▴ 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.

In short, I painted a time-lapse into a single frame. My signature complex, geometrical style reveals the mathematical source of both natural and artificial wonder.

I'm about to explain this to the judge, but my train of thought is cut off when I spot her again, walking in the opposite direction she had been walking in before. The man says something, but I'm not listening. She realizes that I'm glaring at her and stops, stares at me and my painting for a few seconds, and then blows me a kiss. I want to wrap my hands around her neck. She disappears from sight behind a display of mediocre paintings.

"Did you sign up for last year's competition?" the judge asks me.

I snap out of my haze. "Yes," I say. "I received second place." One of the many failures of my existence. "But the year before, I received first."

It had been the only good thing to come out of moving to this overpriced desert: the bliss that came with finally, finally watching her lose.

"If you didn't win first place last year, who did?" he asks. He must be new to the judging committee. I don't recognize his face, his badly-groomed mustache, or his disrespect at asking me such a question.

I don't want to say her name. "Some girl's."

"Some girl's?"

"Eris," I say, and it feels disgusting; it makes me want to wash my mouth with water. "Eris Lugo."

His eyes brighten. "Oh, Eris, I've seen her work! It's remarkable. Her style is that of an old master. Very classic. I almost thought young artists had lost touch with that entirely."

I feel the urge to take off one of my shoes and stick its heel into my eye socket. Excellent. Excellent. What century is he living in? There is nothing original about her derivative paintings. Nothing she didn't copy from boring, outdated, eurocentric standards of art.

"I'm a big fan of your work," one of the other judges says, and I fake a smile before I even look at her, fingers twitching at my sides.

"Is that so?" I ask. If she's already a fan, perhaps she will judge me more favorably. Not that I need it.

"And I've been wondering about one thing," she continues. "Your father... Marcus Baines... I don't want to overstep, but we're all worried and wanting to know when he'll—"

"Excuse me; I'm getting a call," I lie, grabbing my phone before rushing to the bathroom.

I should've known they would've asked. I should've rehearsed a graceful answer. I should've brushed it off and talked about the mathematical source of all wonder instead.

I grip the edge of the sink. My reflection in the mirror fragments until I am nothing but a mess of unsolvable equations.

My scalp throbs. So much for getting my hair done at the salon yesterday for this occasion, my premature reward for my inevitable win. Now I want to yank every braid out. I lean against the tiled wall and take several deep breaths. I imagine myself growing bigger and bigger until I am larger than the Earth itself.

I am going to win.

Once I exit, I spot Eris, surrounded by her clan of art friends who only seek to leech off her wealth. Her painting is a cliché  depiction of yet another nature landscape. She hasn't deviated at all from her usual hyper-realistic, occasionally impressionist style.

Everyone claims her technical skills are "incredible", but all I see is that she's in dire need of my colour theory bible.

My rational brain screams at me to turn around. Instead, I storm toward her. My dress sways with my movements.

"Oh yeah, I didn't spend that long on it," I hear her say. "I actually only started painting a few days ago."

I freeze. I'm in a haze again, her voice drowned out by the numerous conversations taking place around her. A few days ago? Impossible.

And then I hear her slow, obnoxious drawl: "Wow, mira quién vino a verme."

I only understand because I've been taking Spanish since junior year: Look who came to see me.

Her friends, some of whom I know from school, avert their eyes and walk away. They probably want to avoid getting caught in Eris and I's ongoing war at the California Youth Artists fair.

Next year, I'll be nineteen and too old to participate. This is the tie-breaker round, our battles standing at 1-1.

"What's wrong with you, Ef?" she taunts. "Not gonna say anything? You're usually the first to start talking shit."

Despite her grimy clothing and choppy, badly-cut hair, she adorns herself with expensive jewelry. Golden chains on her neck along with an elaborate rosary. The diamond earrings she always wears to show off how much of a rich brat she is.

"Whose work did you plagiarize this time?" I ask. I may have been incapable of answering the judges, but when it comes to insulting Eris Lugo, I'm a master at improvisation. Years of practice.

She sighs, picking at her nails. "A little bit of Turner. Un poquito de Monet. The usual."

I maintain at least a metre of distance between us. Even two seconds in her vicinity is enough to taint my energy. "You didn't have it in you to muster any shred of originality?"

She looks up from her nails—short and bitten down to gross little nubs—and smirks at me. "I know it doesn't take much to beat you."

"Do you say that only because your father bribed the judges again? Just like he did in Moscow?"

"Sure, and your dad is a famous artist, so don't act like you don't have an advantage."

That almost gets under my skin, but her ignorance only makes her look like the fool. Rich, light-skinned Eris Lugo with all the connections to the art world at her feet... accusing me of having unfair advantages. Hilarious.

But my composure cracks, and I end up spitting out, "Maybe it could've worked in my favor if your father hadn't—"

She waves me off. "You're boring me with this talk of the past, pendeja. This isn't the place. I'm going to the bathroom."

Easy for her to say. She gets to walk off casually while I'm left seething. Reeling. Drowning.

