The Year of Shadows (21 page)

“Oh.” I tried to wrap my head around that. “Have you ever fallen out of love with someone?”

“Yes,” Mr. Barsky said. Beside him, Mrs. Barsky nodded
and took hold of his hand. “I imagine it’s a bit like dying, in a way. It leaves you all cold and cracked open.”

After I left, right before opening the Hall’s backstage door, I sighed and squinted up at the roof. The Hall was missing shingles everywhere, like holes in the moon.

“Everything’s cold and cracked open these days,” I said to myself.

Then I felt something brush my arm. I turned around, expecting to see Mr. Barsky, making sure I got a cookie. Or Mrs. Barsky, saying I should come back and talk it out some more. Mrs. Barsky loved talking things out.

But it wasn’t them.

It was a ghost.

Five ghosts, although none of them were mine. Dozens of ghosts, stretching down Arlington Avenue in an orderly line. Poking their heads through each other to get a better look. Whispering in excitement.

About me.

I
T MADE SENSE:
Help one ghost move on, and others will want to be helped too.

Just not mine. Not the ones I really cared about.

I’m not sure why we never thought about the possibility of this happening. As I went inside to find Henry, the ghosts trailing behind me, I tried not to feel annoyed or freaked out.

“They could’ve given us a heads-up about this,” I said to Henry through my teeth.

“Maybe they didn’t know?” Henry said.

“Oh, come on. I’m sure they knew how many ghosts were in the Hall. Or at least had a guess.”

I threw open the door of the green room. “Come on, everybody inside.” I tried to make myself look and sound braver than I felt, like I was used to dealing with strange ghosts. They drifted in one by one. Some looked nervous. Some flashed me huge game-show-host smiles. That is, if the game-show hosts were missing chunks of face and had their heads on sideways.

Something cold tapped my shoulder. “Excuse me.”

I turned around to find the ghost who’d touched me on the street. She was a woman, and the palest ghost I’d yet seen. Even for a ghost, she looked sickly.

“You
are
the girl who helps ghosts, right?”

I felt like when a teacher calls on me to answer a question, and it turns out I’ve been drawing and not paying attention. My skin goes hot and my mouth dries out while everyone waits for me to say something, only I don’t know what to say.

Henry inched closer to me. It made me feel better. I took a deep breath.

“I guess, yeah. That’s me.”

Excitement rippled through the ghost crowd.

“I found Frederick van der Burg’s anchor,” I continued.” Henry and I shared our minds with him and helped him relive his last memories. We reunited him with his anchor, and then he moved on.”

I caught Henry’s eye, and he smiled at me. It
did
sound pretty impressive.

The ghosts looked at each other and then back at us, almost completely in unison. Before I could think how spooky that was, they rushed for us, in a wave of grays and whites and blues and blacks. Their bodies blended together in a confusing mix of fog and smoke, faces and body parts. Their arms reached for us, grabbed at us. They shouted:

“Please, Olivia, you’ve got to help me!”

“I’ll do anything to move on. Anything!”

“Do you have any idea what it’s like?”

“Me first!”

“No, please, help
me
!”

“Okay,
stop
,” I shouted, “or neither of us will help you!”

Immediately, the ghosts retreated to the other side of the room, grumbling. One headless ghost reached over and slapped his hand over another ghost’s mouth, sending up curls of smoke.

“You can’t go nuts on us like that, okay?” I said. “If—
if—
we decide to help you, you have to swear it. Right, Henry?”

“Like no rushing at us, or touching us without permission.” Henry pulled a spiral notebook from his bag and started writing. He pointed his pen at the ghosts, and they nodded furiously. “That’ll be the number one rule.”

“Rule number two: No hanging around in my and Nonnie’s bedroom. That’s my private space. And no following us around everywhere. That can get creepy.”

One of the ghosts cleared his throat. “But the others went in your room, didn’t they? And they were always with you. The kids and the old-timer.”

Henry stopped writing. My throat closed up. “Yes, but only after they earned my trust,” I said.
Tillie. Jax. Mr. Worthington. Where
are
you guys?
“You haven’t earned my trust yet. Remember that.”

Then a thought occurred to me. “You haven’t seen them, have you? Tillie and Jax? Mr. Worthington?”

The ghosts looked at each other, but they wouldn’t look at me. Their smoke drifted and twined together like a giant stormcloud.

“We can’t tell you anything about them,” an older ghost, dark as Mr. Worthington, croaked. “Ghost’s honor. Confidentiality.”

My heart sank. Henry bent over his notebook, frowning.

“It’s not like we’re trying to be difficult,” the pale woman ghost said gently. “It’s just—”

“Ghost’s honor. Right. Got it.” I turned away. Who cared what Tillie, Jax, and Mr. Worthington did? If they didn’t want to have anything to do with us, then I wouldn’t waste my time. “I figure we’ll make a list. If we decide to help you, we’ll have to share with each of you, one by one.”

I shot a look at Henry. He looked nervous. To be honest, I was too. Sharing with one ghost had been bad enough. But dozens of ghosts? And maybe even more, if word got out and more ghosts showed up. Who knew how many people had died around the Hall over the years? Probably too many to count. And even the memory of sharing with Frederick was enough to turn my stomach.

But Henry just nodded at me in this determined way and kept on writing. I snuck a peek at his list:
Rules for the New Ghosts.

“We’ll make appointments,” I continued. “Everyone will get a number, and then we’ll draw numbers, and it’ll be completely random, because that’s the only way it’s fair. Agreed?”

The ghosts nodded.

