The nanny spotted them first. Van saw her mouth open wide as she shouted something, her finger pointing in his direction.
Ingrid Markson whirled around. “Giovanni!” In spite of her high heels, she was next to him in two seconds. She wrapped him up in both arms. Van sagged against her for a moment, feeling safe and grateful and very glad it was her hands clutching him instead of Jack’s—although he wished it wasn’t right in front of a knot of staring boys.
“What were you thinking?” his mother demanded, pulling back so that Van could see her face—although she was speaking loudly enough for Van (and the entire street) to hear. “Why would you jump out of a window and run away? In a city like this? What on earth were you thinking?” She grabbed his scraped hand. “And what happened to you? Are you all right?”
Van’s mouth opened. Nothing came out.
“A minor collision with a bicyclist,” said Mr. Falborg. “I saw it happen. I was too late to do anything else, I’m afraid.”
“You were hit by a bicycle?” His mother squeezed Van’s face between her lily-scented palms. “Are you hurt? Did you hit your head?”
The police officer and the crying nanny were heading toward them. The other boys, except for Peter, had edged closer. They were still throwing acorns at one another, but they were clearly eavesdropping at the same time.
Van still couldn’t quite shove his thoughts into order. And his mouth was too tightly squished between his mother’s hands for any words to get out anyway. “Uh,” he began.
“I believe he landed on his side,” Mr. Falborg put in helpfully. “I hope you won’t mind me intruding, Signorina Markson—I’m Ivor Falborg. I’m a member of the Opera Guild. We first met at the gala last March.”
“Oh, yes. Mr. Falborg,” said Van’s mother. “How lucky that you were there.” Her eyes flashed back to Van. “You still haven’t explained what you thought you were doing.”
Van swallowed. His mind hopped from the open window to Barnavelt the squirrel to the white cat he had used as a squirrel stand-in on his miniature stage, and from there to—
“I saw a stray cat,” he blurted.
“A stray cat?” his mother repeated.
“It was in the yard. I thought it might be lost. So I tried to catch it.”
Van’s mother looked as though he’d just tried to force-feed her a dog biscuit. She leaned back, lips pursed. “You jumped out of a window and ran away from a birthday party because you saw a cat that might have been lost?”
The police officer and the weeping nanny joined them. The other boys sidled even closer.
“Yes,” said Van. “That was why.”
Ingrid Markson rose gracefully to her full height. “Apparently he was chasing a stray cat,” she told the crowd. “I’m so sorry for the trouble, officer. And Mr. Falborg, it was very kind of you to give us your time.”
“Ms. Markson,” said the nanny, looking very wobbly, “I am so—so—I just didn’t—”
“It wasn’t your fault.” Van’s mother patted the nanny’s arm. “It wasn’t anyone’s fault but Van’s.”
“And the cat’s,” said Van, but everyone ignored him.
“. . . like everyone is where they should be,” said the police officer. He nodded at Van’s mother and the nanny before turning toward the police car. “I’ll let you finish your party.”
“The party’s over,” said a loud voice.
Everyone looked around.
Peter hadn’t moved from his seat on the curb. “David already had to leave,” he said. “Everyone else is getting picked up in ten minutes. And we spent the whole time out here, staring into people’s yards. I didn’t even get to open my presents.”
“Peter!” said the nanny reprovingly. “Van is safe. That’s what matters.”
Peter’s eyes met Van’s. Peter’s eyes were that cool shade of blue that made Van think of outdoor swimming pools. They narrowed, and the water darkened, and Van could practically feel Peter’s chilly hatred flooding up and over him.
“I’m sure Giovanni is very sorry for disrupting the party.” Ingrid Markson’s voice was loud enough to push Van forward. Her fingers finished the job. “Aren’t you, Giovanni?”
Van took a step toward Peter. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
Peter turned his face to the side. His voice was only a mutter, and Van couldn’t quite follow his lips, but he was pretty sure Peter had said, “You should be.”
Van slid a hand into his pocket and pressed the little china squirrel between his fingertips. “Thank you for inviting me to your party,” he said, giving Peter his brightest smile. “I had a wonderful time.”
When they reached the apartment, Van’s mother washed his scraped hand, tutted over his scuffed pants, and then sent him straight to his room.
