The Year of Shadows (20 page)

Jax sniffled and hid his face in Mr. Worthington’s side. Tillie concentrated on her feet.

Henry said, “It’s okay, Frederick. You can do it.”

I stood there, trying to hold up this fake smile. My face felt close to breaking.

Then Frederick began to play, and I know I hated music and everything to do with it, but even I knew when a piece of music was really good.

Like this one.

It’s this strange feeling, when you hear a good piece of music. It starts out kind of shaky, this hot, heavy knot in your chest. At first it’s tiny, like a spot of light in a dark room, but then it builds, pouring through you. And the next thing you know, everything from your forehead down to your fingers and toes is on fire. You feel like the hot, heavy knot in your chest is turning into a bubble. It’s full of everything good in the world, and if you don’t do something—if you don’t run or dance or shout to everyone in
the world about this music you’ve just heard—it’ll explode.

That’s what I felt that night. And, judging by the look on Henry’s face, he was feeling it too.

Frederick played through the entire concerto and finished the last note with a flourish of his bow. He said, “Ha!” and bowed. We gave him a standing ovation, and he beamed at us for a second, but then his eyes widened and he said, “Oh,” and then, “Oh, dear.” Then he sighed, and all the bits of him fell away like a gust of wind had blown through a cloud of smoke. There was a bright flash of light, so quick we almost missed it.

The high electric hum disappeared with a pop.

And then Frederick was gone.

The violin and bow crashed to the ground.

For a long time, we stared at the empty stage, at Frederick’s music lying scattered across it. I was the first to move. I gathered up everything and put the pages in order, Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington drifting silently behind me. They didn’t say a word. When Henry and I left to go wait for his bus, I looked behind me. The ghosts were small and dark, floating onstage in a shivering huddle. They couldn’t stop looking at the spot where Frederick used to be.

Outside, the sky was cold and starry. Henry and I didn’t say much. This heavy thing sat between us now, soaking up all the air. We had helped a ghost move on to the world of Death. Had it worked? Was Frederick happy now?

“Well,” Henry said, as his bus pulled up, “see you at school.” His face looked about as sick as I felt.

I stared at the dark windows of The Happy Place, swallowing hard. “Yeah. See you.”

Once Henry left, I added Frederick’s concerto to the music library. It belonged there; it deserved to be played. I wondered what the Maestro would say when he found it—or if he would ever get a chance to find it, if the Hall would be around long enough for that.

After filing it away, I pushed my cot close to Nonnie’s and crawled under my quilt and put my hand on her wrist, just to feel like I was still in this world.

With Frederick gone, everything suddenly seemed more real:

One ghost saved, three to go. Like a countdown.

T
HAT NIGHT, I
had the strangest dream. I dreamed that Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington hovered over me as I slept. Tillie and Jax whispered back and forth to me, talking over each other. They told me that Frederick moving on had scared them.

“He just
vanished
,” Tillie said.

“He
disappeared
, Olivia,” Jax whimpered. Smoky black tears rolled down his face, carving lines in his cheeks.

“How do we know he really made it to Death?” they said together, their voices overlapping. “What if he went nowhere at all?”

Mr. Worthington groaned softly. I took that to mean he agreed.

But in my dream, I couldn’t respond. My mouth was sewn shut, and so were my eyes.

“We’re scared, Olivia,” Jax whispered.

“I’m not sure we can do this, Olivia,” Tillie said, folding her arms over her chest.

“It’s nothing you did.”

“It’s not because of you.”

“It’s just because we’re scared,” Tillie and Jax whispered together. They were fading, drifting out of my dream like smoke out a window. “Don’t feel guilty. It’s okay.”

“We just need time to think,” Jax said.

“We just need to be alone for a while,” Tillie said.

“Maybe it’s not so bad being ghosts forever.”

“We know how to be ghosts. We don’t know how to be Dead.”

Mr. Worthington stared sadly, twisting his hat in his fingers.

Then they were gone.

When I woke up the next morning, I didn’t think about my dream. It was just a dream, right? Besides, all I could think about was Frederick. How he’d disappeared in a flash, like he’d never been there at all. What do you do when a friend leaves you, even if it’s for the best? I didn’t know the answer to that. I still don’t. But I already missed Frederick so much, it felt like my heart had been replaced with emptiness.

I stumbled out of bed, pulled on my boots, and trudged to the bathroom to brush my teeth. Igor followed me, meowing every couple of seconds.

“You’re awfully talkative this morning,” I said.

And then I felt it. That same emptiness in my chest was everywhere, like something important had been sucked out of the Hall itself. And, for the first time since the ghosts started hanging around me, I wasn’t cold.

