The Secret of a Heart Note

by Stacey Lee

  “Sorry. Thought you might have lost something.” Even when he’s not smiling, his brown eyes appear to be crinkled into half moons.

  A clump of damp hair flops into his eyes.

  Stop staring. Talk. “Oh no, I didn’t lose anything.” Only my dignity. “Just harvesting lichen.” Does that sound weird? Yes.

  A pair of dimples materializes on either side of his mouth. “Hm, okay.”

  “Okay.” I begin to turn away. I’m a comet that briefly passed into his solar system but now must return to deep space where I belong.

  “I’m Court Sawyer.”

  I suppress a laugh. No kidding. Our eyes connect. Sure, he’s cute, even up close, but overrated-cute. His eyes squint and he has one of those Count Dracula hairlines that, like the economy, is one day headed for a recession. That said, I can see why he’s a photographer’s dream, with dark features against a naturally pale complexion, and a sweet curve to his lips.

  “It’s Mimosa, right?”

  “Just Mim.”

  “I’ve seen you here before. You’re the famous love witch.”

  “Infamous, you mean.”

  “Is it true you can smell a person five miles away?”

  People love to exaggerate. “No. Four miles, max, and only if the wind is right.”

  He smiles. “How do you do that? I can barely smell my own sweat.”

  Magic? Mutant genes that grew billions more scent receptors than the average person? Probably a bit of both. I give him the short answer. “Genetics. It’s no big deal.”

  “Genetics, huh.” The trouty odor of doubt floats away from him. “People say your mother locked you away in a tower. No one ever saw you until you started school.” He shakes out one leg, then the other, seeming uncomfortable with standing still.

  “My mother wanted to homeschool me.”

  “What changed her mind?”

  A year of begging. A couple of all-expense-paid guilt trips. “The math got too complicated.”

  He laughs, though I wasn’t kidding. I fumble around my messenger bag for my plastic jar and collection tools, hoping he gets the hint. As good as he smells, I can’t be late.

  His face grows serious. “Can you really make people fall in love?”

  “We open their eyes to the possibility of love. But the decision is theirs.” Every few years, some journalist writes about us, giving logical explanations for our singular sniffers, like the journalist in Scientific American, who said our genes hail from the Paleozoic era when humans still walked on all fours. Others call us frauds. Grandmother Narcissa, an anomaly even among aromateurs, put most fraud claims to rest when she scented out a rare prickly pear growing in Arizona, used to treat diabetes. She smelled it all the way from our home on Parrot Hill.

  But still, we have our skeptics.

  Court rubs the back of his neck. “So I’ve been wanting to ask, do you make potions to help people get over each other?”

  I cough to cover my embarrassment. Him, needing our services? “We don’t work with minors.”

  He flashes a smile, and my adrenaline spikes. “It’s not for me.”

  “Oh.”

  He doesn’t explain. Perhaps he’s talking about his mother. Last year, pictures of Court’s tech-millionaire father cavorting with scantily clad “models” surfaced on the internet. Even Mother knew about it, and she hates gossip.

  I finally say, “It’s unethical.” It’s mostly true. We do make Potions to Undo Feelings, or PUFs, in extreme cases like aromateur error. Mother has never made a mistake, but she did make a PUF once before I was born.

  “Making people fall in love isn’t unethical? I mean, opening their eyes to the possibility.”

  I square my hat. “We have rules. The client and the target—I mean, the love interest—must be of sound mind, impeccable personal history, an adult over eighteen; the list is long.” Some of my hair gets in my mouth and I blow it out. “Anyway, Mother says falling in love is the easy part. Things get complicated after that.”

  “I see.” He touches the peeling bark of a eucalyptus and looks up at the leaves.

  The bluesy scent of friar plums drifts toward me, the subtle note of despair, and my annoyance fades. “My mother tells people who are heartbroken to plant roses. They require a lot of attention, and when they finally bloom, you’ll be ready to give them to someone else.”

  “Roses, huh?” He’s looking at me.

  “Yes. Only heirlooms. Hybrids don’t smell as sweet. April Love. Distant Thunder’s nice. They have a peppery finish over a dusky center.” I’m babbling.

