Still Life Page 5

  An invisible snowball struck Olive’s chest.

  “You touched that painting,” the girl said.

  “No I didn’t,” said Olive pointlessly.

  “Yes, you did.” The girl turned back toward the hall. “Ms. Teedlebaum!” she called. “You should come in here!”

  Olive froze. From the corner of her eye, she could see Rutherford staring at the girl, his dark eyes focused and sharp.

  With a jingle of keys, Ms. Teedlebaum swept into the gallery. Her eyes went straight to Olive, who was standing like a startled snowman in front of Morton’s portrait. A huge smile spread across the art teacher’s face. “Wonderful!” she cried.

  “Olive was—” began the girl with the eyeliner.

  “Oh, I know just what Olive found,” Ms. Teedlebaum cut her off. She beamed across the room. “I had hoped somebody would notice it—and I’m not surprised that somebody turned out to be Olive!”

  Olive’s throat clenched. A last gulp of air flew through it, like a bubble sucked into a straw. Her nose made a frightened wheezing sound.

  Ms. Teedlebaum shouted back into the hallway. “Come here, everybody! Quickly!”

  More footsteps clomped along the hall as the other sixth graders hurried in.

  “Come along!” Ms. Teedlebaum called. “Everyone get nice and close to the portrait where Olive and Remington are standing!”

  Soon a semicircle of students was clustered tightly around the picture, with Olive and Rutherford trapped in its center. Olive threw Rutherford a panicked look. He gave her a tiny nod.

  “Now,” said the art teacher, sidling into the crowd, “does anyone else see what Olive noticed?”

  Olive wished with all her might that some gigantic distraction would choose that instant to smash its way through the museum. A blizzard would have been nice. So would a marauding band of art thieves. Or a herd of rhinoceroses. She held perfectly still, hoping to catch the sound of approaching rhinoceros feet. Or did rhinos have hooves?

  “The rhinoceros is actually a three-toed ungulate,” whispered Rutherford.

  But there were no blizzards or trampling toes—just the murmurs of the other sixth graders, and Ms. Teedlebaum’s jingling keys. Olive started to think that her lungs might actually explode.

  Ms. Teedlebaum placed one hand on Olive’s frozen shoulder. Then, as though she were announcing the next contestant on a game show, she belted out, “Pentimento!”

  The security guard stepped back into the doorway.

  “We discussed that term in class, remember?” Ms. Teedlebaum went on just as loudly. “It’s the underlying image in a painting when an old picture has been painted over with a new one. Sometimes artists reuse their own canvases; sometimes they paint over another artist’s work. Look at the brushstrokes in the sky, right here . . .”

  Olive squished herself to one side as three dozen faces craned closer. Don’t move, she thought. Please don’t move.

  “I’m not,” Rutherford muttered.

  Not YOU, thought Olive.

  But the other sixth graders weren’t jerking away from the canvas with startled or mystified expressions. The painting kept still.

  Thank you, Olive thought. Thank you, thank you, thank you.

  “You’re welcome,” whispered Rutherford.

  “If there was anything on our list of terms that I thought might go unfound today, it was this,” Ms. Teedlebaum was bubbling on. “Even some experts wouldn’t notice it!” Her paint-splattered hand landed on Olive’s shoulder again. “I think you’ve got an artistic destiny ahead of you, Olive!”

  Olive swallowed. Her cheeks felt like toasted marshmallows. Out of the corner of one eye, she could see the girl with the eyeliner staring past the painting, straight at her.

  “You know, I think it must be fate that you spotted this picture.” Ms. Teedlebaum’s hand gave a squeeze. “This very painting was given to the museum by the former owner of your own house! Remember when I told you that Annabelle McMartin had made a sizable donation to the museum? Well, this was part of that donation!”

  Hearing the name Annabelle McMartin made Olive’s skin crawl with invisible wasps.

  “Olive’s house used to be owned by a well-known painter,” Ms. Teedlebaum added. “Maybe someday Olive will give him a run for his money!” With a last smile at Olive, Ms. Teedlebaum sashayed away on her mismatched shoes. “Now, who’s found a good example of impasto? Anyone?”

