The Vanishing Violin (5 page)

Leigh Ann smiles as she realizes the significance of that statement. “Wait a minute. Whoever wrote to Margaret and gave her the bow … they want us to find out that this is the violin in the letter?”

“Which means they must be the one who stole it,” I say. “Or they know who did. Boy, wait until Margaret hears this! Early nineteenth century. If it was good enough for this Wurstmann guy to play at Carnegie Hall, it must be amazing. She is going to freak.”

And wouldn’t that be something to behold?

Rather than taking the subway back uptown, we decide to walk so that we can go by the sea lions at the Central Park Zoo—something that Leigh Ann, who lives in Queens, doesn’t get to do that often. I use the alone time with Leigh Ann to ask about Alex, her disturbingly hot brother.

“So, um, what’s the story with Alex? Is he really a genius? And why didn’t you ever say anything about him? Does he know Raf?”

“I doubt it. I mean, Aquinas is a big school, and he is a senior. I can’t imagine he knows a lot of seventh
graders. And I don’t know if he’s really a genius, but he’s pretty smart.” Then her eyes get a little watery. “A lot smarter than me. Kind of like everyone else I know.”

“Leigh Ann—what’s the matter?”

And suddenly her face is like Niagara Falls. I guide her onto a park bench and try to calm her down.

“Gawd, I’m so sorry, Soph. It’s just me being stupid. I’m all right. Really,” she sobs. She’s standing, trying to pull me to my feet.

But I’m not budging. “We’re not going anywhere, Ms. Jaimes, until you tell me what’s going on.” I pull her back down onto the bench and dig through my pockets until I find a napkin from Perkatory so that she can blow her nose.

“You must think I’m crazy,” she snuffles.

“Well, no, but you always seem so … together. I’ve just never seen this side of you. So, are you going to tell me what’s up? Or am I going to have to tickle it out of you?”

At least that gets me a smile.

“Is it your brother? Are you bummed ’cause he’s going away to college next year?”

“I can’t believe I’m saying this, but part of me is kind of glad he’s going,” she admits. “He’s always been ‘the smart one,’ and the older I get, the dumber I feel around him. You don’t know how lucky you are, being an only child. But then I feel all guilty about that because he is my brother and I do love him. And when he’s gone, I really do miss him like crazy. Man, I sound like a psycho.”

“Actually, that sounds relatively normal,” I say. “But I don’t have any brothers, so I don’t really know how you’re supposed to feel about them.”

“All the way through elementary school, I was never the smartest kid in my class, and all my teachers would always say, ‘But you’re still a good student’—and I always knew what that meant: ‘not anywhere near as good as your brother.’ I actually transferred to St. V’s to get away from all that. And then I meet you and Margaret and Becca, and once again I’m not even close to being the smartest. You guys, it’s like you know something about everything. The only thing I’m good at anymore is dancing. And I’m probably kidding myself about that; maybe I’m not really good enough at that, either. What if I’m just… good-average?”

I have to laugh at that one. “Leigh Ann, if you think you’re not a good dancer, then you really are crazy. I couldn’t do the things you do in a million years. And neither could Margaret. Or Rebecca, for that matter—she stinks! Seriously, Rebecca Chen dancing is like a fish flopping on a pier. You’re a great dancer. As far as the smart thing, I’ve just been around Margaret longer, and some of her brains have maybe just rubbed off. I’ll be honest: I don’t know if you’re smarter than Margaret. She’s a freak of nature. But is that really what’s bothering you? Because if that’s all—”

Leigh Ann blows her nose again. “N-no,” she blubbers. “That’s not all. It’s everything else, too. My life is falling apart.”

“What are you talking about? I thought you liked it at St. V’s. And now we’re getting the band started—”

“No, that’s not it. I love St. V’s, and you and Margaret and Becca are the best. That’s the only part that’s normal.”

“So, what’s the problem?”

