Wolfwood

by Marianna Baer

Genres: YA Contemporary; YA Fantasy

Synopsis

A teenage girl begins secretly forging paintings, plunging her into a dark and dangerous imaginary world
 
Indigo and her mother, once-famous artist Zoe Serra, have barely been scraping by since her mom's breakdown. When a gallery offers Zoe a revival show for her unfinished blockbuster series, Wolfwood, Indigo knows it's a crucial chance to finally regain stability. Zoe, however, mysteriously refuses. Desperate not to lose the opportunity, Indigo secretly takes up the brush herself.
 
It turns out, there might be a very good reason her mother wants nothing to do with Wolfwood.
 
Painting submerges Indigo into Wolfwood itself—a dangerous jungle where an army of grotesque, monstrous flora are in a violent battle with a band of girls. As Indigo enters Wolfwood again and again, the line between fantasy and reality blurs. It's a tenuous balancing act: keeping her forgery secret and her mind lucid, all while fighting her attraction to Kai, the son of the gallery owner.
 
And by the time Indigo realizes the true nature of the monsters she's up against, it might be too late—and the monsters might just win.

 

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Release date: March 28, 2023

Publisher: Amulet Books

Print pages: 384

Sample

Chapter One

The Nordhaus Gallery in Manhattan is as far from the bloody chaos of Wolfwood as you can get. A cavernous space with an all-glass front and that echoey emptiness only fancy places can afford. Pristine white walls. Polished concrete floor. Staff always dressed in the almost-black to very-black spectrum. And—today, at least—large black-and-white photographs hanging. No color in sight.

Well, not for the moment.

I sweep open the door and breeze inside.

Red silk dress, wide yellow belt, turquoise heels. The only black: my long, wavy hair and the artist’s portfolio I’m carrying. At six-foot-three in the four-inch pumps, with what my friend Grace calls my diva strut, I know how I look: confident, fierce, unflappable. The girl who’s got everything, except reasons to worry.

Ha.

“Good morning,” I say to the assistant at the reception desk. “I’m here to see Annika Nordhaus.” My voice is steady, no sign I ran the last three blocks to get here on time.

She glances up from her laptop with a polite smile that stiffens when she spots the portfolio. “So sorry,” she says, clearly not sorry about whatever’s coming next. “The gallery isn’t looking for new artists.” Her eyes are back on her screen before she’s finished the sentence.

I straighten up even taller. A bead of sweat slips down my spine. “I have an appointment. I’m Zoe Serra’s—”

“Oh!” she interrupts, attention on me again. “Ms. Serra, apologies.” And before I can correct her, she picks up the desk phone and tells someone that Zoe Serra is here. Seriously? She must be an intern or new to the gallery—anyone who works here for real would know I’m about thirty years too young to be my mother. Her first gallery show was before I was even born.

“Ms. Nordhaus will be right out,” the girl says.

“Thanks.” No reason to correct the misunderstanding now. Annika will see it’s me soon enough.

I stand still instead of wandering the exhibition because of a killer blister I got walking here from the East Village in these heels, which I found last week abandoned in front of a church on Elizabeth Street—either a gift from God or an offering to her, I guess. When I chose them this morning I was in a hurry, thinking that if I was going to wear my one good dress and snub the art gallery black, I wanted to go extra: head-to-toe, in-your-face color. Didn’t think about how long the walk was, or the fact I’d never worn them before. Rookie mistake.

A minute later, Annika emerges from the doorway that leads to the office and storage areas. Even from across the sprawling room, I can tell that everything about her is as precise and perfect as the gallery. Slim-fitting dress folded around her like origami. Pearls melting into the white skin of her collarbone. Signature ash-brown bob all sharp and shiny. I’m glad I fixed my lipstick as I waited to cross Tenth Ave. Perfection is fleeting with this cheap stuff.

“Indigo?” she calls, the clack-clack of her steps punctuating the air. “Where’s your mother?” She turns to the girl at the desk. “You said Zoe Serra was here. Does this look like Zoe Serra?”

The girl’s mouth opens, but nothing comes out.

“Zoe has a migraine,” I explain. “I brought her drawings. Am I too late?”

