The Year of Shadows Read online

  For the music teachers, mine and everywhere—

  —and for Mom, my anchor

  Acknowledgments

  This is, for many reasons, a special book to me. My own experience as a musician is one of these reasons (I used to be a trumpet player, but I was not much of a charmer); my mom’s bout with cancer, which colored the writing of this book, is another. I therefore have many people to thank:

  First, for her unwavering support, keen insight, and priceless phone chats, my agent, Diana Fox; my brilliant and enthusiastic editor, Zareen Jaffery, who asks all the right questions; the whole team at Simon & Schuster, especially the ever-helpful Julia Maguire, Lydia Finn and Paul Crichton, Katrina Groover and Angela Zurlo (oh, so many thanks for your fine-toothed combs!), Bernadette Cruz, Michelle Fadlalla; art director Lucy Ruth Cummins, for making my books look beautiful; Karl Kwasny, for his delightful illustrations; and Pouya Shahbazian and Betty Anne Crawford, for spreading the word.

  To my writer friends, inspiring and encouraging—Alison Cherry, Lindsay Ribar, Lauren Magaziner, Tim Federle, Leigh Bardugo, Trisha Leigh, Emma Trevayne, Stefan Bachmann, Katherine Catmull, Ellen Wright; the Apocalypsies, for their relentless support; and especially to Susan Bischoff and Kait Nolan, writerly soulmates. To the bloggers, librarians, fellow writers and readers, to Twitter and Tumblr and all the online bookfolk who make the day-to-day fun and offer such lovely support—thank you.

  I would not be who I am today without my musical background, so I must give the warmest thanks to a few special music teachers over the year—Kristen Boulet, John Light, Irene Morris, Asa Burk, J. R. Stock, Nicholas Williams, Dennis Fisher, Maureen Murphy, Mike Sisco, Ellie Murphy, Marty Courtney, and John Holt, all of whom challenged and inspired me. Thank you to Andrew Justice, Maureen Murphy, and Jonathan Thompson, for helping me program the City Philharmonic’s season. Special thanks must go to the Dallas Symphony Orchestra and Maestro Jaap van Zweden, in whose beautiful music hall I first saw Olivia and Igor; and to Ryan Anthony, trumpeter extraordinaire and Richard Ashley’s real-world namesake.

  To Dr. Alan Munoz—“Dr. Birdman,” to Olivia—and the staff at Medical City Hospital in Dallas, for taking such good care of my mom; to my friends and family, especially those who helped us through dark times—Pati Gann, Judy Roumillat, Pat Peabody; to Battleship Legrand—is it Destin time yet?!—to Ashley, Andy, my wonderful stepmom, Anna, and my unstoppable dad, W. D., all of whom I miss every day; to my dear friends Starr Hoffman, Beth Keswani, Melissa Gann, Brittany Cicero, and Jonathan Thompson—my rocks, my lifeboats; and to Matt, my love, master untangler of plot knots.

  Lastly, to Drew, and to Mom—thank you, miss you, I love you. We made it.

  PART ONE

  THE YEAR THE ghosts came started like this:

  The Maestro kicked open the door, dropped his suitcase to the floor, and said, “Voilà!”

  “I’ve seen it before,” I said. In fact, I’d basically grown up here, in case he’d forgotten.

  “Yes, but take a look at it. Really look.” He said this in that stupid Italian accent of his. I mean, he was full Italian and all (I was only half), but did he have to sound so much like an Italian?

  I crossed my arms and took a good, long look.

  Rows of seats with faded red cushions. Moth-eaten curtains framing the stage. The dress circle boxes, where the rich people sat. Chandeliers, hanging from the ceiling that was decorated with painted angels, and dragons, and fauns playing pipes. The pipe organ, looming like a hibernating monster at the back of the stage. Sunlight from the lobby behind us slanted onto the pipes, making them gleam.

  Same old Emerson Hall. Same curtains, same seats, same dragons.

  The only thing different this time was us.

  And our suitcases.

  “Well?” the Maestro said. “What do we think?”

  He was on one side of me, and Nonnie on the other. She clapped her hands and pulled the scarf off her head. Underneath the scarf, she was almost completely bald, with only a few straggly gray hairs left.