“Everything’s changing too fast, Sophie. I mean, I’m not even thirteen, and I feel like life is just zooming right past me. First my parents get divorced, and now Alex is going off to college. And he’s going to go someplace far away, I just know it. Then, this morning, I found out my dad got a new job—he’s moving to Cleveland. I’ll hardly ever see him. He’ll probably get married again and …”

By now she’s full-on sobbing, and I’m trying desperately to help her. As I put my arm around her, I remember a conversation we had about the legend of the Ring of Rocamadour—how St. Veronica is supposed to visit you in your dreams and answer your prayers. The night we found the ring, Margaret had asked each of us what we wanted, and Leigh Ann didn’t even hesitate before saying she wanted her parents to get back together.

“First of all, your brother won’t be leaving for college for almost a year, and second, he could go to NYU. Or Columbia. Or a million other places that are a mere bus ride away. And your dad? That is a bummer—but it doesn’t mean you’re not gonna see him, or that he’s gonna get married again. Cleveland isn’t even that far away, and he’ll want to stay close with you, right?”

As I say this, I realize I have absolutely no idea how
far away it is. I know it’s one of those cities in one of those states in the middle somewhere.

“But why do things always have to change?”

It is a very good question. And I haven’t a clue.

“I—I’ll have to get back to you on that one.”

In which yet another of my deeper, darker secrets is revealed

Back at our apartment, Mom has pushed all the living-room furniture against the walls so that her neophyte (another visit to my orthodontist, another perusal of
Reader’s Digest’s
“Word Power”) quartet can sit in a semicircle facing her. They are playing a familiar-sounding piece of music, and considering this is their first time playing together, they sound amazing. (I suspect that the Blazers will not come together quite so quickly.) Their backs are to us as Leigh Ann and I tiptoe past and into my room, where Rebecca is waiting, sprawled across my bed, reading
Seventeen
. She looks up when we come in.

“Hey, loooosers.”

“Nice to see you, too, my dearest darling pal,” I say.

“Funny, I didn’t take you for the
Seventeen
type,” says Leigh Ann, who has pulled herself together following her emotional meltdown in the park.

Rebecca makes a shocked face. “But I just had to
find out which celebrities have ‘the look’ and which ones have …
dun, dun, dun
… lost it! Besides, it’s Sophie’s.”

“Where did you find that?”

“Right where you left it. Under your mattress.”

I feel myself blushing—a biological response that I am trying desperately to learn to control.

“Back up a second. Why are you hiding
Seventeen?”
a confused Leigh Ann asks. “Won’t your parents let you read it?”

Rebecca bounces up and down on my bed like an evil monkey. “She doesn’t want Margaret to know she reads it. Isn’t that right, Sophie?”

“Yeah, well …”

Leigh Ann looks more confused than ever.

“Because Margaret makes fun of her for reading it,” Becca reveals.

“But… but why?”

Becca shrugs. “Because she’s Margaret. If it isn’t lit-er-a-toooooor, she won’t read it.”

“Oh, she’s not that bad,” I say. “I know it’s stupid to hide it from her, but I don’t want her to think I’m turning into … well, you know.”

“Me?” Leigh Ann asks, piling on. “I read
Seventeen.”

“That’s not what I meant,” I say. “There’s nothing wrong with
Seventeen
. I just don’t want to—”

Rebecca shakes her head sadly. “You know, you shouldn’t let her weirdness—”

“Well, what about you, Becca? Snooping around my room.”

“Yeah, I thought I would at least find something with Raf’s name or ‘Mrs. Sophie Arocho’ written out a hundred times.”

Phew. So she didn’t look everywhere.

“Where were you two, anyway? Your dad said something about the library? On a Saturday.” She makes that
tsk-tsk
sound. “And then your dad bet me I couldn’t try some lemon goop and not smile—and I lost. I had to wash dishes. Totally worth it.”

Leigh Ann, doing a little snooping of her own on Margaret and the kids out in the living room with Mom, says, “Whoa. Who is that?”

