Read Online The Year of Shadows by Claire Legrand - Free Book Online

more trouble. Anger stewed in the back of my throat.
    Mrs. Farrity sighed.
    “You’re coming with me to Principal Cooper’s office.” She took my hand, her grip pinching my skin. “Mark, I’ll deal with you later. And don’t you think you can try something like that again. I’m sending over Mr. Hawthorne from next door. Do you hear me, everyone?”
    “Yes, ma’am.”
    “Mrs. Farrity, please .” Joan actually stamped her foot. “Olivia was just defending herself. She’s well within her rights. This is completely unjust!”
    “All right, Joan. You’re coming too.”
    “Fine.” Joan put her arm around me stiffly. “I will come, and I’ll be her defendant. I witnessed everything. I know the truth.”
    In the principal’s office, Mrs. Farrity whispered some things to Ms. Renshaw, who had a cloud of blond hair and gave us pieces of chocolate when Mrs. Farrity’s back was turned. Then Mrs. Farrity filled out some papers and left, and Ms. Renshaw led us into Principal Cooper’s office.
    Principal Cooper watched me and Joan for a minute. We sat across from him in hard black plastic chairs. I don’t know about Joan, but I stared at the ceiling, refusing to look at him. I didn’t have anything to say to Principal Cooper. I hadn’t done anything wrong.
    “Well?” he said. “Why don’t one of you tell me what happened?”
    “Principal Cooper, my name is Joan Dawson,” Joan said, breathlessly, “and I witnessed the incident myself. I’m here to offer testimony on behalf of the accused.”
    “Miss Dawson ,” said Principal Cooper. He rubbed his forehead. I got the feeling he and Joan had done this before. “Why don’t you let Miss Stellatella talk first?”
    Joan cleared her throat. “I, Joan Elizabeth Dawson, do solemnly swear—”
    “Miss Dawson, that’s quite enough.” Principal Cooper called Ms. Renshaw to take Joan into the other room.
    “Don’t let him pressure you, Olivia,” Joan hissed, digging in her heels at the door. “You’re innocent!”
    After Joan left, Principal Cooper’s eyes crinkled tiredly at me. Was everyone tired these days? Richard Ashley, Mr. Rue, even me. I wanted Mom. I wanted to go home—tothe home we’d had, the home where Mom had watched me draw like it was the coolest thing in the world.
    The home before everything started to go wrong, when the Maestro still had dinner with us and let me sit on his lap while he studied his scores.
    “What key is this in, Olivia?” he would say.
    Four sharps. Easy as pie. “E major!”
    Principal Cooper cleared his throat. “How are things at home, Miss Stellatella?”
    I stared at his desk. “Fine.”
    “Are you sure?”
    I opened my mouth, closed it, and opened it again. I didn’t know what to say. I didn’t know what he knew, and I couldn’t say, I live at Emerson Hall, in the back storage rooms with bad plumbing, and Nonnie is small, and Richard Ashley is tired. I couldn’t tell him about the ghosts or show him my burn. What would he say? What would he think?
    Even worse, what would he do ? Somewhere there was probably a law against kids living in music halls.
    So I said nothing.
    “I know about the Philharmonic,” Principal Cooper said gently. “About the orchestra. I know it must be . . . difficult.”
    “It’s fine,” I said. “We’ll be fine.”
    After a long time, Principal Cooper said something about a counselor and a letter home, but I wasn’t really listening. They let me stay in the nurse’s office for the rest of the day. They wanted to watch me, they said. When they pulleddown my scarf to inspect my arm, they found nothing; my burn had disappeared. They asked me questions about my eating habits, and other things too, but my brain was too shocked to think. When they left me, I peeled back my scarf again.
    Nothing. It was gone. I tried to find some sort of explanation, and couldn’t, except for one: None of it had been real. We really had hallucinated the whole thing, me and Henry, like mass