The Year of Shadows (7 page)

T
HE MAESTRO STOOD
in the center of the room, staring at the ceiling as the musicians watched in silence.

I found Richard Ashley by his locker. Henry, annoyingly, followed right behind me.

“Richard?” I whispered. “What’s going on?”

Richard put a finger to his lips and shook his head, but he put his other arm around my shoulders.

“I do not know what to say,” said the Maestro finally. “That . . .” He laughed, but it wasn’t a nice laugh. “My friends, that was not good.”

I glanced up at Richard for his reaction. It was the first time I noticed how tired he looked, how many lines crisscrossed his face, how faded his tuxedo had become.

Then, out of nowhere, the Maestro grabbed the nearest folding chair and threw it against the wall.

Everyone jumped. Richard pushed me and Henry behind him, his hand tight on my shoulder. Igor growled softly.

The chair flew into an old set of wind chimes and sent them crashing to the floor. The racket lasted for centuries.
The Maestro turned his back to everyone, put his hands on the wall, and leaned his head against it.

I tried to clamp down on the panicked somersaults in my stomach, but it didn’t work so well. Poor Igor must have been squeezed within an inch of his life.

Finally, the Maestro picked up the walkie-talkie at his belt. “Jeremy, if you’ll come backstage, please.”

“Be there shortly, sir,” came Jeremy’s static-lined reply.

For a brief, awful, wonderful second, I closed my eyes and imagined that Richard Ashley’s arm on my shoulders was Mom’s arm instead.

When the Maestro started having fits like this, right before The Economy changed, right before
everything
changed, Mom would make me a bedsheet fort and cut out stars from the scrap paper she brought home from the office. Once the fort was done, and the stars strung up, she and I would lie under the starry bedsheet sky. She would hug me and kiss my hair and tell me a story. I’d fall asleep to her fingers tracing shapes on my back, the Maestro’s music floating up from downstairs.

“I was not going to tell you this,” the Maestro said, staring down each of the musicians, one by one. “I was going to wait until later in the season. I thought,
Why upset them?
There was no need. But then you play like a high school group. Need I remind you, you’re getting paid for this? You are
professionals
.”

Jeremy, the box-office clerk, entered the room. He held a scrap of paper in his hands.

“I’m here, sir.”

The Maestro waved his hand impatiently. “Tell them how many people were in the audience tonight. Tell them.”

Jeremy paused. Mr. Rue, the president of the orchestra, came up behind him, hidden in the hallway that led to the east side of the stage. He crossed his arms over his chest, watching. Mr. Rue basically ran the orchestra; he decided where the money went, and hired and fired people, and was the Maestro’s boss. They were old friends. Mr. Rue usually stayed out late after concerts, doing what Mom always called “The Big Schmooze.” That meant sucking up to the rich people so they’d give the orchestra money.

Seeing Mr. Rue standing there spooked me. Why wasn’t he out schmoozing? This was bad.

The Maestro pounded his fist against the wall. “Tell them, Jeremy.”

“Okay, I’m—I’ve got it right here.” Jeremy fumbled with the paper. “We had four hundred twenty-three people in attendance tonight.”

“What was that, Jeremy?”

“Four hundred twenty-three.”

Beside me, Henry slumped against a stack of chairs. Richard Ashley sat down heavily on the bench in front of us. I didn’t want to be there anymore.

“And the total box-office receipts?” The Maestro paused. “How much
money
, Jeremy?”

“$21,008.”

That might seem like a lot of money. But when you have
to pay over a hundred musicians and office staff, and keep the electricity on and keep the Hall itself from falling down, it isn’t a lot of money at all.

A couple of the musicians said a bad word or two. One of the clarinet players started to cry.

Mr. Rue stepped out of the shadows, his bald head gleaming. Even his tuxedo looked rumpled. “What’s the problem, ladies and gentlemen? What happened tonight?”

No one had anything to say.

“I know it’s hard. What with the current state of the economy, you’ve already taken pay cuts. And with the Hall in its current condition . . .” Mr. Rue waved one hand at the ceiling. “I know
I
wouldn’t want to perform under these circumstances. But if ticket sales don’t go up—
drastically—
by the end of the season . . . I don’t know what will happen. We may have to shut down. Pull the plug.”

The Maestro stalked out. The sound of his slamming bedroom door echoed through my bones. Nobody moved for a long time.

Mr. Rue rubbed his forehead, his eyebrows creasing sadly. “I’m sorry to be the bearer of bad tidings, everyone. I wish I didn’t have to be.”

Richard Ashley squeezed my shoulder. I looked at him and felt instantly better. Richard always knew just what to do and say, in any situation. It was part of his charm. That’s what Mom always said, right before rolling her eyes.

“Richard?” I said. “He’s not serious, is he?”

“Yeah, Olivia,” he said, turning away, like he couldn’t stand looking at me anymore. “I think he is, kiddo.”

As everyone drifted out into the parking lot, Mr. Rue found me and patted my arm. “It will be all right, Olivia, somehow. Trust me. Trust your father. Hmm?”

My throat was so pinched I couldn’t get out what I wanted to say:

Why should I trust the Maestro? He’d torn our family apart.

Right before Henry left with Richard for his ride home, he pressed a folded-up note into my hand. It said only:
This isn’t over. Not to sound creepy. I just mean, I know we didn’t find the ghosts tonight. But we will. See you at school.

