Inside Olive’s mind, a flurry of snowflakes began to glitter and spin like the tiny white shards in a snow globe. When they came to rest at last, Olive could see that they weren’t snowflakes at all, but fragments of paper—fragments that had arranged themselves to spell out something new. Something wonderful. Something that meant she might need a lot less than three months to get Morton’s parents back.
For the rest of art class, both Ms. Teedlebaum and Olive remained motionless, one with her eyes shut, one staring straight ahead, neither one seeing anything at all.
The final bell jolted Olive out of her daydreams. Ms. Teedlebaum, on the other hand, didn’t even seem to hear it. The art teacher stayed flat on her back on the table as the students put their materials away on the shelves, picked up their book bags, and dashed out the door. Olive waited until the other kids were gone before wandering toward the cabinets. She looked along the shelves for her place, the spot labeled with a little strip of tape that read Olive Dunwoody. But as she slid her portrait onto the shelf, she heard the rustle of a sheet of paper. There was something else in Olive’s spot.
Olive pulled the paper down from the cabinet shelf. It felt thick and brittle at the same time, with soft, battered edges and yellowed corners. On the paper was a portrait, done skillfully in fine black pencil. It was the portrait of a young woman. A young woman with delicate features, long-lashed eyes, and a tiny, chilly mouth. A woman with thick, dark hair—and, nearly out of sight, at the very bottom of the paper, a glistening string of pearls.
The world around Olive became a blur. Her ears filled with a muted roaring sound, as though she’d been underwater in a deep black lake for too long. She couldn’t even hear Ms. Teedlebaum sighing behind her, or the table creaking as the art teacher stood up and shuffled toward her desk. The paper trembled in Olive’s hands.
“Um…Ms. Teedlebaum…?” she croaked.
A jingling sound drifted through the watery roar. “Olive,” said Ms. Teedlebaum, leaning over Olive’s shoulder, “did you draw that?”
“No,” whispered Olive. “I just found it on my shelf. I didn’t—I didn’t—”
“Well, it’s very good.” Ms. Teedlebaum craned closer. A knot of keys and pens smacked Olive in the back of the head. “Of course, if it were your self-portrait, it wouldn’t be very good, because it looks nothing like you. But on its own—that’s the work of an artist.”
“Mm-hmm,” said Olive weakly.
“You said you found it on your shelf?” asked Ms. Teedlebaum. “Should I pass it around the classroom tomorrow and see who it belongs to?”
Olive jolted out of her blur. “NO,” she said. She turned to face Ms. Teedlebaum, clutching the paper against her chest. “I mean…it’s mine. I just didn’t draw it. But it belongs to me.” She swallowed. “It came from my house.”
Ms. Teedlebaum’s eyes had already glazed over. “I forgot to tell the first class to bring bicycle tires tomorrow,” she sighed, gazing over Olive’s head. “Shoot.” With another sigh, the art teacher headed back toward her desk.
“Um—Ms. Teedlebaum?” Olive asked, trying to squish the shakiness out of her voice. “Do you…do you know if anyone else has been in here? In this room?”
Ms. Teedlebaum glanced up from behind a mound of clutter on her desk. The kinks of her hair bounced. “In here?” She looked around the room blankly.
“…Besides the other students, I mean.”
“Oh, yes!” Ms. Teedlebaum smiled. “The other students. Yes.”
“But has there been anyone else? Like…could any other grown-ups get in here?”
“Well, the janitor comes in every evening, but he doesn’t stay long,” said Ms. Teedlebaum, rearranging the mound of clutter into a few smaller cluttery mounds. “He really just sweeps the floor these days. He says he’s afraid of putting something that might actually be art in the trash again. Hey!” Ms. Teedlebaum crowed. “I’ve got three bicycle tires right here!”
As Ms. Teedlebaum happily unearthed the bicycle tires, Olive looked back down at the paper in her hands. Annabelle’s lifeless eyes gazed up at her. Even in black and white, their stare made Olive’s skin break out in goose bumps. To escape their gaze, Olive flipped the paper over—and saw, with a horrible, prickling chill, that something was written on the back.
