He’s taken off his cap and is pulling his sweater up over his head, attempting to dry his hair on the wet wool. His T-shirt slips up slightly and I catch a glimpse of something that looks like a tattoo above his hip before he lowers his arms and the T-shirt covers it again.
Tattooed teenagers living in a ghost town. I’m not sure I could live with myself if I didn’t find out more about these two. I can’t wait to tell Rose. It occurs to me that if I’d been with Rose this afternoon in the first place, I never would have ended up in this situation.
“Do you want to borrow some dry clothes?” offers Hazel.
“Okay,” I say, and she takes me by the elbow and leads me into the hall and up the stairs. The house smells like candlewax and cigarette smoke.
“So,” I ask as we go up in the near-dark, “what are you guys doing living here?”
The light is slightly brighter on the landing, even though it seems to be getting progressively grayer outside. Although the two large windows at each end of the hall are boarded up like those downstairs, there’s a skylight at the top of the stairs above us.
Hazel doesn’t answer my question. Instead, she calls into one of the bedrooms. “Ivy, you were right. We do have a guest. This is . . .”
“Olive,” I say to the girl who steps out onto the landing. She’s striking—and not just because of her hair, which is short, spiky, and bright blue. She’s small and very slim—beautiful in a fairy princess kind of a way—and her eyes are the kind you notice, which is unusual, because nobody notices people’s eyes outside of fiction. They’re a very light blue, like some kind of crystal. She’s wearing a motley collection of woolen layers that make her look like a punky nineteenth-century farm girl. She is strange and lovely.
To my surprise, she comes over and hugs me, tight and quick, as if we know each other. She says, “Hi, Olive,” as if she isn’t in the least surprised to see a stranger in her weird, empty house. Then she says to Hazel, “Why aren’t you wearing any clothes?”
“I’m wearing underwear.” Hazel hooks a thumb under her left bra strap and coquettishly lowers it over her shoulder.
Ivy doesn’t even bat an eyelid. “That’s true.”
Hazel authoritatively leads me into another one of the bedrooms. Like the rest of the house, it’s blank and dark and almost empty. A sagging mattress pushed up against the far wall serves as a bed. Hazel clicks on a lantern and roots through one of the shopping bags piled under the boarded-up window. She pulls a bunch of clothes and toiletries and other random things out on to the floor.
“Everything’s such a—dammit—mess. Here, take these—they’re mostly clean.”
She hands me a white satiny dress that looks more like a slip than actual clothes, and a large Aran sweater. Then she wriggles into a very tight pair of cutoff denim shorts and an oversize T-shirt. She is all curves of pale, freckled skin and long, strong legs. She has a tattoo of a skeleton key on one arm, and on the other there’s a keyhole that looks like it’s been shaded in with galaxies—no negative space, only tiny white dots like clusters of stars. The other tattoo—the one I’ve been avoiding staring at all this time, the one across her ribs, right under her breasts—is new, covered in a clear plastic bandage. It’s a line of words, but, while I’m curious to know what it says, I’m too embarrassed to look more closely.
I realize I’ve been staring when Hazel turns to look back at me. I peel my damp sweater and school shirt over my head and put on Hazel’s clothes instead. I try hard not to appear self-conscious, fighting the urge to turn my back or cross my arms around my middle. The clothes fit even though I’m about half a foot shorter than she is. Rose would love this girl, I find myself thinking. Rose never mastered the art of shimmying her bra off under her top and instead strips flamboyantly, just daring you to look. Hazel seems to be of a similar disposition.
When I look back up at Hazel, she is fully clothed and considering me appreciatively. She comes over to stand in front of me and pulls my hair out from under the collar of her sweater. “Cute,” she says.
“Thanks.” I pluck at the hem of the dress. “For the clothes.” My legs are muddy and my hair is still wet, but I’m warming up considerably. “And for the compliment.”
Hazel has a wicked smile. “I’ve got more where that came from.” I don’t know if she means the clothes or the compliment.
