The Secret of a Heart Note

by Stacey Lee

  Kali puts down her aloe stub. “The tiger went hungry. And?”

  “Ask any predatory cat. It’s virtually impossible to pursue two prey at once.”

  Kali follows my gaze to Drew. “You’re going to fix her with Drew?”

  “Shh!” I put my chin on my hand and chew on my lip. Vicky threw the first nut. It would be foolish to let her strike without polishing up a few of my own. Drew likes her anyway. It might be the perfect match.

  Drew looks up at us. He lifts his chocolate milk at Kali. “Haven’t seen you at Stan’s lately.”

  “Been watching my weight,” she yells back to him.

  “Cool.”

  I strain for Drew’s scent, and Kali waves a hand in front of me. “Earth to Cupid. Abort plan. If I’m standing in the light, you’d better stand there, too.”

  “So you don’t mind if certain laundry is aired?”

  “Of course I mind.” Kali’s lips squish together.

  “Exactly.” I catch Drew’s scent. Horseradish, beavertail, potatoes . . .

  Kali frowns at me.

  “You don’t like it because you’re a good person, not a squirrel.”

  Her face tightens. “That’s bonk—hooking someone up with a freak show like that.”

  “Drew’s a nice guy.”

  “I was talking about Vicky.”

  I snort. “The elixir just opens the eyes. If there’s no spark, nothing will happen. But if there is, that’s two more passengers aboard the Goodlove blimp. She might thank me one day.”

  “Give her the fake elixir for Court if you want, but don’t fix her with Drew for me. That must break a dozen rules.” She chucks the aloe stub into a bush.

  I clamp my lip. She’s right. Aromateurs can’t go fixing anyone we choose.

  Not to mention, today’s mistake is so big, you could probably see it from space.

  FIVE

  “DANDELION,

  A YELLOW SUN TRANSFORMS INTO A WHITE PUFF OF MOON,

  THEN FEELS THE BREATH OF WISHFULNESS, AND SCATTERS

  ITS SEEDS, LIKE STARS INTO AN EMPTY SPACE.”

  —Ixia, Aromateur, 1771

  DESPITE THE DISQUIET I cause among the student body, I like school. I like raising my hand and answering questions during class. I revel in feeling smart on the few times I score A’s. But this morning’s lessons pass as slowly as glacial melt. At least I already had algebra today. The last thing I need is to see Mr. Frederics, whose love life I may have screwed up forever.

  Finally, the lunch bell rings. On autopilot, I follow a balding path of grass toward a grove of trees. The sun pokes me in the eyes, and I keep my hand up to shade them. I stop at the second to last tree, a sprawling mulberry, where I always eat my lunch, since Kali works the hot lunch line “scooping the goop” as she calls it. I feel less alone there than in the cafeteria, surrounded by people who try not to sit by me.

  Not to mention, being outdoors gives me a break from all the pent-up high school smells. The concentrated odor of teenagers, with their fickle natures, rivals even the smelliest crowds in the world. Not even the jam-packed trains in India, or the World Cup crowds Mother and I battled in Brazil on the hunt for a rare bakupari tree can cause such proboscine consternation.

  I plop down on a dry spot and cradle my head in my arms, wilting at the thought of Mother’s disappointment.

  I won’t be able to fix Ms. DiCarlo with Mr. Frederics’s elixir until I make the PUF for Alice. The librarian will just have to wait. If I fix her now, I might end up with a messy love triangle, and a cartload of new problems.

  Maybe a woman like Alice could fall for a man like Mr. Frederics, even though they sit on different ends of the salad bar. A graduate of Georgia Tech and a proponent of reducing our carbon footprint, he’s crunchy granola, the healthy kind with organic seeds and nuts. She’s crisp iceberg lettuce, a natural flare for dressing, and freshly plucked from the runway by her ex-husband at the tender age of nineteen. But, it could work; their scents are in alignment.

  I shake my head. They could be Romeo and Juliet for all I care, but it wouldn’t matter. My mission is to stamp out any embers, not blow them into a flame. Unfix Alice. Fix Ms. DiCarlo. And avoid the subject at all costs with Mother so I won’t have to lie.

  The rough bark of the mulberry feels warm against the back of my head. Closing my eyes, I inhale. Campfire smells fill my nose: charred cedar, roasted hickory, and fir needles.

