“I got it as a reminder,” he says, “that no matter how far away from home I get, I don’t have to be lost; I can still be myself. Of course, it’s got a lot more meaning now,” he says. “Lost things everywhere.” His face is lower than mine, tilted up so he can see me. So many freckles. The candles on the table reflect at the very edges of his glasses. I want to touch his cheek. I want to run my hand through his hair. Really, I probably just want to kiss him.
Instead, I uncap the marker and take his bare arm in my other hand. I swivel in my chair so that I can write steadily. He rests his arm on my knees. I start at the crook of his elbow where I imagine his heart beats and I write Every first is a loss in the same careful writing that covers my own left forearm. I’ve never thought my handwriting was particularly pretty until now. Somehow, it complements the cursive of his tattoo.
“Does that mean that every first kiss with a new person is also a loss?” he asks in an almost-whisper, his arm on my knees, his face just below mine.
“I guess it must,” I tell him.
“Then not all losses are bad.”
“I guess not,” I say softly. His face is tilted up toward me. He raises himself up on his knees ever so slightly and our lips are aligned. His eyes are not quite closed; he’s staring at my mouth. I’m staring at his. We inch forward and the kitchen door slams open. We spring apart. A couple of the candles blow out and a bowl full of something or other on the counter tips over, spilling little things all over the floor. When I turn around, I see Ivy.
“Oh,” she says in that tiniest voice. “I’m sorry.” The wind howls through the house; it must have been a draft that blew the door open. I somehow can’t imagine little, quiet Ivy banging doors. “I just wanted some aspirin.” Her voice trails off at the end of every sentence. Even with my hearing aid in, I can only make out half her words.
“Whiskey?” Rowan offers, sitting back in his seat at the head of the table. “Nectar of the gods.”
“Oh, no,” Ivy says sadly, shuffling toward the sink. “I think I’ve had quite enough strong spirits for tonight.”
My lips tingle, unkissed. Ivy runs the tap and drinks water from it like a cat, swallows two aspirin, and waves good night with a sad-eyed smile before disappearing upstairs. Her skin is so pale and she is so thin and her lips are so soft and her eyes are so big; she’s like Little Red Goldilocks or Snow Beauty. I can imagine Rowan kissing her. I can imagine his hands around her tiny waist. I look down at my own decidedly untiny waist and the soft flesh of my belly, and I fold my arms over myself and scrape back my chair.
“I should get some sleep,” I say to Rowan, who is still staring at the door to the kitchen, at the invisible imprint Ivy has left behind. “I’m in for a fun time explaining all this to my parents tomorrow.”
“See you in the morning,” Rowan says, as if from far away. He tilts the whiskey bottle and refills his glass. The candles flicker, almost all melted, around him.
Laurel
Saturday, May 13th
Found: Two lost friends
Ash reappeared in the middle of the night. I couldn’t sleep. My sisters had sneaked me inside and hidden my wet clothes. They’d given me tea and blankets and left me curled on the couch with my diary, staring out of the sitting-room window at the storm.
I wrote down some of what we’d found, and it was like a length of silver thread connecting us to the people for whom this was a list of lost things. Silver, star-shaped hair clip; makeup bag (large, red, gold zipper); set of car keys (dog-charm key ring); reading glasses (purple); hairpins (approx. fifteen); delicate gold bracelet with tiny charms; two tarnished teaspoons; packet of cigarettes; blue plastic lighter; three earring backs; human blood.
We pulled these people into our spell. We made them give these things up so that we could find our diaries. And Jude. I can’t forget that we found him, too. Inside the list I hid four hearts. Laurel, Ash, Holly, Jude. I don’t always know whose heart is whose.
Just as the sky was raining itself out, Ash arrived. She threw stones at the sitting-room window like someone in a film and I let her in. She dripped rainwater on the carpet and joined me on the couch.
“I’ve seen the future,” she told me, her eyes wild. “I knocked on its door and it opened for me and I saw what was going to be.”
