He ducked and floundered as the globes sailed past him—and then, impossibly, swung around and sped back toward Tanisha like boomerangs. She flung them with greater intensity, and soon Olive was digging her fingernails into her face, waiting for one of the glass globes to clobber Astaire’s head or bash his nose in. But the mime evaded each and every one. At last, he spun around in a few rapid, impressive pirouettes, then collapsed on the stage, tongue lolling out. Tanisha heaved each globe up as it returned to her, and the invisible orchestra ended the number with one last gong!
Olive squinted up at the rafters. She thought she’d seen a flurry of movement where the globes had vanished in the dark. As the house lights rose, Astaire stood and dusted himself off, and Tanisha set down her globes. Olive noticed that neither of them looked the least bit winded, and she wiped the sweat from her brow self-consciously before turning to the orchestra pit.
“I see the piano player,” she said slowly. “And I see the other instruments, so why can’t I see those musicians?”
“They don’t all show themselves,” Tanisha explained. “I’ve never seen most of the ghosts here. Just the seamstresses. And Knuckles, obviously.”
She waved to the pianist, and one of his severed hands waved back cheerfully. A chill passed over Olive despite the heat from the lights overhead. “Knuckles? That’s Knuckles?”
“Yeah.” Tanisha stretched her arms. “You should ask him about his hands sometime. It’s a great story.”
But Olive was barely listening. She watched as the kindly-looking ghost leafed through his music with one hand. A single sheet fell to the floor, and his other hand drifted down to retrieve it. Knuckles caught her eye and smiled, but this time Olive couldn’t smile back.
This was the ghost who had made Juliana cry.
Hours later, Olive thought she might collapse onstage right next to Astaire. Maude had insisted on going through the juggling act again and again, each time finding something new to improve upon—but with kind, encouraging words, not the harsh criticism Olive was used to. Tanisha’s moves grew flashier, Astaire’s reactions more flamboyant, and Olive’s voice stronger. Confident, even.
It was a strange feeling. Strange, but not unpleasant.
Her ears were still buzzing when she left the auditorium, waving goodbye to Tanisha and Astaire. Halfway across the foyer, Olive suddenly remembered Felix’s message for Juliana.
She doubled back, humming under her breath as she hurried up the stairs. Her plan was to look in the rehearsal room first, but just as she passed the bathrooms—
“Olive!”
Olive spun around to see Juliana’s head poking out from the entrance to the kitchen. “I was just looking for you.”
“Sorry I didn’t watch your first rehearsal, but I was sick all morning,” Juliana said, leading her to the pantry. She pulled open the doors, revealing mostly barren shelves, and sighed. “Slim pickings, as usual.”
Olive nodded in understanding, watching as Juliana grabbed a box of crackers. It dawned on her that this was the first time she’d seen anyone at the theater eat.
Juliana headed to one of the tables and plopped down on the bench. She peered inside the box before offering it to Olive. “Mostly crumbs, but there’re still some good ones in here. Want one?”
“Sure.” Olive took a cracker but didn’t eat it. “Um…I talked to Felix today.”
Juliana froze, cracker halfway to her mouth. She lowered it slowly.
“I know he’s your brother, and…” Olive took a deep breath. “He wants me to tell you to leave Maudeville because you’re in danger. And I don’t know what he’s talking about, but if Knuckles is—is threatening you, I want to help. We can tell Maude, and she’ll take care of it.”
Juliana’s expression had changed rapidly as Olive spoke, from hope to frustration to confusion. “Knuckles?”
“That’s who you said you were talking to in the lobby the other day, right?” Olive asked. “When you were crying.”
“Oh.” Juliana squeezed her eyes closed. “Right. No, I wasn’t crying because of Knuckles. I’d just had a fight with Felix and came back inside and saw…” She shook her head, and her voice took on a steely edge. “I can’t leave. I don’t want to leave. And Felix knows why. If he were a decent brother, he’d…” She trailed off again.
Olive shifted uncomfortably. “He says the theater is…is bad, or something,” she said. “He says it looks wrong. What does he mean?”
