Clouds of crepe myrtle petals billow around my ankles as I trudge toward the courtyard with the wishing well just outside our kitchen. The aspens are getting ready to dump their fall plumage on me, too. At least my best and only friend, Kali, all six feet of her, will be helping me sweep this weekend. I collect my bike from the courtyard, then pedal down our long driveway.
Such is the lot of an aromateur, sacrificing our needs for the common good. We’re not even supposed to have needs. Our noses are like nun’s habits, cloistering us to a life colored by chlorophyll. We can’t afford the luxury of letting our hearts slip. Mother would faint if she knew I wasn’t going to high school just for the academics. That I had interests beyond the briar. That I wanted friends, more than just Kali. And that looking at boys was a nice change of scenery. Mother would lose her leaves over that one, for sure.
While there’s no explicit rule against romantic relationships, our colonial ancestor jinxed them in her Last Word: “Beware ye aromateur; lay your traps of love, but do not yourself get caught.” Fall in love and, like Aunt Bryony, lose your supersniffer. It’s why Mother chose my father from a list of donors she got in the mail like a Christmas catalogue. And why she named me after the flower mimosa, better known as touch-me-nots because their leaflets fold inward at the heat of a human hand.
Love witches can’t fall in love.
TWO
“LISTEN WITH YOUR NOSE.
THE FLOWERS SING TO US IN ALL THEIR COMPLEX GLORY,
SWAYING TO THE STRAINS OF A WHIMSICAL WIND.”
—Posey, Aromateur, 1809
THE TOOLS IN my bike basket rattle as I bump past the sweetbriar hedge our ancestors planted to deter the curious. Hooked prickles and dense foliage form the perfect screen for our peculiar lives.
I pull my bucket hat lower down on my head and steer toward Arastradero Park, the biggest patch of green in quiet Santa Guadalupe. Sometimes I think Mother goes out of her way to make work for me. It’s as if she wants me to fail, so she can be right about school being a distraction.
I pedal hard, sweating away some of the black pepper notes of my irritation. It can’t be easy for Mother, either. With me in school, she’s doing some of the heavier chores by herself now, resoiling, digging up dying roots. I help her during workshop hours from three to six, but it’s not the same as having me beside her all day. She rarely complains.
After locking up my bike, I hike down a running trail toward the scent of grub lichen, an invasive species Mother won’t allow in our garden. I bypass car-size lemonade bushes, zingy with a hint of gym socks, toward a patch of lichen flourishing at the base of a eucalyptus. I put my nose right up to the musty scent, even though it smells like raccoon urine. Aromateurs are trained from an early age to view each scent with objectivity.
“You lose something?”
I flinch and glance behind me.
Court “Warrior” Sawyer jogs in place with those feet fleet enough to net a spot in Sports Illustrated Kids’ The Top 20 Under 20. A sweat-soaked T-shirt with his number ten hugs his lean soccer physique, and a hoodie droops from his hips. I scramble to my feet, heart thumping.
“You scared me.” I didn’t even smell him approaching, with my head stuck in grub lichen and my bum in the air. Now that he’s right in front of me, he’s all I can smell. Driftwood, tonka bean, and something smoky, like the air after a campfire. I don’t usually pay attention to a person’s scentprint unless there’s a need, but sometimes, like staring, you can’t help it.
“Sorry. Thought you might have lost something.” Even when he’s not smiling, his brown eyes appear to be crinkled into half moons.
A clump of damp hair flops into his eyes.
Stop staring. Talk. “Oh no, I didn’t lose anything.” Only my dignity. “Just harvesting lichen.” Does that sound weird? Yes.
A pair of dimples materializes on either side of his mouth. “Hm, okay.”
“Okay.” I begin to turn away. I’m a comet that briefly passed into his solar system but now must return to deep space where I belong.
“I’m Court Sawyer.”
I suppress a laugh. No kidding. Our eyes connect. Sure, he’s cute, even up close, but overrated-cute. His eyes squint and he has one of those Count Dracula hairlines that, like the economy, is one day headed for a recession. That said, I can see why he’s a photographer’s dream, with dark features against a naturally pale complexion, and a sweet curve to his lips.
“It’s Mimosa, right?”
“Just Mim.”
“I’ve seen you here before. You’re the famous love witch.”
“Infamous, you mean.”
“Is it true you can smell a person five miles away?”
People love to exaggerate. “No. Four miles, max, and only if the wind is right.”
He smiles. “How do you do that? I can barely smell my own sweat.”
Magic? Mutant genes that grew billions more scent receptors than the average person? Probably a bit of both. I give him the short answer. “Genetics. It’s no big deal.”
“Genetics, huh.” The trouty odor of doubt floats away from him. “People say your mother locked you away in a tower. No one ever saw you until you started school.” He shakes out one leg, then the other, seeming uncomfortable with standing still.
“My mother wanted to homeschool me.”