Mrs. Dunwoody glanced up as Olive came down the steps.
“Olive, your teacher brought over an art project for you to finish. Wasn’t that nice of her?”
“Yes,” said Olive, in a sickly croak. “Thank you, Ms. Teedlebaum.”
Ms. Teedlebaum smiled and flapped her hands again. “It was nothing. I hope you feel better soon.”
“I hope you—” said Olive, in knee-jerk fashion, before catching herself. “Um—feel good too.”
Ms. Teedlebaum didn’t seem to find this odd. She just went on smiling. Then she wrapped one of her three scarves back around her neck, setting the cords of keys and trinkets clinking, said “Good-bye!” and jangled out the door.
“What a nice woman,” said Mrs. Dunwoody, closing it behind her.
Leaning her forehead against the front windows, Olive watched the art teacher’s rusted station wagon bump out of the drive and pull away. Her heartbeat was finally slowing back to its normal rate, but her mind was still whirring along at high speed.
How had Ms. Teedlebaum known about Aldous McMartin’s paintings? Was she only interested in them as art…or was she looking for something more? Olive felt the hairs on the back of her neck rise as a new thought shot across her mind: Did Ms. Teedlebaum have something to do with the note from Annabelle that had been planted in the art classroom?
Olive pressed her face to the cool glass, feeling genuinely sick once again. It was just as Annabelle had written—it was hard to know whom to trust. These days, Olive wondered if it was safe to trust anyone at all.
15
ON SATURDAY MORNING, a strange thing happened.
It wasn’t that Olive managed to find a matching pair of slippers under her bed, although this was unusual. And it wasn’t that she both brushed and flossed her teeth before she tromped downstairs, although this was also very unusual. It wasn’t even that she remembered all the digits of someone else’s phone number when she picked up the receiver and started dialing, although this was extremely unusual. The strange thing was that the phone number she was dialing was Rutherford’s.
Olive dropped the receiver back into its cradle before it could begin to ring.
What was she thinking? Had she forgotten overnight that Rutherford was deserting her? Olive stared at the silent telephone, chewing on a strand of her hair. She couldn’t depend on him anymore. She couldn’t tell him about her horrible mistakes with the paints, or about Ms. Teedlebaum’s visit. She would have to face her troubles alone.
Well…maybe not completely alone.
Inside the painting of Linden Street, Olive scurried up the hill, displacing puffs of mist that settled swiftly back into place. An old woman in a rocking chair stopped rocking as Olive hurried past. Olive gave a little wave. The woman didn’t wave back. Through dark windows, Olive could feel other eyes watching her—the same eyes that had watched her yesterday, as she led her deformed portraits to Morton’s lawn.
Cheeks burning, Olive tucked her chin to her chest and hurried on.
Morton wasn’t in his yard. He wasn’t on his front porch either. Olive scanned the street all around the tall gray house, but there was no sign of a small boy in a long white nightshirt. She checked the branches of the oak tree. No Morton. She looked behind the shrubs. No Morton.
The door of the tall gray house was shut. Olive knocked, but there was no answer, and when she tried to turn the doorknob, she found that it was stuck firmly in place. It couldn’t be locked, Olive knew, because nothing inside Elsewhere could be changed without changing quickly back. There was only one way the knob could be held in place: If someone inside was doing the holding.
“Morton?” she called softly, putting her lips to the door. “Morton, I know you can hear me. I have something for you.”
As soon as the words came out of her mouth, Olive realized that they were probably the last words she should have said. Morton wouldn’t want any sort of surprises from Olive for a very long time.
The door stayed shut. Morton’s whole house was giving her the silent treatment.
Bending down, Olive took the old black-and-white photograph of Morton’s family out of her pocket and slipped it carefully through the narrow gap beneath the door.
There was a long, quiet moment while Olive stood on the porch, staring at the door. And then, slowly, it creaked open, and Morton’s small white form edged out.
“I thought you might be surprising me with more parents,” he said.
Olive gestured to the empty porch. “Nope. No parents. I’m done trying to make anything with Aldous’s paints.”