Hazel leads me back into the hall, where Ivy is waiting. She turns and says, as if she’s read my mind, “Both.”
Hazel
Wednesday, May 10th
Lost: Two tarnished teaspoons, one small candle
Olive goes into the hall to call her sister and I text Mags to ask if she’ll give her a lift home. After I press SEND, since Olive’s out of earshot, I turn to Rowan.
“So we’re bringing girls home now?” I ask. “Funny, I didn’t get the memo.”
Rowan’s cheeks go pink. “It’s not like that. She just showed up in the middle of the storm—what was I supposed to do?”
“The crossword said to expect guests,” Ivy says quietly. “And this girl just got lost in the storm.”
Rowan’s mouth opens slightly.
“She’s important,” says Ivy. “She must be.”
“Important how?” Rowan asks.
“I don’t know,” Ivy answers. “I just think she is.”
Then it hits me. The crossword wasn’t talking about my mom.
There’s ash in my mouth and I can’t swallow. Ivy said Who else could it be? and I let myself believe it. It’s been nearly four weeks since we’ve heard from our mother. What if she’s really gone? When I close my eyes, I see flames.
When Olive comes back in, she has tea and cookies with us and asks a whole bunch of questions about how long we’ve been living here and why and how come Ivy’s here, too, and even though I like Olive—she’s funny and kinda sarcastic, easy to talk to—I’m finding it hard to breathe. Smoke and flames. My mom not coming home again. Rowan’s chatting and laughing with Olive and he doesn’t know and I don’t know how to tell him. And I don’t want it to be true. But I’ve known it since the day we left. The day we ran away. I knew we’d never see her again.
I only tune back in to what’s going on around me when Ivy spots the shoe I found stuck to my bike when I rode home from work, sitting in the shopping bag where I stuffed it. I’d forgotten all about it.
“Did you meet Cinderella at work?” Ivy asks me, holding the scuffed ballet flat by the heel between her thumb and forefinger.
Immediately, Olive snatches it off her. “Where did you get this?” she asks.
“I found it,” I tell her. “When I was riding home. It was stuck to my bike wheel.”
“Let me guess,” Ivy says to Olive in her lilting voice, the words like a song. “You lost it at the party.” She cocks her head to one side like a blue-haired bird.
“You had my jacket,” I say slowly. “And I had your shoe.”
“That’s really weird,” Olive says, but then she shrugs and stuffs the shoe into her schoolbag. “I suppose we’re even then.”
It is kinda weird. “I guess we are.”
I reach into my own bag and pull out the notebook. “I found this, too.” I hold it up in a beam of lantern light and stolen candles. “It was in the field where the party was last Saturday. Someone must have dropped it there.”
I don’t mention the key that fell out of it. It’s still in the pocket of the work trousers that I took off by the door. I also don’t mention the red-haired girl. I’m not sure why.
Then I open the notebook and it’s like the answer to my prayers.
It says: Spellbook of the Lost and Found.
“What is it?” Rowan asks from across the table.
“It’s a spellbook,” I tell him as I peel off the rubber band and turn the pages carefully. It doesn’t look like a spellbook from the outside. Not really. When I pi
cked it up, I thought it was maybe a diary. It’s red leather and pretty small, like the Moleskines poets carry around in films. But inside it, the paper looks old. Yellow. The pages are waterlogged and some of them are falling apart. On some the ink has run so much, they’re illegible.
But the page the spell is on is clear. I can read it perfectly.
“A spellbook?” Olive asks.
“Spells and saints,” Ivy whispers. “A list of gods and offerings.” I hadn’t noticed her reading over my shoulder.
For every page that’s written on, there’s one with things stuck to the paper. As I turn the pages, a feather, bent backward by the book, unfolds. An autumn leaf covered in strange symbols. An old coin shines in the light of the kitchen.
“What a weird thing to find,” Olive says.
There’s something familiar about the handwriting.
“I wonder who wrote it,” Ivy says like she’s read my mind.