Van had been about to go there anyway.
After making sure the door was firmly shut, Van took out his hearing aids and pulled his collection out from under the bed. He rummaged through the box until he uncovered the velvet drawstring bag he’d found on the floor of a French department store.
Van tugged the blue glass bottle out of his pocket. Holding it up to the light, he turned the bottle from side to side. Peter Grey. April 8. Twelfth birthday. Inside, the silvery wisp glimmered softly. Peter’s wish.
What had Peter wished for? Van wondered. He squinted into the bottle, searching for a clue in the spinning silver smoke, but there was nothing. Nothing that Van could see, anyway. How many other stolen wishes were sealed up in that underground chamber? Millions? Billions? And why were the dark-coated people stealing them in the first place?
Slowly Van slipped the bottle into the drawstring bag. He placed the bag at the very bottom of the box, under a heap of other treasures.
Van turned to the miniature stage. He cleared away the plastic dinosaurs he’d arranged there yesterday, and placed SuperVan and Pawn Girl in the center. He set the stolen china squirrel between them. He rummaged through the treasure box until he found the rusty model garbage truck.
Vrrooommm. SCREEEECH. The garbage truck hurtled around a busy city corner. The tiny gray squirrel had no time to flee. Pawn Girl watched in horror as the truck’s heavy tires barreled closer—
And then, from above, there came a streak of red and black.
SuperVan swept in front of the garbage truck, diving so close that his cape whooshed across its front bumper like a big dustcloth. He scooped the squirrel into his arms and soared back into the air, while the truck rumbled away into the distance.
“You saved Barnavelt!” shouted Pawn Girl as SuperVan landed gracefully on the sidewalk.
“Yeah! You saved me! You’re a lifesaver! I love Lifesavers!” cheered the squirrel. “And I love Skittles, and Starbursts, and—”
“It was nothing,” said SuperVan modestly.
“No. You’re a hero.” Pawn Girl moved closer. “You’ve proved that we can trust you. So now . . . we’re going to tell you all of our secrets.”
Van looked at Pawn Girl. He looked at the miniature squirrel. But for some reason, here, in his own ordinary bedroom, he couldn’t imagine what might come next.
He was still gazing at the silent stage when a raven landed on his windowsill.
Its clever, pointed face flicked from side to side. It took in the scene behind the glass: the preoccupied boy, the miniature stage, the tiny china squirrel. Its beady eyes winked. Then it spread its wings and soared down to the shoulder of a man in a long black coat who was waiting on the twilit sidewalk.
The raven croaked softly into the man’s ear. Then the man turned and strode away, with the raven still perched on his shoulder, and no one on the sidewalk, or in the street, or in the high, busy buildings to either side noticed that they had been there at all.
10
Hair Wreaths and Even Stranger Things
“WHY can’t I just stay at home?” Van asked the next morning, as he scurried along the sidewalk in his mother’s lily-scented shadow. “I don’t want to spend a whole Saturday at your rehearsal.”
“You know why,” said his mother. “You’ve shown me that I can’t trust you to stay where you’re supposed to. This is a big, dangerous city, and you’re very small and very special.” She placed a hand on Van’s head in a way that made Van squirm away. “Besides, I happen to know that Peter will be there.”
The memory of Peter’s ice-water eyes—and the thought of the stolen squirrel and the little blue glass bottle, both of which were currently hidden in his treasure box—pulled Van’s stomach into a knot.
“Peter hates me,” he said.
“I’m sure he doesn’t hate you,” said his mother. “But maybe you could be especially nice to him to make up for disrupting his party.”
“Maybe,” said Van doubtfully.
“Charles and I would love it if you two spent a little more time together,” his mother went on. “You’d be good for each other.”
“Good for each other?” said Van. “Like . . . broccoli?”
“Like broccoli and broccolini!” sang his mother.
For a second, Van thought about making a break for it. He pictured himself taking off like SuperVan, his body a caped streak bulleting through the city. . . . But even his imaginary self couldn’t outrun his real mother. She’d have nabbed him by the next corner.
Van slumped over and stared at the sidewalk.
