Spark (4 page)

C
ass is on the sidewalk outside Duds when I leave Ferguson's. She's mucking around with one of those easel signs—the kind with a marker board on both sides. This one advertises a fall sale on sweaters that seems a bit cart-before-the-horse, actually, in the midst of the Indian summer heat. The entirety of Verona feels every bit as hot as the steering wheel of a car after three solid hours of sitting out in an August parking lot.

But it's not the sign she's interested in. She's staring at the music store, waiting. For me.

“He didn't mean you,” I insist as soon as she's within earshot. “What he said—‘ugly.' He meant what you
said
was ugly—he took it wrong.”

She keeps staring, unconvinced. Or maybe she's waiting
for a better explanation.

“He's afraid of his job, too, you know. Musical director. That's terrifying for him.”

Still. She stares. Weighing this answer, trying to decide if she believes me.

“Okay, you got me. I spent the whole time I was gone beating him to a pulp. That store has his blood splattered all over the tile.”

She tosses her head back and laughs. “That's more like it. I could go with that. Finally, a perfectly triumphant end to the world's crummiest day.”

I grab her around the neck and squeeze. Her laughter always makes me want to scoop her into a giant best-friend hug. This afternoon, though, her laughter is especially soothing to us both. It's lavender scented. It's soft and tastes good. Finally. Laughter.

After our usual round of “See you in the a.m.,” I practically skip to Potions.

Mom's not home yet, so I unlock the front door, gratefully tossing my backpack under the cash register. I could go for some time alone, some breathing space before she gets here. Some time to quit thinking about school completely. Because the minute she shows up, it'll be the Avery and
Anything Goes
and my being a director of the whole ridiculous shebang that brings a sick, heavy feeling to my gut.

But for now, there's just the store—just my home. And
quiet. And the lingering smell of Mom's latest batch of perfume—in which she's somehow captured the smell of overcoats and chocolate and snow and a swirl of different brands of soap and leather and hair spray and even popcorn. An interesting assortment completely unlike the floral scents that usually permeate the entire shop.

I flick on a few lights and head into the back room, where I find Mom's already started to package this new scent. A whole tray is nearly filled with squat little bottles ready for sale. I pick one up, look at the sticker on the bottom. Mom's calling this batch Sunday Matinee.

I smile. The Avery's taken front row in her mind—surely because of the city council thing. She hadn't said anything to me about it—that announcement in class was the first I'd heard of the idea to tear down the Avery. But those kinds of things don't pop up out of nowhere. Mom's known this decision's been coming for a while.

I feel a little bit blindsided, actually. And every bit as unsure of being able to get through it as Cass is.

Maybe, I think, a little work is what I need. Distraction. Sometimes, a simple job that takes you out of your head can feel every bit as good and comforting as a holey favorite T-shirt . . . or laughter from a best friend.

I could make a nice new front-window display, I figure. That's exactly the kind of task that will steer my thoughts down a new direction. Let me pretend, for a little while,
that the pit in my stomach doesn't actually exist. Our supply closet offers up a few artificial silk flowers—mums, in fiery orange shades. I carry them and the tray of bottles to the front window. I stare across the street at the theater that I've never actually been inside of but has somehow also been such a central part of my life.

Maybe it's because Dahlia adopted me when I was still an infant, but my ancestry never seemed like something I could plot out on one of those single-family trees. It's always seemed like a giant connect-the-dots picture. I mean, here I am, working in the same front window where Dahlia's own mom was changing out a hat display the night two kids my age died in the Avery. I'm staring out at the same square where Bertie, my real biological great-grandmother, stood mumbling her usual gibberish about what the skies were saying. I'm standing in the same place where Mom grew up. The store she took over, reinvented, and saved when her own mother died—like she saves everything. Including me, a baby found in the backseat of a totaled car, no living relatives.

It's so weird, the way everything is connected: me, Mom, Bertie, Emma and Nick (two kids who never had a chance to make it to nineteen), the Avery. All of us dots. And if I could ever figure out the order I should connect us all in, I know it'd make some kind of picture. Up until now, though, the picture I've always drawn in my mind winds up looking like a giant confused scribble.