“I’ll make a spreadsheet.” Henry’s eyes lit up. He
would
like making spreadsheets. “Everyone come give me your name, and I’ll assign you a number.”

The ghosts filed quietly by Henry, giving him their names.

Tabitha Jenkins was in two pieces, like something had sliced her right down the middle. She kept having to grab a half of herself and pull it back into place. Frankie James looked pretty normal until you noticed that his skin was bloated with water. Edgar Burroughs had no head, and his friend, who everybody called Geronimo, had to translate because he knew Edgar’s hand signs.

Fifty-one ghosts in all. When we were done, their names, numbers, and descriptions took up a full page in Henry’s notebook.

“We’ll draw names tomorrow, onstage after the concert.” I tried not to look at the overwhelming list of names.
Fifty-one
ghosts? “That’s all for now.”

“Does this mean . . .” The pale ghost woman was trembling, clutching the hand of a darker, frailer ghost beside her. “Does this mean you
will
help us, then?”

I made myself look at Henry’s notebook, at the ghosts’ names spelled out in his neat handwriting. This steady knot burned in my chest, and when I focused on it, pushing past my doubts I almost didn’t miss my ghosts so much anymore.

Almost.

I caught Henry’s eye, and he smiled and got to his feet.

“Yes,” I said firmly, Henry by my side. “We’ll help you. We’ll help all of you.”

The sound of their cheering and thank-yous followed me through the rest of the day, all the way into sleep.

With so many ghosts to get through, Henry and I agreed to share with a new ghost once a week. If it were completely up to me, I’d have done one a day, to get them moved on as quickly as possible.

But it wasn’t up to me, it was up to my body.

As we’d already figured out, a human body can’t take too much sharing before it starts to feel sick and tired. Sharing multiple times, though, and with only a few days between, quickly turned into a disaster.

The first time wasn’t so bad.

“Number forty-three,” Henry said, examining the spreadsheet on his clipboard. “Pearl Branson.”

Pearl’s number had been drawn first, and when she came forward for her sharing, the other ghosts in a semicircle around the stage to watch, she shook so bad that curls of smoke fell off her like rain. She looked about Tillie’s age.

“It’s okay, Pearl,” I said, not very convincingly. I wasn’t sure it
was
okay. What would sharing be like this time for me and Henry? However Pearl had died, I hoped it wouldn’t hurt as much as stabbing did. “Just come a little closer.”

“You have to kind of just
drift
into us,” said Henry. “When
Frederick did it, he drifted closer and closer, until he was leaking into us, and then our bodies kind of slurped him up. Got it?”

Pearl rolled her eyes. “I’m nervous, but I’m not stupid. I know how this works.”

Henry turned toward me, his legs crossed just like mine were. Our knees bumped against each other. “You really okay with this?”

“Sort of.” I wiped my hands on my pants. The last thing I wanted was Henry feeling how sweaty my hands were. “We made our decision, though, didn’t we?”

Henry looked around at the ghosts. Their faces looked ready to fall apart from excitement. “I guess you’re right. It might be impossible to share this many times, though. You know that, right?”

I knew. But we had to try. The more ghosts showed up, the more shades would come. And who knew how much damage they would do to the Hall, to the Maestro?

For my answer, I took Henry’s hands and folded my fingers around them. Together, we nodded at Pearl.

Pearl took a deep breath, her insides churning white, and drifted into us, like Frederick had done. Cold wrapped around us. Memories overwhelmed us. We
were
the memories: Pearl Branson, ten years old, who lived in an apartment on the corner. Pearl Branson, with the bad fever. Pearl Branson, with the weak heart.

Pearl started writing a story. She couldn’t do much else with a weak heart. She liked to sit next door to her apartment in the Hall’s gardens and write. But Pearl didn’t finish. One sunny day, her heart gave out halfway through Chapter Six.

And that was it. Henry and I faded away with Pearl, and it was peaceful. Much better than being stabbed.

Until the sharing ended. The force of Pearl releasing us sent us skidding across the stage. Pearl flew back into the floor seats in a plume of white smoke.

As I lay on the floor recovering, my insides spinning and Henry gasping beside me, I actually considered chickening out. Saying, “Sorry, ghosts, but you’ll have to recover your impossible-to-recover memories all by yourselves.”

But then I realized something. As I lay there, clutching my stomach, I took in the sight of the ghosts, staring at us with those mangled, burned, smoky faces. Behind them loomed the shadowy rafters of the Hall, the rows of faded seats, the chipped angels and dragons on the ceiling, winking down at us.

My
home
, whether I liked it or not.

And if it wasn’t my home, if I
hadn’t
moved in here, would my ghosts have ever decided to trust me? Would
any
of these ghosts be here now? Or would they still be drifting around aimlessly, lost and forever soulless?

I pulled myself into a sitting position and took several deep breaths. I was tingling all over and not because of the ghosts’ chill, but because I had recognized fate. This
was
fate
; this was
destiny
. Maybe I was meant to help these ghosts. Maybe I was meant to move in here. I had a choice; I could quit now. Or I could keep helping them, even if it was hard.
Especially
if it was hard. And maybe then it would be like moving in here, losing our house, not having money or enough sketching paper, all of it—would be worth
something
.

“Olivia?” Henry whispered. “You okay?”

“It’s a story,” I said. My voice sounded strong, confident. The ghosts perked up. So did Henry. That made me feel even stronger. I struggled to my feet, the memories of Pearl’s life turning solid in my head. “Pearl’s anchor is a story. About two dozen pages long. The title is
The Resolute Steed
.”