Oh, Olive, read the paper, in fine, ladylike cursive,
I can’t tell you how dull it has been, watching you bumble through the end of the summer, trespassing on our family’s property, while I was forced to remain outside. But I knew you couldn’t stay indoors forever. I may not be able to get inside your house—my house, that is—but I can reach you anywhere else, at any time I choose. Remember that.
Yes, I’ve been watching you. And I know what you are about to attempt. Here is my only advice: Do not waste this opportunity, Olive. You don’t have much time left, and you may never get this chance again.
Of course, I don’t expect you to heed my words. It’s hard to know whom to trust, isn’t it? Should you do what I say, or the opposite? Can you trust your own closest friends? I believed that I could trust Lucinda—it was she who kept Grandfather’s sketch of me safe inside of her house for all these years—and yet in the end she proved to be unworthy. Take a careful look at those you trust, Olive. Because your own friend is hiding a rather large secret from you.
Good luck, Olive Dunwoody.
—Annabelle
7
“FASCINATING,” WHISPERED RUTHERFORD.
Olive and Rutherford were huddled deep in a green vinyl seat, on the bus ride home from school. Annabelle’s portrait, note-side up, was tilted against their knees.
“I don’t think I’d use the word fascinating,” Olive whispered back, rubbing her still goose-bumpy arms. “I might use the word terrifying.”
Behind their smudgy lenses, Rutherford’s brown eyes widened. “But she appears to be trying to intimidate you. Don’t you know what that means?” He hurried on without waiting for an answer—which was good, because Olive didn’t have one. “It means she knows that her real power over you has weakened. She may be trying to trick you into acting irrationally, because she can’t force you do to anything anymore.”
“I don’t know,” said Olive. “It might just mean she’s a witch.”
They both studied Annabelle’s delicate cursive again.
“And it means she’s been watching me, just waiting for me to come out of the house,” said Olive, her voice getting shakier no matter how hard she tried to straighten it. “She’s been following me. She’s been inside our school. She could be anywhere.”
Both Rutherford and Olive craned over the edge of the seat. Two dozen other kids bumped up and down on the green vinyl benches behind them.
“I don’t think she’s here,” Rutherford whispered, lowering himself in the seat again. “Besides, I don’t think she’s going to pop up in some crowded place and yell ‘Boo!’ She’s just trying to frighten you by revealing that she’s been stalking you all along.”
“It’s working,” said Olive. With the very tip of her finger, she underlined part of the note. “Do you think she’s telling the truth about—” Olive stopped herself before her secrets could tumble out. It might be nice not to have to make her plans all alone—but it would certainly be safer to keep the secrets locked inside. “About this thing I might be trying to do?” she finished.
“What are you trying to do?”
“I can’t talk about it yet. I haven’t even decided if I’m going to do it in the first place,” she said, not meeting Rutherford’s eyes, which were boring into the corners of hers like two drill bits. “Do you think she’s trying to use…what do they call it…inverse psychiatry?”
“Reverse psychology?”
“Right. Maybe she knows that if she tells me not to do something, then I’ll go do the opposite.”
“But she probably knows that about you too,” Rutherford pointed out.
“So if she knows that I know I should do the opposite of what
she says I know…” Olive’s head spun. “I don’t know.”
“It would certainly be a lot easier to discuss this issue if you would just tell me what you might be trying to do,” said Rutherford reasonably.
Olive glanced into Rutherford’s eyes and turned quickly back to the yellowing paper. “What do you think this part means—that my own friend is ‘hiding a rather large secret from me’? Do you think she’s talking about one of the cats? Or Morton?” Olive paused to think. “But Harvey just told me Morton’s secret: That he was trying to escape from Elsewhere on his own.”
“That would be troublesome, to say the least.”
“But how would Annabelle know about that?” Olive held on tight to the portrait as the bus hit a bump and everyone bounced up and down. “Who else could she mean? Do you think she meant you?”
