Spellbook of the Lost and Found

by Moïra Fowley-Doyle

  “Maybe we just had them in our bags all along. Maybe whoever took them put them back there.” I paused. “I do wonder where the spellbook came from, though.”

  “It looks ancient.” Holly nodded.

  “Old-fashioned handwriting,” I said.

  “I don’t know.” Holly frowned. “I told you, I thought I recognized it from somewhere.”

  “I doubt it.” I shook my head. “Unless you know a lot of old people with spectacular penmanship.”

  Holly paused for a moment, then said, “Whoever wrote it thought it was real.”

  “Whoever wrote it was wrong,” I told her patiently.

  “But the pages from our diaries,” Holly whispered. The back of her hand disappeared from beside mine. Ahead of us, Ash had reached the tree.

  That was when we found Jude. Or he found us.

  He came down from the giant oak tree like he’d been living there. He said to our wide eyes, our open mouths, “Did you know that in Greek mythology dryads are the spirits of trees? The word drys actually means oak, so originally dryads were the spirits of oak trees.” He pressed his palm to the trunk of the tree he’d been sitting in. “Sorry,” he said. “I despise small talk. I’d rather know if you believe in God than talk about the weather. So do you?”

  “Do we what?” said Ash.

  “Do you believe in God?”

  “I thought you were talking about dryads,” I said.

  “Do you believe in dryads then?” he asked.

  “Yes,” Holly whispered. “Oh, yes.”

  The boys in school only care about soccer and rumors, sex and games and films. Jude has long hair and makes wooden beaded bracelets that he gave to us and also wears himself. He reads books that are banned at our school and that we can’t find in the library, but that he says he nicked from bookshops in the city. He doesn’t play soccer, but can climb trees better than a squirrel. He’s not from around here. He’s not like anyone we know. Already Holly is in love with him and maybe Ash is, too, although she’ll probably scratch this out if she sees it. Maybe we are all a little bit in love with Jude. I should scratch this out myself.

  We spent the evening together and we talked about everything that could ever be important in the world. We showed him the spellbook and it was like an offering: Look, we know about magic, too. Look, we also despise small talk; we are different and interesting; we are just like you.

  Jude knows all about lost things. And magic. He says there is a balance between goodness and evil, environment and consumerism, light and dark, lost and found. Love and death. I’m not really sure why we listened to him, but I suspect it had something to do with his light eyes, his long hair, his lips.

  Lust. I wonder what balances that one out.

  Olive

  Monday, May 8th

  Lost: Make-up bag (large, red, gold zipper)

  Just before our second-to-last class I get a text from Rose to meet her in the girls’ bathroom by the science rooms. We got back from Oak Road just in time for math class, but I haven’t seen Rose in over an hour and clearly something’s happened.

  MEET ME IN BATHROOM ASAP STOP, her message says. HAVE CRIED ALL MY MAKEUP OFF STOP LOST MY MAKEUP BAG STOP CAN’T BE SEEN LIKE THIS STOP BRING EYELINER STOP ROSE.

  Rose and I went through a Sound of Music phase a few years ago and since then have sent all our text messages in telegram format. I grab my makeup bag (which is paltry in the extreme compared to Rose’s) and make my way up the stairs, wondering what could have happened to make Rose cry.

  I shoulder past a crowd of our classmates loitering outside the bathrooms. “And I swear it was in my pocket at the barbecue,” Chrissy Jones is saying. “But then in the morning it was gone and I haven’t seen it since.”

  “Maybe there’s, like, some secret klepto in town,” says Julia Mullochney.

  “Maybe it’s someone in school,” says Shannon Ryan.

  All three of them hush and look around as if they’ll suddenly catch a thief red-handed. Julia catches my eye.

  “What did you lose at the party on Saturday?” she asks me.

  “It’s the hot question on everybody’s lips,” says Chrissy.

  I shrug my shoulders. “I didn’t lose anything,” I say. I don’t mention my shoe, or my jacket, or my silver star-shaped hair clip. I don’t mention the fact that I woke up without Rose. My hand circles my left wrist. I assumed I’d lost my bracelet on the way to school this morning, but have I seen it since Saturday night?