“I promised I'd save Emma.” That sentence floats through my head. Sometimes when Mom told me the bedtime story about the night the Avery died, instead of the usual bright promise for “magic” to return, for the Avery to come back from the dead, she would whisper, “I promised I'd save her.” As though it was a detail so painful, she could only repeat it on the nights when she was feeling especially brave. This, too, this need to save everything—it seems like another dot in the picture. Not that I'm sure where it fits in, either.

I only know that when Mom inherited the store, nobody was wearing hats anymore. No more new pillboxes or cloches to dress up old suits. Oh, come on. Who was even wearing suits? Now, the perfumery she's turned the old hat store into is barely getting any foot traffic. Pile on the fact that Mom's temporarily back in the classroom (leaving the store open only on afternoons and weekends), and there's really not much sense in me spending time on a front-window display. But it feels good to clear my head. So much so, I lose track of the time.

I don't look up from my display until Dylan leaves Ferguson's a couple of hours later. His movement on the opposite side of the window finally grabs my attention.
A man needs his secrets.
Isn't that what he said? What kind of secrets does Dylan have? I press my face against the front window, curious to see where he'll go. He throws his leg over his bike and pedals away.

I flip the Closed sign, burst out of the store, and race off the front sidewalk. But I get less than a foot into the square when I stop. Dylan's steered down the alley behind the Avery and is already out of sight. And I'm not sure which direction he headed in once he hit that alley. I'll never catch up.

I laugh at myself. Nosy busybody. What business is it of mine where he's going? What do I think I am, the director of everybody's life?

Bleah. Director. It hits me again.

I'm about to turn back around, head into the shop, when Cass bursts outside—finished with her shift at Duds.

“Hey, Ca—” I start to call out to her, but stop when I hear another sound floating through the air and across the square.

Musical notes. Muffled. Tinny. Off-key.

Like an old piano.

I
'm mesmerized. Rooted to my spot in front of Potions. Those notes seem to be spilling directly from the ancient and long-empty Avery. No one's been inside for years—longer than I've been alive. I've never seen the building when it wasn't boarded up and vacant. And now, out of nowhere, someone is in the old theater, playing music, la-di-da, no big deal?

Maybe it's some kind of weird coincidence—maybe the Avery's been on my mind all afternoon, and maybe I just want music to be coming from the old theater.

Only, as I stand there trying to come to grips with it all, I turn and see Cass stopping beside her driver's-side door. She shades her eyes with her hand and stares right at the old theater. She's heard the music, too. The piano sounds out of tune and kind of metallic—like an old-fashioned harpsichord.

She walks apprehensively toward the Avery. As though in a trance, she moves down the long front walk that stretches from the street all the way to the entrance. Dead brown weeds poking from the cracks in the cement are tall enough to completely swallow her feet. Above, the cloth awning that once stretched over the entirety of the walk is so tattered, it really isn't anything other than a metal frame decorated with rotten fragments of cloth. Cass can look up and see the whole marquee, dark for nearly seventy years. The yellow neon letters, which spell “Avery Theater,” are broken, marked with a couple of bird's nests.

Like a child edging into “off-limits” territory, Cass tiptoes to the front door, held closed by a rusty chain and padlock. She presses her ear against the dirty wooden door. Then cups her hands around her face, trying to peer through one of the last remaining windows that haven't been covered with plywood. Trying to see where the music's coming from.

Cass sits down on the front step, hugs her knees, and rocks gently to the rhythm of the repeating chord. I cup my mouth to shout, “Hey—what are you doing? You hear that, right? What is that?” But I stop as I get the feeling that if I were to call to her, she'd yelp and jump like I'd scared her out of a daydream.

She tilts her head and begins to sing—no distinct words, just a melody she improvises to blend with the notes bleeding through the walls of the theater.

The piano begins to respond, playing more complicated runs to go along with Cass's pretty tune.

There's something kind of hypnotic about the way the off-kilter chord mixes with Cass's voice. It becomes junk food for my ears. I want another taste, but know at the same time that another taste is only going to make me want still more.

