“It’s never opened.” I speak slowly, as if enunciated syllables might make him stop messing with the door.
“But that’s stupid.” He doesn’t look at me. His back flexes as he pulls. “It’s a door. It has to open. Or at least it did once, so it can . . . Or. Should. Now.” He smacks the small door with each word. Nothing happens.
“Adam!” I hate when he just won’t let something go. “Leave it. It doesn’t matter.”
He’s shifted from smacking to gently twisting the knob.
“I’ve lived in this house my whole life.” I raise my voice, trying to pull his attention away from the door. “And that cupboard has always, always been locked or stuck. Even when my father lived here, he never opened it.”
“Maybe he didn’t try.” Adam looks up at me.
Of course he didn’t try. I bite the inside of my cheek.
The overwhelming desire to not be like my father propels me across the room, and I kick the little door. Hard. I expect it to spring open, in response to my sudden fury, but nothing happens. I kick it again. And again.
Adam shifts a little to the side and waits for me to stop.
After four kicks, I’m spent. I drop to my knees and grip the knob. It moves left and right, but the door doesn’t budge.
Adam leans in with me. “It’s like it’s locked somewhere else. You know what I mean? The knob turns, but it doesn’t open the door.”
“Well, there’s no other handle,” I sputter as I twist harder.
He reaches over me and tries to grip the edge of the door, but the crack is too small. “Do you have a crowbar?” he asks.
“I don’t know. Is that something people have?”
“I think so. Usually.”
“I’ll get the toolbox.” I push myself up, and the wide floorboard shifts underneath my hand.
Adam’s eyebrows arch. We slide off the board. He presses it with the palm of his hand, and it rocks, just slightly.
“Do you think . . .” he starts.
But I’m already there. I stick a finger into the pinky-size hole where a knot used to be and lift the board. Adam grasps the end, and together we set it to the side. The space underneath is cluttered with a ragged gray cotton I recognize as the same insulation that’s in the attic. Nestled in the cotton are a puzzle piece and a marble, dimmed by dust.
Adam pulls out the puzzle piece and blows it clean. “It’s wood,” he observes. “It has flowers or maybe leaves . . .”
I pluck it from the flat of his hand. Whatever was once pictured here has faded to an unrecognizable smudge of ferny green. I set it next to the rectangular opening in the floor and reach for the marble, which manages to glint through the dust.
“What was that book?” Adam asks. “The one where the mean mother person traps kids’ souls in marbles?”
“Coraline,” I whisper, and I dump the marble into Adam’s hand.
“No souls here,” he says lightly. “Just dusty glass.”
Just the forgotten toy of some kid who lived in this house fifty or a hundred years ago, then grew up and grew old and probably died.
I look away from the abandoned marble to the empty space beneath my floor. Filling it will push away the creepiness, and my mind darts across my belongings, in search of items I could hide here.
Something black catches my eye. A small J-shaped piece of metal hangs down from the base of the cupboard.
I grasp the crook of the J. It’s a handle. I’m sure.
Adam leans in again. “Is it—”
“Wait,” I breathe.
I push the cool metal to the right. For a heartbeat, the small handle resists, and then, as if with a sigh of relief, it gives.
The cupboard door swings open.
Two
THERE’S ONE SHELF. On the shelf is a book. An old book.
A secret, ancient book! Authors I love appear in my mind. E. Nesbit leaps up and down with excitement, and J. K. Rowling raises an eyebrow.
Adam nudges me with his elbow. “Pick it up.”
I lift the book. It’s heavier than I expected, and I have to catch it with my left hand to keep it from thunking to the floor.
The cover feels like skin. Thick skin. A coating of dust clings to the cracked and peeling burgundy leather.
“What is it?” Adam asks, his arm pressing against mine as he leans forward.
I check the front and the back. The spine. “There’s no title.”
I open the cover, and a sweet, musty smell escapes. “I wonder how long since anyone touched this,” I muse. “It could be fifty years or a hundred. Or more.”
