“WE ARE EACH A RAINBOW. EVERY RANK ONE OF US.”
—Gladys, Aromateur, 1855
ON THE FAR side of the stadium field, a break in the shrubs leads to the main street. The red-and-white windsock fronting the school points east. It’s been there so long, no one notices it anymore, much less uses it, even though the wind can tell a lot about the weather. It strikes me that windsocks are like most people’s noses, outdated sources of information, more seen than used.
Near the windsock, Court waits in his Jeep. I slide into the leather seat. There’s a sports magazine on the floor along with a box of number-two pencils. A soccer ball medallion swings from the mirror. How many girls would pay to be in my shoes? How many girls have been in my shoes?
I sniff. The synthetic scents almost always overpower the natural ones and can stick around for months. I count seven different perfumes billowing around me, trapped and ripened in the closed car. One of them is Vicky’s Poison Apple. Though the scent’s months old, my stomach tightens. I also detect potato chips, a whiff of marijuana, and sand mingling with Court’s own scent.
We swing onto northbound 101. Court merges, waving in his mirror to the guy who let us in.
The tan leather of the backseat has been worn shiny. I sniff out of habit, and the human smells from that part of the car bring a blush to my cheeks. I have to stop snooping with my nose. Just because it’s second nature doesn’t mean it’s right, like unlocking every door you encounter just because you own a skeleton key.
Court glances at me sitting stiffly in my seat, my cheeks baking. “Is everything okay?”
“Sure.”
“I’m sorry about that back there.” His face is somber, and so is his smell—yarrow with undertones of barn dust, like opening an old photo album.
“You don’t need to apologize for Vicky.” I weigh whether to tell him of the blackmail. No. He would confront her, and she’d know we ratted on her.
I could swear him to secrecy before I told him, but if he thought I was keeping things from him, the fragile threads of our temporary alliance could break. Besides, secrets have a way of untying on their own, though I cringe to think of my own secrets.
Court presses his fingers into the bones at the base of his neck, glancing at me uncertainly. “I’m also sorry about yesterday. I was kind of a jerk.”
“That’s okay. I would be angry, too.”
“Well, I’m not mad anymore. I’m more—I don’t know how I feel.”
I sniff, though his mood scents are as loud to my nose as the trio of Harley-Davidson motorcycles rumbling by. “You smell sad—”
He blinks, but when he notices me watching him, he shrugs. “Go on.”
Awkwardly, I nose on. “I also smell guilt, which smells like cough syrup, mixed with loneliness—baby’s tears.”
“Baby’s tears?”
“It’s a kind of moss. There’s also rabbit litter. Er, that means insecurity.”
“I smell like rabbit litter.” His face has acquired a pinched look. Clearly I’ve gone too far. He glances at me biting my lip. “Please continue. I’m enjoying this.”
I clear my throat. “On the bright side, there’s a healthy dose of excitement”—I falter, hoping that didn’t come out wrong—“which smells like the strawberry tree, and, well—nervousness.”
He swallows, then produces a queasy grin. “And what does that smell like?”
“Soap bubbles.”
“Ah. You’d be a hard person to hide from.”
“Yes—” I cough to prevent more words from slipping out.
An awkward silence follows. The accelerator nudges to seventy-five miles per hour, but then noticing it, Court eases up on the gas. I study the toe prints on the window in front of me. I could’ve admitted that I also smell like soap bubbles.
Or I could just change the subject. “Was your coach okay with you missing practice?”
He seems happy for the switch, and one hand releases the steering wheel. “I promised him a Kill Drill tomorrow at lunch.”
“Kill Drill?”
“We scrimmage for forty-five minutes, no breaks.”
“Oh, I’m sorry.”
“We could use the practice.” He flashes me a smile. “So the plants you need, will they just let you take them?”
“Ordinarily. The master gardener lets us clip what we want in exchange for cuttings from our garden. But I didn’t arrange a visit because I don’t want Mother to find out.”
“How will we do it?”
I pull out my garden pruners, freshly oiled and sharpened. “Garden variety theft.”
He whistles.
“You have any better ideas?”
“Would they sell them to us? I went to the ATM this morning.”
“The common ones, maybe. But definitely not the rares. And we need several of those.”
“Bribery?”