“What?” Kendall shouts. “Where?”
“Nowhere,” Micah answers for Adam. “Let’s race! La Bala will shoot faster than any other sled!”
The whoops fade away as we head for Goodsell.
Inside, a sign directs us to the third floor.
The elevator is painfully slow.
Adam repeats, “Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.”
“Pray, love, remember,” I answer.
We stand in the dim light of the elevator and remember. Shelby letting me wear her tutu from the dance recital, Shelby rowing the boat, Shelby leaning back in the V tree with her eyes closed, Shelby walking ahead of us with John.
“Remember,” I repeat through clenched teeth, as snow drops from my side and disappears into the tired carpet, leaving only a faint, dark stain.
Fourteen
WE EXIT ON the third floor and follow the signs to the Christopher Jordan Herbarium. The tiny room is filled with four big metal cabinets and a blocky black table like the ones in the science lab at school. On the table are a gallon jug of something white, a glue gun, and one plant, the color of cooked spinach, dried and pressed between a piece of wax paper and a heavy white card.
“Where are all the other plants?” I whisper.
Adam gestures toward the thin, metal cabinets. Each one has double doors and a small white label on the side. The label shows a range of numbers, like call numbers but not from any system I ever learned about in library class.
“Do you think someone will come help us? Like a librarian, or an herb-rarian?” I ask.
“Someone has to come. This is not a normal classification system.”
We wait awkwardly near the door. Adam studies the labels on the shelves. We’re both completely at home in a library of books, but a library of plants has different rules.
“What was the rue spell again?” Adam asks.
I recite:
For you there’s rosemary and rue; these keep
Seeming and savour all the winter long:
Grace and remembrance be to you both,
And welcome to our shearing!
His head is tipped to one side. “How do you know it’s a spell?”
“I don’t, but it seemed like it could be.” I explain about my computer search.
“Grace and remembrance be to you both. It’s a command,” Adam says.
“Huh?”
“Like, Pray, love, remember. You know?”
“I guess it is. Maybe that’s why I thought it seemed similar.”
“Hello!” A breathless young man with curly brown hair pulled back in a ponytail appears behind us. “Sorry. The herbarium is quiet even during the semester, and now that it’s break, I really wasn’t expecting anyone.”
“That’s okay,” I say. “I’m Rosemary Bennett. My mom’s Claudia Bennett? She teaches English?”
“Sure!” Ponytail Man smiles. “How can I help you?”
“Uh, well, Adam—this is Adam—”
Adam offers a lame wave. Ponytail gives him a reassuring smile.
“Adam and I are doing a poetry project for school? For this creative writing elective that we get to take?” Why am I making everything a question? “Anyway, we’re trying to write some poems about rosemary and rue. You know, they’re herbs?”
“Right.” He gives me an encouraging nod.
“Yeah. So, my mom suggested that maybe we could see some rue here.”
Adam chimes in. “And rosemary, too.”
Ponytail grins. “Your name is Rosemary, and you’re doing a project on rosemary?”
“It’s totally appropriate, right?” I manage a smile.
“Absolutely.” He crosses over to an old-fashioned card catalog in the corner. “Only instead of rue, I’d think you’d want to write about Adam’s Needle. You know, to see the plant-name connection through.”
Adam perks up. “There’s a plant called Adam’s Needle? No way!”
Ponytail nods. “Way.” His fingers walk through cards grown yellow and soft with age. “Unfortunately, we don’t have it in our collection, but you could look it up online. You’ll find some good photos. But rosemary and rue we do have.” He mutters catalog numbers to himself, steps over to the first row of cabinets, and opens the door. Inside are about twenty shelves, really shallow, with folders lying in small stacks. He squats down and pulls a stack onto his knees. He sorts through the folders and extracts one. “Here’s rue.” He stands and turns to the cabinet behind him. “Rosemary should be . . .” He runs a finger along one metal shelf, another, and another, and frowns. “Huh.”