A forgotten toy is sad, but a forgotten book makes all sorts of promises.
“There’s a name!” Adam points to the inside cover.
In the upper left corner, letters loop into each other in a slanted, old-fashioned cursive.
“Constance Brooke,” Adam and I read together.
“It was her room!” he exclaims, shoving my shoulder for emphasis. “I told you!”
The first page is blank. I turn it, and my fingers, so familiar with books and their pages, find themselves in a foreign country. The paper is the color of sand, and it’s stiff, like it got wet and then dried out.
“Do you think this is parchment?” Adam asks in a low, library voice.
“Parchment is way older than Constance. I mean, parchment is Bible old, or at least Declaration-of-Independence old.”
Mom would know if this is parchment, and she could probably guess the book’s age too, but I don’t want her to see it and make it hers. She’s always buried in books. This one is mine. Mine and Adam’s.
Adam runs his fingers reverently down the page. “Shelby’d love this,” he says. “What was that story you two read about the kids who find a magic book in the library?”
“Seven-Day Magic,” I answer, pulling my phone from my pocket. I try to call Shelby, but she doesn’t pick up.
Adam shrugs. “We’ll show it to her later.”
I set my phone on the floor next to the book. “They’re both communication devices, really,” I point out. “But from different universes.”
“Different times,” Adam says.
“Right.” I lean back. “Like Constance is from a different time than parchment. I mean, if it is parchment, then it must be hundreds of years old, so why is her name in the book?”
“Hmm,” Adam begins. “If only we could find—I don’t know, like, an English professor to ask . . .”
“We are not asking my mother!” I glare at him. “If this is actually really old, then she’ll take it away. She’ll hurry it off to the library to be preserved in a vacuum-sealed vault, and she’ll organize us into little field trips to visit the book in its sterile, soulless book prison. She’ll probably find some way to write an article about it too, and then it won’t even be our discovery anymore. We found it. In my room. It has nothing to do with her.”
He puts out his hands in an okay-okay gesture. “Fine, Rosie. Fine. We won’t ask your mom.”
I slide my fingers under the next page and lift it, using only the pads of my fingers and the gentlest movement. Mom’s not the only one who can treat an old book with care. It has to be parchment. It’s heavy in a different way than paper.
We almost miss the handwritten phrase just above the middle of the page. The ink’s faded to a tea brown, only a shade darker than the parchment.
“Diary of . . . who? What does it say?” I pull back, the way Mom does when she’s trying to read something small, but it doesn’t help.
Adam runs a finger below the writing, marking each letter. “A Poet,” he reads. “Diary of a Poet.”
“It’s Constance’s diary!”
“This is just totally unbelievable.” He thrusts his hands through his hair, making it stand up in little tufts.
“I have to try Shelby again,” I say. She still doesn’t pick up.
We study the old diary in awed silence. I imagine going on a talk show to describe how we made the greate
st literary discovery of the twenty-first century while Mom stands in the wings, ferociously proud of me.
There’s more writing on the next page. A list in two columns. The handwriting seems the same as the title but even more faded. Some items are just pale ghosts of words. Others are darker, and we take turns figuring out the loops and frills that form strange letters.
“That curl is just a decoration,” I murmur. “And that funny squiggle is an s, I think.” I point to a double letter in the middle of a word.
“Looks like an f to me,” Adam says.
“Yeah, but look . . . that must be sage and so this one would be hyssop. That’s more likely than hyffop, I guess, but what’s hyssop?”
“No idea.” Adam grabs a notebook and pencil from my desk. He makes columns, using his special power of being able to draw crazy straight lines without a ruler, and sorts the words. He copies sage into a column labeled “Qualities” and puts hyssop in the question-mark category.
The next word is chamomile, and Adam labels another column “Types of Tea.”