I stare at her landscape. I imagine the force of my hatred mixing into each brushstroke and specific shade of green oil paint. I'll curse it if I have to.

Finally, it's time for the winner announcements, and I gladly return to my masterpiece.

I am going to win.

The announcer—after saying he's amazed at the quality of paintings this year, how the fair has been such a success with its activities and workshops blah blah blah—finally gets to the part everyone actually cares about. My heart beats so fast I feel my pulse in my ears.

"Third place," he says, voice booming through the assembly hall, "Wilt by Jeffrey Rivera!"

Jeffrey goes up to the stage. His painting, at least from afar, looks like a typical still life of flowers. Nothing new to offer. Nothing new to say.

I am going to win.

Jeffrey grins. He stands proud as everyone claps for him. A few people in the crowd cheer louder than everyone else, and for the briefest second I think about how no one has ever cheered that loudly for me.

"Second place," the announcer says, and then waits for a moment, teasing us, and the anticipation makes me dizzy. The clapping dies down into a silence that only comes from a crowd of two hundred holding their breaths, hesitant to even move.

"Time-lapse in Ottawa by Persephone Baines!"

At first, I don't understand. Don't register the sound waves that came from his mouth, into the microphone, and boomed through the speakers until it reached me.

No.

I am going to throw up. I am going to explode.

Sharp ringing in my ears cuts off the sound of applause. This cannot be reality. But people begin to stare. I grab Time-lapse in Ottawa, the edges of my vision blurred, and walk to the stage on autopilot.

My legs get wobbly. The last thing I need is to trip. The last thing I need is to fall in front of all these people, for them to laugh at my pathetic second place self falling to the ground. I am not going to fall. I am power, I am larger than the world. Second place. My eyes get watery. I am not going to cry.

"First place," the announcer says. I barely hear him over the ringing in my ears. Over ninety hours sketching, measuring, using tiny brushes to bring each little triangle into life. And for what?

I have not won.

"Eris Lugo!"

The ringing stops. I become very aware of everything in the room. The applause. The dozens of paintings that didn't make the cut. The bright lights illuminating the bead of sweat running down the announcer's temple. My eyes rake over the crowd until I spot Eris, halfway to the stage already, and my awareness narrows until all I see is her her her.

I am going to scream. I am going to scream, and my voice will be so loud that everyone's ears will bleed, and the blood will cover all the paintings and the fair will be cancelled and nobody will win at all.

Eris Zepahua Lugo walks up to the stage as if she's the queen of the world. Everything about her—chin raised high, posture tall despite her short, 5'1" frame—tells me she knew this all along. She knew she would win, and every atom in my body ached and screamed with the need to prove her wrong, but now it's too late. I can almost feel her arrogance skyrocket until it reaches the moon itself.

In a matter of seconds, she's only ten, nine, seven, five metres away from me, and I clutch my painting so hard I almost crush it to dust. I imagine myself running away and burying into a deep hole in the ground and going into hibernation for the rest of my meaningless life.

"Let's have a round of applause for our winners, ladies and gentlemen!" the announcer yells. The room breaks into claps and cheers. I see so many glum faces applauding sadly because they are not up on the stage, applauding sadly because they have not won.

Eris passes by me, and she's looking at me—oh, she's practically begging me to look at her, but I don't. If I did, I would probably push her off the stage and get disqualified, and then Jeffrey would get second place and some other amateur would get third.

"At least you tried," she says to me, almost yells over the sound of the still-clapping crowd. I give in and look at her with the meanest face I can muster. She's smirking. She's being sarcastic. She must be so happy that I have lost to her once again. I turn my head away from her and try to calm myself down with the thought of some parallel universe in which the judges weren't so stupid, but it doesn't calm me down and makes me tear up instead.

Ten minutes later, I walk out of the assembly hall with only five hundred dollars in my pocket and a cheap trophy in my hand, stamped with the words of my failure: 2nd place.

Outside, my brother Fitz waits for me. He leans against his car, smoking, but his relaxed demeanor shifts upon seeing the expression on my face.

"Set this on fire for me, please," I say, shoving my painting at him.

He gently takes it from me and puts it in the backseat. He flicks the rest of his blunt at the ground and puts it out, knowing I hate the smell. And then, without a word, he does what he always does after these events whether I lose or not—he wraps his arms around me in a hug.

I feel maybe .04% better until he nudges me. "Ay, Persephone. Uh..."

I look up. Across the parking lot, Eris is literally sitting on top of her white, luxury Jaguar with her atrocious Monet rip-off. Her little admirers crowd around, phones held up to record as they shower her with praise.

"I need to get out of here before she sees me cry," I whisper.

The tears leak out before I can stop them. In the middle of the parking lot, I cry into Fitz's shoulder for a solid minute, cry as I get into the passenger seat, and cry until I fall asleep on the ride home.

▴ ▴ ▴

a/n: welcome to Complementary!! read on for a slow-burn, enemies to lovers sapphic coming of age story with a hefty side of mafia action. tell me: where are you reading this from? what drew you into the story? i've been working on this book for many years, and i extend a big thanks to both new and old readers who've been so patient as eris and persephone's tale unfolds.