By this point, they had stopped moving, and so had we. Henry and I crouched in the seats, hardly breathing.
“Are they saying what I think they’re saying?” Jax whispered.
Mr. Worthington curled himself up into a ball of black smoke and moaned softly.
The Maestro threw his arms up in the air. “I can’t believe you’re just standing here listening to this, Walter!”
“Walter?” Tillie said.
“That’s Mr. Rue,” Henry whispered.
I couldn’t say anything. That happy feeling buzzing around in my chest? Sinking fast.
“He is talking about shutting down our orchestra,” the Maestro said. “And we’re the only one the city has! My musicians will be out of work. I will be out of work. I’ll be a laughingstock, mocked across the world because I couldn’t keep my orchestra alive. Pitied for it.”
Mr. Rue looked up sadly from his papers. “Otto, maybe it’s time. Our numbers aren’t getting any better. And the mayor’s right, the land could be put to better use.”
Then the Maestro spat out an Italian curse word—one of the really bad ones—and shoved Mr. Rue away, hard.
“Really, Otto,” said Mayor Pitter, frowning. “Get control of yourself, or the police will. Have some dignity, man.”
“What if someone came up to you, Mayor Pitter,” the Maestro said, “and told you he was about to take away everything you’d worked for your whole life?”
“I’d be angry at him.” Mayor Pitter put a hand on the Maestro’s arm, which I thought was pretty brave, considering. “I don’t want to tear down my city’s only music hall. I used to play the trombone, actually. In school. Did you know that?”
The Maestro just stared at him. I knew that look. I shot that look at people when I was secretly imagining stomping them into a pancake with my boot.
“But times are tough,” the Mayor said, “and your orchestra’s not cutting it.”
He started walking away, and then stopped and turned back. “If you don’t raise your ticket sales by one thousand percent by the end of March, then that’ll be it. We’ll tear down the Hall in the spring. Unveil a development plan in the fall. It’ll boost city morale. People will get excited about something again.” Then he paused and said, “I’m sorry,” and I could tell he was.
But that didn’t make things any better.
“I’ll do it,” the Maestro said quietly, once the Mayor was gone. “Somehow I’ll raise the money. I’ll make it happen, Walter.”
“No, you won’t, Otto. We’ve been trying, haven’t we?” Mr. Rue’s frown was the saddest I’d ever seen. “It’s over, my friend. It’s over.”
Then Mr. Rue put his arm around the Maestro’s shoulders, and they left, the Maestro’s head in his hands.
“Olivia?” Henry got to his feet and helped me up too. “Are you okay?”
“Tear it down?” Tillie looked around at each of us, and for the first time since I’d met her, it looked like she might cry. Her eyes were these big shaking black pools. “What does that mean?”
“What if we can’t find our anchors before they do it?” Jax whispered. “What’ll happen to us?”
“Olivia.” Henry shook me a little. “Say something.”
I ran for the door.
Out the front lobby and across the street, not even waiting for the walk signal. I heard brakes screeching and cab drivers cussing me out, but I didn’t care. I slammed open The Happy Place door so loud that Gerald got spooked and started flying around the shop.
Henry and my ghosts were right on my heels as I barreled into The Ghost Room. Mrs. Barsky was there, counting money.
Just looking at it made me want to be sick.
“Mrs. Barsky,” I said, “what happens if a ghost’s haunt is torn down before they can find their anchor?”
“What?” Mrs. Barsky put her hand to her mouth. “Is the Hall going to be—?”
“Just answer me!”
“If a ghost’s haunt is destroyed, the ghost has no home. The haunt is protection. Without the haunt, a ghost will fall prey to shades almost immediately. He won’t be able to move on. He won’t be able to find his anchor.” Mrs. Barsky squeezed my hands. “Baby, is something going to happen to the Hall?”
Yes. Something was going to happen. They were going to tear it down, and without it, my ghosts would be homeless. They’d be out in the world, alone and unprotected.
And so would I.