  Rose clearly hears us from behind the bathroom door. “I’m losing my patience,” she growls from inside, and the girls let me through. They reconverge behind me, continuing their speculation about lost items and town thieves. I let the door swing shut with a clack.

  Rose is sitting on the floor between two sinks, her back to the dirty tiles of the bathroom wall. Her hair, which was wavy and gleaming a couple of hours ago at Oak Road, is tangled and frizzy and her skin is blotchy from tears. I sit on the floor in front of her and hand her my makeup bag.

  “Lifesaver,” Rose mutters, and she rifles through it for anything she can use. “I had my makeup bag with me this morning, but it’s gone missing, which is perfect fucking timing,” she says, and swears again, softly but eloquently, at my bag’s meager offerings.

  There are certain things that Rose can be counted on to do in moments of minor crisis (a breakup, a D on a test, an argument with her mother): dramatic door-slamming, vigorous eye-rolling, frustrated screams accompanying wild gesticulating and the occasional plate-smashing. She is not the type to hole up quietly in the school bathroom and cry off all her painstakingly applied makeup. I’m at a loss as to what to say.

  “What’s wrong?”

  Rose forgoes my too-pale powder and goes straight for the eyes. Her breath still comes in jumps, and she mascaras her lashes with rather more vehemence than usual. The bell signals the start of the next class, but we don’t move.

  When Rose finally speaks, her voice is angry, which I’m used to, but also small, which I’m not. “I lost it,” she croaks, then clears her throat and looks annoyed at herself for having said anything.

  “Lost what?”

  She huffs out a breath. “Your stupid saint medal,” she says. “I put it in my pocket at Oak Road, but it must have fallen out on the way back to school.”

  “That’s why you’re crying? It wasn’t even mine to begin with. I just found it in that old jacket.”

  “Yeah, but what if it was protecting you and now it’s lost?”

  I can’t tell if she’s being serious. “Rose, it’s a bit of metal. It wasn’t protecting anyone. Besides, I thought you didn’t believe in that stuff.”

  “I don’t,” she says, pouting at her reflection in the mirror of my powder compact. “But it’s kind of true what Chrissy and the others were saying.”

  “You lost something at the party?” I ask.

  “No. Well, memory of it, I guess,” she says. “Like you.” The smallest corner of her mouth curls. I can’t tell if it’s a smile or a snarl.

  I cross my legs and lean my elbows on my knees. “Where did you go?” I ask. “On Saturday night. Sunday morning, I mean. After the party.”

  I looked all over that field. I’m not buying that she was there and we just missed each other. Rose has been my best friend since we were twelve and her abandoning me at a party and then climbing into my bed at two a.m. hardly raises a red flag anymore—but I’ve never seen Rose quite like this before.

  She shrugs. “I was at the party.”

  “You weren’t. I checked. I saw some things I probably shouldn’t have seen, but I checked.”

  Something flashes in her eyes. “What did you see?”

  “I dunno, some nudity, casual substance abuse, nothing special.”

  “Whose nudity?” she asks. “Male or female?”

  I frow
n. “Who cares? It’s not like I was trying to look too closely. Just enough to know none of the bodies were you.”

  “Bodies,” she repeats, making it sound like I meant dead bodies.

  “You know what I mean,” I say. “Rose.” I press my hands down onto my knees. “Seriously. What happened at the party?”

  Rose tilts her head back against the tiles beneath the sink behind her, the ends of her hair skimming the grimy ground.

  “I can’t remember,” she says finally.

  “That’d be the half bottle of vodka,” I say.

  “Yeah. Well.”

  “What can’t you remember?” I purse my lips. It’s a stupid question.

  Rose understands, though. “We were dancing,” she says, inviting me to join her in filling in the blanks.

  “The music was woeful, but we sang along anyway.”

  “We hung out by the bonfire.”

  “There was a blond guy.”

  “I don’t remember a blond guy.”