Juliana toyed with her cracker. “I don’t know. He’s delusional,” she said bitterly. “He’s always hated this place, even though it was the best option we had when we ran away.”
Olive stayed silent. So she’d been right—Felix didn’t have a home. Nor did Juliana.
“You live here?” she asked, and Juliana glanced up.
“Yeah. All the rest of the cast does too.” She smiled tentatively. “Maybe you could live here too, one day.”
Olive looked away quickly, because that hopeful feeling had returned. “Maybe,” she said. “But why would Felix rather live on the street than in here? Is he afraid of ghosts?”
Juliana was silent for a few seconds. “Sort of, yeah. He thinks he can get a job with some carnival, and he wants me to come. That’s what we were fighting about the other day. I can’t…I don’t want to leave Maudeville. But he’s so sure that there’s something wrong with this place.”
Olive watched her closely. Juliana blinked rapidly, turning the cracker over and over in her fingers.
“It’s not like Felix to make stuff up,” she continued slowly. “Even when we were little, he didn’t like playing make-believe games, you know? But I needed them. I needed to pretend I was a princess, or a wizard, or…someone else. Somewhere else, any place that wasn’t our house with our father.” Her voice cracked slightly, and she shook her head. “But Felix didn’t want to pretend. He wanted to get away for real. And…”
She stopped, staring at the cracker in her hand. Then she dropped it and stood abruptly.
“What?” Olive said, confused. “What’s wrong?”
“N-nothing,” Juliana stammered, clutching her stomach. “I guess I’m still just feeling sick. I should go lie down.” She headed for the entrance, then glanced back at Olive. “Look, don’t listen to anything Felix tells you, okay? He’s just…his head’s not right.”
She left without giving Olive a chance to respond.
Sighing, Olive reached for the box of crackers and stopped. A fine coat of bluish-green dust covered the pads of her first finger and thumb. She glanced around, wondering where it had come from. After a moment, she shrugged and headed to the sink.
Olive pondered her conversation with Juliana as she scrubbed her hands clean. She wondered what could cause such a rift between a brother and sister, and why Felix hated the theater when everyone else loved it so. His head’s not right, Juliana had said. And maybe that was true. But obviously, there was more to it than that, and Olive was determined to figure it out.
Felix was not outside the theater the next day, a fact that disappointed Olive more than she cared to admit. And Juliana spent the afternoon in the rehearsal room with Valentine, working on their act. But there was someone else who might have the answers Olive was looking for, and she’d decided to talk to him the next chance she got.
In rehearsal, they moved on to Eli and his heart-stopping aerialist act. Olive nearly fainted the first time she saw the petite man flying from one silver hoop to the next—the very same hoops Tanisha had juggled. They floated through the air, gradually luring Eli out from the stage and over the orchestra pit, then the seats, until he was twisting and flipping around high overhead in that beautiful dome beneath the feathery winglike pattern.
Olive had dreamed about Tanisha’s juggling act the night before, how the globes and hoops hung in the air in a way that would make a physicist weep, and she wondered again about the ghosts who made such magic possible. There was Astaire’s invisible rope too—surely it was ghosts lifting Olive ou
t of her “pit” in the opening scene. And the beautiful white cocoon was always present in her dreams now. It would glow and tremble violently as something inside it struggled to break free. The real cocoon didn’t shake, although a few times Olive thought she caught a tiny movement.
“It’s the ghosts, right?” Olive asked Eli eagerly once he’d returned safely to the stage. “The ghosts are moving the hoops and all the other props?”
A small smile tugged at the corner of Eli’s mouth. “Something like that” was all he said. But Olive knew she must be right, and whether the other ghosts were nice or mean, she hoped they would start to show themselves soon. Truth be told, Eli’s act frightened her more than the other acts did. Watching him fly so high above the ground would be a lot less terrifying if Olive could see the ghosts who supported him.
But Knuckles remained the only ghost Olive could see. And he was also the person Olive needed to talk to. Juliana had said Knuckles hadn’t threatened her, and Olive wanted to believe that was true. But she still approached the pianist with caution.
