Still Life

by Jacqueline West

  “I’m not making him sleep on the couch,” said Morton, avoiding Olive’s eyes. “I just said he couldn’t have any of the bedrooms.”

  “But you don’t need them. You don’t even sleep.”

  “He promised!” said Morton. “His aunt and uncle already changed the whole dining room without asking. Everything has to be the same, so Mama and Papa can come back!”

  Olive looked down at Morton’s round, pale face. The bedroom’s curtains were drawn, but just enough wintery daylight seeped through that she could make out the shiny streaks and whorls of his painted skin. She had the sudden urge to wrap him up in his bedspread and squeeze him as hard as she could, to keep him safe.

  Or to suffocate him.

  Or both.

  “Couldn’t he have just one room?” she asked, when the squeezing urge had passed. “Maybe your parents’ old room? You could always change it back.”

  Morton’s eyes went wide. “No!” he shouted. Then he looked quickly down at the floor, twisting one toe into a knothole. “I suppose . . . I suppose he could have Lucy’s room,” he mumbled. “But just to sleep in. Not to keep.”

  “Morton, you know that everything won’t be exactly the same if—I mean when—your parents come back, right?” said Olive. “I mean, you’ve changed, and Lucinda is gone, and the street outside is—”

  But before Olive could finish, Morton whirled away. He hopped up onto the bed, bouncing on both bare feet. “Watch how high I can jump,” he demanded. “Watch!”

  Morton bounced until his tufty hair nearly brushed the ceiling. The heavy iron bed began to shake. One pillow slipped from its spot and toppled to the floor.

  Harvey shot out from under the mattress. “An earthquake!” he shouted. “In London! It’s an unheard-of disaster! Alert the citizenry!”

  Just as suddenly as he had started jumping, Morton stopped. He bounced off the mattress. His bare feet hit the floor with a smack. He whirled back toward the rumpled bed, his eyes wide. “Oh no,” he breathed.

  “What?” asked Olive.

  “It doesn’t go back.” Morton tugged desperately at the blanket, pulling it farther out of place. “It has to go back the way it was.”

  “It’s okay, Morton,” said Olive. “It’s just a messy blanket.”

  But Morton didn’t seem to hear. He ran to the other side of the bed, yanking at the quilt, shoving the tumbled pillows. “Everything changes out here.” His voice was choked. “It keeps changing. And nothing changes back.”

  Olive grabbed the side of the blanket, tugging it evenly across the bed. She smoothed its wrinkles away with her palm. “There,” she said, plumping a fallen pillow. “Now it’s just like it was before.”

  Morton took a breath. He looked down at the bedspread, still frowning, his chin tucked defensively to his chest. “You put that pillow crooked,” he said.

  • • •

  “I think Morton is keeping something from us,” Olive whispered to Harvey as they raced back through the yard half an hour later.

  “Indeed, Inspector Olive,” Harvey whispered back.

  Their footsteps crunched in the thick crust of snow.

  “He didn’t want to let us help him,” Olive added. “And he really didn’t want us to see inside his parents’ bedroom. What do you think he found in there?”

  Harvey raised one whiskery eyebrow. “Perhaps it is something that he did not want to find himself.”

  Olive pushed apart the twigs of the lilac hedge. “Like what?”

  “Perhaps his mother was a jewel thief,” Harvey proposed. “Perhaps she stole the cursed diamonds of Koala Lumpy and hid them in her closet, fearing the harm they would bring upon her family.”

  “Koala Lumpy?” Olive echoed.

  “Or,” said Harvey, his eyes widening, “perhaps Morton discovered that his father was a trainer of the world’s most lethal snake, the deadly Mambo Italiano! Perhaps he used the snake to murder his rivals for a grand inheritance, in a perfect, untraceable crime!”

  “Hmm,” said Olive. “Perhaps you should take a break from Victorian detective stories.”

  Harvey sniffed.

  They hurried up the steps to the old stone house. Olive paused on the porch, taking another anxious look down the slope of Linden Street. It was only midafternoon, but already the sky had dimmed to a faint gray-pink, its clouds mirroring the snowy world below. Fresh drifts had gathered on the rooftops of the staid old houses, where windows glowed and wisps of smoke drifted up from sooty chimneys.

