"Are you going to tell me today?" Angel sat on the floor, looking up at her like a giddy child during story time.

"Tell you what?" She teased.

"How did you get here?" He asked eagerly. "What happened to you?"

Her honey dripping laughter echoed in the museum before she caught herself. "Bon Dieu, I think I will get you caught if you keep visiting me."

He puffed out his chest and strengthened his back to give himself a more courageous stand. "I'm not scared."

He already knew no guard was going to come. They were soundly sleeping when he slipped in earlier – an information he chose to ignore as to keep the feeling of adrenaline pushing him on.

"No, but I am scared." She pouted, "who else will I tease if you're locked away? It gets very lonely here especially since no other painting here seems capable of talking."

"Wait, so there are more people like you?"

Zoé watched the boy carefully. He sat on top of a giant sized top hat made of wood. His body was twitching in excitement. She saw the thirst for adventure reflected in his brown eyes. She remembered him looking for some sort of wakeup call when he first set foot here. That was what drawn her out of hiding.

"Since you insist upon it I will tell you the story, my family's story."

He brought his legs closer to his chest. He was ready to get lost into another world. One he never knew existed.

She began like this, "A long long time ago, in a town far away from here, where witches were more than tales of nightmares and fairytale, lived a little girl named Erica."

"Erica?" Angel interrupted. "As in the Erica from the Roald Dahl's story? The one who was trapped in a painting then disappeared?"

"Yes," Zoé agreed, "it is the same Erica but she never completely disappeared as the stories have people believed. The world only knows part of her story."

"What's the unknown part?"

"I will get to it if you stop interrupting me," she scowled him teasingly. "Now where was I? Ah, Oui. Erica never completely disappeared. In fact, she came back as a real little girl only to find her family gone – her parents, her grandparents, and cousins. The painting was all she had in her possession. She was taken to an orphanage where she was given a new name – Theresa. Nobody believed that she was the same little girl who went missing all those years ago. They thought she was abandoned and created a story to make herself feel better. But Erica knew who she was.

Alors, as soon as she was out of the orphanage she went back to her hometown to find out what happened. In the midst of all the myths and legends, she figured out the real story. She found the identity of the witches who had taken her. She also found the reason why she was trapped in the painting."

"Why was she trapped?" Angel asked, unable to stay silent.

"Patience," Zoé smiled. "Erica found out that the witches were never after her. They wanted her mother to join their witch coven. When she refused, they cursed her daughter to spend a lifetime in a painting. After her sentence was done, she was able to come back as a little girl again. Erica tried to find the witches who had done this to her but nobody knew who they were. Her search led her to France where she was forced to stop and make peace with her new life without her family. She got married there to a French farmer.

They were happy and Erica had almost forgotten about her past until the day her daughter went missing. That was when she remembered the painting. She prayed that she was wrong but she wasn't. Her daughter was also trapped in the painting."

"How?" Angel asked. "I thought the witches that cursed her died?"

"They did," she answered. "But curses don't die along with their creators. The curse was passed down to every first born daughter of each generation from Erica's bloodline. I'm the twentieth girl to be trapped in this painting. We've learned to make the best of it. We've evolved enough to be able to move easily within the painting. It's not ideal but Erica couldn't talk to her family, I can."

"So your family is still alive? Where are they? Why did they let you end up here?" Angel was sitting on the heel of his feet. The excitement was getting the better of him.

Zoé's entire posture changed. Her head hung low as she whispered the words, "my father was the one who donated the painting to the museum."

"Why would he do that?"

"I think he was tired of looking at me and not being able to help. After maman passed away, I was the only one he had. I can't imagine the pain he had to go through."

They both quieted down, stuck in their own world.

Angel got off the hat seat to pace around. "Is there a way? I mean to break the curse."

She smiled, seeing his concern. "I don't know. Maman was never able to finish telling me everything."

"So there might be one?"

She didn't want to give hope but she also didn't want to kill the flame that was burgeoning in him. She could feel it. He had change since the first time they met.

"Perhaps but I think somebody might have found it by now if there was. After all it has been hundreds of years since Erica."

Angel stopped his pacing. "But none of them lived in the age of technology. We can find a way."

"Perhaps," she replied slowly.

She looked at him with more curious eyes. It was strange how engrossed he was with her story. It was as if he was waiting for something like that to come – an opportunity to forget everything else that was happening in his life.

"I'm going to find it," he smiled at her with promise in his eyes.

She gave a weak smile in return. "Why don't you tell me your story?" She asked.

"Oh," he blushed. "It's nothing special."

"Everyone's story is special."

He scratched the back of his head and shifted on his feet. Anything to reverse the conversation away from him. "It's nothing like yours. It's very dull."

"I like dull stories," she encouraged him. "I've been in a painting for more than ten years now. There are not much excitements in here."

"Well," he bit his lip. He turned away from her to hide his red face. He hated talking about himself. It made him self-conscious of how little he had accomplished.

"Angel," she called.

He blushed deeper. The way his name rolled off her tongue made his heart pick up its pace. Her accent was getting thicker the more frustrated she became.

It was bad manner to keep a lady waiting especially a lady who looked like Zoé. She was wearing the white dress that made her look like a floating angel. Today, there was a white rose pinned to her black locks. He didn't see any white roses in the painting, though. Another mystery to pull him in.

"Well, I was born here in New York," he said as he leaned in on the wall next to her. For some reason, he felt himself being drawn to her, needing to be around her.

"How lovely!" She muttered, excited. "It must be a lot of fun living here. I heard many things about it. I think once I'm out of this painting, this is where I want to settle down." Her smile faded quickly when she remembered he probably was not going to be here by then.

"It's not as fun as most people think," he said, deciding to stop short her melancholic mood. "It's noisy, crowded, and it smells of a bunch of different odors. Half of them are not good ones."

Zoé's sweet laugh stopped his rumbling. "It sounds like you hate it."

"Maybe a little. I've always lived in New York. Even when we used to go in family vacations in other places, we always had to come back here."

"If you don't like it that much, why can't you move?"

"Because that's the only place I've always known. I'm not like you, I don't have the passion for life that you do. I just want to live and be gone. The shorter my life, the fastest I can go see my mom again."

His eyes dropped down to his shoes.

"I am sorry," she mumbled.

Angel took a deep breath before continuing. "She died a couple of weeks after I graduated high school last year. It seems like my taste in life died along with her. I'm just a big pile of confusion and lost. I came to Barrymore because that was where she went to school. I even accepted dad's idea of me becoming a dentist like she was. I thought if I could closer to her, I'd be able to find a reason for living. Turns out all I found was that everything in my life was – is – meaningless."

"Your life is not meaningless, Angel," she said.

"Then why does everything feels empty?" He stepped away from the wall and tried to put some distance between him and the painting. "All I want is for everything to go back the way they were. I used to be happy, adventurous, and hopeful."

"You still are," she clarified. "You just need to see it. You are adventurous and hopeful. Otherwise, you would not have taken the risk to break in here. You just keep living in the past."

He was feeling restless like all the times a conversation shifted toward him and his internal well-being.

"You can learn about the past," she continued, "write about it, teach it, love it, but never live in the past. It's the secret for enjoying life. You know who you used to be. You need to figure out who you are now. That's the only way you'll get your passion, your joie de vivre back."

Angel smiled sheepishly. "How does someone stuck in a painting know so much?"

"I've studied people," she explained. "You'd be amaze at how much you learn by simply observing and listening to other people. Plus, I've had a rather good amount of free time on my hands."