I smudge the charcoal into shadows. Cian’s the cook and Alicja serves drinks with me. They’re pretty much the only people I know in this town. Runaways aren’t social types.
“You could draw your brother or Ivy.” I can feel my cheeks reddening, but the room’s dim enough to hide my blush.
“You could draw your parents,” Mags goes on, and it’s all I can do to keep my eyes on the paper.
“Have you had any word from them?” I ask, gathering up the charcoal pencils I stole from the art shop down the road a few weeks ago and stuffing them into my canvas bag.
“Not yet, pet,” Mags says.
I’m not surprised, but a lump forms in my throat.
She doesn’t bother suggesting I draw Granny or Granda. She knows the grief is still too raw.
“Here,” Mags says roughly as I get up from my little stool. “Go hide that in the basement, would you?” She dumps the huge tin can in my arms and turns me by the shoulders toward the stairs.
Mags makes poteen: old Irish moonshine. She distills it in her garage and sometimes sells it in her pub—to those in the know—when she’s sure the local police are turning a blind eye. The rumors say it makes you blind, but behind closed lids you’ll see the future. The rumors say it’ll rot your teeth, but that’s probably just all the sugar. I haul the can down the stairs into the basement and hide it behind a bunch of old kegs and crates.
Back upstairs, the others have arrived. They come in the side door by the kitchen and right away I can hear Mags order Rowan out again to chase up a missing order. Good thing, too. I’m not sure I could look at my brother just yet. I don’t know for sure that he was with Ivy last night, but until he tells me any different that’s what I’m going to assume.
Ivy’s our only friend right now, except for Mags, and she’s our boss, so she doesn’t count. Ivy’s the only person who knows our whole sorry story. She’s the only one who called us after our granny died and our granda stopped recognizing us. She’s the only one who worried when she heard we’d been sent back to live with our messed-up parents again. When we ran away from home, she’s the only person we told. So she packed her bags and ran away to join us. Her own mother hardly batted an eyelid. Ivy says her mom thinks of it as a rite of passage, like it’s perfectly normal for her seventeen-year-old daughter to run away from home to hole up with two teenage alcoholics in an abandoned development. But then there’s nothing really mainstream about Ivy and her mom.
I’ve only just thought of Ivy when I see her. She must’ve come in with Rowan. She’s sitting by the window. Her eyes are ringed with shadows and she hasn’t gelled her hair. It’s all soft blue tufts around her face, blond roots just about showing through. But even when Ivy’s tired and her hair’s a mess, she’s the brightest point in the room. She’s all floaty dresses and big boots and eyes that match her bright blue hair and can probably see right through you. She glows so strongly that everything around her looks prettier just ’cause she’s there.
Rowan and I have known Ivy since we were kids. She lives with her mom in Sligo, and Rowan and I lived with our grandparents in Dublin for most of our lives. But every once in a while our mother—the drunk, the train wreck, the one who abandoned her children—would get in another fight with Dad—and then she’d want her kids back and her oldest friend for support. So she’d come and fetch me and Rowan and drag us halfway across the country, and Granny and Granda wouldn’t be able to do anything about it.
She’d turn up on Ivy’s mom’s doorstep with us in tow and tears on her cheeks. Ivy’s mom would try to help, but pretty soon Mom would be off again, chasing after our father for the millionth time, and we’d be back in Dublin with Granny and Granda and we wouldn’t see Ivy—or our mother—again for, like, another year.
I can’t pinpoint exactly when it was I fell in love with Ivy, but I remember vividly the day two years ago when I realized that Rowan felt the same. Probably it was because he had his tongue inside her mouth.
“What are you doing here?” I say to Ivy. She doesn’t work at Maguire’s, like me and Rowan.
“We’re out of tea,” she says in her soft voice. It’s hard to hear over Alicja carrying a crate full of glasses, over Mags dumping a pile of logs in the fireplace. “And I came for the paper, too.”
Mags grabs a Sunday paper from one of the tables and throws it to Ivy. It flutters like a giant black-and-white-winged bird. Ivy catches the paper neatly and opens it to the crossword page.