PART THREE
I COULDN’T SLEEP for a while after that. I kept having too many nightmares.
In the nightmares, there were storms. They weren’t storms that made sense, because even though there was wind and rain and hail, you could still see the stars. The stars were giant, hurtling closer and closer to where I stood with Igor, Nonnie, and the ghosts. And the closer the stars got, the harder it was to stay together.
We were holding on to the Hall, to the columns that held up the staircases in the main lobby. But then it turned out the Hall and the storm were actually this giant, swirling black hole, and that’s what was sucking the stars toward us.
Nonnie was the first to fly away from me. Then the ghosts and Igor. Then me.
The Hall sucked us into Limbo, and then it collapsed, and we were stuck in cold nothingness.
Forever.
One night, instead of trying to sleep, I settled in one of the Hall’s floor seats with a candle from Mrs. Barsky and drew.
The ghosts stayed in my room with Nonnie. It was safe enough in there with her. Anyway, the shades had basically disappeared in the last few days. I hadn’t seen even one creepy shadow-fingernail.
Maybe they figured they didn’t have to hunt my ghosts anymore. After Mayor Pitter tore down the Hall, the shades would have all the ghost victims they wanted—mine and the countless others who kept showing up, asking Mrs. Barsky for help.
“This is stupid.” I scribbled out the sketch of Nonnie being sucked away from me by my nightmare and wiped my eyes on my pajama sleeve. “We should just find me a cardboard box to live in and get it all over with.”
Igor massaged the cushion of the chair beside me with his claws. Funny. I never thought of you as a quitter. Human, yes. Therefore somewhat of a simpleton, yes. But never a quitter.
“I’m not quitting, I’m just . . . scared.”
Igor pushed his paws against my leg. Being homeless isn’t so bad, you know.
“You’re a cat, Igor. I’m a human. I can’t live on the streets.”
His whiskers twitched. See? Simpleton. My point exactly.
Then I heard someone humming from across the Hall. At first, I saw only a dark figure walking across the stage, and I grabbed Igor, ready to run.
But it was just the Maestro. And it was too late to run from him. He’d seen me.
“Olivia?”
I settled lower in the seat, like preparing for battle. “What? I’m drawing.”
When the Maestro reached me, he stood there silently for a second before sitting down. Maybe he was waiting for me to say something else, but I wouldn’t. I wanted him to speak first. I’d been waiting for him to tell me about Mayor Pitter and the Hall, and maybe he was finally going to do it.
“That’s, uh,” he said. “Your drawing. I like it. What is it?”
I glared up at him. “A black hole of death.”
“Oh. Well. That’s good.”
I rolled my eyes and kept drawing.
“Did you know that, when your mother and I first met, it was because of the orchestra?”
So I guess he wasn’t going to talk about our soon-to-be-homeless problem after all. I dug the tip of my charcoal harder into my sketchpad and said nothing.
“She said the sound of their music—of my music—was like someone calling her home at last. She said she’d never heard anything so beautiful. Did you know that?”
“Whatever.”
But he kept going like I wasn’t even there. He settled back against the chair and gazed at the pipe organ. “If I can make them pl
ay beautifully enough, and loudly enough, and just right, I think she will find her way back home again. It will be like before, only it will be right this time, no mistakes. She will come back to us, Olivia.”
Now that, I couldn’t stand. I slammed my sketchpad closed. “No, she won’t. She’s never coming back. And anyway, soon there won’t be anything to come back to.” I got out of my seat so I could feel taller than him. “Will there?”
He looked at me for a long time, and then tightened the sash of his robe. “I know I saw something, Olivia. The day the ceiling fell. I know I did.”
Then he wandered away through the Hall, taking his time and humming. Mahler 2, again. Waving his hands to an invisible orchestra. Peeking into the shadows.
When he’d slipped backstage again, I felt it—a presence, somewhere behind me. Without turning around, I grabbed my sketchpad under one arm and Igor under the other, and pretended I was made of stone.
Stones were brave. Stones didn’t break. I turned around.