“No, no,” Annika says. “The collectors aren’t even here yet.”

At least running was worth it.

She gives my forearm a brief squeeze. “Sorry about Zoe, but lovely to see you, darling. You look gorgeous.” Her grayish-blue eyes are filled with genuine warmth. One thing about Annika: She doesn’t say what she doesn’t mean.

“Thanks. You, too.”

“Come on back.” She starts toward the offices. “Please tell me you took a car here, lugging that big portfolio.”

“It’s a nice day,” I answer vaguely.

I follow her through the gallery into a hallway and then through an office with white

desktops built in along the length of the walls. I force myself not to limp as we pass by two men and a woman working at oversized monitors. There isn’t a speck of dust in the air or smudge of dirt on any of the surfaces. Sterile as an operating room. One of the men makes eye contact with me. For a second I worry he can sense the dankness of our basement apartment clinging to my skin and dress, like I’m contaminating the room with my presence. A walking smudge.

I throw him a blasé smile: I’m all that, who are you?

Annika’s spacious office is at the very back of the building. A glass wall looks out on a courtyard where geometric sculptures sit on a carpet of white rocks. A skylight shows the June blue above. It’s so bright in here I almost need my sunglasses.

“We can lay out Zoe’s sketches on the flat files,” Annika says, seemingly referring to two low metal cabinets with shallow drawers that are covered with framed drawings of what look like spaceships. She holds down a button on her intercom, says, “I need help in the office.” Then says to me, “Someone will clear them for us.”

I slide the portfolio’s strap off my shoulder and rest it against her desk.

“Pellegrino?” she says.

Overpriced water. We sell it at Stanton Füd, the prissy gourmet grocery store on the Lower East Side where I’m working this summer. (AKA “the Fud” among us cashiers.) “Do you have Coke?” I ask hopefully. I haven’t eaten today—calories would be good. And caffeine is my lifeline.

“Coke? No. Kombucha?”

We sell that, too. I’ve never had it, but I’m pretty sure it has vitamins or minerals or something. “Sure. Thanks.”

I check out the spaceships while Annika’s over by a stainless steel minifridge in the corner. “What do you think of them?” she asks a moment later, handing me a tall, thin glass and gesturing at the drawings.

“It’d be fun to live in that one,” I say, pointing at one that looks like a sci-fi luxury camper.

She smiles. “I meant as art.”

Oh. Right.

My mother and I used to visit galleries and museums all the time, and she’d talk to me about the exhibitions—teaching me about composition and color and gesture—but my mind is blank. I run my tongue along the edge of my false front teeth while I think. “I like the quality of the line,” I finally say. “There’s a sensitivity to it that contrasts with the imagery. They’re mechanical, but also humanistical.” I take a sip of kombucha (disgusting, so definitely healthy), satisfied with what I came up with, even if I’m not positive “humanistical” is a real word.

Annika nods. “A young artist from Venezuela. We sold two yesterday.” She pauses, her gaze on me now. “Such a pretty dress. It’s familiar . . .”

“Oh,” I say, touching the smooth silk—poppy red with a hot-pink chevron pattern. “It’s one of Zoe’s. Vintage, from the nineties or something."

Annika probably remembers it because it’s immortalized in a photo of my mother in New York magazine from before I was born. She’s at a party, dancing barefoot on top of a large cube-shaped sculpture by the famous artist Richard Serra (no relation), arms above her head, hair hanging long and wild, eyes closed, glowing like a neon sign. I’m sure she was higher than an astronaut, but I still love the picture. And the dress. It’s the only one of her designer things I’ve let myself keep, instead of selling it at the consignment store. Proof my mother used to be happy and electric. Powerful. Armor that makes me feel like I am.

“It’s that old?” Annika says. “It’s so fresh, the way you’ve styled it.”

A knock comes at the open door, and a guy in a black knit beanie and faded gray tee—not as slick as the rest of the staff—enters the office. “Sorry that took a while,” he says. “I was on top of the ladder, the big one, and—”

“Could you take the Suárez Díaz drawings back to the stacks?” Annika says, cutting him off. “And mark the ones that are sold.”

“Which are those?” He reaches for a frame.