  “Kind of scruffy? Eyebrow piercing? He remembers you.” I don’t mention what he said to me about another kiss.

  “I remember crying.” Rose takes out her bubbles and unscrews the lid.

  “That was our plan for the evening,” I remind her.

  “I remember that, too.”

  The word remember is beginning to lose all meaning. Rose isn’t Rose-like at all; she’s too quiet, almost hesitant. She hasn’t even asked what was with the blond guy.

  We trade memories of the party until there are none left to tell. We drank, we danced, we sang, Rose cried, I woke up alone. Yet something’s still missing.

  Rose screws the lid back on the bubbles and puts the bottle in her pocket. Smoky-lidded and cat-lined, Rose’s eyes look more like her eyes, although they are still ringed with red. She stands up and swipes her hands over her skirt a few times to dry them, then she bends down and gives a quick kiss to the top of my head. “Thanks for the makeup, Olive,” she says. She slings her schoolbag over one shoulder and it’s like she’s putting Rose back on with it—one cocked dark eyebrow, a quirk of her mouth that is not quite a smile.

  “I need to get out of this place,” she tells me. “Tell Mr. Murphy I’m going home sick.”

  She stomps out of the bathroom like she owns the place, nearly plowing down a bunch of younger kids just outside the door. They turn and stare in awe until she’s disappeared around the corner. The hurricane that is Rose often has that effect. I pick up my makeup bag and slink out of the bathroom, unnoticed, to slip into my last class without her.

  Hazel

  Monday, May 8th

  Lost: One wallet; one phone; one temper; pack of cigarettes (only two left)

  I don’t have to look up Saint Jude from the crossword. I’ve kept yesterday’s paper like it’s some kind of proof, sitting starkly on the kitchen camping table in front of me. Perdu, lost. Saint Jude.

  When you’ve been to an Irish convent school, you know all about the saints. There are two for lost things. Saint Anthony of Padua is the one on Mass cards and medals. He helps little old ladies find their keys and kids find their lost dogs. Mags had a Saint Anthony medal stuck to the side of the cash register in Maguire’s until I nicked it to keep in the pocket of my denim jacket. It’s kinda fitting that I can’t find it now.

  Saint Jude’s another story. He lost his head to an ax and now he’s the champion of lost causes. Like me and Rowan, I suppose.

  This morning is the twenty-third since we got here, and the fourth Monday. Twenty-six days since I last saw my parents. Twenty-six days since I knew that number was just gonna keep on getting bigger forever.

  I still haven’t gotten used to not having to go to school, even though I hated school the whole time I was there. Ivy’s at the table, having finished with today’s crossword. I didn’t have to explain the saint thing to her yesterday, even though she’s homeschooled and knows more about constellations, plant reproduction, and the Fibonacci sequence than she does about the church.

  Rowan’s in the empty front room, plucking his guitar. Because there’s no furniture anywhere but the kitchen (except for our mattresses upstairs), the rest of the house has pretty great acoustics. We never spend too long anywhere but the kitchen, though, because it’s the only room with any natural light; the windows of the rest of the house are all boarded up.

  I put the tin coffeepot on the little double-burner camping stove in the corner of the kitchen and wait for my coffee to brew. Ivy puts the kettle on for tea. The smell of coffee fills the house, calls Rowan out of the other room and into the kitchen with us. This coffee’s the good kind, the organic Fair Trade Italian kind our mom only ever drinks—when she isn’t drinking anything else, that is. I have a flowy top that fits a packet of this coffee and a packet of Ivy’s fancy tea inside each sleeve. If I pretend to be tying up my hair when I leave the shop, the security guy doesn’t notice a thing.

  “We’re out of milk,” I say, withdrawing my head from the cool of the fridge.

  Rowan sighs and runs his hands through his hair. “We’re out of everything,” he says.

  We’re always out of everything.

  “Out of luck, time, our minds,” Ivy supplies.

  “I was thinking more like toilet paper,” I say. “Tea bags. Pasta sauce.”

  Ivy gives a little laugh. “Those, too,” she says.