“Who is who?” I ask.

“The boy,” she answers. “Playing that big violiny thing. He just turned around for a second. He’s so cute—in kind of a dorky-preppy way.”

Rebecca crowds into the doorway to peek out the crack, so I get up on tippy-toes to look over her shoulder.

His hair is down to his shoulders, and all I can see of him is the back of his head. “Come on, turn around,” I urge.

They reach the end of the song they’re playing, and I can barely hear Mom talking to them, pointing something out on the sheet music, when Becca gives me a hard shove and we all fall face-first into the hall.

“Sophie!” Mom cries.

“Oh, um, hi,” I say, smoothly covering.

“Everyone, meet my delicate daughter, Sophie, who knows she is supposed to be quiet and absent when I’m giving lessons. And these are her friends Rebecca and Leigh Ann. They all know Margaret. Girls, this is Denise, Stephanie, and Andrew.”

We ignore the girls. Leigh Ann is all too right—Andrew is cute.

“Hey,” we all say, with the same weak, giggly wave.

He smiles and waves back, hitting Margaret in the head with his bow as he does it. Cute, but klutzy.

We run like fools back into my room and slam the door, collapsing on the bed together.

“Yowza.”

“Holy smokes.”

“Hot-tieeee.”

Hey, I never said we were mature.

Margaret joins us in my room a few minutes later. She tries to be mad at us for acting like morons, but she can’t hold back a smile when she remembers Andrew whacking her in the head with his bow.

“You should have seen how red he got. Reminds me of you, Sophie.”

“So, what’s his story?” Leigh Ann asks. “Where does he go to school?”

“Davidson. It’s on Ninety-first, over by East End. Very expensive.”

“So he’s a snobby rich kid,” says Rebecca. “Probably has his own chauffeur.”

“Just because he goes to Davidson doesn’t mean he’s rich,” I say. “Or snobby. They have scholarships and stuff.”

“Actually, I think he might be rich,” Margaret says. “He lives on Park Avenue. But he seems okay. Nice.”

“And gorgeous?” Leigh Ann adds, giving Margaret a little nudge, seconded by Becca.

For a second, I think I might get to see Margaret Wrobel blush AGAIN, but she recovers just in time to suppress it. “Nice try, Miss Jaimes. But it will never work. For I am a Dashwood and he is a Willoughby.”

Rebecca looks puzzled. “You’re a dashboard?”

“Dashwood.
Sense and Sensibility?
Jane Austen?”

I nonchalantly kick that
Seventeen
a little farther under my bed.

“I’ll bet Andrew knows what she means,” Leigh Ann teases.

But Margaret fires right back. “Maybe you all would if you spent your time reading something … not glossy.” She gives me a knowing smile.

Our stock rises, however, when we show her the printout of the article from the
Standard
and the other information we uncovered on the stolen violin.

“Wow! You did great. What if this really is the same violin? If it was worth twenty or thirty thousand dollars in 1959, do you guys have any idea what it would be worth today? At least ten times that much. We have to find this guy. Tuesday, after school, let’s go to the park to visit King Jagiello.”

“Who’s that?” Rebecca asks.

“Oh, you’ve seen him a million times,” says Margaret. “He’s over by Turtle Pond and Belvedere Castle.”

“That homeless guy with all the magazines and the dog? Is that his nickname or something?”

“No,” Margaret says, laughing. “He’s a statue. You know, the man on the horse, with two swords crossed over his head.”

“Ohhh! You mean Aragorn!” Rebecca’s
Lord of the Rings
obsession is legendary.

“Jagiello was a Polish king. A real king, Becca. Fifteenth century.”

“Hey, guys?” I say. “Let’s play.” I take my guitar out of its case, plug into my amp, and start strumming some chords.

Enough of kings and violins and bows and boys. It’s time for the Blazers to rock.

In which we discover some semistrange things. But believe me, there are stranger things to be discovered in Central Park. Much stranger