A shade stood there, a tall piece of darkness in a dark room. One of its long-fingered arms was reaching for me.
“Get away!” I hissed, kicking at it. “Get away from me! Go home!”
It shrunk a little, and groaned and darted away, like I’d scared it. I hoped I had.
Then, just before the shade disappeared into the east lobby, color flickered across it. White, and blue, and gold.
For that one second, I thought I saw a familiar face. A face I hadn’t seen in over a year.
“Mom?” I whispered.
But then the color was gone, and the shade was just a shade, slithering out the door on its belly.
I cuddled Igor close. “Did you see that?”
He flicked his tail. I’m a cat, pet. I see more things than you can imagine.
The next day, I got to school early and headed straight for the library.
Henry was already there, holed away at a table in a corner with a bunch of textbooks.
“Olivia!” he whispered, waving me over.
“Sorry, Henry. Can’t talk.”
I found a free computer, opened a search engine, and typed the word “Cara.”
A bunch of suggestions popped up for me to try, most of them names, and most of them Italian, and none of them Mom’s. A sour knot twisted my stomach.
When Mom first left, I searched for her everywhere. I liked to pretend that she had had to leave us for some noble purpose, like she was a spy who had to go away on some urgent mission, or she was secretly a scientist and one of her experiments had gone wrong.
That was a long time ago, though. Then I realized she’d left because of the Maestro. And then I stopped looking for her, period. It gets depressing after a while, trying to track down your own mom.
So why I was searching for her now? She obviously didn’t want to be found. She hadn’t said good-bye, she hadn’t answered the Maestro’s letters, nothing. She might have even changed her name, for all I knew.
The word “Cara” stared at me in that harsh computer-screen light. The first bell rang, but I didn’t move.
If Mom didn’t want to be found, then I wouldn’t look for her. That weird-looking shade the night before didn’t mean a thing. Probably the shades just wanted to trick me, make me think things that weren’t true.
“Olivia?” Henry had snuck up behind me, arms full of books. “What’s wrong?”
“I don’t know.”
Henry peered at the screen. “Cara. Your mom?”
“No.” I turned the monitor off. “She’s nobody.”
TOWARD THE END of January, we started to feel pretty desperate. We were no closer to finding Tillie and Jax’s bracelets, and soon it would be February.
Only about a month to go until the Hall would close.
Or, as I liked to think of it, the end of everything.
“That’s pretty dramatic,” Henry said. We were at lunch, and it was a Wednesday.
“Pretty dramatic?” I slammed down my lunch tray. “Yeah. It is. Because I’ll be homeless.”
“Maybe the Barskys will let you live with them. Or one of the musicians.”
“Yeah. Maybe Richard Ashley.” I fluttered my eyelashes. “He’s dreamy.”
“He is?” Henry looked at me kind of funny. “Do you think he’s dreamy?”
“Sure. Who cares?”
“So you do think he’s dreamy?”
“Henry, focus. Besides, I can’t just go live with someone. I have Nonnie. Whoever takes me in has to take her in too.”
“Oh.” Joan, at the end of our table, slammed down her lunch tray. “Oh. Don’t even get me started about how we treat the elderly in this society.”
Henry sighed. “Nobody asked you that, Joan.”
“Yes, well. If you did ask me, I’d have a lot to say on the subject.” Then Joan turned back to her food. I noticed she sat closer to us these days, scooting closer an inch at a time.
For the rest of lunch, Henry and I went back over our map of the Hall for the hundredth time, trying to figure out where we hadn’t looked for Tillie and Jax’s anchors. I could feel Joan watching us anyway, stealth-like. You could tell she was thinking really hard about something, but I didn’t pay much attention at the time. Joan was always thinking really hard about something.
For the second series of January concerts, the orchestra was playing The Pines of Rome by Ottorino Respighi. The Maestro had always loved Respighi because they shared first names.
Henry loved Respighi because he said his music sounded like flying.
“Close your eyes and imagine it,” he whispered to me. We were in the floor seats during a Tuesday night rehearsal, the map spread out on our laps. “Come on, the third movement’s the best one.”