  The other students backed off, two or three at a time, scattering toward other canvases. But the girl with the eyeliner stayed, watching Olive with narrowed eyes, until Olive and Rutherford both turned and wandered reluctantly away.

  “ IT MOVED,” OLIVE whispered as she and Rutherford trudged up the snowy slope of Linden Street. “I’m positive.”

  “It moved when you weren’t wearing the spectacles?” Rutherford asked.

  “Yes. Something inside the painting moved, just a tiny bit. And then it stopped.”

  “Interesting.” Rutherford frowned. “But I didn’t see it. Ms. Teedlebaum and the other students didn’t appear to see it, and they were all looking very attentively. When you touched it, did it feel like the other pieces of Elsewhere?”

  “No. It didn’t.” Olive blew away a strand of damp wool that trailed from her scarf to her lip. “At first, I thought I felt something—I don’t know—bend a little. But now I’m not sure.”

  “Are you certain that you weren’t merely noticing the effects of the pentimento, as Ms. Teedlebaum assumed?”

  “I’m certain,” said Olive uncertainly. “I think.”

  “Well, let’s extrapolate,” said Rutherford. “Assuming that you recall correctly, and the painting did move, what would that mean?”

  “It would mean that Morton’s mother knew how to use magic in her paintings.” Olive gazed up the hill, at the old stone house looming through its leafless trees. “And that would mean either she was like Mrs. Dewey, and used magic in good ways, or that she was like . . . them.” Olive looked warily around the street once more. “And since I saw it move without the spectacles, it would mean that there was something inside that portrait that came from the real world. Something Mary wanted to hide.”

  “Or,” said Rutherford, “maybe it means that the combination of layered paintings reacted in a way that caught your eye and created illusory motion. That’s when visual artists use certain techniques to trick the viewer’s eye into believing that something is moving, when in fact it’s perfectly stationary.”

  Olive stared into Rutherford’s smudgy glasses. “How do you know this stuff?”

  “There was an article in Scientific American.”

  “Scientific American?”

  “It’s a magazine. It’s generally the only reading material in my parents’ bathroom.”

  “Oh,” said Olive.

  They paused at the walkway to Mrs. Dewey’s house. Warm yellow light poured from the front windows, making the snow outside glitter like powdered gold.

  “Maybe I imagined it. About the painting,” said Olive, after a quiet moment. “But when I saw that picture, and that it was painted by Mary Nivens, I thought there had to be something special about it.”

  “Pareidolia,” said Rutherford knowledgably. “When vague or arbitrary stimuli are perceived as something significant. Like seeing Satan in the scorch marks on a piece of toast.”

  Olive blinked at him.

  “Scientific American,” said Rutherford again.

  “Oh.” Olive backed toward the street. “Maybe you’re right. But if I find anything else, I’ll let you know.”

  “Good.” Rutherford nodded. “I’m planning to use the winter break to complete my diorama of the Battle of Crécy—although, of course, dioramas themselves postdate the Hundred Years’ War by several centuries. How will you be spending your vacation?”

  “Inside,”
said Olive. “If I didn’t have to go to school, I’d barely leave the house. And now I won’t.”

  “Perhaps that is the safest course,” said Rutherford. He swept her a chivalrous bow. “Until we meet again, enjoy your hermitical vacation!”

  Olive watched him stride up the walkway and disappear through the door of the cozy white house. Then she turned and ran.

  Safe inside the old stone house, Olive turned on the hallway lights. She flicked on the porch lamps and the parlor lights for good measure.

  “Horatio?” she called, tossing her coat onto the rack. “Horatio!”

  “In here,” said a voice from the library.

  She found the huge orange cat crouched on the rug. His green eyes were honed on the ceiling. The tip of his tail twitched like a furry whip.

  Olive flopped down beside him on the woven curlicues. “Hi, Horatio. Is the house safe?”

  Horatio’s eyes didn’t leave the ceiling. “As safe as it can be when it’s besieged by a dimwitted pirate.”

  “Dimwitted?” snarled a voice from above. A splotchily colored cat dove from one high bookshelf to another. “I’ve keelhauled men for less! How dare you insult the legendary Captain Blackpaw?”