  Shivering, Olive gazed along the row of houses and thought of all the secrets that could be shut inside—some little and harmless and vaguely embarrassing, like Mr. Fergus’s legendary doll collection, and some deep and old and dangerous, like the paintings that filled the house behind her. She wondered what kind of secrets Morton’s might be.

  “What say you, Inspector?” Harvey interrupted her thoughts. “In the Case of the Bewildering Bedroom, shall we attempt to extract the truth on our own?”

  “No,” said Olive slowly. “Morton will tell us when he’s ready. I hope.”

  Turning away from the street, she pushed open the heavy front door. Harvey trotted through it. Olive lingered on the threshold for another moment, taking a last long look at the tall gray house next door. Then she stepped in and closed the door behind her, shutting her own house’s secrets safely inside.

  “AND THAT WAS how I met the museum director while standing in a Dumpster!” Ms. Teedlebaum concluded.

  The art teacher beamed around the classroom. Today, a blue silk scarf was wrapped around her head, making her frizzy red hair shoot up like strawberry pop exploding from a bottle. A clump of keys and pens and notebooks dangled from cords around her neck. She raised both hands, letting her stacks of plastic bangles swing. “In fact, these bracelets are all made from sliced yogurt containers!” she crowed. “One hundred percent Dumpster treasure! I can’t begin to count the number of art materials I’ve fished out of the garbage!”

  Her students glanced worriedly around the classroom.

  “Now . . .” Ms. Teedlebaum’s eyes focused. “Where were we?”

  Near the front of the room, a knot of girls put their heads together and snickered.

  A boy in a baggy sweater spoke up. “You were talking about how you got asked to join the board of the art museum.”

  “The museum! Yes!” Ms. Teedlebaum clapped her hands. The keys and pens jingled cooperatively. “We’re all ready for our field trip to the museum this Friday.” She pulled one hanging notebook from the clump and flipped through its pages. “I just need permission slips from control-top nylons, non-drowsy cough syrup, and Miracle-Gro.” Ms. Teedlebaum blinked down at the notebook. “This may be the wrong list.”

  The knot of girls giggled harder.

  “Well, you know who you are,” said Ms. Teedlebaum, dropping the notebook and swiveling toward the chalkboard. “Back to our painting terms.” She gestured to a series of loopy scribbles. “You’ll be looking for an example of each of these inside the museum. We’ve covered chiaroscuro, pentimento, impasto, and still life. I also want you to look for a self-portrait . . .”

  At the very back of the art room, Olive Dunwoody twitched. She’d been watching Ms. Teedlebaum’s hair sweep from side to side and daydreaming about strawberry pop, but the words self-portrait zinged her back to the present.

  She glanced nervously around the classroom. There was no one here who shouldn’t be. The art room was on the third floor of the school, and its windows revealed nothing but a square of white sky and a few bare black branches. Still, as Olive stared through the glass, her mind began to fill it with a horrible image: a face made of shadows and brushstrokes, a face with sunken, burning eyes and—

  “Olive?” said a voice.

  Olive jumped. Her table rattled, sending three colored pencils clicking to the floor.

/>   Several students turned around.

  “I asked why an artist might create this kind of picture.” Ms. Teedlebaum smiled encouragingly.

  Olive swallowed. “Because he might want to . . . um . . . scare somebody?”

  The girls at the front of the room snorted. One of them swiveled in her seat to smirk at Olive, and Olive caught a glimpse of thick black eyeliner.

  “Well . . . I suppose a landscape painting could scare someone who is afraid of the outdoors,” said Ms. Teedlebaum. She turned to the chalkboard and scribbled the word Agoraphobia. “All right,” she said, “why else might an artist paint a landscape?”

  It’s difficult to slump on a high metal stool, but Olive managed it. She let her spine flop like a piece of cooked pasta, placed her elbows on the table, and buried her face in her hands. She could hear her own heartbeat rumbling in her ears.

  Watch out, it seemed to say. Watch out.

