Spark Page 12

  And I feel it in the crooked smile I flash back at her. Feel myself saying, Please, Cass, don’t ask me to tell you what I saw. What if you frown in the same way I swear I saw everyone in the diner frown at Bertie?

  I’m waffling between believing we saw exactly the same scene and wondering how many of the details were different for Cass. As we stare at each other, a few words start to rise to the surface of my thoughts, like ice cubes climbing to the top of a drink. When they appear, they seem like the right thing to say—safe and to the point—but they melt away so quickly, I can’t quite remember for sure what they were. I let go of her arm. “Mom’s waiting” is all I can manage.

  As soon as we hit the kitchen, Cass blurts, “What was the Avery like? Before it closed down?” Light bounces through her eyes as she begins to fantasize.

  Mom smiles, pleased that Cass has asked. She’s covered all this in class, but it’s like Cass is begging to hear the story again. “It was—well, it was special. We would dress up in our best clothes. Gloves and hat required. The Avery was beautiful—ornate and plush and full of gold and red velvet. It really was the stuff of fantasy. It made you believe that the finest things in life could be yours for the taking.”

  “I can’t wait,” Cass says, as if it’s already a done deal. “Just imagine. When we have enough money. And we save the Avery.”

  My eyes swell behind my glasses. “You can’t wait?” I ask. What did you see in the Avery, Cass?

  “It appears as though someone’s settling into her role in the lead,” Mom says with approval.

  “We could start doing new musicals, too,” Cass exclaims, already making grand plans. “I mean, once the Avery’s open again.”

  “We?” I repeat. “Are you talking about Advanced Drama?”

  “Who used to put on plays before—local drama companies?” Cass asks as Mom flips the lids of Styrofoam containers. “We could start that again. What were they called when George was the director? The Verona Players?”

  “Yeah. The Verona Players,” Mom answers wistfully. She says it like she’s talking about an old love.

  “So the Avery,” Cass presses, “it’s been closed a long time. Since those two kids—”

  “Emma and Nick,” Mom says, tugging a bottle of Coke from the fridge.

  “Emma and Nick died,” Cass finishes. While Mom zips away to retrieve an extra chair, Cass throws open the drawer of silverware and starts riffling around. She’s always been comfortable in our apartment, but now, as she passes the silverware out at the table, she seems to be taking comfortable to an entirely new level.

  “Yes,” Mom confirms as she wheels her office chair into the kitchen. “Closed since they died.”

  “What about George?” I ask, the thought suddenly coming to me. “I mean, he and Emma lived there, right? Where did he go? Did he leave town?”

  “No. George was still there,” Mom says. Her face darkens a bit. “When Emma died, the theater went black, and George stayed up there, all alone in that little apartment.”

  She plunks three plates on the table. In our tiny apartment, we don’t actually have a full kitchen table. We’ve got one of those little two-seater breakfast tables sitting on the dividing line between our kitchen area and the living room. It’s a tight fit for the three of us to eat here, but we’ve done it before, and by this point, none of us cares at all about a few bumping knees or even, on a few occasions, losing track of which glass is our own.

  “I didn’t know this,” I insist. “I thought—you always said the Avery closed in 1947. I guess I always assumed—the theater. On that night. You always said—”

  Died. You always said the theater died, too. Turned black and withered. How could George still be living inside?

  “Poor George became a hermit, really,” Mom explains. “The pain of losing Emma was so great—he crawled up into that apartment he and Emma shared and was basically never seen in public again. He would order groceries and have them delivered. A couple of times, I saw the front door open only wide enough for his hand to appear and grab the grocery sack. His mail would pile up into a regular mountain until the postal worker would ring the bell, over and over, making George come get it.”

  “So did you ever go see George? Did you ever visit him?” I ask as Cass clinks ice cubes into glasses.

  “I should have, probably. But, no—I suppose I was a little afraid. Hard to believe that, as fond as I was of him when Emma was alive. I thought, too, that it was mutual. I never felt like he minded me hanging around him at the theater. Even though I was just a little girl. He felt fatherly. Like he was mine, in a way. Looking back, it felt a little like I was getting ready to step in and take Emma’s place—be his little girl once she set off for school. Maybe have my own birthday parties on the stage. My own private movie screenings.”

  “That’s right!” Cass interjects. “They played movies in there, too.”

  Mom nods. “A stage for plays, a screen for movies. That was pretty common then.

  “But Emma died,” Mom goes on, “and he was different, and—I was afraid of the empty, dark theater, the same way kids are scared of dark basements.”

  “Surely, though, as close as you were—I mean, you still did see him, didn’t you?” I ask. “You had to have. You both lived on the square.”

  “I used to see his silhouette in that second-story window, pacing back and forth. Poor man.

  “He did step outside one final time. Collapsed on the front walk. I think he knew something was wrong with him. I figure he was afraid, maybe, of being up there for a long time without anyone finding him. Or maybe he was looking for help. In any event, he had a heart attack.”

  “When was this?” Cass is fidgeting now, crossing and uncrossing her legs in Mom’s office chair.

  “Fifty-seven. I remember it because I was the same age Emma was when she passed away. Eighteen.”

