The Year of Shadows Page 11

  “It took a lot out of me, but I’ll be fine,” he said. He tried to hug me, but when I started shivering, he pulled back. “Oh, Olivia. Henry. I’m so sorry. I didn’t remember how badly it would hurt.”

  “Don’t worry about that, Frederick,” I said, even though my stomach still hurt. My whole body hurt. “Henry and I knew the risks.”

  “But you didn’t know you would be murdered,” Frederick said, shaking his head. It fell off with a soft, smoky plop, and he held it in his hands, looking back up at himself. “Thomas. My own friend had me killed. Murdered.”

  I shivered at the word. It sounded just like what it was—evil and angry, hidden in shadows where no one could see you.

  “But we’re here now, and we’re okay,” said Henry, coming up behind me. He seemed so different now, so quiet. Dying had changed us. I felt all mixed-up inside, and I couldn’t meet Henry’s eyes when he looked at me. Henry had been in my mind, and I had been in his. He had felt my hatred toward the Maestro and the Hall. He had seen my bedroom. He knew how every day Nonnie looked smaller, how every day I was afraid I’d wake up and find out she’d finally shrunk herself away into nothing.

  And I had seen the white room, the redheaded man. The battlefield. The jar. It was almost like we had seen each other naked.

  I realized I was looking at the world through tears. I needed to be alone; I needed to think.

  Henry put his hand on my arm. I don’t want you to touch me, I thought at him—before realizing he couldn’t hear my thoughts anymore. How glad that made me feel, how safe—and how empty.

  I shrugged his hand off me and took a deep breath. “But we did find out something important, Frederick,” I said. “We know what your anchor is: the music you wrote.” I walked to the edge of the stage, my toes hanging over the side. I crossed my arms over my chest and glared into the blackness, at that flickering exit sign.

  There’s no exit sign on the way to Death, I thought, and for some reason, that made me angry. There’s just nothing.

  “Now all we have to do is find it.”

  We agreed to wait a week to start searching for Frederick’s anchor. He wasn’t kidding when he said sharing took a lot out of you.

  I felt like a sack of garbage that someone had taken out back and beaten with a hammer. Every bone in my body ached. Randomly, I’d feel like getting sick and have to run for the bathroom. Sometimes at night I would wake up, gasping, with this sharp pain in my stomach—an echo of the murder.

  One time, when that happened, I woke up to find Mr. Worthington settled on the edge of my bed, staring at me.

  I shot up into a sitting position, knocking an indignant Igor to the floor. “Mr. Worthington, what are you doing in here?”

  Across the room, Nonnie rolled over and smiled at me. “Is one of the ghosts, Olivia?”

  “Um. Yeah.”

  “Tell it I said hello. Oh.” She hugged herself. “I wish I could see it. Do you think someday I will?”

  “Him,” I corrected automatically. “His name is Mr. Worthington. He was a businessman. And maybe. I don’t know. They have to trust you first.”

  “I’m very trustworthy. Molto fidato. Does he like scarves?”

  “Probably.” I drew my blanket up to my chin. “Mr. Worthington, what are you doing here? I never gave you permission to come into my room.”

  Mr. Worthington took off his hat and turned it around and around in his hands. His face looked unusually distressed.

  “You were loud, Olivia.” Nonnie pulled out a scarf from the box by her bed and cuddled it. “You had bad dream. Un incubo. You have many now. You didn’t always.”

  Igor shook himself irritably and glared up at me. Obviously the old fellow was worried about you, in his own way. Now, if you’ll excuse me, since I’m up, I’m off for a snack. He slid out the bedroom door, invisible in the dark.

  “Were you worried about me, Mr. Worthington?” I whispered to the frigid air swirling and shifting in front of me.

  He didn’t answer, of course, but he rearranged himself at the edge of my bed, stiff like a soldier, and when I went back to sleep, the pain in my gut wasn’t so bad anymore.

  The first time I fell asleep in class, Mrs. Farrity gave me a warning. The next two times, she gave me more warnings. The fourth time, she sighed and beat her famous gavel on the metal underside of her desk until I bolted upright.