  “Okay,” says Rowan. “Only one way to settle this.” He rolls up the right sleeve of his old knitted sweater and puts his bare elbow on the table with determination. With his other hand, he jams his stupid flat cap back on his head. I’d hoped he’d lost it for good, but Ivy found it on the rubble behind the house this morning.

  “Nope,” I say, and I lean back against the counter. “No way. It’s your turn to do the shopping.”

  Ivy, grinning, wanders over to the windup camp radio Mags brought over one day.

  “Come on, Hazel,” says Rowan. He braces his elbow on the table and invites me over with a cocked eyebrow. “May the best man win.”

  “You haven’t got a chance.”

  Ivy finds a radio station in a burst of static. “Ride of the Valkyries” fills the house. It builds and swoops, and Ivy and Rowan look at each other and laugh, and they look at me and invite me to laugh along, too, but suddenly all I can see are their faces pressed together, laughing over the same song, their faces pressed together, reflecting the flames of the bonfire, their faces pressed together, kissing as I stumbled home alone.

  Rowan swore blind last night that he wasn’t with Ivy at the party, that he spent the night hanging out with some local kids in the next field, but why should I believe him? We’re all thieves and liars here. I grab a handful of shopping bags from the pile by the sink and throw the change jar into my canvas bag. “I’ll go,” I say to my brother. “But if I’m late to work because of this it’ll be your fault.”

  My head’s a mess of moving pictures like a slideshow. Ivy and Rowan laughing. Rowan and Ivy dancing around a bonfire. Ivy and Rowan kissing with green icing on their tongues. I’m walking through a shop with the security guy’s eye on me, slipping tea and cookies up the sleeves of my top when I’m out of his line of sight.

  More slide show images: Granny, still and waxy in her coffin. Weeks of Granda slipping away. His vacant eyes the last time we saw him.

  My mom’s face, jaw slack and eyes closed, passed out drunk on the couch.

  The old lady behind me in the checkout line digs a sharp finger into my back. “Move on up there,” she says. “It’s your turn at the register. We don’t have all day here.”

  “You can fuck right off, lady,” I say to her loudly. She makes a shocked face and moves to the next register.

  I could head to work early, but my veins are live wires and I really need a drink. This is what thinking about my mom does to me. Ivy—who’s no teetotaler herself—says me and Rowa
n drink too much. Well, she said it once, and she was pretty stoned at the time, which is kinda ironic if you ask me. But I heard between the words. I know what it looks like. It looks like I’m just turning into my mom, and I’m not gonna think about that. Except to say that there are a whole lot of ways someone can mess up another person. Even though she isn’t here, she’s still in my head. I’m not gonna think about her.

  I take out her credit card and pay for the shopping I haven’t stuffed into my clothes. When I get out of the shop, I look at the card again, the letters of her name raised against the plastic. Instead of going into work, I head for the tattoo place down the road.

  Later that afternoon I walk into work with new ink on my skin. In the pub kitchen, I hear raised voices. I stow my groceries in the little closet where we hang our bags, and I rub my thumb over my older tattoos, the ones on my forearms. The new one stings too much to touch. In films, girls’ wrists are so little that men’s hands can circle them thumb to middle finger, all the way around. My wrists aren’t little. Big boned, my granny always said, but it isn’t just the bones. Big bones, big meat, I’m a meal of a girl. Tall, too. A mass of curly brown hair to top the whole thing off. But I’ve got a sailor’s mouth and skin inked black over freckles, and I know I’ve got legs that go on for days. A meal of a girl and you wouldn’t go hungry.

  The tattoo artist was smug. The kind who sees a teenage girl and takes her money even though it’s illegal to tattoo anyone under eighteen, smirking the whole time because he’s imagining Chinese symbols for love or purple swirls on the small of her back, a butterfly on her ankle.

  I rolled up my sleeves and he eyed up the keyhole I already have tattooed on one arm, and the key to fit it on the other.

  The guy narrowed his eyes. He probably expected me to be coming in for my first tattoo after some kind of fight with my parents. A tattoo, a piercing, a way to rebel. I could tell he was trying to calculate how old I am.