Pyxis: The Discovery (Pyxis Series)

by K. C. Neal

  We arrived at the café with a few minutes to spare, so we went back to the kitchen in search of a snack.

  My dad hunched over an oven door he had cracked open. His sous chef, a plump woman in her thirties named Lynn, stood at the huge mixer, adding something from a measuring cup to the mixing bowl. She smiled and waved at us. The kitchen smelled amazing, like roasted vegetables, melted cheese, garlic, and herbs.

  “Mm, is that lasagna?” I asked, and my mouth watered a little.

  “It is,” Dad said, and opened the oven door a little wider so we could peek in. “You can take some for dinner tonight. How was school?”

  “Oh, it was … school.” I shrugged.

  I hated it when Mom asked me that type of question because I felt like she wanted me to tell her some juicy gossip or mind-blowing fact I learned in history class. But it was just high school. And this was Tapestry. Nothing much ever happened. Well … until recently, I guess. But when Dad asked me about school, I could tell he got that it was routine. He didn’t expect me to burst into a song and dance number like my life was some kind of ridiculous musical.

  “Sandwiches left over from lunch.” He nodded at one of the coolers, the kind you see in the grocery store dairy section, and turned back to the chicken breasts. “You’re welcome to split one.”

  “Cool. Thanks, Dad.” I slid one of the doors back and picked egg salad on sourdough. I gave Ang a smirk. “Don’t worry, I have gum in case Toby comes in.”

  She flushed pink, and I giggled. It was her Pavlovian response: I said his name, and she blushed furiously. I tried not to tease her about Toby too often, but sometimes I couldn’t resist.

  We sat at one of the empty tables and ate in silence. I was thinking about the cookies, wondering who would come into the coffee shop this afternoon, and trying not to think about Mason’s return. I’d have to talk to him. I’d have to tell him about the list. And the truth was that I really hoped he could help us figure out what it all meant. My insides twisted around like my intestines were tying themselves into slow knots, and it was all I could do to finish my half of the egg salad sandwich.

  We walked through the doorway from the café into the adjoining coffee shop, where the rich aroma of espresso replaced that of lasagna. Del, a retired teacher who worked a few hours a week in the coffee shop, let me take over the till and started counting out his half of the tips. He handed the other half to Marissa, the barista, and the two of them left.

  Ang put on her sky-blue barista apron with the Rainbow Café’s logo on it, and we surveyed the place. A couple who looked barely out of high school sat side-by-side on the loveseat near the door, their coffees ignored on the table while they mauled each other with their tongues. Three other patrons bent over their laptops. And Genevieve and Hannah occupied a table right next to the window.

  Hannah glanced my way, and I lifted my hand in a small wave. She wrinkled her nose at me as if I were a stray dog that just pooped on her lawn, then went back to arranging her Sophie-inspired hair around her shoulders and nodding earnestly at Genevieve.

  I frowned. “Did you see that?”

  “Uh huh.” Ang raised an eyebrow at me.

  I dug into my school bag, pulled out one of the storage containers, and marched across the coffee shop.

  “Want a cookie?” I pulled the top off the container and held it out. “No charge. We’re giving away some free stuff this afternoon.”

  Genevieve frowned out the window, as if she was afraid someone might see her. Then she gave me the tiniest of smiles. “I guess. If it’s free.”

  They each took a yellow cookie and then resumed their conversation and hair-flipping. I might as well have been the third chair at their table.

  I slipped back behind the register and stacked the three cookie containers on the little shelf under the counter. I watched in satisfaction as both Hannah and Genevieve nibbled their cookies.

  The first few coffee shop customers of our shift—a few older couples, a guy with bleached, spiked hair who settled down with his coffee and laptop, and a little girl with her dad who ordered hot chocolate—weren’t good candidates for our experiment, so they didn’t get cookies.

  After a short lull, the bell on the door jangled, and I saw Andy Jones. His arm was outstretched to hold the door for someone behind him. And in strutted Sophie.

  They walked side-by-side toward the counter, Sophie staring right at me, smirking so hard I thought her face might implode. Something about their proximity and way Andy walked slightly behind her told me this wasn’t a case of two people randomly walking into the coffee shop at the same time.