  Court ambles in my direction with his trademark casual stride, backpack slung over one shoulder.

  I stop breathing as I watch him close the distance, wishing I didn’t feel so giddy. Behind him, the school appears stately and calm, with clean blocks of blond stone rising behind columns of Italian cypress.

  Moments later, he stands before me. “Hi, again. I’m not following you. This used to be my spot. I sat here all the time freshman year.” He drops down beside me and straps his arms around his knees. On the right toe of his Converse All Stars, someone wrote in black marker, “Beware of Foot.” “You get tired of people, too?”

  “The other way around.” His squint deepens, and I add, “People prefer I keep my distance.”

  “People can be idiots.”

  The undeserved sympathy jabs at me like goatheads, cough-syrupy creepers that grow through the smallest cracks and can puncture even tires with their sharp spines. I pray that he leaves now so I can continue panicking in peace.

  He fiddles with his watchband as he stares off to the right, where the field extends toward the five-thousand-capacity soccer stadium. “You coming to the game?”

  “Game? Oh, homecoming.” Dummy. It’s only the biggest event of the year, of which Court is the star. He chuckles.

  “I’m sorry. I’m not sure if I can go.” Because I might not be alive.

  “It’s okay. It’ll probably be boring.”

  “I doubt all your screaming fans would agree.”

  His mouth hints at a smile, which quickly disappears. “The only fan I care about is my mom. This game means a lot to her. I don’t want to disappoint her. She’s had enough of that this year.”

  “I’m sorry.” Sorrier than you know.

  “It’s okay.” He glances at me. “My mom plays her ukulele in the key of B minor every night. Doesn’t matter what the song is, it could be ‘Happy Birthday’ and it would still be in B minor. It’s so damn depressing.” When he shakes his head, his hair flops into his eyes. He doesn’t brush it aside.

  I rub my temples. “I smell protea in your mother’s scentprint.” Protea, also called sugarbush, is usually sweet, but hers is especially melon-like in the top notes.

  “Protea. From Proteus?”

  “Yes. You know the myth?”

  Tapping his finger against his forehead, he says, “Greek god who told the future. He’d change his shape so people couldn’t recognize him and bug him with questions.”

  “Nice.”

  He stretches his back. “See, I’m not all jock.”

  “They named protea after Proteus because it comes in a thousand varieties—pincushion, brown-beard, tooth-leafed, et cetera.”

  He snorts. “No dude wants a flower named after him. So why the protea?”

  “People who smell like protea are resilient, survivors. Victory has the same sweet notes, like champagne sorbet.”

  “Wow. So, does defeat smell sour, like a bunch of stinky jocks crying for their mamas?” His grin teases one out of me.

  “Actually, yes. Any emotion based on fear tends to be ‘sour,’ like helplessness, self-pity, rejection . . .”

  A circlet of yellow flowers straight as candles grows near Court’s foot, their florets arranged in perfect Fibonacci numbers. Court plucks the only puffed one and twirls it between his fingers. Then he holds it out to me. “What’s a dandelion mean?”

  I take it. The bloom’s chardonnay notes are oakier when it matures to a puff. “Flirtation.” The word slips out before I have a chance to catch it. A flash of heat sears my collar.

 
“And here I thought I was being subtle,” he jokes, though I catch the unmistakable scent of smoked paprika, the mildest of the chilies and a telltale sign of embarrassment, creeping in from his direction. Or maybe it’s coming from my direction.

  Before my nose ties itself into knots, I add, “And hope. It also means hope.” I lift the dandelion puff like a wineglass. “To your mother’s happiness.” I send the seeds sailing away in one breath, knowing it will take more than hope to set things right.

  SIX

  “THOUGH COWSLIPS LINE THY MAPLED CART,

  THE WISE WILL CATCH A FALLING HEART.”

  —Carmelita, Aromateur, 1728

  THE ROAD TO Parrot Hill is a winding two-lane highway no one uses except for the residents, who are few in number and mostly elderly. I’ve never seen any parrots myself, but they swarmed the sycamores when Mother was young, mini-F-18 bombers that dropped their loads wherever and whenever. After the parrots stopped coming, Mother bought chickens to enrich the soil, which are easier on the hair.