“Wait.” I put a hand on his arm. “Sage, hyssop, chamomile, this one’s lemon balm, marjoram, right? Next is lavender. This is basil. Thyme. Mint, and—”
“Rosemary!” Adam cuts in with a smile. “They’re herbs!” He pushes away the notebook. “But why? What for?”
“Maybe she was making notes for poems about herbs?” I suggest.
I turn the page.
Nothing. And more nothing.
Just blank sheets of parchment, yellowed and stiff.
Disappointment settles over me like an itchy blanket.
“Maybe she realized poems about herbs would be insanely boring,” Adam suggests.
“But Constance Brooke wrote lots of poems,” I protest, still turning pages, less carefully now. “I mean, even if you only count the ones we’ve had to read in school, that’s, I don’t know, twenty at least, and she won prizes and stuff. She’s famous!”
Adam clasps his hands like an old-fashioned schoolboy and recites:
Through the window poke twigs and grass
A robin nests at my room’s edge
A wooden frame pokes in the nest
A woman’s room beyond my ledge.
I stare at him. “Why is that taking up space in your head?”
He shrugs. “It’s hard to forget something once you memorize it. Like, Four score and seven years ago—”
I cut him off. “Maybe the diary was a present, like a blank book or a journal, you know? And she started to use it but then abandoned it.”
“Maybe,” he agrees. “Or maybe she found it. Maybe it belonged to someone else before it was hers.” He carefully flips between the list and the inside cover. “The handwritings are different, see? Like the s and f thing. Constance has a regular s, not like these ones in hyssop.”
“So there could be two different poets.” I like this idea. Layers of poets.
“You know what I think?” Adam’s eyes are huge. “I think this book’s been waiting for you. Constance left it in the cupboard for a future poet.”
Sometimes I recognize younger Adams in his face. The one that looks at me now, all eager and earnest, is about five and sincerely believes that we can build a secret tunnel between our houses. Adam’s faith that people might leave ancient books hidden in cupboards for future generations to find is infectious. I believe he could be right.
My phone buzzes loudly against the hardwood floor. Shelby!
“Hey, Rosie. You called?”
“Hi, Sh . . . Michelle.” I look at Adam.
He mouths, “Cupboard.”
“We got the cupboard open. You know the one in my dad’s . . . in my room?”
“Really? That’s great. How—Wait, hold on.” A loud jumble of voices and laughter makes me pull the phone away from my ear. “Rosie? Was there anything inside? Oh, hang on again. Rosie? I’m so sorry, but I have to go. John! Yeah, I’m coming. Rosie, we’ll talk later, okay? See ya.”
She’s gone. “Bye,” I whisper to the silence.
“She’ll be excited when she sees what we found,” Adam says quickly. “She just doesn’t get it yet.”
I decide to look forward to showing Shelby the book instead of thinking about the way her call left me dangling. Adam’s right. She’ll be just as excited as we are once she sees it.
“You know who else would love this?” I start to shape a plan.
“Your mom?”
“Mr. Cates! We should use this for our poetry journal. For class.”
Adam frowns. “But we can’t write in it. It’s probably valuable.”
I shove away reason. “It would be in a library if it was valuable. Or a museum. Besides, it’s mostly blank.”
“Maybe we should ask your mom—”
“No!” I didn’t mean to shout. I take a breath. “No.”
Adam looks at me the same way he did three years ago when I wanted to go swimming in the river. He was right: That would have been stupid. But this is just a book. An old book, sure. But it’s just paper or parchment sewed together and left in a cupboard.
I blaze ahead. “There are already two layers of people who wrote in it. That’s like an invitation to us to be a third. What should we write? All those blank pages . . . We should use a pen . . .” I riffle through a box of desk stuff and pull out the bookmark Adam made for my birthday last month. Sprigs of rosemary from the patch on the island braided around a piece of gold ribbon and pressed flat.
When he gave it to me last month, I asked, “How’d you get the rosemary?” because we hadn’t been to the island since August. The thought that maybe he and Shelby went without me made my heart squirm.