  “Oh my God, she did not,” Ang whispered.

  I fumbled for the container of yellow cookies and set it on the counter next to the tip jar.

  Andy and Sophie stood in front of the counter, scanning the menu posted on the wall behind me. I tried to ignore Sophie and watch Andy instead. I mean, he’d taken me to the cove just three days ago. He’d kissed me in the meadow, for cripe’s sake. And now he was studiously ignoring me. I narrowed my eyes. Was this because of Sophie? Or was there something else at work here?

  “Hey, Andy,” I tried.

  He swallowed a couple of times and started rubbing his forearm. “Uh, hey. Could I get a medium caramel macchiato?”

  I marked a sixteen-ounce cup with his order, handed it to Ang, and rang up his drink.

  “Let me guess,” I said, looking at Sophie. “Skinny mocha with sugar-free hazelnut?”

  “Small,” she sneered.

  “Together?”

  “Yeah,” Andy said, and reached for his wallet. Sophie smiled triumphantly, and I wanted to poke her eyes out.

  Instead, I pasted on my best customer-service smile and pushed the container of cookies toward them. “Help yourselves. They’re free.”

  Sophie gave me a pinch-faced grimace. “No, thanks,” she said.

  Funny how a phrase that was supposed to be polite was more like a slap across the face when it came from her.

  Andy looked like he wanted to take one, but he didn’t. They moved down to the drink pick-up area and watched Ang make their coffees.

  Damn. I really wanted to see what would happen if Sophie ate that cookie.

  “Guess my great love affair with Andy Jones is over,” I said to Ang once Andy and Sophie were out of earshot. I watched as Andy pulled another chair up to Hannah and Genevieve’s table.

  “Does that bother you?” Ang asked. I could tell she wasn’t sure if she should be sympathetic or not.

  I scoffed. “No. I wasn’t really into him.” Still, it didn’t feel great to have him saunter in here with Sophie and basically ignore me. “But I do kind of wonder...”

  I reached for my phone and typed a text.

  WTH? U didn’t txt me or anything after the cove. and ur w sophie now?

  I watched Andy pull his phone from his front jeans pocket and read my text. He shot a furtive glance at Sophie, who was chattering away at Hannah and Genevieve, and started typing. A minute later, my phone chimed.

  Sry. I don’t know how to explane but it’s just different now. mabe we can hang out sometime.

  I raised an eyebrow and held my phone out to Ang so she could read Andy’s message.

  “He’s an atrocious speller,” she remarked. “I wonder what he means by, ‘it’s just different now?’ It might help if we could, like, interview him about how he felt when he asked you out and how he feels now.”

  I laughed. “But that would be totally weird, Ang.”

  She smiled and gave me a light backhanded smack on my arm. “I know, but you know what I mean.”

  The door jangled, and a guy—a senior from Tapestry High—came in.

  “Blue cookie?” I whispered to Ang. “And what’s his name, anyway?”

  “Scott something. Yeah, give him one.”

  I quickly exchanged the container of yellow cookies for the container of blue ones. “Hey, what can we get started for you?” I said when he stopped in front of the
register. “And please take a cookie. On the house.”

  He absently picked up a blue cookie. “Medium latte, please.” I watched him as he dug some cash from his pocket. Wavy blonde hair, brown eyes. Not bad-looking, but not someone I’d probably notice in a crowd.

  “Scott, right?” I said.

  “Yeah. Corinne Finley?”

  “Yep. Here you go.” I held out a couple of ones and some coins, and he stuck a dollar in the tip jar. I smiled. “Thank you.”

  Ang and I watched Scott take his coffee and stuff the whole cookie in his mouth.

  Andy, Sophie, and Sophie’s two minions departed not long after. Two junior girls came in together, and I gave them both blue cookies. Kaitlin came in and hung out with us for a while, and ate a couple of white cookies. I wanted to distribute more—it seemed like we hadn’t given out enough to get any real answers—but our shift was nearly over.

  I closed down the till, and Ang cleaned up the espresso machine. Then she waited for me while I picked up to-go containers of lasagna from the café. Dad was in full-on charming restaurateur mode with the dinner crowd. He and Bradley were a lot alike that way—they’d talk to anyone who’d listen, and they were good at making people laugh—except Dad wasn’t an annoying attention whore.