The late-afternoon sun is brutal. I'm sweating, and my fair skin has begun to let out those
getting scorched here
warning signals.

That is, until a cloud slides between me and the sun, dragging a silky-cool breeze across my skin.

I turn my head skyward, ready to unleash an “Ahhh” or “Thank you.”

My smile vanishes, though, when I find myself staring not at a white cloud's underbelly, but at a midnight darkness that has inexplicably appeared over the square. Night has fallen. Stars glitter. The moon hovers.

“What—” I mumble as I shudder against a sudden chill. Confusion and fear swirl; a row of exclamation points fills my head.
What is this?

A siren cries in the distance.

I tremble, confused and startled, as a tiny yellow light flashes maybe a foot from my face. A firefly, blinking adamantly. It shouldn't be here—no more than a night sky should appear in the middle of the day. Firefly season starts early in
Missouri summers, and disappears long before the first freeze. But it's September, and the fireflies should all be gone.

Fighting to make sense of it all, I latch onto the fact that it's been unusually hot—hotter, even, than most Indian summers. The fireflies have hung on because of the lingering summer heat, I tell myself.

But the night—where has that come from?

It can't be night. How stupid. Night doesn't fall in late afternoon, all at once, out of nowhere.
Come on, Quin, where's your head?

Maybe it's a low-flying plane hovering over the square. Or an eclipse. Something decidedly boring and realistic that will explain it all.

Only, when I look up again, there is no simple answer. Just a dark sky with stars. A moon. Streetlights pop to life in front of the theater.

When a firefly flitters in front of my face again, I swoop my hand out in a sorry attempt at catching it. I want to touch it, this thing that shouldn't be here, no more than that night sky should be. If I catch it, if I conquer it, then maybe whatever has overtaken the entire Verona sky won't be quite so frightening, either.

But I'm too slow—the firefly zips away, landing on the small, grassy lawn in front of the Avery. Or the scraggly brown patch that passes for a lawn, anyway. And then it rises—higher, higher, toward the empty marquee and the broken
neon Avery Theater sign. It hovers there, blinking insistently. If I allow my eyes to wander even for a slice of a second, the firefly edges into my line of sight, then flitters back toward the front of the theater.

Goose bumps spill down my arms. What's happening? Is the firefly pointing? Telling me where to look?

A sudden pop from the front of the Avery sends a shower of orange sparks exploding across the night sky.

The old dilapidated neon Avery Theater sign flicks to life, glowing yellow. The marquee buzzes, emitting a high-pitched electric hum. The marquee promises, “TONIGHT! EMMA HASTINGS AS HOPE HARCOURT IN ANYTHING GOES!”

The streetlights continue to shine on the Avery as brightly as spotlights. It can't be! But it is—the building has begun to mend like a wound healing on fast forward. Boards vanish from windows. Graffiti fade. Cracks running like jagged lightning bolts through the mortar between bricks disappear. Animated expressions replace the weather-worn blank faces of gargoyles. The awning repairs itself, covering a suddenly smooth, paved front walk. Wild, overgrown arms of untrimmed bushes shrink, making shrubs appear well manicured. Grass begins to grow lush and green. Vines creeping along the edges of the building swell with buds threatening to burst open.

The Avery—that slobbering old woman everyone swears
once had an endless string of suitors—is young again. She's risen from the dead.

I want to scream, but my throat's too tight for any sound to escape.

The harmony of the piano and Cass's voice grows louder.

Other than the theater, the square remains unchanged: the modern neon “Ferguson's” light continues to glow over the music store's door, and a Corona sign burns in the window of the Mexican restaurant. Vanessa moves about on the opposite side of the Duds plate glass. Behind me, Potions is just as I left it, my own display gracing the front window.

Cass's voice continues to mingle with the piano. I stare at her sitting on the front step, still swaying to her music. Are her eyes closed? How can she have missed this transformation? Am I the only one who sees it?

Footsteps click down the street.
Someone sees.

A woman races toward me, wearing a red-and-white striped seersucker dress that rustles about her knees.