I sighed. “Did you take something, Ash? Did you drink more of that stuff he gave us?”
“I didn’t realize,” she said. “I was stupid. I thought I loved him, but he’s not what we thought. I’ve seen the future. I know how it goes. And I’m going to stop it.”
Ash’s knees bounced. She gripped them with her fists and her whole body trembled.
I almost shook my head. I almost told her I didn’t believe her. Instead, I said, “What was in that drink he gave us?”
“He’s a lost soul, you know. We called him up, with the spell.”
I felt goose bumps springing up over my skin. “He’s just a boy, Ash.”
She shook her head like she shook her body. “Mm-mm, no,” she said. “He’s so much more than that.”
It reminded me of Holly earlier that morning, comparing Jude to Orpheus. How could a mere boy have such an effect on my best friends?
“Forget about him,” I said. I shivered and shook my head. “He’s trouble. He’s lost a lot and so will you. Stay away from him,” I added, “or you’ll lose everything.”
The scene in front of me flickered and changed. Like a dream. Like a vision. Ash lay there asleep on the couch with her lit cigarette and the house went up in flames. I blinked and she was sitting again, and of course there was no cigarette in her hand on my mom’s overstuffed couch with the ugly embroidered pillows. What was in that drink?
“Laurel,” Ash said softly, and she stared into my eyes. “Don’t you realize? Don’t you understand what he is?”
“Just a boy,” I said again, but some of my certainty was lost. I thought Ash might be slightly delusional—thinking she loved him, thinking he was magic. Earlier she was all glee at our having found him, and now she was—what—calling him a demon?
“It was him,” Ash said. “It was always him. He turned us against one another; he enchanted us all; he whispered his lies and made us believe him.”
The last of the rain beat against the windows. The last of the wind howled from the forest. Ash came closer. “And where did he come from?” she asked. “Where does he live? Who is he really?”
I should have pointed out that it wasn’t Jude who took our diaries. It wasn’t Jude who gave them to people to read out in front of the whole class. It wasn’t Jude who betrayed his best friends. But with Ash wild-eyed before me, I didn’t say any of that. I said slowly, “We’ve never seen him outside that forest.”
Ash sat back and sighed like she’d had the last sip of a long, cool drink. “He’s one of the lost,” she said. “A lost soul we called up without knowing. How else would he know so much about lost things, about magic, about light and dark?” She sat forward again, her stare intense, and said, very fast, “He’s all darkness. We must protect Holly. He has too much power over us already. It’s going to get worse. We have to make him stop.” It wasn’t that I believed Ash. It wasn’t that I had forgiven her for what she’d done. It was seeing Holly’s body swinging from a tree like it was real. It was seeing Ash go up in flames as if it was happening right in front of me. It was knowing that somehow, in all this, Jude played a part, and we could not trust him.
We have to make him stop.
We threw stones at Holly’s bedroom window until she appeared at her front door, her hair disheveled and her eyes half closed. It didn’t take long to convince her. We sat together on her bed and she shook and shook her head.
“I knew it,” she whispered. Her thin hands worried at the scarf around her throat. “How could I have been so blind?”
Somewhere outside, a dog barked in the darkness.
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br /> We got our bikes and rode to the forest.
Maybe he saw us coming. Maybe he has always existed in this forest. Maybe he needs us if he ever wants to leave the shade of the trees.
We led him into the deeper forest, down the slope and close to the lake. The sky was lightening slowly, a pink tinge to the horizon, a spread of blue above the trees.
We stopped together and we grabbed him. We tied him to a tree with silver string. Our veins were awash with spirits still, but we didn’t forget; we remembered everything.
We danced around him like wood nymphs. We made sounds that weren’t words but a calling: a calling for the found to stay lost.
At first he asked, “What are you doing?” But Holly tied her scarf around his mouth and after that he didn’t ask anything. No small talk, no Kerouac, no questions with fire.
We twirled like Furies; we skipped and jumped. We circled the tree on our hands and knees, clawing at the earth like wolves. We filled our fists with leaves and moss and we threw it all at him. Marbles and key rings, buttons and bracelets hit his skin.