Mags is related to Ivy in a way that none of us, including Ivy, can really figure out. She’s some kind of great-aunt or third cousin twice removed, on Ivy’s mother’s side (Ivy never knew her father). Mags has lived in this town forever.
Granny and Granda used to live here, too, just down the road from Maguire’s. After they moved to Dublin, they’d bring us back here sometimes to visit.
When Rowan and I ran away, this is where we ended up. It felt right. We couldn’t go back to Dublin; this was the only other place that ever felt like home. We asked Mags if we could crash with her for a bit, but she just grunted and said, “I don’t take in strays,” like we were a couple of lost dogs. But then Ivy turned up, and she was the one who led us to Oak Road, to the house we’re now squatting in. I still don’t know how she knew about it, but I’m glad she did.
I dig under the coffee machine for the fancy loose leaf tea that Ivy likes. Ivy always wakes up first. Every morning I come downstairs to find her sitting at the rickety old foldout table with the morning paper and a cup of tea.
Except this morning, because she was still at the party. With Rowan.
I lost them somewhere between the end of the barbecue and the third beer that I nicked from the cooler behind the deflated bouncy castle. A bunch of girls with straightened hair and short dresses had cake, so I went up and asked for a piece and they gave me a slice off the second layer—there were seven and each was topped with a different color icing. One of the girls was cute—shoulder-length hair that went blonder at the edges, and shiny pink gloss on her lips. But by the time I’d licked the last of the green icing from my fingers she was wrapped around some guy like a noose. My problem is I fall in love too easily.
The pub’s pretty empty for a Sunday; most of the town must still be nursing its hangover. When my first break comes around, I make myself a cup of coffee and join Ivy at her table. She’s sitting right beside the fire now and her cheeks are flushed. The crossword in front of her is almost filled in—just two clues left to find. I know without looking that they’re the same clues written on the Post-it note beside Ivy’s teacup.
Every day Mags leaves the paper rolled around a packet of chocolate digestives—Ivy’s favorite—on our porch. On top of the paper she sticks a Post-it with a clue number or two written on it.
“Twelve across.” Ivy shows me. “And two down.”
The answers to those clues are always a sign of something that’ll happen that day, or some truth about the three of us. They’ll say something like breakdown the morning before our generator runs out of diesel. Or abundance on a particularly good tip day. It’s pretty weird, but we’ve all come to accept it.
“So,” I say to Ivy quickly, before I can chicken out. “How come you and Rowan got home so—”
But Ivy looks down at the clues on the crossword and jumps up suddenly from her stool, as if she’s just been kicked. Her teacup smashes on the tiles in front of the fireplace.
I jump up, too, slopping coffee all over myself, and I ask, “What? What does it say?” A few of the people around us look up and stare.
Ivy says something under her breath. It sounds kinda like, “It didn’t work.”
“What didn’t work?” I ask, still flustered and covered in coffee.
“What?”
“You just said—”
“What? Oh, no, nothing,” Ivy says quickly. She sits back down and swivels slightly in her seat. I
t creaks under her. Back and forth, back, forth. “I’m sorry about the cup,” she adds vaguely, eyes still on the paper.
Mags appears at our table with a dustpan and a mop. She hands them to me and raises two thick eyebrows in Ivy’s direction.
“Is there a reason you’re destroying my crockery today?” she asks.
Ivy reaches across the table and takes a sip of my coffee. She makes a face. “Twelve across, two down?” she asks.
“Hmph,” says Mags.
I turn the crossword toward me and scan the page, hoping the answers’ll make sense even if Ivy doesn’t. I’m worried about what they might say.
Twelve across: Pain of a hidden French breakfast (5). Two down: A beetle saint (4).
“Did you lose something last night?” Ivy asks me suddenly.
“Yeah, my denim jacket.” Then I narrow my eyes and say, “And you mean besides you and Rowan?”
Ivy doesn’t meet my gaze. “You didn’t lose us,” she says. “You went home early, remember?”
“And you didn’t come home at all.”