  The day Mom disappeared about nine months ago, just before Christmas, Nonnie had shaved all her hair off.

  “Oh!” Her wrinkled face puckered into a smile. “I think it’s beautiful.”

  My fingers tightened on the handle of my suitcase, the ratty red one with the caved-in side. “You’ve seen it before, Nonnie. We all have, a million times.”

  “But is different now!” Nonnie twisted her scarf in her hands. “Before, was symphony hall. Now, is home. È meglio.”

  I ground my teeth together, trying not to scream. “It’s still a symphony hall.”

  “Olivia?” The Maestro was watching me, smiling, trying to sound like he really cared what I thought. “What do you think?”

  When I didn’t answer, Nonnie clucked her tongue. “Olivia. You should answer your father.”

  The Maestro and I didn’t talk much anymore. Not since Mom left, and even for a couple of months before that, when he was so busy with rehearsals and concerts and trying to save the orchestra by begging for money from rich people at fancy dinners that he wouldn’t come home until late. Sometimes he wouldn’t come home at all, not until the next morning when Mom and I were in the kitchen, eating breakfast.

  Then they would start yelling at each other.

  I didn’t like breakfast much after that. Every time I looked at cereal, I felt sick.

  “He’s not my father,” I whispered. “He’s just the Maestro.” I felt something change in that moment. I knew I would never again call him “Dad.” He didn’t deserve it. Not after this. This was the last straw in a whole pile of broken ones.

  “Ombralina . . . ,” Nonnie scolded. Ombralina. Little shadow. It was her nickname for me.

  The Maestro stood there, watching me with those black eyes of his. I hated that we shared the same color eyes. I could feel something building inside me, something dangerous.

  “I think I’m going to throw up,” I announced.

  Then I turned and ran outside, my suitcase banging against my legs. Out through the lobby, past the curling grand staircases and the box office window, and onto the sidewalk. Right out front, at the corner of Arlington Avenue and Wichita Street, I threw down my suitcase and screamed.

  The traffic sped by—cars, trucks, cabs. People pushed past me—office workers out for lunch, grabbing sandwiches, talking on their phones. Nobody noticed me. Nobody even glanced my way.

  Same old Emerson Hall. Same curtains, same seats, same dragons. The only thing different this time was us. And our suitcases.

  Since Mom left, not many people noticed me. I wore black a lot now. I liked it; black was calming. My hair was long, and black too, and shiny, and I wore it down most of the time. I liked to hide behind it and pretend I didn’t exist.

  I couldn’t decide if I wanted to cry or hit something, so I turned back to Emerson Hall’s double oak doors. Stone angels perched on either side, playing their trumpets. Someone had climbed up there and spray-painted the angels orange and red. I squinted my eyes, trying to imagine the Hall’s blurry shape into something like a home. But it didn’t work. It was still a huge, drafty music hall with spray-painted angels, and yet I was supposed to live here now.

  “Might as well go back in.” I kicked open the door as hard as I could. “Not like there’s anywhere else to go.”

  Our rooms were two empty storage rooms backstage: one on one side of the main rehearsal room, and one on the other side. There was also a cafeteria area with basic kitchen stuff like a sink, microwave, mini-fridge, and hot plate. It used to be for the musicians, so they could break for lunch during a long day of rehearsals.

  Not anymore, though. It was our kitchen now.

  The Maestro, Nonnie, and I hauled o
ur suitcases backstage—one for each of us, and that’s all we had in the world, everything we owned.

  The Maestro disappeared into the storage room that would be his bedroom and started blasting Tchaikovsky’s Symphony no. 4 on the ancient stereo that had been there for years. The speakers crackled and popped. Tchaik 4—that’s what the musicians called it—was the first piece of music on the program that year. Rehearsals would start soon.

  Nonnie carefully arranged her suitcase in the middle of the rehearsal room, surrounded by stacked chairs, music stands, and the musicians’ lockers, lining the walls. She perched on her suitcase and waved her scarf at me. Then she started humming, twisting her scarf around her fingers.

  Nonnie didn’t do much these days but hum and twist her scarves.