I breathed in and out. My breath didn’t puff. I looked at my arms. No goosebumps.

“Tillie?” I clomped upstairs and out onto the stage, my bootlaces flying. “Jax? Mr. Worthington?”

Igor was right at my heels.
They’re gone, pet. I don’t know what happened, but I know they’re gone.

“They’re not gone,” I said, trying not to cry. My dream rushed back to me in shadowy images. Had it not been a dream at all? Had it been real? “They can’t be gone. They’re just hiding. Tillie? Jax? Mr. Worthington!”

Usually, the ghosts would appear as soon as I woke up, like they’d been waiting for me. Or if they were off floating somewhere in the Hall, I could just say their names, and they’d come right to me.

But not today.

“Tillie,” I whispered, closing my eyes. “Jax. Mr. Worthington.” I said their names over and over.

Nothing. The air remained still and my breath remained invisible.

“Olivia!” I could hear Nonnie calling from downstairs. “Where are you? Is breakfast time!”

As I stood there, looking around the empty Hall, anger flooded through me. They had
left
me, just like Mom.

“Fine,” I said. “Fine, if that’s how you’re gonna be. If you’re gonna run scared, then fine!” I kicked over the music stand from the night before, the one Frederick had used. It crashed to the ground, sending Igor darting back
downstairs. “Stay invisible, then!
Cowards
!”

If they heard me, I couldn’t tell. And I didn’t wait to find out. I ran downstairs and slammed the stage door shut behind me.

“What do you mean,
gone
?”

I couldn’t eat my lunch. I couldn’t look at Henry. All I could do was stare at the back of my sketchpad, where I’d been doodling tiny pictures in a mural of scratchy ink.

“I mean they’re gone. Invisible. Hiding.”

I told him about my dream, which I didn’t think had been a dream at all. I was pretty sure it had really been the ghosts, saying good-bye.

“After all that, after showing up and sharing with Frederick and everything, they’re just giving up?” Henry couldn’t believe it.

Down at the end of the table, Joan nibbled furiously on her sandwich, trying to watch us without being obvious. It didn’t work.

I shrugged. It was easier to pretend I didn’t care, with Henry getting so mad. “I guess so. Guess it really freaked them out.”

“But they
want
to die!”

“Maybe they changed their minds.”

“What, are they just gonna hide in the Hall forever until the shades drag them into Limbo?”

I forced myself to take a bite of potatoes. “Maybe. Who cares? If that’s what they want, let them do it.”

“You don’t mean that,” Henry said quietly.

“Henry, we did all we could for them. If they’re too chicken to follow through, that’s not our fault, and I’ve got too many problems to worry about scaredy-cat ghosts.”

Henry didn’t say anything after that, eating his lunch in silence, this miserable expression on his face. But the thing is, he was right. I didn’t mean it. I didn’t want the ghosts to be dragged into Limbo, to get stuck forever.

But apparently, they did.

That whole week, as I tried to ignore the ghosts’ absence, the Maestro’s words cycled through my head. Something about them nagged at me, but I couldn’t figure out what.

I think that I see things,
he’d said.
I think that I see her. But when I look again, it is just a trick of the shadows.

On Thursday, after I finished wiping down tables at The Happy Place, Mrs. Barsky pulled me aside to give me my money for the week. Then she put her hands on my face and made me look her in the eye.

“Olivia,” she said, “is everything all right? You look worn out.”

“No. Yes.” I stuffed the money into my pocket. “I don’t know.”

She and Mr. Barsky looked at each other in that way married people do, when they talk without actually saying anything. I know because Mom and the Maestro used to do it.

“You can always talk to us,
cher
,” Mr. Barsky said. “Zat ees what friends do, no?”

“Really, Olivia.” Mrs. Barsky eyed my gloved hands. I’d found an old-fashioned dressy kind at the charity store. They were a stained white satin. “We’re here for you.”

“Yeah. Thanks.” I stared at my gloves for a long time, swallowing until I could speak again. A million things raced through my brain. My gloves. The burns. The ghosts.
Our
ghosts.

The Maestro. Mom.

“Can I ask a question?” I said.

“Of course,” Mrs. Barsky said. “Anything.”

“How do you fall out of love with someone? How is that possible?”

I don’t think that was the kind of question the Barskys were expecting. They shared one of those looks again. Mr. Barsky said in his normal voice, “Well. That’s a tough one, Olivia.”

“People change,” Mrs. Barsky said slowly. “They aren’t always the same from year to year, or even from day to day. And sometimes when people change, the things in their life that they used to need or want, they don’t anymore. Or things they used to think were beautiful turn ugly.”