“We were just by the bonfire,” Ivy says, but there’s some color creeping over her cheeks. She clears her throat. “And I’ve just realized I lost one of my necklaces. It fell off at the party. And Rowan came back without his cap.”
“Thank Christ,” I mutter. That hat was an eyesore. “So you did come home with Rowan.”
Ivy sighs. “And Mags said a bunch of beers kept going missing, too,” she says like she didn’t hear me.
“So, what, there’s some kind of town thief?” I don’t mention with Mags right there that I know exactly where those beers went.
“I don’t know,” Ivy says.
My gaze goes back to the two blank spaces in the crossword. Twelve across, two down.
Pain of a hidden French breakfast.
There are plasters wrapped around two of Ivy’s fingers. She holds her pen in a bandaged hand.
“What happened?” I ask, nodding at her hand as I try to work out the clue.
What’s a French breakfast? Crêpe? Bread?
“Cut them on a broken glass last night,” Ivy says.
Then I get it. “Perdu,” I say, and I point at the newspaper. Pain of a hidden French breakfast. Pain is bread, and pain perdu is French toast, an old way to use up stale crusts. It translates, literally, as lost bread.
On the floor the tea leaves gleam.
Ivy nods at me meaningfully. She’s already figured it out. I’ve always been good at crosswords, but Ivy’s like lightning. She can crack a clue in thirty seconds flat. “Perdu. Lost.”
“So some things at the party got lost,” I say, and I shrug again even though Mags says it’ll make me a hunchback when I’m old. “It’s no big deal. I can’t get the other clue, though,” I add. “Two down. A beetle saint. Four letters. I don’t get it.”
Mags says “Hmph” again, and Ivy says, “Jude.”
It takes me a second. “Hey Jude.” A beetle means the band, the Beatles, and the saint is—
Ivy’s voice is very small. “The patron saint of lost causes. Saint Jude.”
“So what—we’re a lost cause?” I say.
“I’ve been saying that for years,” Mags grunts, but her eyes twinkle.
“I’m starting to take that crossword of yours personally,” I tell her.
“Oh,” says Ivy, and she looks worried. “I’m sure it’s not about you.”
But I don’t believe her. Every morning since Rowan and I got here I’ve been waiting for her to find me out. For the crossword clues to spell my name and tell her what I’ve done. The problem is I’ve too many secrets and sometimes it’s hard to keep up with your own lies.
I can guess what she thinks today’s clues mean. Rowan and I have lost our granny already. We’ve lost our granda, too, in a different way. He doesn’t know us. He can hardly speak. When we call him, it’s always the hospice nurse that answers.
But Ivy also knows we’re expecting our mom to come find us, apologize, try to make things right. Ivy knows we haven’t heard from her in over a month. I’ve tried calling, but her number’s been disconnected.
Ivy probably thinks the crossword means we’ve now lost our parents, too.
The thing is, even though she and Rowan don’t know it, I’m pretty sure she’s right.
Olive
Monday, May 8th
Lost: Half an hour’s sleep; concentration; delicate gold bracelet with tiny charms
Rose sneaked into my bedroom on Monday morning somewhere close to two a.m. My mom must have left the back door unlocked. Rose clambered over me and nestled down between me and the wall, all elbows and knees and hair snaking across my face. I grunted and shoved her, hard, my own elbow sinking into her side. She smelled like she hadn’t been home since before the party.
Waking slowly, I rolled over onto my back and stared at the ceiling. Rose continued to make herself comfortable, like a dog in a new blanket. Shifting, sighing, tugging the covers. I wanted to ask her where she’d been, but sleep was like a spell pulling me back under.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, or maybe that’s what she whispered—my hearing aid was sitting useless on the bedside table and she was facing my deaf ear.
“Whatever,” I said back, not unkindly. “It’s not like I thought I had lost you for good.”
Rose made a hmm sound that I thought might have been a smile or a sigh.
By the time my door bursts open to the sound of Dad reciting Thomas Moore, Rose is gone. She has left a flower—her namesake—on the pillow beside me. Thoughtfully, she’s had the foresight to remove the thorns.