  “Olivia,” she said, frowning, “if you can’t manage to stay awake in my class, then go stand in the corner.”

  I blinked at her, trying to wake up. People were laughing, Mark Everett the loudest of all, of course. I wished Henry were in my class. Mark Everett wouldn’t mess me with if Henry was around. Or maybe he would have; he didn’t seem too happy with Henry these days, not since he started sitting with me at lunch.

  “Stand in the corner?”

  “Yes. It’ll be much harder for you to fall asleep if you’re standing.”

  “Horses sleep standing up,” Mark whispered at me as I stumbled to the corner, “and donkeys, too. Hee-haw, hee-haw.” He made an ugly face and crossed his eyes.

  “You’re the one who looks like an idiot right now,” I spat, “not me.”

  More giggling. More sighing from Mrs. Farrity. “Olivia . . .”

  “Fine, I’ll be quiet. Even though I’m just defending myself.” I stood in the corner, determined to look as impressive as possible, like it was no big thing to stand up in the corner for the rest of class when all I wanted to do was curl up under my desk and sleep.

  Right as Mrs. Farrity resumed her lecture about this book that I was supposed to be reading and wasn’t, this sad-looking book with an old bearded man on the cover, I saw Joan Dawson get out of her seat and march toward me with her head high in the air.

  She took up position right next to me and clicked her heels together.

  Mrs. Farrity was staring, everyone was staring.

  “Joan, what on earth are you doing?” Mrs. Farrity said.

  “Solidarity, Mrs. Farrity,” Joan said. She lifted her eyebrow coolly. “Perhaps you’ve heard of it?”

  Mrs. Farrity sent Joan to see Principal Cooper after that, but Joan caught my eye on her way out. She saluted me, and I smiled. Joan and I didn’t talk much, not since the séance. I wasn’t sure if we’d ever be friends again, or if we were even friends to begin with, but it was a nice thing, to have her come stand next to me.

  Solidarity: when people stick together because they believe in the same things.

  I liked that.

  A week after sharing with Frederick, we all gathered on the catwalk during the Friday night concert.

  It was the day before Halloween.

  Below us, the orchestra wailed and shrieked their way through Symphonie Fantastique by Berlioz and Night on Bald Mountain by Mussorgsky. If I hadn’t been so preoccupied with thoughts of ghosts and dying and murder, I might have actually paid attention to this music. It was dark and intense, designed to creep people out.

  The orchestra was creeping people out, all right—but not the way they should have been. Already that night, I’d counted fifteen people getting up and leaving right in the middle of the concert.

  Henry sat near the railing, watching morosely. “This is awful. It’s like they’re just going through the motions. No wonder they sound so bad. You can’t just go through the motions when you’re playing Berlioz!”

  “Henry, calm down before someone hears you,” I said. “Anyway, it’s easier if you just ignore it. That’s what I do.”

  “Your dad’s conducting up a storm. Sweat’s flying everywhere.”

  “Okay, ew. I do not need that mental image.”

  “He must feel so bad about what’s happening to the orchestra,” Henry whispered.

  I did not want to think about the Maestro feeling bad. I feel bad too, I wanted to scream at the top of my lungs. The orchestra might shut down. I could be homeless. But I didn’t have the guts to say that out loud. If I did, it might come true.

  “Would you
get over here? We’ve got a job to do.”

  Henry grumbled his way over, and I unfolded my map.

  Tillie let out a low whistle. “Olivia, this is really good.”

  Jax beamed at me. “You drew this?”

  My whole body flushed. Usually people didn’t pay attention to what I drew. I mean, it was good—a complete diagram of the Hall, including every hallway, every room, every staircase. The angels at the entrance, the fountain in the lobby, the pipe organ—I’d drawn everything, framed with an elaborate border of curlicues and dragons and angels, just like the ceiling.

  But I just shrugged. “Yeah. It was slow at The Happy Place yesterday.”

  Henry leaned over the map, inspecting it, but he didn’t say anything. Probably too mad at me for not sobbing over the orchestra or whatever. But I could see in his eyes that he liked it. It’s hard to fake things when you have sky eyes like that.

