Spark Read Online Free Page B

Food” propped in the front window. Mom’s store, Potions Perfumery, is on the south side; Ferguson’s Music (where Dylan works after school) is on the east. The rest of the storefronts on all three sides are empty, dusty, filled with signs that beg for someone to rent them.
    On the north stands the old Avery Theater—a building large enough to take up the entire side of the square. The saddest of all the dilapidated buildings, the Avery these days is an old woman whose family contends was once the town beauty. Any ornate gold detail has tarnished and blackened. Many of the windows are both broken and boarded up; several along the first floor are concealed by overgrown, wild shrubbery. The second story is marked by rotten windowsills, the glass of the windows all old enough to have turned purple. The roof is littered with thick, clumsy patches of black tar; old gargoyles are missing parts of their faces. Darkened bricks across the front of the building are tattooed with spray-painted warnings: “Keep Out!” “No Trespassing!!” “Stay AWAY!”
    â€œI always dreamed about that place being open,” Cass admits, pausing on the sidewalk to point at the old theater.
    â€œYeah,” I say quietly. “I know.” I hate the look Cass is wearing. The same look I figure most people wear when they’re sentenced to jail time for something they didn’t do.
    â€œBut this—I mean, I love the Avery. I love your mom. I love that she thinks I can—but I just—” She turns her pleading eyes toward me. “I don’t think I can do this.”
    â€œBut it won’t be you ,” I try to reason. “Right? You’ll be a character.”
    She doesn’t answer.
    The bottom of Cass’s purple-and-blue floral print maxidress flutters around her ankles as she hurries into Duds.
    Vanessa, the thirty-something owner who looks young enough to pass for our sister, glances up from the back of her point-and-shoot. She does her selling online—so much so, I always wind up wondering about the need for a storefront. Or an employee. But Cass would hang out here for free.
    â€œWhoa. You guys get in a wreck on your way over here?” she asks. “What’s with the faces?”
    â€œMom’s decided we’re doing a production of Anything Goes . In order to raise money for the Avery,” I tell her.
    â€œThat’s kind of fantastic, though, isn’t it? I thought you two were always interested in that place. Aren’t you the one,” she goes on, looking right at me, “who told Cass about whathappened inside? To those two kids? And didn’t you get all teary-eyed about it? Get so worked up about it that you used the word ‘died’? The old place ‘died,’ you said. How sad it all was. Now your mom’s trying to save the place and you still look sad. Isn’t saving the Avery a good thing?”
    â€œCass got the lead,” I say. “Hope Harcourt.”
    Vanessa swivels in time to watch Cass rake her fingers through her dirty-blond hair in a way that makes it tumble over the birthmark.
    â€œOh,” Vanessa grumbles. She’s still staring. Still trying to think of something to say.
    But my you’ll be another person on the stage line of reasoning didn’t exactly make Cass feel any better, and I’m a little afraid if Vanessa says anything at this point, Cass might burst into tears. So I point toward a rack in the back—the one with the records—and say, “How can you stand to work in here without a soundtrack keeping you company?”
    While Duds is primarily a vintage-clothing store—the place is crammed with round mirror-topped dress racks labeled by the decade—plenty of pop culture gems fill the side shelves, too: Enid Collins box bags and disco ball–shaped 8-track players and lava lamps and flatware with Bakelite handles. And records, in the back corner. A