“Can you hear me? Court?” I should talk to him. But what about? I could ask him some questions.
Right. Poor guy can barely breathe, let alone answer questions.
I could do something to distract him from his pain until help arrives. Sing? Dance? Tell a joke? If I did any of those, I might make things worse. Maybe I could tell him a story, if only I could think of one. Well, I do know one.
My throat has gone dry and I swallow hard to get my voice working again. “My mother says we’re related to the Queen of Sheba. You see, the queen gave King Solomon rare spices for the chance to pick his brain, which led to the world’s first power couple. They had a son, and when he began to crawl, they discovered he could sniff out a single poppy seed stuck in a hundred-foot-long carpet.”
A siren wails. The paramedics will be here soon. Time for the neutralizing mist, which Kali dubbed Boy-Be-Gone, or BBG for short. When you live and breathe flowers, it’s not just the bees who are drawn to you. If I touch individuals predisposed to liking me—most often boys, but sometimes girls—residue from the thousands of elixirs Mother and I create transfers off my skin, like the dust from a moth’s wing, causing attraction. It’s why I always wear hats and long sleeves in public, though I draw the line at gloves, which would just make me look like a germaphobe. BBG nixes any mushy feelings that may arise from contamination by this “aromateur’s pollen.”
From my bag, I pull out a crystal atomizer that fits into my palm and is as small as a perfume bottle. My finger feels for the pump, and just as I’m about to spritz, Court’s eyelids flutter open. I catch my reflection in his startled eyes, bewitched and bewildered, like I was the one bitten.
“I, I—” Closing the door on my doubts, I spray. One dose lasts a lifetime.
He watches the beads of mist float in the air. A gentle breeze carries some of them away. He turns his puzzled eyes to me.
“It’s just something I, er, do. It’s calming. I feel calm. Don’t you feel calm?” Living with a human polygraph, my mother, means I lie as well as grass.
I hear the chatter of girls and raise my voice. “Hello?” Maybe someone can flag down the ambulance when it comes. “Can someone help me?”
A girl half skates and half walks into the grassy clearing, and I recognize her from the group of rollerbladers who passed me earlier. Her mouth drops when she sees us. One by one, her friends pile up behind her, including Vicky who cries out, “Court?”
Her blades kick up clumps of grass as she dashes to us. “What happened?”
Court squints at her, then his eyes close again.
“A bee stung his arm.”
“He’s allergic!” she says, as if I didn’t already figure that out. “Oh my God, Court baby. Did you find his pen?”
Baby? Gross. “He doesn’t have one on him.”
She kneels beside me and elbows me out of the way, lifting his head and placing it on her own lap. “Move over.”
I eye her long gold-painted nails, hoping she doesn’t scratch his face. “Maybe you shouldn’t move him.”
“Are you a medical expert?” Vicky shoots back. The sharp, weedy odor of her hostility—stinging nettles—peels at the inside of my nose.
The other girls, now crowded around us, glare at me as if I’m the bee.
Sirens wail louder now and a truck rumbles up, the red visible through the screen of plants. A pair of medics rush to us, holding equipment. “Step aside, please,” barks one of them. The girls back off.
“He’s allergic to bees,” Vicky tells the medic, her throaty voice tight and high.
Court opens his eyes again. “I’m, I—” he mumbles.
The first medic pulls out an EpiPen from his bag and sticks Court in the thigh. The medic’s partner examines Court’s arm, which is no longer angry and swollen.
“How are you feeling? Any trouble breathing?” asks the first medic.
“No, no, I’m fine.” Court struggles to sit up, aided by Vicky who straps her arms around him from the back.
“Just rest against me, baby,” she coos. “You’re going to be fine. I’m so glad I found you in time.”
I dig my arms into my stomach. Anyone else might be repulsed by her boldness, but I remind myself it’s better this way. I am a mere comet.
The medic asks Court more questions, which he answers mostly through nods and monosyllables. Slowly, I get up. He’s in good hands now.
Court catches me stealing away and says in a quiet voice, “Mim? Thanks.”
Vicky cuts her gaze from him to me, and her eyes lose their anxious cast and harden. The unmistakable scent of jealousy, like sour milk, putrefies the air.
No good ever came of that scent.
“You’re welcome.”
I refill my jar with lichen, then hurry away, but the scent of jealousy stays in my nose long after I’ve left the park.
THREE
“EVERYTHING SMELLS, ESPECIALLY EMOTION.”
—Mu Jin, Aromateur, 1621