Ash took out her silver lighter and flicked it open. The flame was the brightest thing, reflecting on the silver string. She let it lick against the leaves at his feet, and as the smoke curled up into the body of the tree he broke free.
He tore the scarf from around his mouth. The flames licked the leaves, but he kicked them aside. He came toward us with his arms outstretched. He lunged at our throats.
We three held hands and we turned and ran.
Olive
Sunday, May 14th
Lost: All control; appetite for breakfast
It isn’t quite morning when I wake up again. My mouth is a desert and my hair is stuck to my face and the room is still spinning. The other side of the mattress is empty.
Faint light shines through the cracks between the plywood boards and the windows. My phone says it’s a quarter to five.
There’s nobody downstairs. In the kitchen, the candles are puddles of wax on the camping table. Two chipped glasses still sit there, the last drops of whiskey pooled in the bottoms, the ghosts of our lips around the rims. The place is a mess of wet clothes and damp towels, bowls of crumbs and empty glasses. There isn’t a soul but me around.
There isn’t anyone in the upstairs bathroom either, which leaves two rooms to find four people. I quietly turn the handle of Hazel’s first.
It looks like a bomb has hit it, long enough ago for the rubble of cans and cups and makeup bottles and dirty laundry to have fossilized into small, sharp mountains around the room. I would have thought that runaways travel light, but there is very little about these particular runaways that I ever expect.
For example: As the light from my phone spills into the room, I quickly realize that Rose is in Hazel’s bed. They are curled together, naked and sleep-tousled, Rose’s hair a long black river falling over Hazel’s shoulder. I back out of the room and shut the door silently.
The landing is full of my breathing. My phone goes out and I try to let my eyes adjust to the darkness. Two more people somewhere in this house. One more room to look in. I shouldn’t but I can’t not.
When I crack open the door of Rowan’s room, a shadow on a mattress raises its curly head out of the covers. I can just about make out Rowan’s hand groping along the floor beside the mattress, searching among the black outlines of clothes and his guitar, and coming up with his glasses. He rubs his face with both palms and puts the glasses on. He smiles when he sees me.
Ivy isn’t there.
“Can’t sleep?” he says hoarsely. He clears his throat and beckons me in. The door swings shut behind me and we’re left in deeper darkness. He turns on a big camping lantern on the floor beside the mattress and everything glows. Soft light, soft smile, soft swish of the mattress when I sit down facing Rowan and cross my legs over the covers. We’re so close, our knees touch, mine over the bedsheet and his under; I see his discarded flannel pajama bottoms on the floor and realize he’s been sleeping in his boxers. Or naked. I blush.
“Sorry I woke you,” I whisper. “I was looking for Rose.”
Rowan straightens a strand of hair on my bangs and my whole skin tingles.
“She’s with Hazel,” I add, and I can’t help but wonder what it will mean for Rowan and Ivy that Hazel is no longer a sharp corner of their triangle.
Rowan grins. “From what I’ve learned of Rose, this might mean that Hazel’s finally met her match,” he says.
I raise an eyebrow. “Rose is kind of a force of nature.”
“Good,” Rowan says, and he leans back against the wall. “’Cause Hazel tends to burn through girls. She falls in love every other week.”
I laugh. “Rose, too.”
“They have a lot in common.”
“Tall, gorgeous, outspoken, take no shit from anyone . . .” I say, without mentioning another thing they have in common. They’re each one of our whole worlds. A sister, a best friend. Then again, if Rose and I were still completely attached at the hip, I wouldn’t be here now.
Rowan grins. “Definitely,” he says. “I like Rose.”
“She likes you, too.”
“Glad to hear it,” Rowan says. “Do you?”
“Do I what?”
“Like me?”
I’m not sure how to answer that—certainly not with what I’m thinking, which is that with his lips soft and his chest bare in front of me I don’t so much like him as want to throw myself right at him. My breath comes a little faster. When Rowan breathes, the phoenix on his chest seems to move in the low light of the lantern on the floor.