He places the rue folder on the black table. “You can start with this. I’ll have to check the online catalog to track down the rosemary.”
“Thanks.” Adam slides into a chair.
“No problem.” Ponytail pauses in the doorway, on his way to wherever the online catalog is. “Don’t touch the Ruta graveolens. It’s fragile. And poisonous.” And he’s gone.
“What’s ruta whatever-he-said?” I ask.
“The scientific name,” Adam answers. “See?”
We look together at the label pasted onto the corner of the paper. It’s typed by a real typewriter and says Ruta graveolens, Potomac Riverbank, Franklin, West Virginia, June 17, 1923.
“So it does grow near Pennsylvania,” I observe.
“But probably not in December,” Adam points out. “Did you know it was poisonous?”
“I don’t know anything.”
The plant arcs across the page. I was expecting it to have some color, but it’s just brown, though a complicated brown with hints of rust and sage green mixed in.
“It’s the same color as your eyes!” Adam exclaims.
“It is?” I thought my eyes were plain brown.
“Yeah.” He looks at me intently.
I break away and focus on the plant. The stalk looks like a miniature tree branch. It’s taped to the paper with a piece of thin white tape. The branches—six of them—are glued down, but one small branch hovers over the others. Somehow, over the years, it’s escaped the page.
Some small leaves cluster near the stem, and, about three-quarters of the way up, the leaves thin out. At the top, there are what must have been flowers. The leaves, shaped like thin teardrops, angle upward. The flowers look like dry lentils with tiny hair-like tendrils.
I lean in and inhale a slightly spicy smell. Is that the rue or just old paper and glue?
Adam yanks me back. “Don’t breathe it! It’s poisonous!”
“It’s dead—” I start.
“It keeps savour all winter long.”
“Okay. I won’t breathe it,” I promise. “But I will . . .” I glance over my shoulder for any sign of Ponytail man. Just an empty doorway. I put two fingers between the one loose branch and the paper. Before I can think twice or Adam can stop me, I use my thumb to snap it off, and I’m holding a dried sprig of rue in my hand.
Adam sucks in his breath sharply.
Quick footsteps. The squeak of a rubber sole on polished tile.
I shove the rue in my coat pocket.
“According to the records—” Ponytail bustles into the room, holding an open laptop and reading from the screen. “The rosemary specimen was reported missing four years ago. I don’t know why it hasn’t been replaced. It’s easy enough with the rosemary patch on the island. Come spring, we’ll have to take some students over there to collect a replacement, but for now, I’m afraid I can’t help you with rosemary. Sorry.” He looks up from the screen with an apologetic smile.
“It’s okay,” Adam says and stands up too quickly. His chair starts to fall, but he catches it and rights it.
“Well, thanks,” I say. “It was cool to see the rue at least.” Rue and rosemary. Rosemary, that’s for remembrance . . . Grace and remembrance be to you both.
“Will it help you with your project?”
In my pocket, I carefully roll the thin stem between my fingers. “Definitely.”
“Of course
you could just buy rosemary at the grocery store,” Ponytail says. “Though I suppose that’s not very poetic.”
He’s right. We have rue, and we can get rosemary easily, but we still don’t know what we need to do with the herbs.
We say thanks and don’t talk as we walk back to the elevator. The swish of our snow pants is mortifyingly loud in the long corridor.
Adam pushes the elevator button. We wait.
Doors slide open. We step inside. Doors slide shut.
Adam looks at me like he doesn’t quite know me. “I can’t believe you stole from a library! They trusted us, and you just . . . I mean, they have everything all cataloged and organized, and you just took—”
“But I had to!” I protest.
The doors open. He walks ahead of me.
I can’t believe it! He’s putting one tiny bit of a dried plant above his sister! Somehow, even though I know I did the right thing, he’s managed to make me feel guilty.
I follow him, not trying to catch up but keeping pace. By the time we’re near the grove, the guilt has twisted into rage.