Morton hung on the doorknob, swinging slowly back and forth. His tufty white hair drifted back and forth too, like dandelion seeds that wouldn’t blow away. “Do those cats know what you did?” he asked.
“What do you mean, those cats?” Olive repeated. “You know their names.”
Morton only shrugged and went on swinging.
“No,” said Olive. “Well—Horatio knows. He was really mad. He took the paints and the papers away.”
Morton narrowed his eyes. “Mr. Fitzroy says,” he began, swinging back and forth even faster, “he says…they might not have our best interests at heart.” Morton’s words marched out in the stiff pace of something memorized.
“Mr. Fitzroy doesn’t really know them,” Olive said, putting her fists on her hips. “I told your neighbors that they could trust the cats.”
Morton stopped swinging. His eyes drifted toward Olive’s toes. “Well—they don’t really trust you, either.”
Olive’s mouth opened, but nothing came out. The neighbors knew she had lied about keeping the papers safe. They knew she had used the paints. She had used the neighbors too, taking advantage of their help—and Morton’s—to do something that didn’t help anyone at all. They didn’t trust her. And she wasn’t sure she could blame them.
Morton gazed past Olive’s shoulder. “I bet I can balance on this railing better than you,” he said abruptly, hopping across the porch and climbing onto its banister.
“I bet you can too,” said Olive.
But Morton decided to prove it anyway. He walked back and forth several times, with both skinny arms sticking straight out, and only fell off into the bushes once. Olive clapped politely when he was done.
“I’m glad you’re still here, Morton,” she said as Morton slid down from the railing.
Morton gave her a frown.
“I mean, I’m not glad that you’re stuck here, I just…” Olive trailed off with a sigh. “You remember Rutherford, from two houses away? You met him when Lucinda was hiding Annabelle in her house.” Olive plopped down on the porch steps. “He’s leaving. He’s going to go to a fancy school in Sweden, where his parents are doing research, and I’m going to be stuck in sixth grade all alone.” Olive flicked a fallen oak leaf off of the step and watched it flutter back into its place. “I bet he was just curious about this house. I bet he never actually wanted to be my friend in the first place.”
Morton sat down beside her. He tugged at the hem of his nightshirt until it covered his toes. Then he said, “Maybe he just misses his parents.”
Olive kicked an acorn cap. A moment later it was back in its spot, as though it had never moved at all. “You have to stay here for three more months, remember,” she said softly. “We made a deal.”
“Three months minus three days,” said Morton.
They were quiet for a minute. Olive leaned forward, holding her chin in both hands. Morton did the same. They both stared across the street at the silent houses on the other side.
“Do you want to go dance in the ballroom?” Olive asked at last.
“Not really,” said Morton.
“Want to play with Baltus?”
Morton shrugged.
“We could explore a new painting. There are some at the other end of the hall that—”
“That’s all right,” Morton interrupted. “I think I’m just going to stay here.”
Slowly, Olive stood up. “Okay,�
� she said, looking down at the top of Morton’s tufty white head. “I’ll come visit again soon.”
The tufts gave a tiny nod.
Olive waited for another minute before turning away and walking across the lawn into the deserted street.
She passed the empty lot where the old stone house would have stood, if Aldous had painted it there, and was shuffling along yet another quiet lawn when a voice said, “Evening, Miss Olive.”
Olive jumped. The old man with the beard—Mr. Fitzroy, she remembered—strolled toward her through the mist. He gave her a smile, which was half hidden in the bristly kinks of his beard.
Olive tried to smile back. “Hello,” she mumbled.
“Saw you in here not too long ago,” said the man. “You were leading those two”—he paused, as though searching for a word—“people up the street.”
“Oh,” said Olive nervously. “Yes.” Suddenly she felt dangerously close to crying. She swallowed. “I was just…” she began. “I was just trying to make Morton’s parents.” Olive shrugged, looking down at her feet. “But it went wrong. And I got rid of everything. The paints and the papers and everything.”
The old man studied her. Then he nodded. “I think I’ll go check on the boy. Maybe stay with him for a while.”
