyah inspected their art, Cedar scrolled through the statistics in their online art shop and held back a loud exhale of disappointment when they noticed that their sales hadn’t increased since the last time they checked.
“Dude, your art is so good! You’re super talented. Why’re you always worried about your future? With art this good, you’ll be the next Picasso in no time,” Aaliyah remarked as she stood up from her seat to hand Cedar their drawing back.
“First of all, Picasso was an abstract artist and I’m more into realism.” Aaliyah rolled her eyes light-heartedly at Cedar’s correction. “And second of all, it’s easy for you to say I shouldn’t be worried about my future. You’re a science major. Honestly, I wish I’d chosen something more useful. Instead, I just had to decide to do art. Why couldn’t I have been interested in plants or something?”
Aaliyah laughed as she sat back down in her seat. “Still, I’m sure that whatever your future holds, you’ll be successful and great. You don’t need to worry.”
“Thanks.” Cedar kicked off their sneakers and flopped onto their bed, sighing as they stared up at the popcorn ceiling of their dorm room. They rubbed both their hands along their nose and closed their eyes, hoping that would help them calm down and stop themselves from spiraling into another crisis about their future. Cedar wanted nothing more than to believe Aaliyah’s words, but they just couldn’t imagine a future that was happy as the bright flowers blooming on their sketchbook.
The question of what Cedar’s future held tormented Cedar, who had hoped that, miraculously, they would wake up one day, suddenly know that they would be a successful artist, and stop worrying about their fate. Unfortunately, Cedar found themselves waking up day after day, still no closer to finding a sense of certainty.
Although Cedar made little to no progress on their vision for their future, they did make progress on their drawing of the sunflowers. They finished the drawing relatively quickly, and in the morning they finished their rendition of Van Gogh’s painting of sunflowers, Cedar had held their sketchbook with their completed drawing out in front of them and smiled, feeling somewhat content with the improvement in their art as they compared their drawing with the original painting.
Cedar checked the time on their phone and frowned when they saw they only had thirty minutes before their noon class, so they quickly slung their trusty messenger bag over their shoulder and closed their sketchbook as they stood up and exited the exhibit. Once again, Cedar failed to notice Lorena, who was dressed in a grey hoodie and plain jeans.
Lorena flipped through the map of the museum, pretending to read it as they stealthily followed Cedar out of the museum. To avoid being caught, Lorena maintained a distance between her and Cedar that was large enough for Cedar not to notice but small enough so that she wouldn’t lose track of them as they walked down the street.
To blend in better, Lorena traded her map for her cell phone, and she trailed Cedar down the bustling street and stopped only when she saw Cedar walk into one of the lecture halls on campus. There was a chance that Lorena could follow Cedar into the lecture hall without anybody noticing, but Lorena decided to play it safe, stop by the admissions office and join in on a group tour.
She maintained an innocuous act, making sure to have wide eyes and a soft voice as she asked the tour guide if the group would walk past the lecture hall near the admissions office because it just looked so lovely. The tour guide excitedly accepted Lorena’s request and proudly guided the group into the lecture hall as he explained the history of the building in his loud booming voice. As the group marveled at the banners hanging on the walls and slowly followed the tour guide through the building, Lorena glanced through the windows of the classrooms and stopped when she spotted Cedar in one.
Cedar sat in one of the first few rows of seats, and they were scribbling something — maybe notes or perhaps doodles — in their notebook. When Lorena carefully walked closer to the window in the door and peered inside the classroom, she identified something peculiar.
There was a sadness in Cedar’s eyes that seemed to have spread throughout Cedar’s entire body, evident in their sagged shoulders and deeply etched frown lines. Lorena hadn’t noticed it before. When Cedar was drawing in the museum, their eyes were bright and brilliant, full of life and hope, much like the colors in the paintings illuminated in the museum.
Lorena wanted nothing more than to cup Cedar’s face with both her hands and promise them that everything would be fine, but she was too far away. The tour group was starting to drift further and further away so Lorena begrudgingly peeled her eyes away from Cedar and hurried down the hall to catch up. As she half-heartedly listened to the tour guide talk about the construction of the building, Lorena tried to bring up the picture of the despondent look in Cedar’s eyes.
Oddly, seeing Cedar so discouraged fueled Lorena. Even when she was offered millions of dollars to steal jewels, Lorena had never felt so motivated to take action. She was bored of breaking into places, stealing things that were worth more than she could fathom, and chasing after the fantasy of maybe one day owning a collection of riches that she stole for others. All that paled in comparison to Cedar. She had to save them. All she had to do was reach them.