Wads of old gum. Bottle caps. A few crumpled flower petals. And there, under a shrub, something with glittering black eyes.
Van crouched so suddenly that his mother nearly knocked into him.
“Giovanni, what on earth—” she began.
But Van wasn’t listening. He edged closer to the thing in the leafy shadows. Maybe it was Jack’s raven, with its beak like a sharpened pencil. Maybe it was one of Nail’s rats. Whatever it was, it was something alive. Something that stared back at him. Heart thumping, he reached out and swept back the branches.
Beneath the shrub was a tiny, trembling ball of gray fuzz.
“It’s a baby bird!” cried Van. The bird blinked at him with ink-drop eyes. One crooked wing gave a twitch. “I think it’s hurt!”
“Oh,” said his mother. “It must have fallen out of its nest. Poor thing.”
“What should we do?”
“Giovanni . . .” His mother sighed. “These things happen. And we have to go, or I’ll be late.”
Van pulled his arm out of his mother’s grasp. “We can’t just leave it!”
His mother sighed again. “It’s outdoors, where it belongs. Don’t touch it. I’m sure it has mites or rabies.”
“Birds don’t get rabies,” said Van, who actually wasn’t sure about this. “We have to help it!”
“Giovanni, it’s a wild creature. You can’t just bring home a crow or a sparrow or a—a—”
“A baby robin,” said a polite voice.
So quietly that Van hadn’t noticed it, a man in a white suit had stopped beside them. Van looked up and found himself washed in the warmth of Mr. Falborg’s crinkly smile.
“You have sharp eyes, Master Markson.” Mr. Falborg beamed. “And Signorina Markson, what a pleasure to run into the world’s greatest lyric soprano two days in a row! My lucky stars must be aligned.”
“That’s very sweet of you, Mr. Falborg.” Van’s mother glowed back at him. “Van and I were just on our way to the opera, as a matter of fact.”
“I wasn’t,” said Van. “I’m not leaving the bird here.”
“Giovanni,” said his mother, in a voice that began to take on that cathedral ring.
“May I make a suggestion?” Mr. Falborg asked. “I could take the robin to an excellent animal hospital nearby. It’s where I bring my Renata for her annual checkup. Renata is my Persian cat. Like Renata Tebaldi, she’s quite the diva.” His smile shifted back to Van. “And if it’s all right with you, Signorina Markson, I’d be happy to take Van with me.”
Van whirled around. “Can I, Mom? Please?”
“I’ll bring him directly to the opera house afterward,” Mr. Falborg offered. “If you say yes, that is.”
He paused, waiting for an answer. Mr. Falborg’s face looked so warm and crinkly, Van didn’t know how anyone could have said no.
Van’s mother didn’t say it either. “All right.” She bent down to give Van a kiss on the forehead. “But you behave yourself. Do you hear me, Giovanni?”
“I hear you,” mumbled Van.
“It’s a good thing you spotted that little creature,” said Mr. Falborg as Ingrid Markson hurried away. He tugged a blue silk handkerchief out of his vest pocket. “Without you, he probably wouldn’t have survived. There.” He bent down and swaddled the bird in the handkerchief. “It can think it’s safe in the sky.”
The animal hospital was just two blocks away. On the walk there, Van found a quarter and a Lego knight, which made the morning seem even sunnier. They left the baby robin in the care of a friendly veterinary technician, who promised that the bird would be cared for and released into the wild, and Mr. Falborg asked her to send the bill to his home address, and he and Van strolled back out into the street.
They gave each other job-well-done smiles. Then Van thought of Peter Grey, and of the rehearsal room at the opera where everything was loud and blurry and boring, and of all the other things he could be doing on a sunny summer Saturday. He let out a sigh.
“Something wrong?” asked Mr. Falborg.
“Just . . . I don’t really want to go to the opera. And rehearsal doesn’t get done until three, so I’ll have to sit there for hours.”
“Hmm.” Mr. Falborg looked thoughtful. “What if you were at the opera house long before the end of rehearsal, but you spent the rest of the time at my home instead?”
Van felt his face crinkle into a Mr. Falborg kind of smile. “That would be good.”
