The Year of Shadows (37 page)

“Olivia, how was I supposed to tell you?” The Maestro’s voice was thin, wavery. “On top of everything that’s happened to us, how could I tell my daughter that her mother had died? That she had lost her again? First because of me, and then because of this?”

What would a broken Mom have looked like? Would her nose have shattered into bone splinters? Would there have been a great, black gash across her stomach where the windshield sliced her open? A spiderweb of scars?

The Maestro reached for me. Igor put his paws on my legs. I shoved them both away and found the Maestro’s eyes—those black, wet, pathetic, red-rimmed eyes.

I whispered, “I wish it had been you instead of her.”

He nodded. He was suddenly a thousand years old. “Sometimes I do too.”

Then the air filled up with this horrible croaking sound. Mr. Worthington moaned and rushed across the stage, his arms reaching out for something.

Toward a shade. With a doll in its arms.

Igor dug his claws into my foot.
The doll, Olivia!

Tabby Worthington’s doll.

But it was too late. Because the shade was opening a dark, shadowy slit right beneath the exit sign. Unzipping it with its spider-fingers, like a tent flap. Through the slit, I could see teeming shapes of blues, reds, and blacks. The shade
slipped back through the opening, the doll in its arms . . .

 . . . and disappeared into Limbo.

Mr. Worthington let out an awful cry.

I ignored him. I ignored the Maestro, who stood like a statue, watching me. He hadn’t noticed a thing. He whispered my name. I even ignored Igor, until I realized I was back in my room, that I had marched there like a robot, that I was scribbling exploding cars and broken faces in my new sketchpad, the one with Henry’s name on the inside.

For Olivia
, it read.
My favorite artist. From Henry.

Igor slammed his head into my hands, knocking my pencil away.

“Is a storm?” Nonnie murmured, rolling over in her sleep.

“Igor, I can’t breathe,” I whispered. There was a hot river building inside me, and I was drowning in it.

Igor started licking me.
I can clean you, if you like. Would that help? You look messy. You don’t even have to pet me. Although I wouldn’t stop you or anything.

I tucked Igor into bed with me and rocked him, and rubbed the friendship bracelet around my wrist, and shoved the twist in my throat down, down, and down.

Dead. Mom was dead. Not just missing, but actually dead.

Maybe if I said the word enough times, it would stop being so awful.

DEAD. DEAD.
DEAD.

I wasn’t sure where to go from here. I shut down. I went dark. “Radio silence” is the term. At lunch the day after I found the obituary, I said only enough so that Henry and Joan would understand.

“I found an obituary in the Maestro’s room last night. My mom is dead. She left, and then she died a couple months later. About a year ago. It was a car crash.”

Joan dropped her sandwich and covered her mouth with her hands.

“Olivia . . .”

I was fine until I heard Henry’s voice. Then the river started swelling up in my throat again, so I kept talking.

“Also, the shades got a hold of Tabby Worthington’s doll and took it into Limbo. So I’m not sure what we’re going to do about that.”

“Olivia.” Henry grabbed my milk carton, and I glared at him.

“I was drinking that, Henry.”

“
Olivia
. Are you okay?”

“What do you think, Henry? Give me my milk carton.”

“Fine. I just . . . you can talk about it if you want.”

“I don’t. I just wanted to keep you updated.” We didn’t have time to talk about mothers. I pulled out our clipboard and our pounding-the-pavement plans for that evening, ignoring Henry and Joan’s shared look of concern. There were only two concerts left. We had to make the most of it. “Now. We’ve got work to do.”

That Friday, the Maestro called a surprise rehearsal. Normally, the orchestra wouldn’t rehearse the afternoon before a concert, so everyone was curious and more than a little grumpy. Somehow, I found myself sitting in seat H15 with my sketchpad, Henry on one side and Igor on the other. I was drawing, but not anything in particular; I just let my pencil wander.

“What do you think this rehearsal is for?” Henry asked.

I shrugged. “Who cares?”

Henry didn’t say anything more after that. I think he was afraid to talk to me, afraid that I would crack. He might have been right. All I knew was the tip of my charcoal on my sketchpad, like I was sewing myself back together.

Once everyone was onstage, the Maestro clapped his hands. “I’m sure you’re wondering why I’ve called you here.”

From behind me, I heard a door open. I looked over my shoulder and saw Mr. Rue, Mayor Pitter, and two men I didn’t recognize enter the Hall.

“First,” the Maestro was saying, “I wanted to announce that for our finale concert in May, we are going to adjust the program slightly. And, yes, we are going to go forward as though the Hall, and our orchestra, will remain intact. Instead of the Bach, Mozart, and Elgar, we are going to perform Mahler’s Second Symphony.”

The musicians looked surprised and impressed. I saw Richard Ashley elbow one of the other trumpet players with this huge grin on his face. Trumpet players loved Mahler.

Henry let his algebra textbook fall to the floor. “Mahler 2,” he breathed, like it was something to worship.

I was still watching the group of men. The two men I didn’t recognize were talking with Mayor Pitter, pointing at the damaged chandelier, at the crummy ceiling repairs the handymen had done for a discount.

