Hope. Freshly soured.
I remember leaning over the water. Holding my breath. The sinking feeling when there was nothing before me but silver water, clear enough to see ink drops of tadpoles against the sand and silt.
I’d trudged back to town, my legs tiring and as heavy as lead. But then I’d seen Matilda, and everything had suddenly felt so much lighter. Brighter. The air, my legs, even the future.
She had been alone. Beautiful, beautiful Matilda, with her hair fluttering like red feathers.
“Have you seen Juliet?” Matilda asked, her eyes wide with panic. “I’m worried about her.”
“No,” I said. My mouth was dry, as it always was when I was near her.
“What’s wrong?” Matilda knew me well enough to notice. She even reached out and touched my arm.
I looked into her eyes, green and speckled with gold. I would have told her anything at all, if she looked at me like that. I licked my dry lips. “I couldn’t see my reflection,” I admitted.
“Don’t feel bad. Neither could anyone else,” she’d said kindly. “No one but Juliet. That’s why we need to find her.”
“But why her?” The question exploded from me with such fierceness that Matilda dropped my arm and took a step back. “It doesn’t make any sense,” I said, softening. Wanting her to close the distance between us again. “If Juliet can, then why can’t I?”
“What do you mean?” she asked. Confusion had crossed her smooth, pretty face.
It should have been obvious.
“Because—?because I’m her brother.”
“But . . . you’re not related by blood . . .” she said.
I gaped at her, unable to breathe.
“Is that what Juliet told you?”
And something inside me snapped then. As if I were a lock. Finally coming undone after just the right combination of clicks.
Chapter Fifty-One
Beas’s bicycle is leaning against the fence by the time I arrive at George’s. I find them both in the clearing behind his house, laying a kindling foundation for the bonfire.
“Did you walk here?” George asks, eyeing my muddy shoes as he breaks a stick over his knee.
“I needed to stretch my muscles,” I say.
“How very Elizabeth Bennet of you,” Beas says. Her hair is pulled up in a knot on her head, her bangs poufed in a wave that grazes her eyebrows. They stand and clap for me as I set my bag in the grass. “Stop,” I laugh, waving them off.
George rolls up a newspaper and sticks one of Daisy’s articles about the tournament between the slats of kindling.
“George, I saw you making amends with Margeaux today,” Beas notes, sharpening a stick with a Swiss army knife. “Did you manage to bury the hatchet?”
“Hardly. I’m pretty sure she still wants to cut me,” George says, stuffing in another tight ball of newspaper.
“I’m pretty sure that’s not what she wants to do to you,” I mutter under my breath.
“What?” Beas breaks out into hysterical laughter. “Are you serious? Margeaux Templeton is keen on George?”
“Almost certainly,” I say, settling on the stump of an old tree.
George’s jaw falls open. “You think Margeaux is stuck on me?” He taps a book of matches against his palm, then adds thoughtfully, “She’s actually kind of cute, I guess . . .”
Beas and I catch each other’s side glances. I smother a merciless burst of laughter.
“So are you ready for Variant Innovation?”
“I wanted to do the music Variant, obviously, but working with Dr. Cliffton disqualified it. So I have something else,” he says, lighting the match to the paper. “Underwhelming.”
Beas raises her stick threateningly toward him. “Show us, Mackelroy.”
George pours us two mugs of tea from his thermos and spreads several pouches of Variants at our feet before picking one up and dusting it over a sprig of mint. When he dips the mint into the tea, it instantly hisses and crackles, like ice cubes clinking together, and the mugs become frosted and chilled. “Voila,” he says. “Mint iced tea. Try it.”
Beas and I clink our mugs together and then take a sip.
“Mmm,” I say.
“Amazing, George,” Beas echoes.
“It’s really just a glorified version of ice,” George says, kicking the dirt. “But I’m hoping to make a version for human use. A companion to the Warming Variants, for cooling off in the summer.”
“Impressive. How did you do it?” I ask.
“Mint root,” he says.
“Mint root,” I note. I’ve taken to hauling my Shakespeare book with me everywhere, and I pull it from my bag. “I bet I’ll find it in here.”
“Really, this again?” George says, and Beas shows her loyalty by poking him in the side with her stick.
“Yow,” he says, rubbing his shirt. “Don’t get sand in your eye. I just mean—?why are you so stuck on the Shakespeare thing?”
“Because she’s found every single Disappearance there . . .” Beas says proudly. “And all the Variants. And a seven-year connection—?well, really I found that one. But she might have told you earlier if you hadn’t been so quick to shut her down the first time.”
“All right, all right,” George says, throwing a stick into the catching fire. “So catch me up. You really found them all?”
I nod, and they both look at me expectantly, settling into their seats. The fire catches hot and bright, throwing shadows onto their faces.
“It started because I wanted something of my mother’s,” I tell them, remembering my last day in Gardner all those months ago. “I ended up taking this book.”
I open the cover. “She’d written all over it,” I say, showing them the pages. “She was planning to send it to someone she grew up with in Sterling. I actually found her old ring hidden here—” I slip my fingers into the fold of the back cover. That first day, I’d felt only the smooth surface of the stone. But there is something else in there now. Something I’d missed before.
My fingers graze the edges of a small folded envelope.
I fish it out.
“Go on. So what’s that?” George asks. But I don’t answer him. I see the name “Stefen Shaw” written as the sender, my own familiar Gardner address scrawled across the front.
My hands betray the smallest tremor as I open it. There are two items folded inside: a handwritten letter and a sketch page that’s old and warped with creases.
I’m vaguely aware of Beas and George coming to stand over my shoulder.
“Dear Viola—” the letter starts, and I think, Why Viola? again—?the same name Mother had used in her letter to him.
Some time has passed since your last letter, which I’ll admit has me curious. Phineas and I have been very eager to hear from you.
Well, perhaps this will inspire a response. I have a riddle for you, for old times’ sake. Something I’ve been working on, similar to the Variants. Something big. I’ll give you a hint as to what it is. Find it within the pages of “our” play.
“What does thou mean? . . . I did think, by the excellent constitution of thy leg, it was formed under the star of a galliard.”