“You see it, too,” I whisper when she gets close enough to hear me. “The night sky. The Avery. You see it.”

She faces me, and I get the odd sensation I'm looking into a mirror. She has my brown hair, my widow's peak, and a crook in her nose nearly identical to the one I like to say holds my glasses in place. I know this woman. But this cannot be real.

“Of course I see it,” she says, smiling. “I was the one
who said it would happen. And now everyone will know I was right.” She crosses her arms, hugging a red journal to her chest. “Alberta” has been scrawled across the front in cursive. My trembling intensifies. Bertie is short for Alberta.

“Where'd you get that book?”

“It's mine,” she says as if I should already know.

“How—”

“Dahlia's been keeping it safe,” she explains, holding the journal under my nose. “She promised she would. Look how clean and perfect it is. What a good job she's done.”

“Dahlia—that's—my mom.”

Bertie uncrosses her arms to point behind my shoulder, where yellowish-green flames leap from the horizon, climbing into the dark sky. “Look, Quin. It's come back. Just like I said it would.” Satisfaction washes across her face as she whispers, “It's them.”

How can she know my name? “Who's ‘them'?” It's all I can manage.

“Don't pretend you don't hear them.” Bertie points at the front of the theater. “Their duet has unlocked the story. They've brought the sky back. They've brought the past back. It's picking up where it once ended far too soon. The next scene is unfolding.”

Her eyes flash brightly as she opens her arms. Her journal, which she now clutches by a corner, flops open; the pages flip back and forth in the breeze, as though some invisible hand is
searching for the right passage.

“Picking up?” I repeat as I glance up at the stars.

“This isn't just any night sky,” Bertie tells me. “It's the night sky of June 27, 1947.”

The night sky of my bedtime stories.

“You'll see, don't worry. This is really happening,” Bertie continues, her voice calm. “Two pure hearts meant to be together. There will be a new ending. Star-crossed lovers uncrossed.”

“What does that even mean? What pure hearts?”

“Cass and Dylan, of course. You hear their music. Her voice, his chords.”

“Dylan? He's meant to be with Cass? What are you talking about?”

“And you,” Bertie whispers. “You're part of it, too. You had to be here. For all this to happen.”

“Me? What do I have to do with it?”

Bertie cocks her head to the side. “You believe in it, don't you?”

“Believe in what?”

“The magic of the theater, of course.”

The piano music ends abruptly. Just as quickly, Cass stops improvising.

A slit appears in the center of the awning; the fabric turns brown and withers. The awning becomes nothing more than a tarnished metal frame with only tattered bits of material
clinging on for dear life. Vines and grass and bushes crackle as they dry up and turn brown.

The late-night sky slips away, exposing billowy white clouds and a powder-blue sky.

The Avery shrivels. Graffiti rewrite themselves across the bricks. Boards slap loudly against the windows. Gutters rust. The front walk cracks and buckles. Features are scrubbed from the faces of the gargoyles along the top of the building. The screaming siren grows faint, as though it's changed direction—as though it's driving away from the Avery rather than coming closer. The angry heat of the Indian summer returns.

“What—what—?” I sputter. But the street beside me is empty. Bertie's gone.

Cass's sandals click as she races down the Avery's front walk.

The tiny jingle of a small chain and the
whoosh
of wheels draw my eyes toward the side of the building. I watch as Dylan emerges from the alley, hops on his bike, and begins to pedal frantically. In his hurry to get away, though, his handlebars wobble, and his front tire zigzags along the cracked pavement. Before I can shout a warning, Cass walks straight into Dylan's path.

Cass lets out a yelp as Dylan punches his brakes, trying to stop.

He teeters toward the ground, throwing his leg out to the side to catch himself. “H-h-h-h-hey-ey-ey-ey!” he shouts,
because she's nearly knocked him to the ground, where the rough pavement of the square could have completely chewed up his bare arms and knees.

Cass only veers around him without a word. Heads straight for her car. Dylan whips off in the opposite direction.

And I'm left standing alone.

I shake my head. Can three nobodies from Verona High Advanced Drama unlock anything?

No way.

. . . Or could we?