  “You’d be an intimidating person to buy flowers for.”

  “Me? Oh, I don’t really need flowers.”

  He grins. Pinching his shirt, he wafts it a few times then stops. “Sorry.”

  “It’s okay. It’s nothing I haven’t smelled before.” That didn’t come out right. Hastily, I add, “I mean, everyone sweats.”

  He scratches the back of his head. “So what do I smell like?”

  My turtleneck feels like it’s choking me. “You smell like a campfire, with heart notes of fir needle, and nutmeg, plus a ton of cinnamon—” I stop. He might know cinnamon is an aphrodisiac. “And other stuff.”

  He blows out an amused breath. “You want to know what I smell in you?”

  Me?

  He takes a step closer and sniffs, stopping my heart in its tracks. “Butterscotch pudding.” He keeps a straight face.

  A flush migrates all the way to my scalp. “You’re making fun of me!”

  “I’m sorry, all I meant was you’re not chocolate, vanilla, or strawberry. You dare to be yourself.” His eyes sweep up my five-foot-eight-inch frame, from my prairie skirt to my bucket hat, which hides most of my messy bob. “You’ve got style.”

  Actually, what I have is a concerned mother, who makes me cover up as much skin as possible. I try to hold on to my anger, but it slips away. “I just wear whatever fits me from Twice Loved.”

  “You hold your head up, even when people say you eat silkworms.”

  “They taste heavenly with a bit of butter.” I press a hand to my heart and affect an expression of bliss, a look that must be too convincing, as his forehead crinkles in uncertainty. Cheeks burning, I add, “Also, I make humans fall in love with their shoes.” That’s the latest rumor. I freak a lot of people out. One girl at school even screamed when she looked up from her sandwich and saw me standing beside her. Kali said people are afraid I’ll put a spell on them, I just need to give them time—though I doubt time will make a difference.

  He chuckles, and dimples once again light up his face.

  I force myself to think about lichen. Black and scratchy like pirate whiskers. “I should finish up here.” Mother will start to worry.

  “Right. See you at school.” He gives me a lopsided smile, then lithely jogs away. The word lifeguard is emblazoned across the hoodie wrapped around his hips.

  I shave the lichen into my jar with a metal scraper, but my heart is still racing. At least I managed to keep the weird to a minimum. I shake thoughts of Court’s dreamy smile from my head, lid my jar, and stuff it in my bag. Job done; time to clock out.

  Two bees follow me back to the running trail. I’m like an ice cream truck to them. Only instead of Popsicles, I peddle pollen, which is impossible to rid myself of without constant showering. Once they realize I’m no flower, they usually leave.

  Four girls on rollerblades whiz toward me in a cloud of sunscreen and hairspray. The predinner rush is in full swing. Arastradero gets especially crowded when the school year starts—it’s a prime running spot for the athletes and more interesting than the hamster wheel of our school track. I step off the path to let them pass, and recognize the head roller as Vicky Valdez, Court’s ex-girlfriend.

  Coincidence? Or not. Kali told me that when Vicky and Court broke up, she became known as Exxed-Valdez. She’s still not over him.

  The girls trailing her veer as far away from me as the paved path allows, cas
ting suspicious glances my way. Vicky, though, stays her course, black hair flowing like seaweed and unencumbered by a helmet. Her gaze lingers on mine for a moment, cool and appraising, and the scent of disdain, like rancid kumquat, invades my nose. Without missing a beat, she muscles forward with her short but well-formed legs. She’s never spoken a word to me, but I don’t need words to tell me she doesn’t like me.

  As they roll away, I catch a whiff of habañero peppers, so faint that if it were not for the breeze, I would’ve missed it. It’s coming from the direction Court ran. I inhale. Sifting through the plant smells, I find it again, the hot scent of panic. I run toward the source.

  Just around a bend, Court’s lying curled up on the ground, his lifeguard sweatshirt a few feet away. The hot, honey aroma of bee toxin pricks my nose. He got stung?

  Panting, I drop down beside him. “Court? Are you okay?”

  He struggles to breathe. He must be allergic to bee stings. Those can be fatal.