“Hello,” she said tentatively. Knuckles glanced up from the sheet music he’d been studying and smiled. One of his hands hovered over the conductor’s podium, waving a baton. The other swayed gently back and forth over the piano, palm up, as if relaxing in an invisible hammock. Olive forced herself not to laugh.
“Hi!” Knuckles’s voice was bright and pleasant. “You sounded lovely today. One of the best singers we’ve had yet—and I’ve heard them all.”
Olive blushed. “Thank you. How long have you been doing this show?”
“Oh, since the day I died,” he said lightly. “Been dead almost as long as I’d been alive, and twice as happy.”
“Really?” Olive said, taken aback. “What was wrong with being alive?”
Knuckles waved a handless arm dismissively. “Nothing wrong with it. In fact, I was pretty upset when I finally figured out I was dead. Then I realized I had it so much better.” His wrinkled face softened as he gazed down at the piano. “All I wanted to do when I was younger was play. But I lost my hands in a factory accident when I was maybe a few years older than you. Learned to get by, but being a pianist wasn’t so much of an option anymore.”
All thoughts of Juliana and Felix momentarily disappeared, and Olive gaped at the ghost. “You lost your hands when you were a teenager?”
“That’s right.”
“And you found them when you…you…”
“Died?” Knuckles supplied, nodding. “Over fifty years later. Curled up on my usual park bench for the night, woke up, and walked away without realizing I was leaving my body right there in the park. My hands—well, the ghosts of my hands—found me. I thought I was hallucinating.” He laughed, his eyes crinkling. “I chased them, and they led me to this very theater. Maude said they’d been playing piano here awhile. Developed minds of their own once they got away from me, apparently.”
Olive did not know how to respond. Knuckles appeared unperturbed, even amused, but she felt terribly sorry for him. Then she remembered Juliana and stiffened her resolve. She opened her mouth to speak, but Knuckles beat her to it.
“I saw your audition, you know,” he told her. “Marched right up on that stage and sang without waiting for an invitation. No wonder Maude loves you—you’ve got some nerve. She’s never had much patience for the meek.”
Olive lifted her chin, his words filling her with pride. Her mother had never said she had nerve. Quite the opposite, in fact. But Knuckles was right—here at Maudeville, Olive was perfectly confident onstage. It really had been mother fright holding her back all along.
Perhaps Olive was better off without her.
After a few seconds of silence, Knuckles’s right hand waggled its fingers in her face. “Oh!” Startled, Olive waved it away. “Sorry, I was just…um…”
“Distracted,” Knuckles said with a cheerful grin, glancing up at the now-empty stage. “The others are probably at dinner—aren’t you hungry? That’s the only thing I miss about being alive,” he added wistfully. “The food. Sometimes I think I’d give up one of my hands for some pork dumplings.” His left hand made a rude gesture, which he ignored.
Olive smiled. “Oh—no, I don’t live here. But I should get home.” She paused, watching as his left hand twirled the conductor’s baton between its fingers. “Knuckles?”
“Yes?”
She took a deep breath and looked into the ghost’s kind eyes, trying to focus on him and not the tuba visible through his head. “I have a question about Juliana.”
Knuckles nodded encouragingly. “What about her?”
“Did you…” Olive hesitated. “She seems upset about something, and I wondered if maybe you knew anything about it.”
“Ah.” Sadness flickered on his round, wrinkly face. “I do, in fact.”
Olive tried not to sound too eager. “You do?”
“Of course,” the ghost replied. “Juliana hasn’t been the same since Finley.” He said Finley as though it referred to an incident and not a person. “I keep trying to tell her it’s for the best, but—”
“Liang, dear.” The sound of Maude’s husky voice caused Olive to jump. She spun around to find the woman right behind her, smiling at Knuckles. “Are you still talking Olive’s ear off? I’m sure her mother won’t appreciate her being late.”
Startled, Olive looked at her watch. “Oh yes—I really should be going.” She paused, glancing uncertainly at Knuckles. “Liang?”