  I sat beside her for the longest time, listening to her hum and the Maestro blast his music. I felt outside of myself, distant and floaty, like if I concentrated too hard on what was happening, I might totally lose it. The tiny gusts of ice-cold air I kept feeling drift past me didn’t help. Great, I thought. It’s already freezing in here, and it’s not even fall yet.

  This couldn’t be happening. Except it was.

  Nonnie and I each had tiny cots that came with sheets already on them. I wasn’t sure where the Maestro had bought them, but I didn’t trust strange sheets, so I took them down the street to the coin laundry and remade the beds.

  That put me in an awful mood. Buying the detergent and paying for the laundry had cost us a few bucks, and every few bucks was precious when you didn’t have a lot to begin with.

  Nonnie and I also each had a quilt. Mom had made them during one of her crafty phases when she’d spread out all sorts of things over the kitchen table after dinner—fabrics, scissors, spools of thread, paper she’d brought home from her office.

  The Maestro came into our bedroom while I was spreading out the quilts over our cots.

  “You should get rid of those ratty old things,” he said.

  “This is my and Nonnie’s bedroom.” I kept smoothing out my quilt, not looking at him. “And you should get out.”

  He was quiet, watching me. “I have some money for you. If you want to go get some things for your room, school supplies. School starts soon, doesn’t it?”

  “Yeah.” I took the crumpled twenty from him. “You should get out.”

  After a minute, he did.

  When the beds were made, I found some boxes in the rehearsal room that didn’t look too old or beat-up. I also found a couple of old pianos, rickety music stands, chairs with shattered seats. All the broken stuff.

  I refused to live out of my suitcase. It was too depressing. I stacked my clothes in one box and Nonnie’s clothes in another box and arranged them at the ends of our beds, on their sides with the flaps like cupboard doors. Then I shoved our suitcases under the beds so we wouldn’t have to look at them.

  I lugged a couple of music stands to our bedroom and put them beside each of our beds, lying their tops flat like trays, so we could have nightstands. On my “nightstand,” I carefully arranged my sketchpad and my set of charcoals and drawing pencils. It all looked so sad, sitting there next to my fold-up cot in my bedroom that had ugly concrete walls because it was never meant to be a bedroom.

  Nonnie came up behind me and hugged my arm. She could always tell when I was upset.

  “Maybe we need more color in these rooms,” she suggested.

  “Yeah. Maybe.”

  I couldn’t stop thinking about our old house uptown, the pretty red-brick one with the blue door. The one we’d had to sell because the Maestro had taken a pay cut and we couldn’t afford to live there anymore. Because the orchestra didn’t have any money, so the Maestro couldn’t get paid as much as he used to.

  Because he’d auctioned off everything we owned so he could plug more money into the orchestra to keep it alive.

  I hated the orchestra, and Emerson Hall, and everything associated with either of those things—including the Maestro—more than I could possibly put into words.

  So I drew the hate instead. I drew everything. That’s why my sketchpad got a place of honor right beside my bed.

  “I’ll be back later, Nonnie.” I shoved the Maestro’s money into my pocket, tied one of Nonnie’s scarves over my hair, and slammed on my sunglasses—the glamorous, cat-eyed ones Mom had bought for me. Like those actresses from the black-and-white movies wore, like Audrey Hepburn and Lauren Bacall. Mom loved those movies.

  “They’re so elegant,” she’d say, hugging me on the sofa while we sipped milk through crazy straws. “You know? The way they talk and walk and dress. It’s like a dream.”

  “Uh-huh.” I didn’t get what the big deal was about Cary Grant. I thought he talked kind of funny, honestly. But I’d say whatever Mom wanted to hear.

  It made me kind of sick, to think about that now. How did I never see it, right there in front of me? That someday she would leave me?

  I shut my eyes on that thought and pretended to squeeze it away. I didn’t like feeling mad at Mom, like if I got too mad, she’d sense it. She’d be right outside with her suitcase, ready to come back to us, and then she’d feel how mad I was and change her mind. She’d walk away, forever this time.

  It was easier to get angry at the Maestro. After all, if it wasn’t for him, Mom might still be around.

  “Where are you going, ombralina?” Nonnie asked as I headed out the door.