  Ang and I parted ways a couple of blocks down Main Street, where she headed toward her neighborhood. I turned onto Wild Rose, hugging the warm bag of lasagna to my chest, trying to decide if I should give out more cookies tomorrow.

  After a couple of blocks, I felt a hand close around my upper arm. I yelped in surprise, dropped the bag of lasagna onto the sidewalk, and whirled around.

  I came face-to-face with snake-eyed Harriet Jensen.

  || 11 ||

  SHE SQUEEZED MY ARM harder, and I winced and threw my weight backward, trying to pull away, but her grip didn’t budge. I wanted to scream, but my breath seemed to die in my lungs.

  “I’m coming home with you right now, and you’re going to give them to me.” Harriet smelled faintly of her shop—musty and herbaceous—and the smell made my nose tingle.

  I swiveled my head, looking for someone who could help me or provide a distraction, but the street was deserted. We stood on a block with a stretch of weedy, empty lots on one side and a ditch on the other, and I realized she must have waited here for me, in a place where she could intercept me without anyone noticing.

  “They’re gone,” I said. “I poured them out. Flushed them.”

  “You’re lying,” she said, her voice low and her face pressed close to mine. The smell of her breath was familiar somehow—faintly rotten, dirty, smoky—and it filled me with dread. “The Pyxis would never do that.”

  The pyxis? The box? I frowned.

  We both whipped around when a car with music blaring turned down Wild Rose a few blocks away. I almost cried in relief when I realized it was my brother’s old, blue VW bug. Harriet released my arm, and I turned just in time to see her disappear into a stand of Douglas firs at the back of an empty lot. I stared dumbly after her for a second, trying to figure out how she’d moved that fast.

  “Corinne?” Bradley pulled up beside me and turned the music down. “What the hell are you doing?”

  I turned around and opened my mouth to answer, but couldn’t think of what to tell him. He put the car in park and got out, leaving the door open.

  “Are you okay?” He picked up the bag of lasagna and stared at me.

  “Yeah.” I swallowed and tried to steady my voice. “A, um, big dog just ran at me and scared me.”

  He twisted around, looking. There was no dog, of course. He eyed me doubtfully, one side of his mouth quirked up. “Well, get in. I’m going home.”

  I opened the squeaky passenger door and slumped into the seat with relief. He turned the music up too loud to allow any conversation, and I clenched my hands together in my lap so he wouldn’t see how hard they were shaking.

  When we got home, I dashed down to my room and pulled out my phone. There were texts from Hannah and Genevieve that sounded so similar I would have been amused if I weren’t so shaken. They were both dying to put streaks in their hair, and wanted to hang out “ASAP!!!”

  I hit the shortcut for Angeline’s number, and she answered after the first ring.

  “Oh my God, Harriet Jensen practically attacked me on the way home!” I gave her the play-by-play, and we had a mutual freak-out.

  We decided that, for the foreseeable future, I wouldn’t go anywhere alone.

  I didn’t even consider telling my parents or anyone else about Harriet. That would mean revealing the pyxis, and there was just no way I wanted to do that. I had a strange feeling that I couldn’t do it, even if I tried.

  It was like the pyxis belonged to me in an intimate way. Like the way my diary from junior high or the reflection of my own face in a mirror belonged to me.

  * * *

  Before first hour the next morning, I showed Ang the texts from Hannah and Genevieve.

  “I think you should call them on it,” Ang said. “Seriously, invite them over tonight and try to dye their hair. See how they react.”

  I laughed. “Okay, if you say so.” I punched in a text message and sent it to them. Seconds later, I got their enthusiastic replies and showed them to Ang. “Guess we’re on.”

  Ang and I went upstairs to junior hall to find the two girls who’d taken yellow cookies the day before. We wandered past where they were talking to a couple of junior guys. I tapped one of them on the shoulder—Kristin, I thought.

  “Hey, how are you?” I said and gave her and her friend my brightest smile.

  She gave me a blank look. “Oh … good, thanks. How’re you?”