  A burst of anxious energy helps me pedal up the incline, leaving a swampy bog in my wake. The wet-dog smell of forgotten cucumbers assails my nose, spiked by zingers of hoary tomatoes. Even though most of the homeowners no longer grow their own vegetables, the ghosts of produce past still linger.

  At the break in the briar, I stop at the end of our long, stone driveway, breathing hard. If I’m not careful, Mother will smell my stress.

  I step through bitter chicory plants with their jagged leaves, to reach a Merengue rosebush bursting with plump blossoms. Mother insists we plant them this way for the visitors. The bitter walnut scent of the chicory actually balances the sweetness of the roses, sort of like how coffee and sugar, working together, can create a more pleasing and complex taste. I inhale, letting its muscat-sweet fragrance cool my mood.

  Calmer, but not by much, I pedal up to the covered walkway that leads into the round courtyard just outside our kitchen. Our cottage is a mishmash of stone blocks, as if the ancestor who built it simply employed whatever odds and ends were on hand. The whole lopsided structure has stayed intact through several earthquakes, but the wishing well is crumbling on one side where I crashed our old maple cart last month. Mother wouldn’t speak to me for a week for taking out those two relics in one careless swoop, especially that cart. Aromateurs traditionally used handcarts made of maple, a hard wood whose scent won’t react with the cargo, but true maple carts are hard to come by nowadays.

  I lean my bike against the good side and peer through the window of the corner turret where Mother sometimes escapes, working her crossword puzzles. I don’t see her, which I hope means she’s in the workshop.

  Cautiously, I enter the house, but not hearing or smelling Mother, I retreat into my room and perch on the edge of my bed. A handwritten journal our ancestors compiled in 1672, the Rulebook sits on my nightstand. I flip through the tissue-thin pages to Rule Eighteen:

  In the case of an error, the Wronged Party (WP) may be neutralized with a Potion to Undo Feelings (PUF) without consent until the time of the WP’s first kiss with the client. Thereafter, the WP may only be PUF-ed with informed written consent.

  I don’t know how I’ll know when Alice and Mr. Frederics kiss, but the sooner I can make the PUF, the sooner I can avoid a meeting of their two lips. I skim through all the pages but can’t find a single word about how to make the PUF. For something so important, seems someone should’ve written it down. We do keep index cards of all the elixirs we’ve made in my workshop desk. Maybe the card from the one time Mother made a PUF will be in there. It may not be helpful, since elixirs are client-specific. Still, it’s a starting place.

  Grimly, I trudge down the stairs and out the kitchen door. Mother’s scent drifts from the direction of the workshop. Maybe I should wait until she leaves before searching for the card. But, I smell gardenias, which means she’s making an enfleurage, a time-consuming oil extraction of the more delicate blooms. She could be in there all day and night.

  I’ll just have to keep my cool and hope she’s too involved with her work to smell a few wayward stress fumes from me. Gardenias are heavy scenters, and might help mask my anxiety.

  I travel down the path of stones. Everything is okay.

  “Hi, honey.” Mother looks up from the tray of oil on which she’s carefully layering the flowers.

  “Hi.” My voice goes high. I try not to think as I head to my desk, but forget about the fist-size indentation in the hardwood floor. It’s been there since before I was born but I never tripped on it until today.

  “Mim!”

  I catch myself before I fall. Bottles rattle at my jig. “I’m fine, I’m fine.”

  “We should’ve fixed that years ago.”

  Cool and easy. Conversational. “Why didn’t you?”

  “Your grandmother thought it would remind us not to play on chairs.”

  “Chairs?”

  “It’s a long story.” Mother sighs and pulls off her reading glasses. “So . . .”

  I freeze. She knows. Here it comes.

  “I’ve decided not to interpret Rule One so strictly, given the circumstances.” She points at me with the glasses, and for a moment, I’m vaguely aware that the eye of Medusa has somehow passed over me.

  “But I meant what I said about you being overscheduled,” she goes on. “You’ll have to drop algebra if your work starts to slip.”

  Too late for that. “Thanks, Mother.” I force myself to think happy thoughts of penguins frolicking in the snow.

  “You notice any reactions in Ms. DiCarlo?”