“Check with Tom.”

“I can help,” I say. I need this whole meeting to go as fast as possible so I can get to the Fud on time. I already had to scramble to get someone to cover the first half of my shift, which I hated doing.

“Don’t be silly,” Annika says as I put down my drink.

Ignoring her, I take two—they’re heavier than I expect—and follow the guy into the hallway. He’s shorter than me but solidly built, no hair peeking out of the beanie, strong, smooth forearms lightly tanned to a golden color.

“You really don’t need to help,” he says, setting his two frames on the floor. “Leave them here. I’ll take them to the stacks.”

“Just trying to speed things up.” Wasn’t implying you can’t do it yourself, Mr. Man. I rest mine down and lean them against the wall.

As I start to turn around he says, “Wait . . . Indigo?”

I turn back. He’s studying me with narrowed eyes. Not unfriendly. Curious. Then something clicks. “Kai?” I say. “Wow. I didn’t recognize you.” One of Annika’s two sons. His face is less full than I remember, his lips fuller. The bright brown eyes under the arched eyebrows have a familiar spark, though, now that I’m paying attention. And there’s a sprinkle of dark freckles along his angled cheekbones that I recognize, too.

“Me neither,” he says. “I mean, not at first. You’re . . . taller.”

I smile down at him. “You’re not.”

He laughs and shakes his head, crosses his arms. “Oh, no. You’re exactly the same.”

“I assume that’s a goo

d thing, considering the way you used to follow me around.”

“I was scared of turning my back on you! You had elbow lasers.”

“Elbow lasers?” I say, no memory of this anatomical power.

“Don’t ask me. You’re the one who told me you had them.”

We head into the office again. “You work here?” I ask. All I really remember about Kai—aside from how he followed me around gallery openings when we were little—is that he’s a year above me in school, so would have just graduated, and that he ate a lot of cherry tomatoes that sometimes exploded when he bit them, pissing off his mother and making both of us laugh our heads off. And that he has a super cute older brother, Hiro, who I had a major crush on.

“Not really,” he says, in a way that seems to imply there’s more to the story. “I mean, sort of.” He takes the last two drawings and, with a “Great to see you,” disappears into the hallway.

“You, too,” I call after him.

The cabinet tops now clear, I unzip the portfolio and carefully take out the sheaf of sketches that are the basis of the much larger paintings that will be in my mom’s show at the gallery this September. The drawings are done on thin, rough paper that’s slightly dingy and yellowed from age—she drew them over twenty years ago. As I lay them out, I check the numbers penciled in the lower right corners to make sure the sheets are in the correct order. The Wolfwood series tells a story in sequence, a story about a group of girls in a tropical jungle where the oversized plants are an army of brutal monsters who torture and try to kill them. The monsters are led by the one male character, a longhaired guy called the Wolf. These drawings are of the final “chapters” in the story. My mother had the first of her three Wolfwood exhibitions in the nineties. Until this year, she hadn’t made new paintings in the series since before I was born.

I don’t let my eyes linger on the graphic images. I haven’t had nightmares about Wolfwood for years, but that doesn’t mean I like to dwell on the violent world that came out of my mother’s brain. She’s told me the paintings don’t have any real meaning. That she was young and doing a lot of drugs and wanted to be controversial. Somehow, that doesn’t make it any less disturbing.

“How long do you think this will take, once the collectors are here?” I ask Annika. Before my shift at the Fud, I need to cash my paycheck from last night and pay a bill that’s due today. And I have to go home first to change. It’s not that I mind helping my mom with stuff like this—I just like to have more warning, so I can arrange things. (To be fair, my mom didn’t ask me to come to the meeting. She was going to cancel it.)

Annika frowns at the sketches instead of answering my question. “Is this all of them?”

I count. There are seven: #25 through #31. There should be eight.

“No,” I say, inwardly cursing. “Not the final one. Zoe . . . has that at the studio still.” I guess? I didn’t ask her if they were all in the portfolio. I assumed they were.

“Smart. No one shou

know how the story ends before the show.”

“Right,” I agree immediately. “Preserve the suspense.”

Her cell phone pings. “Is Zoe okay, aside from the migraine?” she asks, typing something brief. “She never answers my calls. Makes arrangements difficult.”