  “So then—who owns it?” Cass asks.

  “He had no other family, so I suppose it simply became property of the city.”

  “So 1957. That was when the theater really started to go down the tubes. I mean, with no real owner—”

  “The theater died in forty-seven,” Mom corrects Cass. “That’s when its heart stopped beating. A theater lives and breathes, brought to life by the stories on the stage. The Avery died with Emma and Nick. When Emma’s obituary appeared in the paper, the Avery should have had one, too. Right beside hers.”

  We all fall silent. The only sounds that fill the kitchen are the clinks of forks against the table. I glance across the room, at the backpack I dropped beside the cabinet. It’s only partially zipped; the journal inside is exposed. “Alberta” blazes across the cover in dark-black pen.

  When I turn my gaze back toward the table, Mom’s staring out the window, toward the Avery. And under her breath, as she chews, Cass is humming “Anything Goes.”

  I suddenly feel more connected to the Avery than ever. The story feels real, somehow, in a way it never has before—not at any point during a lifetime of living just feet away from the theater. “Dead but not dead,” I announce.

  Mom’s wrinkles deepen with her frown.

  “What’re you talking about?” Cass asks.

  “The theater. It died. But you don’t want the city council to tear it down. You want to save it. You still think it can be resurrected. That’s not dead.”

  “I never stopped believing,” Mom admits. “Even after the Avery went black and the building scared me. I never stopped believing in the magic inside it. Maybe something physical—maybe that can die. But magic’s like the theater’s soul, isn’t it? That doesn’t die. It’s always seemed to me that all it would take would be a few new windows, some paint, and some elbow grease. And a story, of course. A new story that would finally allow the stage’s last tragedy to escape—like soured air locked in a room too long. And suddenly, everyone would have the ability to experience the Avery’s magic for themselves.”

  It’s all here in front of me: Mom, the pas
t; Cass, the present—and maybe the future. And maybe, just maybe, I’m the one who’s supposed to connect the two.

  But do I have that kind of power?

  “Another scene,” I whisper. Out there on the square, Bertie said the story wasn’t finished. The last scene still needs to be written.

  Maybe it’s mine to write.

  When I glance back at my backpack, my name is still lighter than Alberta’s, but darker than it was a moment before.

  twenty

  I become obsessed with Bertie’s map. Why wouldn’t I be? The journal’s where she kept track of the way things really were, but the map’s where she wrote her predictions. I want to know more about what she saw. Maybe it’ll provide some guidance. About what’s to happen. And how I’m supposed to pull this whole thing together.

  I spend the next few days studying it with a magnifying lens. I thumbtack it to the wall above my bed and stand on the opposite side of the room, thinking maybe something will emerge when I stare at the big picture. I scan in the smallest sections and blow them up on my computer. I’m searching for my name. But it’s nowhere to be found.

  How can that be, though? My name was clearly on the journal. Why would she include me but not predict anything for me?

  And while we’re at it, why have I been trusting her every word? Some of it has been a hundred percent true: the sky’s return. The rise of the Avery from the dead. But is all of it true? Did she ever make a mistake? Flat-out make stuff up?

  Anything’s possible, after all. For one thing, why would the Avery spark back into existence, only to quit breathing all over again? I’m suddenly doubting my own eyes. Is it the power of suggestion? Was Bertie really as wacky as people said she was?

  For my own peace of mind, I need to know exactly how much is true.

  I bow out of carpooling with Cass that Friday, claiming to be behind on a history paper, and ride to school with Mom. I bury myself in the library.

  In all honesty, the Verona High library is a little slice of ridiculousness. We have far more shelves than we have research materials anymore; the volumes that remain are all turned face out in order to make the bookcases look full. We rely, for the most part, on internet access. And occasionally, we use the archives of the Verona Times. They were meticulously scanned in a few years ago, by a librarian I figure had gleefully leaped at a chance to finally have a work-until-your-last-piece-of-hair-falls-from-your-bun job. And besides, isn’t the only real item of value in any small town—research-wise, anyway—its old newspapers?

  The rarely used library’s completely empty before school; the librarian’s not even here yet as I sit at one of the computers and pull up the Times archives. I type in the first name from Bertie’s map: Frank Andrews. And find a listing for August 6, 1947—the same date she scrawled beside a dark cloud. “Heart attack,” I read aloud from her map.

  “. . . in his home of an apparent heart attack . . . ,” Frank’s August obituary echoes.

  Engagement announcements, death notices, all match up with her notes.

  I look up her own obituary. It’s incredibly short: mother of Nancy, wife of Charley. Survived by her mother and daughter. That’s all—a stack of women, nesting dolls all one step smaller than the one who came before. Under Nancy, my mother. There’s another obituary in there somewhere—one I don’t want to look up. One that mentions a car accident and my mother and Nancy.

  In all of it—all these little paragraphs, these “survived bys,” there’s no mention of Dahlia. Which doesn’t seem right. And suddenly, my family doesn’t look like a set of nesting dolls—it’s back to looking like that old connect-the-dots picture that’s not a picture at all, but a scribble every bit as confused as the contents of Bertie’s mind.