  • • •

  Rutherford Dewey was waiting for her in their usual seat on the school bus. Olive hadn’t even stepped out of the aisle when he glanced up, fixed her with his dark brown eyes, and demanded, “What’s your opinion of intentional anachronism?”

  Olive plunked down on the green vinyl seat. “Tension and what?”

  “Do you believe that an author should include historically inaccurate elements when writing about well-understood time periods?” Rutherford asked in his rapid, slightly nasal voice.

  Olive found that she tended to lean toward Rutherford when he spoke, as if this might help her ears to catch up with his words. All it did was help his words reach her faster.

  Rutherford tapped the copy of The Once and Future King lying in his lap. “Personally, I find it implausible that Eton College, which wasn’t established until 1440, could have existed in any similar form during the sixth century, and thus I find the reference highly distracting.”

  “That’s what you’re thinking about today?”

  “That’s what I’m thinking about right now,” Rutherford corrected her. “I’ll be thinking about something else in a few seconds, I’m sure. And I’m equally sure that you’re thinking the same pointless thoughts you think every day during our ride home.” Rutherford lowered his voice slightly. “Aldous McMartin will not have gotten into your house while you were at school, Olive.”

  “But what if—”

  “It isn’t possible,” said Rutherford. “My grandmother is keeping watch, and Walter is right next door, and the cats are standing guard.”

  “Two of them are, anyway,” said Olive. “This morning, Harvey put on his Sir Lancelot outfit and jousted with the coat tree.”

  “Who was the victor?” Rutherford asked.

  “My dad’s hat, I think.”

  The bus hit a snowdrift, bouncing them in their seat.

  Rutherford straightened his glasses. “When Aldous does attempt to return, he’ll most likely do something completely new. Something we won’t expect.”

  Olive kicked a clump of slush along the bus floor. “I wish you could read his mind.”

  “Paintings, strangers, and various non-living entities are beyond my abilities, unfortunately.”

  “Well, what would you guess he’s going to do?” Olive whispered, sinking deeper into the seat. “Annabelle said he was hard at work. We know he has some of the paints. He used them to put the fake version of me on the deck of the ship, and Leopold says some jars are missing from the room below the basement. What do you think he’s painting?”

  “A fascinating question,” Rutherford whispered back. “How do you think like an enemy, when that enemy is trying to think like you?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “If Aldous is seeking revenge, then it’s likely that he will attempt to paint whatever would scare you the most.”

  Something cold and slippery tunneled to the pit of Olive’s stomach. “Oh.”

  “And he could paint anything, real or unreal, extinct or alive,” Rutherford went on, sounding more excited with each word. “A fire-breathing dragon. A gigantic spider. A herd of tyrannosaurs—although in actuality the tyrannosaurus is believed to have been a solitary hunter. A razor-toothed—”

  “He can’t paint the thing that would frighten me most,” said Olive, cutting off Rutherford’s unpleasant list. “He can’t paint Annabelle.”

  “An excellent point,” said Rutherford. “Both the living subject and the last living image are gone for good.”

  “No matter what he paints, he can’t set it free from the canvas anyway,” Olive continued, trying to make her voice sound braver than she felt. “Not without the cats or the spectacles. And those are safe with me.” She patted the lump beneath her collar.

  “Another excellent point,” said Rutherford.

  A fine, dry snow had begun to fall. Flakes coasted over the bus windows like white pollen. Olive stared through the glass, seeing menacing patterns in the swirling whiteness.

  “However,” Rutherford added, after a moment of thoughtful silence, “Aldous might find a new way to access Elsewhere. He did create the paintings and the spectacles in the first place.”

  Olive shot him a look that said YOU’RE NOT HELPING in fiery red capitals. Rutherford didn’t really need the look, but it did finally make him stop talking.

  The bus stopped at the foot of Linden Street. Olive and Rutherford hurried up the sidewalk between the rows of quiet houses. Their yards lay buried in smooth sheets of white, like the frosting on an uncut cake. High above the street, leafless branches wove a black net against the sky.

  Olive blinked through the snowy air, checking every house, every tree. There was nothing to see—but the fact that she didn’t see it made her all the more certain that it was there, hiding. Watching her.