“That’s me,” he replied good-naturedly. “You didn’t think my mother named me Knuckles, did you?”
Olive laughed despite herself. “I guess not. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Till tomorrow!” Knuckles agreed, and his hands waved and somersaulted.
Maude gave Olive a warm smile. “Till tomorrow, darling.”
Hurrying through the lobby, Olive went over her conversation with Knuckles. Whatever was wrong with Juliana, it had to do with Finley. The entire cast looked sad whenever the former star of Eidola was mentioned, which was understandable. But she couldn’t imagine how Finley’s death could have driven such a wedge between Juliana and her brother.
Olive checked the empty alley thoroughly before beginning her walk home. No Felix. And she’d dawdled too long—this was the latest she’d ever left the theater. She’d have to hurry to beat her mother home.
By the end of Friday’s rehearsal, Olive’s sides ached from laughing. They’d moved on to Aidan and Nadia’s act, which was even more astounding up close—and, thanks to Astaire, even more hilarious. The mime was enamored with Nadia. He pulled a bouquet of posies out of thin air to present to her the moment she and Aidan appeared onstage. Olive, still squinting up at the dome and trying to see Eli in the suddenly dark auditorium, had not even noticed the boy and his puppet until she turned and found them standing beneath the giant cocoon.
She’d watched Aidan closely this time, now that she knew the secret of his act. But the young ventriloquist played the part of a dummy perfectly, slouching ever so slightly, his motions stilted and jerky, his mouth moving just out of sync with his words. Nadia, in contrast, was graceful and articulate. Her bright, offbeat look helped disguise some of her puppet-ness, from the electric-blue bangs nearly covering her glass eyes to the vivid pink paint on her wooden lips.
But Astaire was the most effective distraction. He hung on Nadia’s every word, heaving great gasps at the most impressive tricks with her “puppet” and doubling over in silent laughter until tears rolled down his face after every punch line. And when the act ended with Aidan stepping forward and Nadia slumping over, as if her soul had left her body and entered his, Astaire swooned, falling back on the stage with his hand over his heart.
Olive thought about Aidan and Nadia all the way home, still marveling at their transformation. It was almost enough to distract her from the recollection that Eli had evaded her questions about Finley, as had Mickey. Both had looked distinctly uncomfortable when Olive mentioned the former s
tar, and each had attempted to distract her in his own way: Eli by offering her a cranberry scone, Mickey by showing off an elaborate new move in his routine (and nearly setting Olive’s hair on fire in the process).
And once again, Felix and Juliana were nowhere to be found. Tanisha had informed her that Juliana was rehearsing with Valentine again. But Olive had no explanation for Felix’s absence. He couldn’t have just given up—Juliana was his sister, and he felt she was in danger. Olive had the nagging sense that something bad had happened to him, and she pondered this as she climbed up the fire escape and slipped through the window.
The sight of her mother drove all these thoughts from Olive’s mind.
Mrs. Preiss sat in Mr. Preiss’s chair behind his desk, eyes cold and hard. Olive froze right next to the telescope. For a moment, she understood perfectly what it must feel like to be a ghost—the numbness of having someone you know stare straight through you.
“Mrs. Marino told me she’s seen you in the alley.” Mrs. Preiss’s voice cut through Olive like steel. “She was worried you were developing an obsession with…”
Her eyes flickered to the window, and she didn’t have to finish the sentence. Olive knew what she meant. Mr. Preiss’s absence had its own presence, the invisible shape of him right in front of the open window. Olive had been standing in this exact spot next to the telescope the moment she’d first realized something was wrong. She’d been searching for a lion in the stars and had tugged her father’s sleeve when she found one. He hadn’t responded right away, and when Olive looked up, he was staring at the sky with an expression so lost, so empty, it sent a chill up her spine. He’d snapped out of it, but his “moods,” as Mrs. Preiss called them, started to come more frequently and stay longer and longer. It was as if something evil had snaked in through the open window and stolen his soul, leaving behind an impostor father who did not love any of the things—or people—Olive’s father had loved.
Olive and the Backstage Ghost Page 7