Downstairs, the others are up already. Emily is glued to her phone as always and my mom is making a mashed-banana clown face for Max’s breakfast.
“So soon may I follow, / When friendships decay, / And from Love’s shining circle / The gems drop away.” Dad quotes his way through the poem, following me into the kitchen.
“Want some?” Max asks me as Mom pops a raspberry in the middle of the foul-looking mush as a nose. The raisin mouth grins ominously.
“No thanks.” I make a face and opt for toast and the coffee that’s been brewing since my mom got up. It’s dark as night and smells like a sharp slap.
“When true hearts lie wither’d, / And fond ones are flown.” Dad insists on finishing the poem even though we are all awake and de-bedded. He amps up his performance for the last few lines, doing a mock swoon to the words. “Oh! who would inhabit / This bleak world alone?”
“Nice,” I mutter.
“Can I go to Chloe’s later?” Emily asks, ignoring our dad’s antics as usual. Chloe is her best friend but could be her identical twin. They buy the same pastel skinny jeans and Topshop crop tops that Dad is dutifully scandalized over, and one is not usually found without the other. Rose and I share jewelry and spend all our time together, too, but I’d have a hard time being a carbon copy of Rose. Also her clothes would never fit me, seeing as how she’s eight inches taller and three dress sizes smaller than I am.
Mom tells Emily she can go to Chloe’s after school, and I try my luck by asking, offhand, “Can I go to Rose’s, too?” but she sees right through me.
“You’re grounded, as I’m sure you’ll remember. You can come straight home,” she tells me. “And, much as I enjoy Rose’s company, she’d do well to go straight home, too.”
I put Rose’s rose up on the bookshelf above my bed before I leave and wonder again where she went yesterday after the party.
Emily and I ride to school single file on the twisty road, our uniform sweaters around our waists, the backs flapping like big blue swan wings behind us. My shirtsleeves are pushed as far up my arms as I can get them. All that is left of the words written there is you’ll never be found—the word never fading gray in the crook of my elbow; be found bleeding black into my wrist.
I only realize my bracelet is gone when the school bell rings and I am hurrying down the corridor to my first lesson. It must have slipped from my wrist as I rode to school. I’ve been wearing its absence on my arm since I lost it. A ghost bracelet singing with invisible charms.
While all the other girls have their Pandoras heavy with round silver beads shaped like birthday cakes and teacups, I have a tiny, linked gold chain from which dangle miniature stars and cats and mountains, and—my favorite—a delicate little olive tree, light as air and sounding like musical notes when they tinkle together. It was my mom’s when she was a girl. She gave it to me for my sixteenth birthday and I haven’t taken it off since.
I slide into my seat and drag my schoolbag onto my lap. I take out my schoolbooks and pencil case, my dad’s copy of the collected poems of Sylvia Plath, the loose pens and packets of tissues and used hearing-aid batteries and hairpins and crumpled-up pieces of paper at the bottom of the bag. I open every pocket. I turn out the linings. The class fills up in dribs and drabs, the bell long since rung. My searching becomes more frantic. I roll up the sleeves of my sweater; I roll down my socks; I check through each pleat of my skirt until Cathal Murdock turns around and asks loudly, “How much for the striptease, hot stuff?” He waggles his tongue suggestively.
Fortunately Ms. Walsh, who has heard Cathal’s delightful question, intervenes before I can dump the jumbled contents of my schoolbag over his head.
“Mr. Murdock, please take a seat at the front of the class,” she says. “I will not tolerate sexual harassment in my classroom.”
Muttering darkly, Cathal takes his seat right in front of the teacher, to applause from most of my female classmates. I take advantage of the distraction to continue my search.
Rose slouches late into class and sits down beside me. “What’s wrong with you?” she asks. “Does Weetabix have fleas again?”
I shoot her an evil look and check under my desk to see if I’ve dropped the bracelet in all the searching. “I’ve lost my bracelet.”
Spellbook of the Lost and Found Page 3