“I thought you believed in us. Why would you help me if you didn’t believe in us?”
Melanie falls silent.
Court stands rigid and apart from me, his lips pressed into a hard line. I shake my head at him, trying to pass him the truth even though he’s not looking at me. It’s not what you think. The elixir was just water. I was trying to help you.
“You never believed it would work,” comes Vicky’s accusing tone.
“I thought you needed to see for yourself that he wasn’t meant for you.”
Vicky makes an indignant gasping noise. “Well, I guess you’re not as bad an actress as my father thinks you are. But you can forget about a part in his movie. When you have to try so hard, maybe it’s just not meant to be.” At that last line, she makes her voice go high and overarticulated, like Melanie’s.
Vicky gets to her feet. The bleachers rattle like thunder as she stomps off.
Court’s breath escapes in a hiss. He looks up at Melanie, now by herself. Her stiletto pokes through the grated flooring of the bleachers and gets stuck. She twists her foot to free it, then runs in the opposite direction.
Court swears. “You fixed me with Vicky?”
“No, it’s not like that. It was w-water. The elixir.” My stammering makes my explanation sound even lamer.
He snorts. “So you charged her for water? That’s a good one.”
“Elixirs are free.”
“Free?” His eyes flick to the side and he shakes his head. “So are private jets.”
I cringe as I remember my boast to him about having a private jet. Why did I do that?
He walks away, then reverses course. “This is seriously jacked up. I thought you cared.”
“I do.”
“Right. You needed my help to fix your mistake.” He rakes a hand through his hair and some of it remains sticking up. “You know, I would have done it anyway. She is my mother.”
“It’s not like that.”
“Did you ever care about me?” His eyes plead with me to make it right.
“Not that way.” My voice sounds raspy and dry. I swallow hard. “I told you, love witches can’t love.”
He coughs in disbelief and his head draws back. His hurt eyes linger for a moment on mine, then with a muttered curse, he strides off.
I waver between laughter and tears as I stumble away. BBG was never the answer. All I had to do was lie.
THIRTY
“AMAZED, PLEASED, EVEN TICKLED, SOMETIMES. BUT NEVER
SURPRISED. NO, A GOOD AROMATEUR IS NEVER SURPRISED.”
—Anise, Aromateur, 1904
THE PIERCING WHOOSH of a plane like a Cloud Air jet rouses me from my slumber, and for a moment, a thrill of panic stabs through me. But it can’t be Mother. She won’t be here until Monday. I squint at the clock—almost eleven a.m. I haven’t slept this late in weeks. Sunlight streams through my windows, but today it doesn’t burn my eyes. Perhaps I am getting accustomed to my other senses. I sniff, but don’t detect any olfactory improvement.
I try calling Kali. With every ring, I’m filled with hope that this time she’ll answer. That she’ll be ready to get our friendship back on track. When the call goes to voicemail, I say, “Hi. Your poem—what you did—was amazing.” I stretch out the coil of my old-fashioned phone. “You’re amazing. If you feel like talking, call me.”
The bag of candy grams on the floor catches my eye. I shake myself free of my quilt and sort through the messages, one by one. The sight of Court’s neat printing squeezes my chest, making it hard to breathe. Twenty of the twenty-one are written by the same hand.
I read one:
I’m a veggie vampire,
Who does not suck on necks,
I only eat bean sprouts and peas,
And other healthy snacks.
I snivel a few times but won’t allow myself to cry. You’re not supposed to cry if you’re the cause of your own misery. Then it’s just pathetic.
I should throw them away, but I can’t. So I stick them in my nightstand drawer. The Rulebook falls over when I close the drawer. I pick it up and flip through the pages once again. Maybe there’s something about recovering your nose.
The book opens to Rule Eighteen, the rule on PUFs, probably because I’ve been reading that page a lot lately. My eyes stick on the Last Word penned at the top of the page: Love is revealed through sacrifice. —Shayla, Aromateur, 1633.
Shayla was Layla’s daughter, the one for whom Layla gave her life. Is there a reason her Last Word appears on this particular page? Last Words appear throughout the Rulebook in no particular order, though most aromateurs put them in the blank pages at the end.
My mind drifts back to the day I asked Mother about PUFs. She said, Sniff-matching. It wasn’t December, you know.