I go back to the page with the spell on it and read it again. And again. And again.
Calling for the Lost to be Found.
You will need: A charm or talisman. A glass bottle filled with the waters of Lethe, the underground river in Hades that makes the drinker forget. A length of silver string. Red ink. Olive oil. A handful of rowan berries. A hazel branch. A vine of ivy. As many rose thorns as you have losses. Moss gathered from under an oak tree. Human blood.
Rowan and I have lost our parents. In my hand, there’s a spell to call back what’s been lost.
Olive comes up behind me and reads over my other shoulder. She reaches across me and turns the pages. She says “Weird” and “Wow” and “How old do you think this thing is?”
But that’s not what I’m wondering right now. “Who does it belong to?” I think out loud. “Who’d lose a spellbook?”
Olive laughs. “Who’d bring a book of spells to a party?” she says.
“What?” Rowan asks.
Olive looks at me. “You said you found it in the field the party was in last Saturday,” she says.
The party. My jacket, Rowan’s cap, Ivy’s necklace, Olive’s shoe. Everybody lost something.
“Somebody cast this spell at the party,” I say slowly. I don’t know how I know it’s true, but it’s like Ivy’s crossword. Right every time. “Everybody seems to have lost something since then.”
“Oh, don’t be silly,” says Olive, then she backtracks. “Sorry. I just mean people lose shit at parties all the time. I doubt it’s the first time any of us lost something after a few drinks.”
But Ivy’s nodding, flipping to the end of the spell. “Be careful what you bargain with; every lost thing requires a sacrifice—a new loss for every called thing found.” She closes her eyes. “That’s why we’ve all been losing things. Somebody cast this spell to find something, but they didn’t sacrifice something as well. So everyone who was at the party is losing things to make up for that.”
“Seriously?” Olive laughs a bit. “You really believe all that?” She looks at Rowan, who just kinda shrugs.
“I mean,” he says, “it does explain a lot.”
“A lot of what? I lost a shoe. Hazel lost a jacket. That all sounds pretty normal to me.” But then Olive stops, and the look on her face changes. It’s like she’s just thought of something. Something she’s lost. Something more than a scuffed silver shoe.
“A hazel branch,” I read aloud. “Olive oil. Rowan berries and a vine of ivy. Hazel, Olive, Rowan, and Ivy. There’s an ingredient for each of us.”
Olive leans closer. “And rose thorns,” she adds quietly.
Ivy takes the book from me and says with something a bit like wonder, “You’re right—there’s a part for each of us to play.”
Olive’s phone buzzes suddenly in the silence. She checks the message and stands up fast. “Shit,” she says. “That’s my sister. My parents are looking for me. I have to go.”
As if on cue, we hear the crunch of tires outside. Mags. Olive leaves, holding her schoolbag over her head against the rain.
We watch her go, sitting silently around a table we found at a garage sale, on chairs we salvaged from the side of the road, drinking from mugs that we stole. Rowan doesn’t know this isn’t temporary. He doesn’t know our mom’s not coming home. That she probably died in that fire. But he looks like he knows something. His face is drawn and he stares out of the kitchen door where Olive left, but he’s not looking at anything at all. Ivy’s frowning, her bottom lip between her teeth. There’s a part for each of us to play, she said. A spell to make lost things found again.
The only problem is, how do I get them to cast it with me without ever telling them why?
Olive
Wednesday May 10th
Lost: Train of thought; small umbrella (red, white polka dots)
Mags Maguire drives me home. Rowan told me she’s related to Ivy somehow, and that’s why she keeps an eye on them. I watch her covertly, trying to see a family resemblance between her broad, lined face and Ivy’s delicate features, without much success. Although they do both have those very pale blue eyes.
Pressed uncomfortably against my feet is a big old brown Labrador with rheumy eyes. (Lucky. That’s her seat, so if you don’t want to sit in the back you’re sharing the passenger seat with her.) I would have sat in the back except that the entire seat is taken up by a row of big metal cans that clank ominously as we drive. They are belted in tighter than I am. The whole car smells like cigarette smoke and wet dog. Still, it’s good to be out of the rain.