I folded up his note and slipped it under my pillow. For a long time, I stared at the ceiling, thinking. Igor snuggled up next to me. Across the room, Nonnie breathed thin, rattling breaths. I snuck over and tucked my quilt around her so she’d be warmer. Those strange cold gusts were happening more and more now, ever since Henry and I had seen the ghosts. I didn’t know what that meant, but it couldn’t have been good.

By the time I settled back in bed, I’d made my decision: I would do it. I would find the ghosts, even if that meant teaming up with Perfect Henry Page. Two heads were better than one, after all, and I needed to find these ghosts. I
had
to. Maybe I couldn’t fix everything in my life—maybe
the orchestra was awful and we were poorer every day and Mom was gone and school was the pits, but this—I could do this. I could find the ghosts.

If I could make sense of ghosts, if I could solve that, I could solve anything.

Maybe if I figured out where this one puzzle piece went, I could find the rest of them and somehow put my life back together.

T
HE NEXT MONDAY
at school, The unthinkable happened: Henry Page sat with me at lunch.

There I was, minding my own business and sketching ghosts. A perfectly normal day.

Joan sat across from me. She’d been doing that a lot lately. “What are you drawing?”

I glared up at her through my hair. Even if I’d wanted to talk to her, I wasn’t sure how to explain.

Joan calmly chewed her sandwich. “You look freaky like that. Like one of those Japanese horror movie girls.”

“Thanks. I like looking freaky.”

“Yes,” Joan said thoughtfully. “You work very hard at it.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Then Henry slid into the seat beside me.

It was like you could hear the entire cafeteria hold its breath. Henry Page—baseball star, track star, popular kid—was sitting next to Olivia Stellatella—homeless girl, daughter of crazy conductor, motherless artist.

“Hey,” said Henry.

I shrugged. “Hey.”

Henry opened the first of three milk cartons on his tray. The cafeteria let out its breath, and people started talking again. I wondered how much of the whispering I heard was about us.

“Hey, Joan,” said Henry.

Joan sat there with her mouth hanging open.

Henry ate in silence. Eventually, Joan started doing the same. I hunched over my sketch so Henry couldn’t see it.

“What are you working on?”

Behind Joan, Mark Everett and Nick Weber, this other boy from Henry’s usual table, walked by with their lunch trays. Nick looked horrified, like he’d just seen some kind of alien. Mark looked angry.

I waved and flashed him a smile.

Henry raised his eyebrows at me. “Hello? What are you drawing?”

“Nothing.”

“It’s one of them, isn’t it?” Henry craned his neck to peer at my paper.

I slammed my sketchpad shut. “One of what?”

Henry glanced at Joan. “One of . . .
you know
.”

Joan leaned closer. “What’s going on? Is something going on?”

“Nothing’s going on,” I said. “And I have to pee. If you’ll excuse me.”

I headed for the restroom. On the way, I dropped a piece
of paper into Henry’s lap so Joan couldn’t see. My stomach jumped when I did it, but it definitely was not because of Henry, no matter what anyone might think. It just felt nice to have a secret that was actually
fun
to hide.

I want to contact the ghosts,
the note said.
For real. We can’t find them, so we’ll bring them to us. And I know someone who can help us. I’ve got a plan. Meet me in the courtyard after school, by the water fountain that doesn’t work. P.S. We’re still not friends, though.

This thing between me and Henry, this ghost hunting thing—I didn’t know what it meant, and I still didn’t want him to be my friend. But maybe we could at least be partners. It would be, as Henry had said, “strictly business.” Not friends. Partners. I could handle that. I could handle “strictly business.”

Henry found me by the water fountain after school. I was watching Joan march in circles through the courtyard, holding up a posterboard and shouting out something about corrupt banks.

“Hey,” Henry said. “So, what’s your brilliant idea?”

By that point, I was pretty much bursting, but I tried to keep things cool, like partners would.

“I’ve started working at The Happy Place after school.”

“Really? I didn’t know that.”

“That’s probably because I don’t tell you every little detail about my life.”

Henry frowned. “If you’re going to be rude, I’ll just go
home or something. I’ve got lots of homework to do.”

“This is more important than homework.” I paused at the shocked look on his face and sighed. “Okay, okay. Sorry. I won’t be rude, ever. Promise.”

“Ha. Yeah, okay.”

The fact that Henry thought I was incapable of
not
being rude hurt in a kind of surprising way, like when a bee stings you out of nowhere. “Well. I’ll try, anyway.”

“Fine. So, The Happy Place?”

“Yeah. Well, you know the Barskys.”

Henry nodded. “Sure.”

“So, they’re really weird, right? I mean, I like them a lot, but they sell all this crazy stuff in their shop. New Agey stuff, you know? Crystals, incense, books about how to understand your dreams. But I think they actually believe in all of it. So I was thinking—”

A couple of girls walked past us, talking just loud enough to make sure we could hear.

“Do you think they’re going out?” one of them said.

“Nah,” the other one said, practically shouting it. “You kidding? Henry Page? With
her
?”

Henry’s chest puffed up, but I shoved him out of the way and marched up to the girls myself.

“Why not with me? Because I’m
crazy
?” I waved my arms around and stuck out my tongue. “Ooga wooga booga!”

The girls gasped and jumped back.

“Psycho,” they said. “Freak.” Then they walked away,
shooting these awful looks at me over their shoulders.

Henry and I headed out the courtyard in silence. As we walked toward Arlington, it started to rain.

“Don’t you have a raincoat?” Henry asked, after a minute.