I lunge forward and yank him around. “I don’t know what you thought we were going to get from just seeing the plant. We need to have it. The spell doesn’t work without the herbs.” I rip the small sprig of rue from my pocket and wave it in his face. “This is the antidote! The antidote to that horrible poisonous void poem. That we said!” I’m crying now, and Adam’s pulling away from me.
“You’re losing it, Rosie,” he murmurs.
“It’s our fault!” I sob and clutch the rue. “Shelby would know what to do, but we have to figure it out, because she’s gone, and that’s the problem. We need her. And she’s your sister. Who we disappeared. Do you remember?”
The question arcs out over the snow and dissolves into silence. Maybe he doesn’t. My anger and sadness pivot into alarm.
“Do you? Adam? Do you remember?”
“What do you mean?” Beneath his anger, I hear confusion.
I grasp him by both arms and recite the memory spell.
“I remember,” he whispers. “Thanks, Rosie.”
“We have rue,” I say in a firm voice. “And I only took a small piece.”
He nods.
“But we don’t have rosemary. Like the guy said, we could buy some. Or, we could find the bookmark. Maybe we can find it? Maybe it’s in your room?”
“I don’t know.” He rubs a hand over his face. “I had it when I left your house the other night . . .”
“You dropped it,” I say. “But you picked it up.”
“How do you know?”
“I saw you from the window. You put it in your pocket.”
He yanks off his glove and reaches into one pocket. Then the other. He shakes his head.
I stick my hands in his pockets. They’re fleecy and damp and empty.
He rubs his hand over his face again. “Okay, I must’ve dropped it after that.”
“Let’s go check your room,” I say. “Maybe you took it out and put it away but then you forgot. Anyway, if we can’t find it, we’ll just get my mom to take us shopping.”
“Or we could go to the island,” Adam suggests.
We walk together down the hill. Grass already pokes up through the snow in the tracks left by our sleds.
As we cross George Street, we pause to watch the river race angry and bold to the south. Muddy water has crept over the launch, and the rowboat strains as the current tugs it downstream.
“Do you think we can even get to the island?” I ask. “I mean, if we want to go.”
The water is dark, like it’s churning stuff up from the bottom, and it’s running so fast that things—branches and hunks of ice—race along with the current.
Adam doesn’t answer. Rowing through that water is out of the question.
We squish through the soggy snow in Adam’s backyard and pull off our boots in the mudroom. We enter the kitchen in our socks.
Mrs. Steiner looks up from the stove. “Lunch is almost ready. Soup. Chicken with white beans.”
It smells like comfort and warmth.
“Thanks, Mom.” Adam heads for the stairs. “We just need to look for something first.”
Adam’s room is ridiculously tidy. Everything has a place, and everything is in its place. Square plastic bins with neatly printed labels line the shelf in the closet. The drawers are filled with carefully folded clothes. Nothing is under the bed. No dirty clothes or half-read books clutter the floor. I can tell instantly that the rosemary bookmark is not here.
Mrs. Steiner’s voice wafts up the stairs. “Lunch! Come eat!”
We sit at the table, and Mrs. Steiner puts supersized bowls of soup in front of us. She’s a really good cook, but since she started working so much, she hasn’t had much time to spend in the kitchen. Shelby cooked sometimes, but then she got too busy, too. And now she’s gone.
Adam blows on a spoonful of golden broth.
I lean in to inhale the steam rising from my bowl. Along with the rich smell of chicken, there’s a familiar piney smell.
“Mrs. Steiner, does this have rosemary?” I ask.
Adam looks up at his mother.
“Yes,” she says, ladling out a bowl for herself. “I love rosemary with white beans.”
“Do we have any more?” Adam asks.
“You think it needs more?” She frowns and tastes the soup.
“No,” I say. “The soup is perfect. But we’re still working on that poetry project. You know? For Mr. Cates? And we thought it would be . . . well, it’s hard to explain, but we need some rosemary.”