  “Do you have an EpiPen?” Frantically, I search his pockets, noticing the silver MedicAlert bracelet beside his watchband. I don’t find the EpiPen, but I do find his cell phone. I dial nine one one.

  It rings once, twice, three times. Why doesn’t anyone answer?

  As the phone continues to ring, my nose guides me to the sting, which is right under his bicep. There’s a deep scratch mark where he failed to remove it. The black stinger sits just under the skin. Carefully, I dig it out with my fingernail.

  Ring. Ring. “What is your emergency?”

  “My friend got stung by a bee. He’s allergic.”

  “What is your location?”

  “Arastradero Park, about a hundred yards from the giant lemonade bushes.”

  “The what?”

  I look wildly around me for another landmark. “We’re in a grove of gum cannabis.”

  “Cannabis? Is this a crank call?”

  “Oh no, not that variety . . . Er, east of the tennis courts? Hundred feet from a water fountain?”

  She pauses for at least four seconds. “Okay. I’ve dispatched the ambulance.”

  After I answer more questions, we hang up.

  “You’re okay,” I tell Court. “They’ll be here soon. I need to fetch something.”

  Court’s eyes are bloodshot and watering. I pillow his head with his sweatshirt. Dumping the lichen out of my specimen jar, I scurry off in search of plantain weed, which grows everywhere except when you’re looking for it. I try to follow the scents but the lemonade bushes and buckwheats are interfering, and an uneven breeze stirs everything together.

  I drop to my knees and sniff the ground. Got it. The zesty trail leads me to a strong patch just a few yards from where I harvested the lichen.

  Court’s nearly unconscious when I return. Fighting down panic, I stuff plantain leaves into the jar, add stones, then shake the whole thing to release their oils. I pull my sleeves down to cover my hands and lift his head onto my lap. Then I undo the jar and hold the opening to his mouth and nose, praying the anti-inflammatory weed will reduce the swelling.

  At last, his chest moves a fraction, and soon he’s breathing in short shallow breaths. I set the jar back down. Sweat trickles into my eyes and I wipe it away with my sleeve. His bicep is taut and curved, even at rest. I take a plantain leaf and hold it against his bee sting, being careful not to touch my skin to his, even though I already touched him to get out the stinger. I’ll take care of that later.

  I listen hard for the wailing of an ambulance. His head feels heavy and hot in my lap, and I shift around to get comfortable. It strikes me that this is the closest I have ever come to a boy, much less one so popular. His pheromones pelt my nose from all angles; it’s like being hit by a confetti canon.

  Court moans and turns his head to one side.

  “Can you hear me? Court?” I should talk to him. But what about? I could ask him some questions.

  Right. Poor guy can barely breathe, let alone answer questions.

  I could do something to distract him from his pain until help arrives. Sing? Dance? Tell a joke? If I did any of those, I might make things worse. Maybe I could tell him a story, if only I could think of one. Well, I do know one.

  My throat has gone dry and I swallow hard to get my voice working again. “My mother says we’re related to the Queen of Sheba. You see, the queen gave King Solomon rare spices for the chance to pick his brain, which led to the world’s first power couple. They had a son, and when he began to crawl, they discovered he could sniff out a single poppy seed stuck in a hundred-foot-long carpet.”

  A siren wails. The paramedics will be here soon. Time for the neutralizing mist, which Kali dubbed Boy-Be-Gone, or BBG for short. When you live and breathe flowers, it’s not just the bees who are drawn to you. If I touch individuals predisposed to liking me—most often boys, but sometimes girls—residue from the thousands of elixirs Mother and I create transfers off my skin, like the dust from a moth’s wing, causing attraction. It’s why I always wear hats and long sleeves in public, though I draw the line at gloves, which would just make me look like a germaphobe. BBG nixes any mushy feelings that may arise from contamination by this “aromateur’s pollen.”

  From my bag, I pull out a crystal atomizer that fits into my palm and is as small as a perfume bottle. My finger feels for the pump, and just as I’m about to spritz, Court’s eyelids flutter open. I catch my reflection in his startled eyes, bewitched and bewildered, like I was the one bitten.