  “Not yet.” Sunlight dapples the floor through the skylight. I haven’t lied yet but my sweat glands are preparing to launch an attack. “The recipes are a mess. I’m going to move them onto the computer.”

  She beams at me. “Great. I’ve been wanting you to do that for years.”

  “I’ll start right now.”

  Mother returns to her enfleurage. With tiny flicks of her wrist, she picks out the bruised flowers, something she could do blindfolded. Mother’s nose is like two of mine. She once woke me up at four in the morning to help her cut out a root on her favorite oak that had caught disease. She smelled the rot in her sleep.

  I park at my desk in the alcove and switch on the computer. Opening the drawer, I pull out the index cards containing the formulas to our elixirs and straighten them into piles, like a card dealer. Then I shuffle through the first pile, hunting down the card from the one time Mother made a PUF. The cards are a jumbled mess, some from the eighties when Mother and Aunt Bryony were teenagers themselves, and others from just last month. There’s nothing indicating a PUF in the first deck. I move on to the second then third and fourth, flipping cards, scanning ingredients.

  Mother clears her throat. I look up to see her twirling a gardenia between her fingers. “Do you need to do that so loudly?”

  My shoulders have risen to my ears, and I relax them. “Sorry.”

  I finish the fifth deck and still, no sign of a PUF.

  Well, I could ask Mother. But lightly, tread lightly. “All done. They’re all there, except . . . didn’t you make a PUF once? I don’t see that one in here.”

  Mother stands and stretches. The antique floorboards creak as she crosses to the far wall where the rare-plant terrariums gleam like cake stands. “Mark my words, this won’t wait for December.” She steps to one side. Long, smooth leaves drape from the center stalk of the orchid, Layla’s Sacrifice, where a single white bud has begun to grow, its universally delicious jammy scent seeping through even the glass. The green sepals wrap the base of the bud as tight as a mother holding a swaddled baby. “I predict Thanksgiving.”

  “That early?” I lift my eyebrows and attempt to look interested. Why isn’t she answering my question?

  “Maybe we’ll have time to replant the succulents like I wanted this Christmas.”

  When the once-a-year midnight bloomer opens, usually in December, the scent is so complex it can substitute f
or many elixirs, which saves us a ton of work. Though we never actually use the holidays to relax; love never takes a vacation. We do things like replanting cactus, which is as much fun as rolling around on tacks. I go with the flow. “Sure.”

  She poises one hand on the glass knob. “Ready for liftoff?”

  “Yes.” I hold my breath.

  She lifts off the lid and sprays the plant. Even holding my breath, the jam scent assails me. Slowly, I let out my air. Only the initial release knocks me out. I broke a baby tooth learning that.

  Now I’ll have to bring it up again. When I’m breathing normally, I ask, “So about that PUF . . .”

  “Why do you want to know about that?” She looks up sharply.

  I quickly reign in my curiosity. Happy penguins. A note of defensiveness, like sour strawberries, wades from her direction. “No reason. Just didn’t want to miss a card.”

  Spritz, spritz, goes her water sprayer. “Don’t bother. I threw it out.”

  “What?” Stress fumes dribble out from me, but Mother doesn’t notice. She seems to have drawn into herself, spraying Layla’s Sacrifice at every angle even though she’s gone over it twice already. “Why?”

  “She refused to take it. No use keeping a record of something that was never used.”

  I begin to pick up threads of bitter chicory, the scent of regret, which resembles burning coffee fields. Why is she getting so emotional? “Who never took it?”

  Mother makes an annoyed sound at the back of her throat. “Your aunt Bryony.”

  My eyes go round. She hardly ever talks about Aunt Bryony. So her sister was the one Mother tried to PUF? “Why didn’t you just hit her from behind?”

  “Mim! Of course I couldn’t. She was already living in Hawaii by that time. She knew what I was up to as soon as I stepped off the jet.”

  I knew the basics of their fallout. The year that Grandmother Narcissa died, the governor of Hawaii commissioned the twins to make him an elixir, so they flew to Maui and hired a certain Captain Michael to help them collect marine flowers. Aunt Bryony married him within months.

  Mother finally moves on to the next terrarium. “I knew I shouldn’t have agreed to using that Captain Michael’s boat. I could smell she was attracted to him.” Her eyes grow large.