I let my eyes linger on his tattoo. I was avoiding staring too closely earlier, but something about the darkness and the bedsheets between us makes me brave. And makes me notice something I wouldn’t have before.
The skin under the ink is scarred. I see waves of it when I look closer—knots and bumps and hollows becoming the wings of the bird. I reach out to touch it, slowly, waiting for Rowan to move away, but he doesn’t. I run my fingers over it and Rowan goes very still.
“What happened?” I ask, and my voice is barely a whisper.
“There was a fire,” he says, and he shakes his head. “It’s not a great story, to be honest.”
Yesterday I asked what he was hiding from, here in this house. I assumed it was just the police, but obviously it’s more than that. I don’t want to push him to tell me, but I’ve never been very good at not asking questions.
“When did it happen?” I ask. It has to have been years ago for the burn to heal enough to tattoo over.
“The fire happened when I was fourteen,” he tells me. “But I got the tattoo last month. It was a . . . running-away present.”
“A phoenix from the flames? Very fitting.”
Rowan grins. “I’m a pretty literal kinda guy.”
“Well, it’s beautiful,” I say, then I blush. Again. I quickly ask another question. “Did it hurt?”
His grin widens. “The tattoo or the burn?”
“Oh. God. The tattoo, of course. Sorry.”
Rowan laughs. “Oh, sure,” he says. “I nearly passed out.”
“And,” I say hesitantly. “How did the burn . . . ?”
“Okay,” Rowan says. “But don’t say I didn’t warn you.” He’s wearing half a smile, untroubled, like he doesn’t mind telling me. “So. You know how me and Hazel said our parents were never around much?”
“Yeah?” I have a sudden sinking feeling about where this story’s going.
“My mom . . . She’s not a bad person, she’s just kinda . . .” He searches for a word. “Lost. I guess. My dad’s pretty messed up and manipulative, and she just follows him around the whole time, which is why she left us with our grandparents. But every once in a while she’d come back to Dublin solo and cart the two of us off to Ivy’s place, so her mom could,
I dunno, help our mom stay away from Dad, I guess. Stay sober. Stay with us. It never worked for more than a week. My parents . . . well, they mostly just drink and disappear. That’s kinda what they’re good at.”
I make myself close my mouth. I can’t imagine having parents like that.
“Anyway,” Rowan goes on, “the last time, which was three years ago, Ivy and her mom were away somewhere, so we showed up at their door and they didn’t answer. We ended up renting a flat in Easkey, close to where Ivy lives. And my dad found us. He tried to act like this was some kinda family holiday, but obviously it wasn’t, and my parents spent the whole time fighting, which is something else they’re really good at. Me and Hazel were getting sick of it, so Hazel stormed off, but I got in a fight with my dad about it and he locked me in my room like I was a kid. Then they both went out. I think they forgot I was there at all.”
He keeps a careful eye on me as if to gauge my reaction. “My mom’d left a lit cigarette on the couch. She did that, like, every night. Me and Hazel would come home and she’d be passed out drunk and my dad would be gone and my mom’d have a lit cigarette way too close to whatever it was she was drinking and we’d have to put it out so the place didn’t go up in flames. But that time there was no one there to put it out.”
“Oh God.” My skin tingles with shock.
“Yeah,” Rowan says. “I ended up breaking down the door, but not before my clothes had caught fire.”
“Oh God,” I say again. No wonder they ran away.
“Told you it wasn’t a great story.”
His blood is beating under the palm of my hand. His eyes are dark in the lamplight. He licks his lips.
“But it’s all healed over now,” he says lightly.
It’s a big tattoo. A lot of scarred skin to cover.
And.
It’s a lot of naked skin right there in front of me, my fingers pressed to his chest. Slowly, deliberately, I trace the outline of the tattoo from the phoenix beak along the top of his rib cage to the tail feathers just above his hip bone. He stops breathing.
Spellbook of the Lost and Found Page 18