“Thank you,” said Olive. She looked into the man’s painted blue eyes. “You don’t have any guesses about what might have happened to Morton’s real parents, do you?”
The man let out a slow, sad sigh that twitched the whiskers of his beard. “It’s been a long, long time,” he said at last. “A very long time. And when there’s nothing new to remember…” He trailed off, gesturing at the sleepy street beneath its changeless canopy of twilight. “The memory shuts down.” He shook his head. “I don’t remember if they disappeared before or after those cats trapped me here. I don’t remember the last time I saw them. But I remember that they were good people. Truly good.” His painted blue eyes got a bit dreamy. “Mary had a way of looking at you that made you tell her the truth. Even if you hadn’t planned on telling it.” He chuckled. “It could be pretty risky talking to her if you had anything to hide. Maybe that was why the Old Man hated her so much. He couldn’t lie to her.”
“Mary?” Olive repeated, in a breathless whisper. “That was her name?”
The old man’s bushy eyebrows rose. “Well, how about that! I remembered something. Mary Nivens. That was it. Mary and…Harold.” The eyebrows went up even higher. The old man beamed.
Olive beamed back at him. “Mary and Harold.”
Still smiling, the old man turned toward Morton’s house. Olive turned the other way, wiping her eyes on her sleeve and grinning at the same time.
The next day, after leaving a deck of cards and the puzzle of a picture of puzzle pieces on Morton’s empty porch, Olive set off to find the other friends who hadn’t betrayed her.
But the cats apparently did not want to be found. Olive tiptoed around the first floor, peering into the shadows beneath the furniture, while inside the library, Mr. and Mrs. Dunwoody performed a cheerful duet on their computer keyboards. There was no trace of Horatio anywhere. She went down to the basement and stared at Leopold’s deserted station for several long, chilly minutes, willing him to appear from the tunnel below. He didn’t.
When her feet were too cold to wait any longer, Olive wound her way up to the second floor. With every empty room and gaping doorway, Olive’s sense of loneliness grew. By the time she’d searched the last guest-less guest room, she felt as hollow as the house itself. She shuffled back down the hall to her own bedroom and pressed her forehead to the cool windowpane, staring down into the backyard. Far below, she could see the jumbled garden, the filled and hidden hole, the crumbling shed…and, just inside the line of lilac bushes, a boy with messy brown hair and a yellow dragon on his shirt.
Her heart gave an involuntary little leap.
Almost as though he had sensed her eyes on him, Rutherford leaped up too, and the thick book he’d been reading flopped out of his lap and onto the ground. He waved both arms in a beckoning way. His lips were moving—moving more slowly than usual, fortunately, or Olive wouldn’t have been able to read them at all. Come outside! he was calling. Come out!
Olive froze for a moment, fingers gripping the windowsill. Then she pulled her curtains shut.
She marched along the upstairs hall, away from her own room, away from the backyard and Rutherford standing in it. She turned into to the pink bedroom, putting on the spectacles and pushing through the painting that led to the attic.
Olive climbed the bug-strewn steps and glanced around the room, with its crooked stacks of boxes and dusty, half-covered furniture. The ruddy light of afternoon threaded through the attic’s window, glinting on the ring of mirrors and buffing the metal of the small, battered cannon. Olive peeped out the window. Rutherford still stood in the backyard, frowning up at the house, waiting. He was far enough away that she couldn’t be sure, but she thought she saw his eyes travel upward to the attic window. His body seemed to deflate slightly, like a week-old party balloon. Then he stooped down, picked up his book, and disappeared into the withering lilac hedge.
Olive felt an unexpected twinge of disappointment. But before the twinge could become an ache, she was startled by the soft clink of glass against wood, somewhere in the shadows to her right.
“Hello?” she called. “Harvey?”
Winding between an old hat rack and an armchair that looked like it was spitting out its stuffing, Olive tiptoed across the room, trying to trace the source of the sound.
There was another, closer, rattle. “Yes. I’m watching you. I know what you’ve been up to,” muttered a voice with a faint British accent.