Mr. Rue looked miserable, his arms crossed, his shoulders hunched.

“Henry, what are they doing?” I said.

Henry turned. “Uh-oh. That doesn’t look good.”

“Second,” the Maestro was saying, “I wanted you all here to congratulate my daughter, Olivia, with me.”

I spun around. “What?”

“Our ticket sales are up—you will not believe it—one thousand percent.
One thousand
. Exactly what we needed.” The Maestro held his arms out toward me. “And you have helped get us there, Olivia. You and your friends and those beautiful posters. My little ghost girl.” He kissed his fingers and then threw the kiss at me. “My little shadow.”

I hoped the Maestro didn’t think this changed anything. I was still furious with him. I still felt sick when I looked at him and thought about the secret he’d kept from me. But the musicians were smiling, cheering, raising their instruments to me. Richard Ashley smiled the biggest of all. For a few seconds, I soaked it up, gulped it down—this flushed, proud feeling. I had done good work.

It didn’t last.

The Maestro had noticed Mr. Rue and the others. He waved the musicians silent and squinted past the bright lights. “Walter? What is this?”

Mr. Rue walked slowly toward the stage. “It’s over, Otto. It’s over.”

I hadn’t ever heard a room go so silent so fast. “What do you mean?” the Maestro said. “Who are those men? Mr. Mayor?”

“I’m sorry, Otto.” Mayor Pitter cleared his throat and held out a paper to read. “After the incident at that concert with the chandelier, I sent in some people from the engineering department to inspect the building. Otto, this place is dangerous. It shouldn’t be open, not even for another day. I’m not sure how it’s still standing.” He took a deep breath and looked around for a long time, like he was making himself look the musicians in the eye. Then he gave the papers to the Maestro and stepped away. “I’ve got a notice here I can’t ignore. A notice to condemn.”

Condemn
: to say that something can no longer be used; can no longer be open for business.

To say that something should be destroyed.

Immediately, the stage erupted into chaos. The musicians demanded to read the papers themselves. They demanded meetings with the mayor, with City Council.

Henry chased after Mr. Worthington, who was wailing in agony. Other ghosts flitted around, shouting to each other, making a mad rush for The Ghost Room so they could share
with Mrs. Barsky as soon as possible. They were jumping off a sinking ship.

The Maestro stared silently at the papers in his hands. He seemed small and shrunken, like a kid in too-big clothes.

His mouth moved. I couldn’t hear him, but I could read his lips.

They said
Cara
.

Then he said,
What do I do?
and looked up at the ceiling.

I followed his eyes to the ceiling, and I tried to scream, but nothing came out.

Shades swarmed up above the stage, maybe drawn there by all the chaos of the ghosts flying around. A big knot of shades hovered right over the Maestro’s head, hanging from the ceiling like a cluster of bats.

They were chewing on the ends of a big, curved wooden beam. Clawing at the ceiling in a frenzy, chipping away the painted angels.

I knew what would happen right before it did happen.

And I couldn’t do anything about it.

I couldn’t move fast enough to get to the Maestro, to push him out of the way. I couldn’t get my voice to scream, “Watch out!”

So when that stretch of ceiling crashed down, it landed right on top of him.

I watched his body buckle under the weight of all that wood and plaster.

I saw his head smack the edge of the stage.

I saw him topple off the stage to the Hall floor, and the wreckage pin him there.

I saw his arm, bleeding. It was the only part of him I could see.

It didn’t move.

I
WAS ZOOMING
somewhere, fast.

There were blue lights, and red lights. People rushing around, uniforms floating in the air. Hands touching me, hugging me.

“Olivia?”

Colors blurred, surrounding me. I was being poked, prodded, patted. Why wouldn’t they just leave me alone here? Why did they keep talking to me?

“Olivia? Look at me.”

Two hands cupped my face. A man with sandy brown hair.

“It’s Richard, Olivia,” the man said. “Richard Ashley.”

I nodded. I knew Richard Ashley.

“We’re on the way to the hospital. Do you understand? Your father’s in an ambulance. He’s hurt, Olivia. We’re following the ambulance in a cab. Do you understand?”

Of course I understood. Why did he keep asking me that?

“Olivia, say something. Hilda, do you have any water?”

I blinked and looked around. Richard Ashley. Hilda Hightower. A water bottle.

“Here, drink some of this, sweetie,” Hilda said.

I tried to drink some water, but it didn’t go down right because something was choking off my air.

“Henry,” I said, and my face was wet. Richard Ashley was hugging me. His jacket was around my shoulders. I smelled the valve oil he kept in his pocket. That’s what trumpet players use when their valves go dry. There are seven valve combinations: open, 1, 2, 1-2, 2-3, 1-3, 1-2-3. The Maestro once showed me. I was sitting in Mom’s lap. The Maestro made a weird sound on the trumpet that sounded like a horse neigh. You can do that, you know, if you hold the valves down only halfway and shake the horn around.

It made us laugh, me and Mom.

“Where’s Henry?” I kept saying. “Henry.”