  I pointed at the map. “Henry, you’ll take the main Hall, your usher territory. Frederick, you can do the front offices because some of those are always locked. Tillie and Jax, you can take the attic, the ceiling, all the stuff we can’t reach.”

  Tillie grinned. “Swinging through chandeliers never gets old.”

  “Let’s see. Mr. Worthington, you get the grounds, if that’s okay? Outside, the courtyards, the walking park?”

  Mr. Worthington nodded, his eyes glued to the map.

  “And I’ll take the backstage area, the storage rooms, the basement.” Home, in other words.

  “Well, this map is indeed beautiful, Olivia,” said Frederick. “But it will be futile for we ghosts to do any searching. We can’t pick up anything we find, or move things.”

  “No, but you can see things we can’t,” Henry said. “You can float inside walls and underground. If you find something, come find us, and we’ll figure out a way to get it.”

  We gave the ghosts icy high fives and split up to search our assigned areas, but we didn’t find anything that night. I must have combed every inch of that rehearsal room, and I found lots of music, but not the piece I was looking for. Frederick couldn’t remember much about his music—not a title, not what key it was written in, nothing. Just that it was a concerto, and that his name was written on it: Frederick van der Burg.

  “A lot of good that’ll do if the ink’s rubbed off or something,” I muttered to myself, climbing on top of the lockers to rifle through boxes. “Or if it’s smudged or torn.”

  Igor didn’t seem to care; he had found a piece of fuzz near the ceiling. Fuzz, buzz, wuzz, he purred to himself, batting at the fuzz with his front paws. Linty, flinty, squinty.

  The others didn’t have much luck either. I went to bed feeling frustrated and hopeless. How were we supposed to find one tiny piece of music in such a huge place, a place crammed full of music? And what if it had gotten burned in a fire or leaked on or crumbled into dust?

  When I fell asleep, I dreamed of Mom. I always dreamed of Mom when my mind was too busy to remember that I didn’t want to think about her.

  The dreams weren’t always nice.

  This time, Mom was swimming in an ocean of music. I was high above her, soaring on the back of one of those origami swans she’d taught me to make. Dozens of others surrounded me, filling up the sky. I called to Mom, and she waved back, but then the ink started bleeding off the music, and soon she was lost in a cold, black sea. I couldn’t find her anymore. Everything was dark.

  The scariest part was, I didn’t care. I searched through those crashing, thick black waves, looking for her blonde head, and the longer I couldn’t find her, the more this hot, sharp feeling built up inside me. A satisfied feeling.

  “That’s what you get,” I screamed into the inky storm. “You left us. You left me! That’s what you get!” I pounded on the back of my swan. “I hope you never come back! I hope you drown.”

  Then the storm became stronger. The ocean of ink splashed up in tidal waves, drenching my swan’s wings, making us too heavy. I started screaming for Mom, but she was long gone.

  We crashed into the sea.

  I woke up, sweating, to see Frederick floating beside my bed.

  He put his hand on my leg. That frozen touch seeping through me was strangely comforting. “Forgive me for waking you,” he said quietly, “but I think there’s something you should see.”

  I FOLLOWED FREDERICK into the main Hall, my mind reeling from my dream. I couldn’t shake the image of Mom drowning in blackness, the feeling of gladness that had filled up my chest. I didn’t understand it; the longer I concentrated on it, the guiltier I felt. Glad? Glad that she drowned? What was wrong with me? As I followed Frederick up the narrow staircase that led to stage left, I tried to push all memory of the dream down into that deep, locked-away place where I kept everything belonging to Mom.

  Frederick stopped me at the stage door, his hand trailing ice down my arm. “Look, Olivia.”

  I followed Frederick’s ghostly fingers into the Hall. First, I saw a shade, just one, wandering around the ceiling. It seemed lost, or maybe just sad. It kept crawling across the ceiling from one end to the other, wagging its head.

  Then I saw the Maestro.

  The door at the back of the Hall opened, letting in pale light from the lobby. The Maestro’s silhouette made its way down the center aisle. After a minute, he paused, peering into the darkness. I wondered if he had seen the shades move. But then he started walking again, waving his arms distractedly. As he approached the stage, I could hear him humming to himself. I recognized the melody: the scherzo from Mahler’s Symphony no. 2. That symphony was nicknamed “The Resurrection.”