  “Um, fine. Maybe I’ll see you at the coffee shop again,” I said.

  Ang and I moved on.

  “Okay, that was like nothing. The other girl didn’t even seem to recognize you,” she said. “You definitely need to get Hannah and Genevieve talking tonight.”

  “You’re going to come over and help me, right?”

  She looked pained. “No, I can’t. My aunt and uncle are coming for dinner, remember?”

  “Oh, crap, that’s right. You’re not working today, either.”

  “Sorry.”

  That meant I’d have to decide whether or not to give out more cookies and deal with Hannah and Genevieve on my own. Ugh.

  We walked through the halls until we found Scott, the guy who’d stuffed a blue cookie in his face at the coffee shop. I caught his eye and fluttered my fingers at him, but he just looked around as if he thought I was trying to get someone else’s attention.

  “Great,” I said, deflated. “I don’t think we know any more than I did a few days ago.”

  “No, it’s okay,” Ang said. “Even a negative result is still a result.”

  I laughed. “Okay, you’ve been watching the science channel too much or reading ahead in biology or something. What do you mean?”

  “Well, if you try something and nothing happens, that’s still information.”

  “I guess. It would be a whole lot more helpful if the results made everything clear and obvious, though.”

  After school, Ang walked me to the Rainbow Café and then headed home. She made me promise I’d get a ride after my shift.

  “Hey, Marissa,” I said to the barista. I stashed my bag under the counter.

  “What’s up, Corinne?” Even though Marissa was only around twenty-two, her voice was husky from all the cigarettes she smoked. She had funky cropped maroon hair and a ton of piercings in her ears and face. “You going to the rally in Danton on Saturday?”

  I gave her a withering look. She knew I didn’t know or care about any of her political causes, but she always said things like that, anyway. “Yes, I have my bullhorn polished and my signs all painted.”

  Her good-natured laugh dissolved into a burst of coughing.

  I readied the containers of cookies under the counter and pulled out my geometry homework just as a herd of seven or
eight girls crowded through the door. I recognized their affiliation immediately: dance team. The heart of Sophie’s high school life. The group was Sophie-free at the moment, though.

  Barely considering what I was doing, I plopped the box of yellow cookies on the counter. The girls kept jabbering and giggling as they placed their orders, hardly acknowledging my presence. But they each took a cookie, and that was all I cared about. After they left, I wrote down all their names on a sticky note.

  I felt a tiny bit weird about what I’d just done. I wasn’t sure why, so I didn’t offer up any more cookies the rest of my shift. I called Brad for a ride home, citing the large bags of to-go boxes full of chicken cacciatore, rice pilaf, and Caesar salad as the reason.

  After dinner, I texted Hannah and Genevieve to come by my house anytime. I set out all the hair dye stuff in my bathroom, and found two old t-shirts they could wear so I wouldn’t get dye on their clothes. I heard the doorbell ring, and I ran up to get it, relieved that Bradley had his music up so loud in his room he didn’t seem to hear.

  “Can we see your room?” Hannah asked as I led them down to the basement.

  “Uh, sure.” I detoured to my bedroom instead of leading them straight to the bathroom.

  “Oh my God, cool chair,” Genevieve said in her breathy voice, pointing to a purple velvet chair I’d found second-hand. “Where did you get it?”

  “I hopped into my time machine and stole it from 1978,” I said.

  Hannah gaped at me and Genevieve scrunched her nose.

  “It’s from the thrift store out on the highway.”

  I watched them take in the details of the Kandinsky posters on my walls, the black-and-purple satin duvet, and bookshelf stacked with scrapbooks and adorned with framed photos of me and Ang, and me and Mason. Well, there used to be some of me and Mason, but I’d stuck those in my closet.

  “You sure you still want me to do your hair?” I asked, giving them one last chance at an out.

  They glanced at each other, and then looked at me and nodded. “Yeah, totally!” Hannah said.

  I grabbed my iPod and some little speakers, and the three of us crowded into the bathroom. Hannah sat on the edge of the bathtub, and Genevieve perched on the closed toilet. I put my iPod on random and started pulling the hair dye stuff out of a plastic shopping bag.