“She’s fine. Just gets caught up in the work.” This is true, but my mother is also the worst at taking care of business stuff, especially if it involves talking on the phone. Totally stresses her out. “Why don’t you contact me from now on, and I’ll make sure to get back to you? I’m kind of like her assistant.”

“Fine with me.” Annika tilts her head slightly. The light catches the wrinkles on her forehead and around her eyes, making her look less perfect, more human. “Zoe is so lucky to have a daughter like you. I remember when you two used to come here together, having so much fun . . .”

I brush away a pang of sadness. “Yeah, we did have fun.” Hopping between gallery shows, exploring the marble halls of the Met, painting at my mother’s sun-filled studio where she had more paint colors than we had at my whole school . . . We weren’t rich then, either, but it felt like we were—our days were so rich with doing. I shift on my feet; sharp pain stabs up from my blister.

“Remind me how old you are now?”

“Seventeen.”

“Really? You seem older.” She pauses. “If you’d ever like to intern here, let me know. We have the space on Sixty-Ninth Street, too.”

“Thanks,” I say, knowing I wouldn’t take her up on it even if I could. I’d want to intern in a fashion designer’s studio, not a gallery. Moot point, though. Unpaid internships aren’t for people like me.

Her phone pings again. “The Millers are just about here.”

“Great.”

“I’m excited about this.” She picks up a small silver mirror and Chanel lipstick off her desk to reapply. “The art world is ready to go back to Wolfwood. I can feel it.”

“So are we,” I say, but my chest constricts, like one of those python-thick vines is wrapped around it, squeezing tight.

Chapter Two

Annika shoos me out of the office as soon as the front desk girl buzzes to say the collectors are here. I need to bring the drawings home with me, though, so I can’t leave the gallery until the meeting’s over. There’s an alcove across from her office, where a printer and some supplies are kept. I figure it’s as good a place to wait as any, and the door to the office isn’t shut, so I can eavesdrop.

Checking the time, I see I have a text from the guy I’ve been hanging out with recently.

Josh: Chill later?

Despite the zing that vibrates through me, I write: Sorry babysitting

I’m working two jobs today: the Fud, then watching a toddler in our building. (Usually, I wouldn’t be babysitting; I’d be sewing various bags and accessories for this lady Trinity’s Etsy store. But sitting pays better.) After sending the text, and one to my mom letting her know I got to the gallery on time, I calculate that I should leave here in about thirty minutes. At the most. Annika never answered my question about how long the meeting will take.

I don’t even want to think about the issue of actually getting home. I ease my heel out of my shoe, wincing. It’s raw, covered in screaming-red blood, a thick flap of skin hanging off. Gross. I open my bag and take out the small zippered pouch where I keep money and cards. Occasionally a hair elastic or Band-Aid ends up in it. I dump it out on the table next to the printer and sift through: student ID, EBT card, library card, safety pin . . .

“Ouch,” Kai says. Shit—I didn’t notice him coming up next to me. He’s staring down at my bloody heel.

I hurry to gather up my stuff, fumbling in my rush, praying he didn’t see the EBT card. “It’s not so bad,” I say. “I was looking for a Band-Aid.” Even if he saw the card, he probably wouldn’t know it was for food benefits. Still, my face burns. Everyone makes the same assumptions about people on public assistance: lazy, useless, parasitic. My mother would die if Annika found out. I almost mean that literally.

“There are some in the bathroom,” Kai says. “Want me to get you one?”

“Thanks,” I say. “I’ll go myself.” As I zip my pouch closed, one of the collector’s voices, the man’s, broadcasts out of Annika’s office, saying something about an “art fair,” whatever that is.

“They’re twins,” Kai tells me quietly. “Did you notice?”

“Twins?”

He nods toward the hallway. “Those collectors. Not actual twins. They’re married, and they always wear matching outfits. Like, they have some tailor make his and hers versions.”

“For real?”

He nods again and lowers his voice even further. “And . . . they’re both named Kris.”

“No.” I’m smiling now.

“With a ‘K.’ ”

I laugh, quickly covering my mouth, as Kai keeps talking.