  “Shopping.”

  If the Maestro wouldn’t take care of us, I would. And if he wouldn’t give me and Nonnie a real home, I’d do my best to make us one.

  There was this charity store right off Arlington at Clark Street. It had a soup kitchen and a food store, clothes, and household goods. I walked there as fast as possible, huddling beneath my scarf and sunglasses. If I had to go there, no way was anyone going to recognize me. The thought of going there made me want to smash things, or maybe just huddle up in Mom’s quilt and never come out.

  I’d never had to shop at a charity store before. No one I knew had ever had to either. I’d have to go back to school in two days being the girl who shops at a charity store. On top of the girl whose father is going crazy, who draws weird pictures all the time, who lives in a symphony hall like some kind of stray animal.

  The girl whose mom left.

  SEPTEMBER

  THIS IS WHAT I got at the Clark Street charity store:

  1) a pack of multicolored construction paper, for decorating our ugly gray walls

  2) soup, pasta, milk, bread, a bag of potatoes

  3) two pairs of flip-flops for me and Nonnie, for when we showered at the Y a couple blocks over (there weren’t any showers at Emerson Hall, just toilets with rust around the rims)

  4) for Nonnie: a new green scarf with gold flowers on it

  5) for school: a couple of spiral notebooks, folders, pens, pencils

  I felt a little bad about buying the scarf for Nonnie. I guess it wasn’t totally necessary; she had dozens, and I could have used that money to get some spiral notebooks with designs on them instead of the plain ones. But Nonnie didn’t have a lot going on in her life. She played with her scarves and slept and read the three books she owned over and over, and played Solitaire with a deck of cards that had a bunch missing, so I’d had to re-create the missing ones on index cards.

  Plus, Nonnie was so small. She seemed smaller, older, and more wrinkled in the buzzing fluorescent lights backstage at Emerson Hall than she’d ever seemed before. It scared me. Kind of like how I got scared when I let myself think about where Mom might have gone. Was she happy? Or was she small and lonely, like Nonnie would be if she didn’t have me?

  The day before school started was a Monday. After lunch that day, I went to The Happy Place, a tea shop across the street from the Hall.

  Mom started taking me there for muffins and juice when I was little, and I’d kept going even after she left. It had bright yellow walls, a bright orange door, blue lamps, and THE HAPPY PLACE written in swirly black l
etters above the door. On either side of it was Antonio’s Shoe Repair, which had been boarded up for over a year, and a dingy gray apartment building, so The Happy Place stood out like sunshine.

  “Mr. B?” I called out, stepping inside. Gerald the parrot cawed at me from his perch in the corner. I waved at him and he bobbed his head, dancing around on one leg.

  Mr. Barsky popped his head up above the counter. “Why, Olivia, ma belle! Bonjour, ma petite belle! And how are you zis fine Monday?”

  Not even Mr. Barsky’s silly fake accents could make me smile today. See, he used to be an actor. He’d never “made it,” as they say, but he claimed accents were his specialty, so he put on these accents all the time and pretended to be different characters. This guy, the French guy, was Ricardo.

  “Isn’t ‘Ricardo’ a Spanish name?” I’d asked him once.

  He’d leaned close and waggled his eyebrows. “Ricardo is . . . a mystery, Olivia.”

  “Hey, Ricardo,” I said, slumping onto a stool at the counter.

  “Why, whatever is ze matter, mademoiselle?” Mr. Barsky flung his towel over his shoulder and started rummaging through the pastry displays. “When people wear expressions like yours, I always say, ah! Time for une crepe! Or, un biscuit chocolat!”

  Mrs. Barsky came out of the kitchen with a big steaming pitcher. She clinked when she walked because she liked to wear miles of beads around her neck. Today they were a shiny ocean-green color. Her hair was silver and stuck up everywhere, and her nails were painted ten different colors, one for each finger.

  “Olivia!” Mrs. Barsky said. “What a pleasure. It’s been a while. What’ll it be? Raspberry tea? Mango juice?”

  “Actually, I can’t have anything.” I looked around, starting to sweat. There were only two other people here, two guys by the window chatting over some book. “I was wondering if I could work here? Just for a while, maybe.”