Olive craned around the side of a musty sewing dummy. There, just a few feet away, was Harvey. He was perched on the edge of Aldous’s cloth-covered easel, looking down at something Olive couldn’t see.
“Agent 1-800?” she called.
Harvey whirled around. He leaped off of the easel, positioning himself between it and Olive. “Agent Olive,” he replied, with a brusque little nod.
“I haven’t seen you in days,” said Olive. “Where have you been?”
“I’m on the job,” said Harvey. “Surveillance. Surreptitious security. Surgical…surceasance.”
“Oh,” said Olive. “Have you seen anything new?”
Harvey squinted one eye. “Perhaps,” he said. “But what I haven’t seen may pose an even greater threat. If you catch my drift.”
“I don’t,” said Olive. She plopped down on the floor, facing the cat.
Harvey maintained his distance. “The work of a secret agent isn’t easy,” he said softly. “Keeping your ears peeled, your lips open, your eyes sealed.”
“I’m sure,” said Olive.
“And then there’s the issue of trust,” Harvey went on. He gazed up into the rafters, eyes sparkling glassily. “Who can trust a cat who doesn’t exist? Who can believe the word of a cat whose entire life is a secret?”
“Hmm,” said Olive, who could tell that Harvey didn’t really want an answer.
“And who can we trust, if no one knows us?” Harvey’s eyes flicked back to Olive. “Imagine a game of chess in which all the pieces are the same color.” The eyes began to sparkle wildly. “You cannot be sure which side anyone is on. Double agents. Triple agents. Quadruple agents.” The eyes widened slightly with each word. “Dodecahedral agents.”
“I can see that you’re really enjoying this,” said Olive.
For a split second, Harvey looked startled. “I—” he began. His whole body seemed to stiffen. “That is—you will have to excuse me, Agent Olive. I must return to my duties.”
Olive got reluctantly to her feet. “I suppose I should get out of your way. If you’re busy.”
“In fact,” said Harvey, backing toward the easel once again, “if you visit this area in the future, you may not see me.”
Olive frowned. “Why not? Where will you be?”
>
“Ah,” said Harvey. One whiskered eyebrow rose. “Where will I be? That is the question. I shall be everywhere and nowhere. Invisible and indivisible. No double agent will be a match for me.”
“Oh,” said Olive. “Then…I guess…good-bye.”
“Good-bye,” said Harvey softly.
Olive slumped back down the stairs and out of the attic, feeling more alone than ever.
That was the last she saw of any of the cats until very late that night. And what she saw then didn’t make her feel any less alone.
16
SOMETIME AFTER MIDNIGHT, when the rest of the house was asleep, Olive woke from a bad dream about a huge chessboard where all the pieces were carved out of purple crayons. The shadows of the ash tree’s branches rippled and unfurled across her ceiling. One twig tapped softly at her window. At first, Olive wondered if this sound had woken her. But as she lay there, listening, she heard another sound.
It sounded like a voice. But it wasn’t her mother’s voice, or her father’s voice. It was a voice that she couldn’t quite place.
Olive slipped both legs out of bed and pushed back the covers with as little crinkling as she could manage. Holding her breath, she leaped off of the mattress and tiptoed toward her bedroom door. The hinges gave a creak as she pulled it open. Olive moved the door as slowly as she could, forming a gap just big enough for her to peep through.
The hallway angled away from her in two directions. One branch led to the staircase, and beyond that, to her parents’ closed bedroom door. The other dwindled off toward the lavender, blue, and pink bedrooms, where Olive couldn’t see. Faint silver moonlight glanced off of the banisters, turning the staircase railing into a cage of shadows. The picture frames glimmered like treasure sunk to the ocean floor.
The sound had seemed to come from her left, inside one of the empty guest rooms. There was a dull creak from the floorboards as someone moved out into the hallway. Olive couldn’t have seen whoever that someone was without sticking her whole head through the door, so instead, she stayed frozen in place, watching and listening with every nerve in her body. Again, she thought she heard the murmur of a low voice, but she couldn’t make out the words.
The Second Spy: The Books of Elsewhere: Volume 3 Page 10