  “Captain Blackpaw forgot to take off his Sir Lancelot costume,” said Horatio.

  Harvey used the eye that wasn’t covered by a miniature eye patch to glance down at his tuna can breastplate. “That’s pirate armor,” he said quickly.

  Horatio read the can’s faded lettering. “‘Chicken of the Sea’? Is that what they call Captain Blackpaw?”

  “Outrage!” yowled Harvey, leaping from the bookcase onto the huge brass chandelier. “Prepare for battle, ye scurvy scalawag!”

  Olive and Horatio ducked as one of the chandelier’s lightbulbs sailed down and landed on the velvet sofa.

  “BOOM!” Harvey bellowed.

  “But otherwise, the house was safe?” Olive asked, getting to her feet. “You didn’t notice any changes?”

  The chandelier gave a tinkly creak. Another lightbulb soared down and buried itself in a potted fern.

  “BOOM!” shouted Harvey again. “Avast, ye scoundrels!”

  “No,” said Horatio dryly. “Everything was perfectly normal.”

  • • •

  That night, the Dunwoodys’ dinner consisted of a large pizza cut into equal fourteenths. There were five-fourteenths for Mr. Dunwoody, five-fourteenths for Mrs. Dunwoody, and four-fourteenths—“Or two-sevenths!” as her father pointed out—for Olive, who didn’t care what fractions she got as long as there weren’t any mushrooms on them.

  After dinner, the three Dunwoodys settled down in the living room with their books and newspapers. Olive was in the middle of an especially creepy mystery book, which meant that she had to sit very close to the lamp. It also meant that, after twenty silent minutes, she almost jumped off the couch when the grandfather clock began to chime.

  She glanced nervously out the living room window.

  The evening was already dark, turning the glass into a blurry mirror. Olive could see herself and her parents reflected there, settled in their seats around the glowing lamps. On the other side of the window, above the backyard, a quick, dark shape glided through the trees—an owl or another night bird. Its blackness slid through the Dunwoodys’ reflection like a shadow beneath a living portrait.

  Pentimento, Olive thought.

  “Can I go visit my friend Morton?” she asked, shooting to her feet. “You met him on Halloween, remember?”

  “I think that would be all right.” Mrs. Dunwoody glanced at her wristwatch. “It is only seven oh two. The sun sets so early at this time of year—”

  “Four thirty-three this afternoon,” Mr. Dunwoody chimed in.

  “—that it already feels like night,” Mrs. Dunwoody finished. “Go ahead. Just don’t stay out too late.”

  Stuffing her arms into her coat sleeves, Olive raced out the front door. A blast of cold air swirled around her. The porch was dark and empty, but as she stepped over the threshold, she heard the soft crinkle of paper beneath her shoe.

  She looked down. On the frosty floorboards, just outside the heavy door, there lay an envelope. Olive stooped to pick it up. Its thick ivory paper was as chilly as the air. By the moon-pale glow of the streetlamps, she could read her own name on the front, scrawled in angular black strokes.

  Olive Dunwoody.

  She recognized the handwriting, she was certain. It wasn’t Morton’s, or Rutherford’s, or Mrs. Dewey’s, and yet it seemed foggily familiar, like new words put to an old melody.

  Inside the envelope was a single sheet of paper. As Olive tugged it out, something cold and thick and awful cracked open inside of her body, its chill seeping from her shaking fingers to the soles of her feet.

  I know what you have found, the note read, in the same angular black writing. If you are wise, you will leave it there, turn away, and forget that you saw it at all.

  Olive glanced around. Layers of footprints, too many and too messy to trace, trampled the snow that led down the steps toward the silent street. She didn’t need to follow them to know the truth, anyway.

  Aldous McMartin had been here.

  He had climbed the steps and left that note, just inches from her family’s door. He had stood right where Olive stood now while the Dunwoodys were eating dinner and talking and reading, with only that barrier of wood between them. Maybe he had stopped to listen to their voices and their clinking plates. He must have been getting stronger than Walter’s and Mrs. Dewey’s protective charms. Almost strong enough to step inside.