  “I, I—” Closing the door on my doubts, I spray. One dose lasts a lifetime.

  He watches the beads of mist float in the air. A gentle breeze carries some of them away. He turns his puzzled eyes to me.

  “It’s just something I, er, do. It’s calming. I feel calm. Don’t you feel calm?” Living with a human polygraph, my mother, means I lie as well as grass.

  I hear the chatter of girls and raise my voice. “Hello?” Maybe someone can flag down the ambulance when it comes. “Can someone help me?”

  A girl half skates and half walks into the grassy clearing, and I recognize her from the group of rollerbladers who passed me earlier. Her mouth drops when she sees us. One by one, her friends pile up behind her, including Vicky who cries out, “Court?”

  Her blades kick up clumps of grass as she dashes to us. “What happened?”

  Court squints at her, then his eyes close again.

  “A bee stung his arm.”

  “He’s allergic!” she says, as if I didn’t already figure that out. “Oh my God, Court baby. Did you find his pen?”

  Baby? Gross. “He doesn’t have one on him.”

  She kneels beside me and elbows me out of the way, lifting his head and placing it on her own lap. “Move over.”

  I eye her long gold-painted nails, hoping she doesn’t scratch his face. “Maybe you shouldn’t move him.”

  “Are you a medical expert?” Vicky shoots back. The sharp, weedy odor of her hostility—stinging nettles—peels at the inside of my nose.

  The other girls, now crowded around us, glare at me as if I’m the bee.

  Sirens wail louder now and a truck rumbles up, the red visible through the screen of plants. A pair of medics rush to us, holding equipment. “Step aside, please,” barks one of them. The girls back off.

  “He’s allergic to bees,” Vicky tells the medic, her throaty voice tight and high.

  Court opens his eyes again. “I’m, I—” he mumbles.

  The first medic pulls out an EpiPen from his bag and sticks Court in the thigh. The medic’s partner examines Court’s arm, which is no longer angry and swollen.

  “How are you feeling? Any trouble breathing?” asks the first medic.

  “No, no, I’m fine.” Court struggles to sit up, aided by Vicky who straps her arms around him from the back.

  “Just rest against me, baby,” she coos. “You’re going to be fine. I’m so glad I found you in time.”

  I dig my arms into my stomach. Anyone else might be repulsed by her boldne
ss, but I remind myself it’s better this way. I am a mere comet.

  The medic asks Court more questions, which he answers mostly through nods and monosyllables. Slowly, I get up. He’s in good hands now.

  Court catches me stealing away and says in a quiet voice, “Mim? Thanks.”

  Vicky cuts her gaze from him to me, and her eyes lose their anxious cast and harden. The unmistakable scent of jealousy, like sour milk, putrefies the air.

  No good ever came of that scent.

  “You’re welcome.”

  I refill my jar with lichen, then hurry away, but the scent of jealousy stays in my nose long after I’ve left the park.

  THREE

  “EVERYTHING SMELLS, ESPECIALLY EMOTION.”

  —Mu Jin, Aromateur, 1621

  I LIFT A pair of poached eggs out of the pot, willing them not to break. They make it to the plate without incident, so I add a banana scone to my arrangement. Free and easy. I cannot coax Mother into a good mood if I’m giving off stress smells.

  At our kitchen table, Mother looks up from Friday’s crossword puzzle. The wagon-wheel lamp bathes her with warm light. She pulls off her reading glasses and lifts an eyebrow. “Confined.”

  I don’t lose a beat. “Constrained.” Mother and I used to do the crosswords together until I started school.

  “Cramped.”

  “Caged.”

  “Cornered.”

  I set the plate before her. “I dub you Sir Synonym, but there will be a rematch,” I say good-naturedly, even though I have another one up my sleeve: curbed.

  Mother grins, and I return the smile despite the fact that I’m so tired, even my face droops. She was up even later than I was, but unlike me, there’s no stoop to her shoulders, no circles under her eyes. Her hair is neatly combed in place, not tangled like brambles under a slouch hat.

  She tucks her bookmark with the pressed flowers into the seam of her crossword book. “You should’ve slept in, though this is a nice treat. My favorites.”