“I got it when we went in the summer,” he explained. “It’s taken two months just to get it so flat!” They didn’t go without me. He’d been thinking about my birthday for months.
I set the rosemary in the diary, and its piney scent wafts up.
“Here’s a pen.” I pull one from the box. “Let’s put our names.”
I know we shouldn’t. The diary belonged to Constance Brooke and maybe someone else before her. Mom would have a fit. Worse, she would be disappointed in me. But I write my name. Not on the parchment but on the inside cover, which is a soft, yellowed paper glued to the leather binding. It takes the ink a second to settle into the page.
Adam leans close to me and writes his first name below mine. His familiar handwriting—the way his capital A is super pointy at the top—reassures me.
He looks up at me. “How old do you think it is, really?” What he means is, “Are we going to get in trouble for this?”
I answer truthfully. “Old enough that my mom would completely have a seizure if she knew we were writing in it.” I’m half smiling and half terrified. And also a little proud. We’ve marked this valuable, important, ancient book as our own. “But even though it’s old, it’s empty. It’s just paper. Or parchment.”
Adam sets his concern aside and writes his last name slowly and neatly, so now there is another list in the book: Constance Brooke. Rosemary Bennett. Adam Steiner.
Shelby’s name should be there, too. She makes her S’s so that they kind of underline the rest of her name. Now that she’s Michelle, I wonder if she does that somehow with the M.
Adam gazes at the book. He pushes his hair off his forehead again. He looks hopeful, expectant.
The book lies on the floor. The names rest on the page. Nothing happens.
“It kind of seems like an ancient, hidden book might be—I don’t know,” he stammers. “It ought to be, like, magic.”
“You mean you thought the book would write back?” I joke, but I’m not really joking. Somewhere deep inside my imagination, I was hoping the book might be magic too.
Suddenly I’m heavy with the business of being real in a world that offers stories about wizards and spells and fantastical lands but confines all that wonder to books. I thought the diary was wonderful, but it’s not. It’s just old and dusty.
> Deflated, we stash the book in the secret compartment under the floorboard and busy ourselves organizing my desk. The joy of sorting rescues Adam’s mood, but disappointment pecks at me.
It’s gotten dark, and it’s almost time for dinner.
Before he goes, Adam checks his work. Like always. He pulls out each tidy desk drawer to admire his system. He found a bunch of those little boxes for jewelry in Mom’s wrapping paper stash, and they’re are all lined up in my drawer, one with paper clips, one with rubber bands, even a long necklace one for pencils. “You have to try to keep it like this.”
“I’ll try.” We both know I won’t succeed. I’m not exactly a slob, but organization is not high on my list of priorities. That’s why I need Adam.
He echoes my thought. “I’ll help you.”
The doorbell rings, and Mom’s clogs clomp across the floor downstairs. Adam and I stand still, listening. Could it be? Voices rise up the stairs.
“It’s Shelby!” I announce, and we turn to greet her.
“Hey, I came to get you,” she says to Adam. Her hair is tumbled up on top of her head again. She’s wearing yoga pants, which used to mean she’d been at dance class, but she stopped taking dance.
Adam mumbles, “I can walk home by my—”
But I cut in. “You won’t believe what we found in the cupboard!”
“Oh, right!” She remembers the call. “How’d you get it open?”
“There was this hidden latch,” I begin, and then Adam’s explanation and mine tumble over each other. We tell her about the floorboard and the J-shaped handle.
“And the door just swung open!” Adam announces.
“And?” Her hands are on her hips. “What was inside?”
Adam and I look at each other and grin.
“A book.” We answer together, like a small choir. The word resonates in the room.
Shelby looks appropriately awestruck. “Wow! What book?”
“You won’t even believe—” I start.
“It’s really old,” Adam says.
“Like, with parchment!” I add.
“And two handwritings. One is definitely ancient.”
The Rosemary Spell Page 2