Ophelia and the Marvelous Boy Read Online Free PDF Page B

from behind the doors.
    Then another noise. A noise more terrible than the first. The sound of something very sharp on the marble floor.
    A
click, clack
.
    A
scritch, scratch
.
    The sound of talons.
    The distinct sound of claws.
    Ophelia scooped up the key and began to run. She ran and did not look back. She turned the corner and sped toward the elevator, waiting with its open mouth. Each room she passed, the sound grew louder. The click, clack, rustle, sigh, scratch, and now the rattling of the doorknobs. Something was trying to escape. She slipped on the marble floor in the large open room, skidded on her denim bottom into the elevator, scrambled onto her knees, slammed the number 3 with her fist, and fell backward as the door closed.

3
    In which Miss Kaminski returns for Ophelia and looks at her suspiciously
    Ophelia could not breathe. She couldn’t breathe when she stepped out of the elevator. She couldn’t breathe when she stood pretending to carefully study
Triceratops
. She couldn’t breathe when Alice and Miss Kaminski returned for her.
    She took a squirt on her puffer.
    Then another.
    “Are you okay?” said Alice.
    “Yes,” squeaked Ophelia.
    “You’re as cold as ice,” said Alice, touching her sister’s cheek.
    She wrapped her scarf around Ophelia’s neck. It reminded Ophelia of the old Alice. The Alice before their mother was ill. The Alice who took the stairs three at a time and sang into her hairbrush and laughed loudly on the phone to her friends. The Alice who held Ophelia’s hand and lent her hair-clips and offered kind and well-meant, if not utterly useless, fashion advice.
    Ophelia could feel the key heavy in her left pocket, where she had carefully stowed it. She was sure Miss Kaminski must be aware of it. Surely there was a light shining from her pocket announcing to the world that she, Ophelia, was a thief.
    Miss Kaminski looked at her rather suspiciously. She bent down and touched Ophelia’s cheeks with her very cold hands, which only made her feel more freezing.
    “Look,” said Alice, and she turned her head to show an antique lace flower clip in her long blond hair. “Miss Kaminski said I could borrow it from the collection.”
    Alice had put away her headphones. Her cheeks were flushed. She pointed to a little pink diamond brooch on her coat lapel and held out a turquoise ring on her finger.
    Miss Kaminski smiled. The museum curator knelt down in front of Ophelia. “And did you enjoy the dinosaurs, Miss Amelia?” she asked.
    “Oh yes,” Ophelia squeaked again, too scared to correct Miss Kaminski. “I did very much.”
    Miss Kaminski deposited the sisters in the sword workroom and did not stay long. She said she was continuing preparations for the greatest and most remarkable sword of all to be unlocked from its city vault in two days’ time to take its place of pride in the exhibition.
    “Mr. Whittard, when you see this sword, your heart will stop,” Miss Kaminski said.
    Ophelia watched her father try to speak in the presence of the beautiful museum curator. He nodded, fumbled with hisglasses, then managed to knock over a cup filled with pens. Alice sighed loudly. As soon as Miss Kaminski was gone, Ophelia jumped up.
    “I have to go somewhere,” she said.
    “Aren’t we going skating?” shouted Alice.
    “I won’t be too long,” said Ophelia, already halfway up the stairs.
    She ran through the galleries until she found the narrow corridor that led to the room filled with teaspoons. Her feet led her then. Through the telephones, the mirrors, the elephants, the wolves. She slipped through the crowd ogling the Wintertide Clock in the
Gallery of Time
. She raced down the hallway filled with gloomy paintings of girls.
    She stopped there because she was out of breath.
    And because she thought it must be sad to be a painting of a girl that no one ever stopped to look at.
    She walked slowly down the corridor, gazing at each girl or almost every girl—there were so many of them,