  “What’s he doing?” I whispered.

  “I don’t know, but he does this quite often,” Frederick said. “He’ll wander the Hall for hours, singing and conducting, or talking to himself, or in complete silence.”

  At the first row of floor seats, right by the stage, the Maestro turned around and wandered back up the center aisle. At the back of the Hall, he started up one of the curling staircases that led up to the dress circle boxes.

  “Sometimes, it seems as though he’s searching for something,” Frederick said.

  “Seems to me like he’s just crazy.” My cheeks were burning. “I’m sorry you have to see him like this.”

  “Oh, I’ve seen much stranger things than a lonely man.”

  “Lonely?” I laughed. “If he is, he did it to himself.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “We’ve got to get you moved on.” I watched the shade with my fists clenched. “We’ve got to get those shades out of here. They’re making him nuts.”

  Frederick draped an arm around my shoulder. It felt like a scarf made of ice.

  Desperate to change the subject, I remembered a question I’d wanted to ask, before the Maestro showed up. “You know how the only way you can see a ghost is if the ghost shows himself to you?”

  Frederick nodded.

  “Is it the same for shades?”

  “No.” Frederick paused. Then he said carefully, “In fact, the only people who can see shades are those who, like the shades, have experienced true loss.”

  During every class the next day at school, I tried to focus on my latest sketch. It was the ocean of melting music from my dream, Mom being tossed around in its waves. I thought maybe if I drew the nightmare out of my mind, I’d stop thinking about it—stop feeling glad, stop feeling guilty.

  But concentration was impossible. Frederick’s words stuck in my brain like thorns. Only those who have experienced true loss can see shades.

  What counted as true loss? I guess Mom leaving was my true loss. Putting those words to it made me feel ripped open. Loss. I had lost her.

  No. She had left me. You can’t lose someone who knew exactly what she was doing when she left you behind.

  I stabbed the paper with my charcoal, black dust flaking off the tip. This was my last piece of sketch paper. I tried not to think about that, coloring in the inky sea over and over, black as night, b
lack as Death.

  Another thought came to me as I worked, as Mrs. Farrity drew diagrammed sentences on the board and Joan shot disapproving looks at me for not paying attention:

  Henry had also seen the shades.

  He must have lost something too.

  NOVEMBER

  THAT FIRST WEEK of November, we went crazy searching for Frederick’s music. Every evening after work at The Happy Place, I’d find Henry, wherever he’d camped out in the Hall working on his homework. The ghosts were usually hanging around him, so we’d set out an agenda for the evening, split up, and search.

  We found nothing for a few days. I started to lose my patience. So did old Kepler. He kept whacking us with his broom and yelling at us for crawling around in the dirt like a couple of miscreants.

  Finally, the only place left was the Maestro’s bedroom.

  During one of the first November concerts, while the orchestra fumbled through Dvorák’s New World Symphony and the Brahms violin concerto, I snuck into the Maestro’s room. Igor slid through, right on my heels. I shut the door behind me and switched on the light.

  Music clogged every inch of this room—recorded music, music lying silent within the upright piano crammed into the corner, music in the old photographs of conductors plastering the walls.

  “Well,” I said, nudging trash around with my foot.

  Igor yawned. Well, what?

  “I guess we dig in.”

  Igor plopped onto the ground, tail twitching lazily. We? I don’t think so, friend.

  I rolled my eyes and began to search. I rifled through each stack of music one at a time—scores of symphonies, concertos, weird experimental music that the orchestra didn’t play anymore. It was hard enough getting people to come hear the popular, classic stuff, much less weird experimental music. Weird experimental music didn’t fly since The Economy.

  Piece after piece after piece, and nothing by Frederick van der Burg.

  I shoved the fifth giant stack of music aside, ready to give up, when I noticed the old cardboard box beside the Maestro’s cot. It was full of used tissues, crusty plates, and moldy books—but at the bottom of the box, I found a hard plastic container.