  A muddled brain, talking to the sky, forecasting wild events—no doubt that was the reason for the short obituary. There’s no mention of the tragedy she faced or the way she reacted. She’s summarized in headstone generalities: “Always remembered.” “In our hearts.”

  According to the archives, though, Bertie passed away in July of 1947—so there’s no chance that any of the heart attacks or deaths or births on her map could have been penned in after the events took place. They’re all a part of Bertie’s fortune-telling. And so far, every single one of her predictions is true.

  “Let’s try Geraldine,” I mutter, typing that name into the search box on my screen. “Geraldine Fields.” That’s the name that Bertie’s written on her map, surrounded by a tear-shaped raindrop. I pull up her obituary, finding her with two married names. And the children listed as survivors have her second husband’s name—indicating that the first marriage didn’t last all that long.

  She should not get married. She will be cursed with unhappiness. It’s not the right time. And he’s not the right love.

  “You were right,” I whisper, as though Bertie can hear me.

  So what does that say about me—why was I on the cover of her journal at one point? It has to mean something.

  Am I supposed to discover my own heart’s desire? Uncover a wish that means as much to me as being without a birthmark and stutter mean to Cass and Dylan? As much as the Avery means to Mom? I suddenly feel like a girl holding a magic lamp, rubbing it frantically, desperate to free the genie before she’s worked it out in her mind what to ask for.

  I’m still staring at the screen when a chair screeches against the floor. Cass plops into the seat beside me. She’s got on an eighties-era neon-orange T-shirt with the neckline torn so that it hangs off her left shoulder, exposing the strap of the neon-yellow tank she wears underneath. “Jerry Orbach missed you this morning.”

  “Tell Jer I owe him a belly rub.”

  “Everything still good to go?” she asks.

  “For—?” I’m still so focused on Bertie’s predictions, I’m not sure what she’s talking about.

  “Rehearsals. We’re still having them this afternoon, right?”

  I nod. “Of course.”

  The smile Cass flashes is one part excitement, one part I know something you don’t . . .

  twenty-one

  That afternoon the auditorium feels as tight as a rope in a game of tug-of-war. And everyone’s staring at me, daring me to relieve the tension.

  I start babbling, “We can do this. Of course we can.”

  The faces that stare back at me are all slathered with an identical expression. It reads, in short, Yeah, sure.

  “We’ve passed the one-month mark,” Kiki informs me. “We’re more than halfway to the show, and we don’t have a decent set, and no one knows their lines, and music—” she rolls her eyes toward Dylan. “What music?”

  “We all agreed to come up with ideas to make this our own,” I remind her. “Let’s hear some.”

  Cass stands. “We have something,” she says, gesturing toward Dylan.

  She approaches the piano, leaning against the cabinet as Dylan sits on the bench, props his music on the stand. We? I think. We have something? These past few days, I’ve been far more absorbed in the map. The play had faded a bit into my background. But how could it have faded so much that I didn’t know Cass and Dylan had been working together? What are they up to?

  He plays a few chords; Cass closes her eyes. And she opens her mouth and begins to sing.

  In what is maybe even a more magical turn of events than anything that has happened so far, Cass’s voice emerges both strong and in tune. This is no longer the stumbling, horrific voice that has graced our practice sessions. Instead, this is the voice I know—the one that fills my bedroom nearly every weekend and the passenger side of my car as she fiddles with the radio. It’s the voice that Mom’s listened to for the past decade—the one that began as a cute elementary school squeak and blossomed into a stirring soprano. The same voice that made sparks fly from the front of the Avery. The same voice that filled the Avery during her private rehearsal with Dylan at the same moment that the theater began to rewind, the piano sounding new again, the seat beneath me no longe
r feeling like a relic of a lost time.

  When she reaches the refrain, she sucks in a lungful of air and belts the lyrics so powerfully and with such feeling, they actually buzz against the walls.

  Dylan responds; he backs her up, his fingertips offering their own staccato notes to echo her clipped words during the verse. He hammers the refrain, then backs off when her voice dips in volume.

  “Anything goes!” Cass cries out, in a way that begs us all to listen. To understand. At that moment, I swear she’s singing from experience. “Anything goes”—when I hear these words, I interpret them to mean the awful double takes, the second glances, the pinball eyes that she finally, for the first time in her life, was able to push aside, thanks to the magic of the Avery. She saw it. Of course she did. She had to. She’s singing about it now. Anything goes—she’s getting rid of all of it: the bad feelings, the embarrassment. The belief that spotlights aren’t for her.

  Through it all, Dylan’s fingers answer, Yes, I know exactly what you’re talking about.

  When the song ends, we’re frozen, every last one of us. In shock. Silent.

  Finally, Liz jumps to her feet and begins to clap. She sticks her fingers in her mouth and starts whistling, cheering enthusiastically.

  I tense up a bit. I hope this isn’t coming across as condescending—not like her “Good for you” comment did over in Duds back on day one. Because Cass really does deserve our applause. They both do. I stand, tucking my script under my arm, and start clapping, too. I’m followed by everyone else in the cast.