“So, how long have you known the twins?” I ask conversationally. I see why she would want to watch over her great-grandniece or whatever Ivy is to her, but I’m still a little fuzzy on her connection to Hazel and Rowan and why they seem to trust only her with the knowledge of their current living situation.
Mags looks across at me. “I’ve known the twins’ mom all her life. I’m the closest thing to family they have right now.”
“And,” I say, hoping it’s not too indiscreet, “you’re okay with them staying at Oak Road? How come they aren’t staying with you?”
“I don’t take in strays,” Mags says bluntly.
“Right.”
When I nod, she finally looks back at the road, but before I can allow myself to relax she has folded over to root around under her seat for something. I brace myself for what seems like inevitable death, but when I open my eyes Mags is calmly lighting a cigarette, one hand back on the wheel.
“And, um,” I say when I’ve caught my breath, “what about Ivy?” Rowan described her as our friend, who is also a girl. I’m half hoping Mags will clarify if that means girlfriend. I secretly cross my fingers.
“She’s keeping an eye on them.”
“So she’s not . . . with . . . either of them?”
Mags squints her eagle eyes at me. “That’s something you should ask her, not me,” she says curtly.
“Right.” The rain lashes across the window. At my request, Mags stops the car far enough down the road from my house that nobody will see me even if they do happen to be looking out of the window. I thank her and untie my bike from her roof.
“They’re okay, you know,” she says with a brisk nod. She turns the wheel like she’s throwing a discus at the Olympics, and I wince at the loud squeal of tires on the wet road. It’s only when she’s gone that I realize I never gave Rowan or Hazel my number. And now it’s too late to ask Mags to pass mine on.
Emily texts me the all-clear and I climb up onto the kitchen roof and in through her window. When I get inside, she greets me with a Cheshire-cat grin. “I told you to get back quickly. But don’t worry. I just said to Mom that you came in fifteen minutes ago. The shower’s running because I told her you’re in it. So what do I get for covering for you this time?”
I stand on her folded-out desk chair to get down from the window.
“Watch
my stuff!” she shouts, putting out her hands as if to shield her desk from my wet clothes.
“I’ll give you a ten?” I try.
“Twenty.”
“Look,” I reason, “I needed to find my bracelet. I’m pretty sure I lost it at the party on Saturday, so I went back to the field to try to find it.”
“Oh, maybe that’s what Rose was looking for when I saw her at the party,” says Emily.
“Looking where?” I ask.
She shrugs. “She was talking to Chloe’s brother and looking around, I don’t know. Maybe she was looking for your bracelet.”
“Actually,” I tell her, “loads of people lost stuff at the party. Or had stuff stolen.” I speak in the kind of hushed voice I know will appeal to my sister’s dramatic streak. “The girls in school think there’s some kind of kleptomaniac in town.”
“Oh my God, really?” Emily’s eyes open wide. “I have to tell Chloe.” She grabs her phone and begins to text furiously.
I drip across her bedroom, and she wrinkles her nose at the lingering smell of smoke and wet dog that I can detect still clinging to me.
“One more thing,” she says, jumping off her bed and blocking my way out of her bedroom door, mostly with her elbows. On a girl as skinny as she is, they’re basically weapons.
“What?”
“I’ll have that twenty,” she says, palm out.
I slap a twenty into her hand and make to go past her, but her elbows are still in my way.
“What now?” I ask.
“Who were you with tonight?” she says.
I manage to shoulder past her. “Rose,” I say. “Who else?”
Emily follows me out of her bedroom and onto the landing. “What are you even wearing anyway?”
“I got wet. Rose lent me some clothes.”
“That’s not Rose’s sweater,” she says. “And Rose quit smoking. You smell of smoke.”
“Look, I have revisions to do.” I shut my bedroom door and leave Emily pursing her lips outside.
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