Mr. Falborg’s house, like Mr. Falborg himself, was tall and tidy. Its five stories of white brick were wreathed by a yard of sculpted bushes and trees, and its door was painted the same shade of sky blue as Mr. Falborg’s handkerchief.
“Please come in,” said Mr. Falborg, as they stepped over the threshold into a high-ceilinged foyer.
Van, who had expected to see numbered apartment doors on either side, let out a little gasp. “You have the whole building?”
“It’s been in my family for quite some time. Ah! Gerda!” Mr. Falborg exclaimed, as a middle-aged lady in a neat gray suit appeared at the other end of the hall. “Let me introduce Giovanni Markson, son of renowned soprano Ingrid Markson.”
“People just call me Van,” said Van timidly.
“Ni-yis to meet you.” Gerda spoke with a swoopy accent that Van couldn’t quite identify. She gave him a warm smile. “Mr. Falborg . . . tree calls from the Venetian dealer dis afternoon.”
“Thank you, Gerda.” Mr. Falborg turned toward Van. “Would you excuse me for just a moment? Please make yourself comfortable in the front room.” He ushered Van toward an arched doorway. “Perhaps Gerda can find us some refreshments.”
Gerda strode down the hall toward the back of the house, Mr. Falborg turned to the right, and Van was left to tiptoe through the arched doorway.
He found himself inside a large front room. The walls were white, and chandeliers hung from the white ceiling, and white armchairs were arranged around a large fireplace whose bricks and mantelpiece had all been painted white. But that was where the whiteness ended. Jungly ferns poured from hanging baskets. Built-in bookcases shone with worn, warm-hued hardcovers. The walls were covered with frames of all shapes and sizes, and each frame held something different: a cut-paper silhouette, an antique postcard, a bunch of butterflies pinned in place.
More curios covered every flat surface. Glossy seashells. Wooden ships in bottles. Old metal toys. Lifelike flowers carved out of stone. Very carefully, Van touched the trunk of a cast-iron elephant. The trunk bent down and snapped back up into place. Van jumped.
“Lemonade and ginger cookies,” said Gerda’s voice, making Van jump again. “Please help yerself.” She set a t
ray on a table and whisked back out the door.
Van sidled around the low white couch and took a nibble of one of the cookies. It was so brittle and spicy that it seemed to be trying to bite him back.
“. . . see . . . fresh mints every . . . ,” said Mr. Falborg’s voice over his shoulder. I see the refreshments have arrived.
Van turned. “Mrs. Gerda . . . um, Mrs. . . . your wife brought them.”
“I hope my wife wouldn’t call me ‘Mr. Falborg.’” Mr. Falborg smiled. “Gerda and her husband, Hans, help run my home. They also help to manage my business matters—sales and purchases and so forth. And they make this big place less lonely. Otherwise, it would be just me and my collections.” He gestured around the room. “They take up plenty of space, but they aren’t much company. Mechanical banks, stamps, marbles, hair wreaths—”
Van was pretty sure he’d heard this wrong. “Hair wreaths?”
“Victorian arrangements made from human hair,” Mr. Falborg explained. “I’ve only been collecting them for the last decade or so. But some of my collections are the work of a lifetime. My opera albums, my paperweights . . .” His blue eyes grew even brighter. “You can see for yourself, if you’ll come with me.”
Mr. Falborg led the way through another arch, around a corner, to a pair of closed doors. He threw the doors open and flicked on the lights. The entire room twinkled to life.
“Ohhh,” Van breathed.
The room was packed with lighted glass cabinets of the kind that Van had seen only in fancy jewelry stores. Each shelf of every cabinet was filled with glass bubbles, all different colors, all glinting softly. Van’s mind flashed to the chamber full of shimmering bottles . . . but Mr. Falborg was opening a cabinet and lifting something out, and Van quickly dragged his mind back.
“This is one of the oldest in my collection,” Mr. Falborg said, holding out an orb of green glass clustered with gold spirals. “I found it in an antique shop in New Orleans when I wasn’t much older than you are. With that, I was hooked.”
Van gazed around at the galaxy of paperweights. Some were filled with frozen cyclones of bubbles, some with layers of colored glass that looked like jellyfish legs, some with flowers that must have been picked a hundred years ago. “Wow,” he murmured.
The Collectors Page 6