“Elixirs take time. I can’t just snap my fingers—”
“The homecoming dance is in two weeks. I’m in kind of a hurry.” Her tweezed brows squeeze closer together, as if to invoke sympathy, but then she snaps her gum and the effect is lost. A moment later, she breezes toward the locker room. Melanie hurries after her.
Kali scratches at the black tattoo bands on her upper arm, then her neck and her shoulder blades. Hives have started popping up on her skin.
“Come on.” Instead of continuing to the locker room, I pull her to a planter of aloe vera near the lunch tables. The plant grows wild in this area. “We’ll think of something.” I break off an aloe vera tip and hand it to her. “Rub this on the itchy spots.”
Kali rubs the plant on the welts on her arms. “Nasty she-squirrels. Wish I could dump ’em.”
According to Kali, squirrels are the most vicious animals, cute but dangerous. She eyes a rubber trash can at the end of Drew Reaver’s table. The year I met her, Kali got suspended from the eighth grade for dumping a boy in the trash bin.
She clenches a fist and begins to get to her feet. “Maybe I will dump her.”
I pull her back down by the arm. “No. You’re always telling those Puddle Jumpers, ‘If the puddles get too big to jump over, just step through them,’ remember?” Kali said if her mom hadn’t started bringing her to hip-hop classes at the Puddle Jumpers Center, she’d probably be in juvie by now.
She scowls, but doesn’t get up. From Drew Reaver’s table, someone yells, “Eat dust, baby!” Drew opens a carton of chocolate milk and guzzles it.
I take a long drink from my own water bottle, though it doesn’t erase the bad taste in my mouth. Blackmail. If I don’t make Vicky’s potion, she’ll out Kali. People love their traditional values here in Santa Guadalupe, where the grass even grows to the right. But I would never do something so wrong as fix Court.
I’ll give Vicky a potion. A sprinkle of durian in her powder will make her olive skin turn orange for a day. “I could give her a fake elixir . . .”
“She’d know when Court doesn’t ask her to the ball.”
I cut my eyes back to Drew, sprawled over the table like a spider with his pale white arms poking out from a T-shirt with a picture of a succubus. His dark blond hair hangs in greasy ringlets below his ears, but his face is scrubbed. “What happened on that episode of Animal Planet when the tiger was chasing the gazelle, then another gazelle came along?”
Kali puts down her aloe stub. “The tiger went hungry. And?”
“Ask any predatory cat. It’s virtually impossible to pursue two prey at once.”
Kali follows my gaze to Drew. “You’re going to fix her with Drew?”
“Shh!” I put my chin on my hand and chew on my lip. Vicky threw the first nut. It would be foolish to let her strike without polishing up a few of my own. Drew likes her anyway. It might be the perfect match.
Drew looks up at us. He lifts his chocolate milk at Kali. “Haven’t seen you at Stan’s lately.”
“Been watching my weight,” she yells back to him.
“Cool.”
I strain for Drew’s scent, and Kali waves a hand in front of me. “Earth to Cupid. Abort plan. If I’m standing in the light, you’d better stand there, too.”
“So you don’t mind if certain laundry is aired?”
“Of course I mind.” Kali’s lips squish together.
“Exactly.” I catch Drew’s scent. Horseradish, beavertail, potatoes . . .
Kali frowns at me.
“You don’t like it because you’re a good person, not a squirrel.”
Her face tightens. “That’s bonk—hooking someone up with a freak show like that.”
“Drew’s a nice guy.”
“I was talking about Vicky.”
I snort. “The elixir just opens the eyes. If there’s no spark, nothing will happen. But if there is, that’s two more passengers aboard the Goodlove blimp. She might thank me one day.”
“Give her the fake elixir for Court if you want, but don’t fix her with Drew for me. That must break a dozen rules.” She chucks the aloe stub into a bush.
I clamp my lip. She’s right. Aromateurs can’t go fixing anyone we choose.
Not to mention, today’s mistake is so big, you could probably see it from space.
FIVE
“DANDELION,
A YELLOW SUN TRANSFORMS INTO A WHITE PUFF OF MOON,
THEN FEELS THE BREATH OF WISHFULNESS, AND SCATTERS
ITS SEEDS, LIKE STARS INTO AN EMPTY SPACE.”
—Ixia, Aromateur, 1771