“And it’s like, which came first, the names or the outfits, right? Like, did they go on a first date and say, ‘Hey, we have the same name. We should get married and dress like twins.’ Or did they show up at the date in matching outfits and decide to change their names?” He says this all in a whispered rush that gets less whispery as it goes.

“Shh!” I say, still laughing, but keeping it in as much as possible.

He glances into the hallway again. “I should get back to work, I guess.”

“Yeah. I should take care of . . .” I gesture at my foot.

We give each other a

final brief smile and I limp off. In the bathroom, after I push the silver trash can up against the locked door, I use wet toilet paper to clean my heel and find Band-Aids in the cabinet under the sink. I take a big one and smooth it on—one of the really good, waterproof kinds that last for days. I consider taking a few extra since the ones we have at home barely even stay on your skin for ten minutes, but the box isn’t very full, so I take only one more, somehow worried that if I take several Kai will notice and think it’s weird, which I also realize is a silly worry. I’m sure he has better things to do than inventory bathroom supplies.

I freshen my lipstick and check my teeth, making sure there’s nothing in them or on them, nothing to draw attention. I’ve had my false front ones since I was thirteen, and they still feel too big, like they belong in someone else’s mouth. (That someone else being a horse, ideally.)

When I return to the hallway, Kai’s nowhere to be seen. I take up my spot by the printer.

Annika is talking about the paintings now. “You already know how influential the Wolfwood series has been,” she says. “And from the recent auction result, it’s obvious the work is as relevant as ever, twenty-five years after the first exhibition. That’s because it speaks the truth, in the voice of an enormously talented artist.”

I have no idea what auction result she’s talking about, but I feel a swell of pride at the part about my mother’s talent. Hating Wolfwood doesn’t mean I think it’s bad art. No, I think the paintings are too good. That’s part of the problem.

“Do you know how you’re pricing the pieces yet?” the woman asks.

“And what can you do for us if we reserve one now?” adds the man.

“Since you were early supporters of her work, I can do . . . twenty percent. So, let’s see . . . that would bring it to . . . ninety-six.”

Ninety-six. That can’t mean ninety-six dollars, obviously, so it must mean . . . wait . . . ninety-six hundred dollars? My hand flies to my mouth. That’s almost ten thousand dollars! Half of that would go to the gallery—the gallery always gets 50 percent, my mother once told me—but still . . . Almost five thousand dollars! Five thousand dollars would be huge! More than I’ll make all summer. It would mean we could catch our breath for a few months. And if these people are interested—after only seeing the drawings, not even the real watercolor paintings—maybe other people will be, too. Eight paintings in the show . . .

Holy shit.

“That’s reasonable,” the man says. “We’d definitely like a reserve on this one. We’d also like to be the first to see the final work in the series.”

“I have to give the Whitney first look,” Annika says. “Although . . . it would make sense for the final image to be in your collection. Maybe I can steer the museum toward another one.”

“Please do,” the woman says.

Jesus. They might want a second one? And the Whitney Museum is interested?

After they walk out—yes, in matching white linen suits—I find Annika making notes at her desk. Before I can say anything, her phone rings. She holds up a give me a minute finger and answers.

I begin putting the drawings back into the portfolio while she talks, my mind speeding like an express train. I was right. I was right to tell my mother to do the show!

Last fall, when Annika called out of the blue and asked her to finish the Wolfwood series for an exhibition on the twenty-fifth anniversary of the first show, my mother resisted. She told me she was worried about me because of my old nightmares. She said she didn’t want to bring Wolfwood back into our lives. I was shocked. I told her not to worry, that I wanted her to do it. That we needed the money. (Duh!) Worst-case scenario, I’d have a couple of bad dreams.

“If I did it, there’s no guarantee anything would sell,” she said, not even looking away from the pot of macaroni or spaghetti or whatever was cooking on the hot plate.

“But something might. Please don’t worry about me,” I said again, more firmly. “It’s going to be great.”

And I was right!

“Absolutely not, Bruce.” The volume and sharpness of Annika’s voice draw my attention. “Reread the consignment agreement, then honor it and send me the money. Unless you want to hear from my lawyer. ...