  “Run,” said Rutherford.

  Olive gave a start.

  “It would make you feel better, wouldn’t it?” he asked. “So let’s run.”

  Together, they tore up the sidewalk, kicking up clumps of snow behind them.

  On that wintery afternoon, Mrs. Dewey’s cozy house looked cozier than ever. Butterscotch-colored light glowed in its windows. Pine boughs and waxy red berries twined through its porch rails. Rutherford ran up the steps and threw open the door, releasing a burst of warm, spicy air into the cold.

  “We’re here!” he called.

  “In the kitchen!” a woman’s voice called back.

  Stomping the snow off of their boots, Rutherford and Olive followed the scents and sounds around the corner, into the coziest room in the whole cozy house.

  Walter and Mrs. Dewey were bent over the kitchen table. Bowls of dried leaves and sparkling seeds cluttered its surface. Canisters of cocoa and sugar and cinnamon and other, more unusual, ingredients waited on the kitchen shelves. A copper teakettle puffed softly on the stove. Pots of bright red blossoms pressed against the steamy windows.

  “Now, Walter,” Mrs. Dewey was saying, “you only need the peel of the stormfruit, but it’s very thin. Remove it gently.” Her round, smiling face turned toward the door. “Hello, you two! How was school?”

  “Very informative,” said Rutherford. “We started a new unit in science on the anatomy of invertebrates. It should provide interesting connections to my already existing knowledge of prehistoric life forms.”

  “Why don’t you warm up with a cup of cocoa?” Mrs. Dewey suggested. “And then, Rutherford, we’ll continue your lesson on memory spells. Olive, you could watch Walter, if you’d like.”

  This was the way things went in Mrs. Dewey’s kitchen. Rutherford and Walter learned increasingly difficult recipes using increasingly strange ingredients, while Olive—who had as much natural talent for magic as she had for mathematics—handed them spoons. This was all right with Olive. Her own attempts to use magic had resulted in one awful fight with the cats and one truly disastrous painting. It seemed safe
r to leave the actual spellcasting in Mrs. Dewey’s dimply hands.

  While Rutherford fetched the cocoa mugs, Olive ventured closer to the table. Walter stood beside it, squinting down from the top of his very tall body at the very small fruit below. He bowed down, bringing his face close to the tabletop, and tried to get a pair of tweezers around the pea-sized ball.

  “Hi, Walter,” said Olive.

  “Hello—mmm—Olive,” said Walter, trapping the teeny fruit.

  “Where’s Morton?”

  “He stayed home. I asked him to come, but—mmm—he wouldn’t. He said he had too much to do.” The fruit popped out of the tweezers and flew upward, beaning Walter on the forehead. “He’s safe. The house is surrounded by spells. I wouldn’t have left him alone if—”

  “I know you wouldn’t.” Olive watched Walter sprawl on the floor, hunting for the escaped stormfruit. “I think I’ll go over and talk to him by myself.”

  “Good idea,” said Walter. “Mmm—there are locking charms on the doors, but the house should recognize you.” He made a sudden dive under the table. “Got it!” he exclaimed, just before a rumble of thunder burst through the kitchen, making the canisters rattle. Rutherford spilled a slosh of cocoa across the stovetop. Olive clamped both hands over her ears.

  Mrs. Dewey sighed. “That’s why you have to be gentle with stormfruit.”

  Leaving Mrs. Dewey’s kitchen for the outdoors felt like climbing out of a warm bath onto a freezing tile floor. Olive dashed across the lawn, around a clump of birch trees, and through the back door of the tall gray house. Only once it was closed behind her did she realize she’d been holding her breath.

  The house was silent. Olive ventured across the empty kitchen and into the hall, listening hard. There was no sound but the creak of her boots against the floorboards.

  “Morton?” she called.

  No answer.

  Olive clomped softly up the staircase. Morton’s bedroom was empty. Lucinda’s bedroom was as stiff and still as ever, though Olive noticed Walter’s bag of clothes had moved from its spot under the couch to a new spot under Lucinda’s ruffly bed.