  The two-sevenths of a pizza bubbled queasily in Olive’s stomach. With a deep breath, she leaped down the stairs. The twigs of the lilac hedge clattered as she plunged through them, their brittle tips scratching at her face. A light glinted within the tall gray house on the other side, beckoning her onward.

  Come on, Olive! the light seemed to say. Come inside! RUN!

  Olive pounded at the gray house’s front door.

  “Walter!” she shouted. “Morton! It’s me!”

  The door stayed shut.

  Olive glanced fearfully over her shoulder. The lawn was dark and quiet—too dark to tell if any dark, quiet shape within it was slinking closer.

  “Let me in!” she yelled.

  No answer.

  Telling herself that just this once being safe might be more important than being polite, Olive grabbed the doorknob, wrenched it to the side, and stumbled gratefully through the unlocked door. She slammed it shut again behind her.

  The tall gray house was still. The lights in the entryway and the hall were switched off, but Olive had seen the ruddy glow of light through the windows, she was positive.

  “Hello?” she called. “Walter? Morton?”

  She stepped forward. The old floorboards creaked beneath her. And then, from somewhere down the hall, there came a high-pitched, frightened scream.

  “Morton!” Olive shouted.

  There was no reply—only the distant, crackling sound of something being consumed by fire.

  OLIVE TORE ALONG the hallway.

  Her boots thudded on the floor, but she could barely hear them. Her heart was beating twice as loudly. With a surge of panic, she skidded around the corner, following the crackling sound of fire straight through the living room door.

  Morton stood alone in the center of the chilly white room. His arms were crossed in front of his face, blocking the glow from the fireplace. In the grate, a fire roared. Heat made the air ripple like melted glass.

  “Morton!” Olive grabbed him by one skinny arm, pulling him farther from the light. “What happened?”

  Morton didn’t answer. He just blinked, wide-eyed, at the fire.

  “Are you all right?” Olive demanded. “Can you hear me?”

  Morton turned to Olive. “Of c
ourse I can hear you,” he said. “You’re shouting in my ear.” His eyes flicked back to the fireplace. “I just didn’t know they would catch so fast.”

  Olive squinted across the room. A heap of papers writhed in the grate, each page gusting with white flames. “Morton,” she whispered, “what did you burn?”

  Morton tugged his paint-slick arm out of Olive’s grip. “Well, I wouldn’t have burned them if I wanted you to know.”

  “It was those sketches, wasn’t it? The ones your mother made?” Olive’s words came faster. “She was studying with him, wasn’t she? She wanted to learn about the things he could do?”

  “Shush!” Morton exploded. “Just shush! We’re not supposed to talk about it!” He wrapped his scrawny arms around his body. “I knew somebody was going to find them, somebody nosy, and wrong, so it’s better if nobody ever sees them at all!” Whirling away, Morton stalked across the room and threw himself down on the stiff white couch.

  Olive took a breath. The fire snapped softly behind her, nibbling away at Mary Nivens’s secrets. She looked back at Morton, who had curled up into a small, tufty-headed ball.

  “Where’s Walter?” she asked.

  “At Mrs. Dewey’s,” the ball muttered.

  Olive inched across the room. She sat down on the edge of the couch, far from the spot where Morton had wedged himself.

  “Morton,” she began, “I found out something else about your mother today. Something strange. I think she might have had . . . talents, like Aldous McMartin. I think she might have been able to make paintings that weren’t just ordinary paintings.”

  Morton gave a jerk at the sound of Aldous’s name. “She just liked to draw,” he said, squeezing his nightshirted knees.

  “I don’t think that’s all,” said Olive. “I mean, everybody says there was something special about her. That nobody could lie to her. Maybe . . . maybe she had other magical talents too.”

  “Shh!” Morton grabbed a pillow from the end of the couch and clamped it over his ears.

  “I saw a painting by your mother in the art museum,” Olive went on stubbornly. “It’s a portrait of you. It isn’t perfect, but it’s kind of like Aldous’s artwork. Like Elsewhere. I think—I think it might have something alive inside of it.”