There was no answer. Rutherford squirmed in the green vinyl seat. He took off his glasses, huffed on the lenses, and began polishing them on the edge of his red dragon T-shirt. Without the glasses in place, Rutherford’s familiar face looked suddenly quite unfamiliar. For a long, uncomfortable moment, Olive had the sense that she was sharing a seat with a stranger.
“Does she?” Olive pushed.
“Well—I wasn’t going to mention this,” said Rutherford, talking even faster than usual, “because until all the arrangements were complete, it just didn’t make sense to bring it up, and I’m not sure how Annabelle knew about it, unless she’s been spying on me and my grandmother too, which she may very well have been—but my parents have found an international school in Stockholm that has an opening for this fall, and apparently the school’s programs are excellent; they teach six different languages, and there are field studies in archeology and paleontology and botany, and of course, it being in Europe, it’s in closer proximity to many of the more interesting relics of the Middle Ages, and as you know, I’m an expert in the Middle Ages—though I would naturally prefer that the school was located in Germany or France, where my primary interests lie”—Rutherford went on, polishing his glasses with increasing speed—“however, my parents have promised that we might be able to make some exploratory trips to various Germanic castles during school breaks, of which there are several, even though the academic programs are considered to be extremely challenging…”
By the end of this speech, Rutherford was talking so fast that all Olive heard was veryusgermanicasslesduringskoolbreaksofwitchthereareseveraleeventhotheacademicprogramsareconsideredtobeckstreamlychallenging… But this didn’t really matter. She knew exactly what he was saying.
“Wait,” she cut in. “You mean…you’re leaving.” This was meant to be a question, but there was no question in Olive’s voice. “You’re switching to another school? In Sweden?”
“As I said, the arrangements aren’t completed yet,” said Rutherford, putting his glasses back on at last. Olive had never seen their lenses look so clean. “But it is highly likely.”
For the second time that afternoon, Olive felt the world turn into a blur around her. The bus’s metal walls and green vinyl benches suddenly seemed as insubstantial as clouds. She wasn’t even sure how her seat was managing to hold her up.
“But—you said—you said you’d be staying here with your grandma for at least a year,” she stammered.
“I thought I would be. But then my parents heard about this school and—”
“When would you go?” Olive interrupted.
“I’m not sure; there are still plane tickets to buy and paperwork to fill out, but it makes more sense to transfer at the beginning of the semester than later in the year, when I would have to catch up substantially in every class.” Rutherford swallowed audibly. “In other words…soon.”
“Soon,” Olive repeated. There was so much anger in her voice that she felt almost scared of herself. “So you’re going to leave. And I’ll be alone.”
Rutherford looked out the window for a moment before answering. Then he said softly, “You’ve been alone before.”
Olive wasn’t sure if it was Rutherford’s words or the truth in them, but the statement stung like a slap. She hopped up from the bus seat, grabbing her book bag and the sketch of Annabelle.
“Olive…” said Rutherford. But Olive was already charging away up the aisle.
The bus ground to a stop at the foot of Linden Street. Olive leaped down as soon as the doors whooshed open, stalking up the sidewalk as though she couldn’t even hear Rutherford hurrying along just a few paces behind her. She and Rutherford were the only kids who got on and off the bus at this corner. As far as Olive knew, they were the only kids who lived on the whole street. With or without the two of them, the average age of Linden Street’s residents appeared to hover near the triple digits. Through the changing leaves that hung above her, like a whispering, moth-eaten canopy, Olive could glimpse the angled rooftop of the old stone house. Its dark bulk loomed at the crest of the hill, a piece of midnight thrust into the middle of the afternoon. Olive stormed toward it.
Two doors down the slope from the old stone house, Mrs. Dewey was working in her front garden. At first glance, Mrs. Dewey seemed like an ordinary older lady. She looked as though she had been built out of three large snowballs coated in pink powder and propped on a pair of tiny feet. She raised flowering plants and baked cookies and scolded her grandson for not combing his hair. But with another, more careful glance, a person might notice that Mrs. Dewey was not a garden-variety grandmother. In fact, Mrs. Dewey knew quite a bit about the history of Olive’s house…and about magic itself. She had once saved Olive’s life with a charm that included a macaroon and a painted knight figurine. Now, as Olive stomped up the hill, Mrs. Dewey’s snowman-shaped figure teetered to its feet.