“Henry, get real. We’ve got anchors to find.”
Henry made a pouty face. “Please, Olivia?”
I rolled my eyes, but that face was pretty cute. “Fine.” I closed my eyes, leaned my head back against the cushion, and listened.
It wasn’t good because, well, it was our orchestra. And the Maestro had been out every night, visiting donors and City Council members, so he was cranky and had ticked off pretty much every musician onstage. But after a couple of minutes, I felt the music take over anyway. Each of the movements of The Pines of Rome is supposed to take place in a different section of pine trees in Rome. The third movement happens near a temple at night. And as I listened, I could feel nighttime soaring over me—sunsets and the first stars twinkling, and maybe a cool river nearby. Even nightingales singing. And yes, just like Henry said, it felt like flying. I was in a forest, a dark, cool forest of pines, drifting lazily through the branches like a bird, like the wind, like a ghost . . .
I bolted upright. My brain wobbled at the edge of something important.
“What is it?” Henry said.
Images raced through my head. Ghosts. Bracelets. The tree by Jax’s hiding spot, with the bark scraped off. Henry’s mom’s jewelry.
“Henry,” I whispered. “That jewelry your mom wore . . .”
“Yeah?”
“It was made out of rocks and wood and stuff like that, right? It came from stones and trees.”
“Sure . . .”
“And Tillie’s and Jax’s bracelets were made out of bark . . .” The orchestra’s music soared over our heads, out of tune and lifeless. I laughed, feeling a little crazy. “Maybe even from a pine?”
Henry’s eyes widened. His binder crashed to the floor. “It’s . . .”
“. . . a tree.” The Maestro was glaring at us over his shoulder. “That’s why we haven’t been able to find those bracelets. It’s because their anchor is a tree.”
Pure adrenaline zipped through me from head to toe, and Henry and I laughed like idiots all the way backstage. I knew the musicians could hear us, but I didn’t care.
But when we got Tillie and Jax outside and told them to touch every tree on the grounds until they found the right one, the tree that held their anchor, they couldn’t.
/> They floated up through every branch, just like I’d imagined when listening to The Pines of Rome. They wrapped themselves around every trunk and swam underground through every tangle of roots.
“Nothing.” Jax slumped glumly next to me, and I tried my best to put my arm around him, even though it made my arm crackle up like ice.
“Stupid!” Tillie screamed, zipping through the trees like an angry shade. “Stupid, stupid!”
“I was so sure that was right.” Henry slumped against a trash can. “It made total sense!”
Jax hid his face in my arm and started to cry.
I forced myself to sound cheerful. “Well, we’ll just have to come up with something else, won’t we? We’ll figure it out.”
But, a little voice whispered in my head, what if we don’t?
I couldn’t eat lunch the next day. Henry couldn’t either. He just sat across from me with his head propped up in one hand, making mountains out of his mashed potatoes.
I pounded the table with my fist. “I want to smash something.”
Henry tossed his chicken patty at me. “Here, take this. I’m not gonna eat it.”
Before I could grab it, Joan rushed up out of nowhere and slammed a big notebook down on top of it.
“I,” she declared breathlessly, “have a brilliant idea. It’s so brilliant that sometimes I can’t even stand it.”
“Whoa, Joan,” Henry said. “Your eyes are lit up kind of weird. Are you sick?”
“Sick with brilliance.” Joan put her hands on top of ours. “Don’t despair, friends. Like my historical namesake, I’ve come to your aid, to defend the innocent and weak against the injustice of the corrupt.”
Henry blinked. “The what?”
“Joan, spill it already,” I snapped.
“I know how to save Emerson Hall.”
“You . . . what?”
“It’s simple, really.” Joan slammed open her notebook. “We just need some fliers, a petition or something. A message. I’ve been doing this my whole life, you know. People just need to know what’s going on. What the issue is. We need to make ourselves visible to the public.”
The Year of Shadows Page 19