“Olive!” Mrs. Dewey called out. “Would you like to come inside for some cookies and milk with Rutherford?”
“No thank you, Mrs. Dewey,” said Olive, stomping even faster. “I have to get home.”
The smile on Mrs. Dewey’s face folded into a look of concern as her grandson slumped closer. “I take it you told her,” she whispered to Rutherford.
“I told her something,” Rutherford whispered back.
Then the two Deweys stood together at the edge of their yard, staring after Olive’s retreating form.
Olive pounded up the porch of the old stone house and slammed the heavy front door behind her. She threw her backpack onto the floor with such force that it skidded across the floorboards, knocking over an antique coatrack. She leaned back against the door, fuming.
Rutherford was going to leave her. For the first time, she’d had a friend at a brand-new school, and he was going to abandon her. This was even worse than starting from scratch. Now, where only a blank sea of strangers would have been, there would be a hole—a great big gap where something important used to be, and she would have to dodge around it, day after day, trying not to fall in.
Olive kicked the door with her heel. The noise thundered away through the empty house.
She stomped along the hall into the kitchen, yanking the wastebasket from its place under the sink.
Stupid Rutherford. That traitor, she thought, ripping the sketch of Annabelle into smaller pieces with each angry thought. The pieces fluttered down into the wastebasket’s mess of coffee grounds and soggy napkins. Sneaky—Untrustworthy—Secretive—TRAITOR.
For good measure, Olive grabbed the bottles of ketchup and mustard from the refrigerator and squirted them generously over the shreds of Annabelle’s face. Then she stuffed the wastebasket back into its spot.
She didn’t need Rutherford. She had other friends—friends that wouldn’t leave her. She still had the cats. She still had Morton. For now.
Olive swallowed. Annabelle had been telling the truth about more than one thing, apparently: Olive had no more time to waste.
8
WHEN OLIVE CLIMBED through the frame and into the painting of Linden Street that afternoon, she knew immediately that something wasn’t quite right.
The rest o
f the house was as it should have been. The empty, dusty rooms greeted her one after another, like the pages of a book she’d read a hundred times. Through an upstairs window, she’d spotted Agent 1-800 watching over the backyard from the branches of a towering maple tree, with his fur painted yellow to match the changing leaves, and this had made her feel a smidgeon safer. But here, in Morton’s world, something had changed.
At first, she couldn’t figure out what it was. Everything looked the same. All the houses were where they should have been, every tree and shrub stood in its place, every fallen leaf and acorn sat in its assigned spot. And yet, something strange hung in the air, even thicker than the mist, which in some places was as thick as marshmallow fluff.
Olive trotted warily up the street. Empty lawn after empty lawn greeted her. The houses loomed, sleepy and silent as ever. But from somewhere in the distance came the trace of an unfamiliar sound.
Frowning, Olive trotted a bit faster.
As she reached the crest of the hill, the sound grew clearer, louder, more real, until at last Olive could tell what it was.
It was the sound of voices. A lot of voices. More voices than Olive had ever heard speaking all at once in the muffled world of Linden Street.
Olive sped from a trot to a gallop. The sound of voices grew louder until she reached the edge of Morton’s lawn. There she stopped in her tracks.
The porch of Morton’s tall gray house was absolutely packed with people. All of his neighbors—the woman in the lacy nightgown, the man in striped pajamas, the old man with the beard, the young woman Olive had only glimpsed in an upstairs window—were sprawled on the floorboards or kneeling in clusters, talking softly, their night-capped heads nodding. A few pairs of slipper-covered feet stuck out between the porch railings. If you threw in pillows and sleeping bags and some bowls of popcorn, it would have looked like Morton was throwing a very sedate slumber party.
The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3 Page 5