She crosses to the fridge and rummages in a small drawer. “I might have used it all. Let’s see. Here’s thyme . . . this is cilantro . . .” She pulls up a slim plastic package and wrinkles her nose. “This was mint. More thyme. I’ll have to do something with that . . . Here’s rosemary!”
Adam looks at me over his bowl.
Mrs. Steiner hands me the package. Two slight sprigs lie inside.
“It’s too bad you can’t go over to the island and pick your own. That would surely be more poetic than scrounging in the fridge.” She sits at the table. Picks up some papers.
The table is against the wall in a windowed nook. There are only three places to sit. One for Adam. One for his dad. And one for his mom. I sit in Mr. Steiner’s spot.
I pat the pocket of my jeans, feeling the outline of the folded paper. I say the rosemary verse into my bowl and picture Shelby at the table with us, but there’s no space for her here.
Adam and I eat in silence. He tries to use his spoon to separate the ingredients—beans clustered in one area, carrots nearby, and chicken on the other side of the bowl.
“It’s soup, dork,” I say through a full mouth. “All the stuff is supposed to be mixed up. Same’s true for salad, actually.”
He grins at me sheepishly. “I can’t help it. You know how I like to do separate bites and together bites.” He makes careful and strategic maneuvers with his spoon.
“But it all floats back together.” I try not to laugh.
“I just have to be persistent.”
My phone rings.
I tug it from my pocket. “It’s my mom.”
“Rosie?” I can hear the worry in her voice.
“What’s wrong?”
Adam and Mrs. Steiner both look at me.
“Well.” She’s perplexed, not worried. “This is rather odd. I just got a call from a nurse at River House . . .”
“Is Constance okay?” I look at Adam.
His jaw clenches.
I bite the inside of my cheek.
“I’m not exactly sure,” she answers. “The nurse said she’s been unusually agitated and she keeps asking for you.” She finishes on a note of surprise.
“For me?”
Adam’s forehead crinkles into a question. “For you what?”
“Evidently.” Mom sighs. “She says, ‘Rosemary. I need Rosemary.’ Over and over again. The nurse say
s she’s never been like this before, and she wondered if you might be able to come see her. It all seems strange to me, but . . . she’s an old woman with no family . . . Would you mind? I’ll come pick you up. I don’t think we’ll need to stay there for long.”
“Of course. I don’t mind.”
She sighs with relief. “I’ll be there in a few minutes.”
“Can Adam come too?” I ask.
He gives me a thumbs-up.
“I don’t see why not,” she says.
“It’s awfully nice of you two to take an interest in Constance Brooke,” Mrs. Steiner says.
“She doesn’t have anyone,” I reply simply, but it’s not simple. My eyes dart to the fourth side of the Steiners’ table, the side pushed against the wall. The side for no one.
Fifteen
MOM INSISTED ON STAYING with us. She, Adam, and I sit jammed in a semicircle of chairs too close to Constance’s bed. A nurse lurks in the doorway.
Constance’s face is blank. She doesn’t recognize me or Adam.
“Do I know you?”
“I’m Rosemary,” I remind her.
“Oh, rosemary!” She nods, but her face remains still. “Father is just wonderful with rosemary, you know. He always says . . .” Her voice trails off.
“Constance,” the nurse urges her. “You asked for Rosemary. Do you remember?”
“Remember,” Constance echoes.
I reach for Constance’s hand. It’s so light, I’m afraid I will hurt her just by touching her.
She closes her fingers around mine and looks into my face. She whispers, “There’s something I’ve forgotten.” Her eyelids droop, then close. Her mouth drops open slightly.
“She’s asleep,” I whisper.
“Should we leave?” Adam asks.
She summoned us. This has to be important. “Let’s wait.”
Mom’s face is pinched. “Such a horrid disease,” she murmurs. She looks away, her jaw clenched, and rummages in her bag. “I should’ve brought a book.” She pulls out a folded newspaper and starts to read.
I wish I could disappear into reading too, but I owe Constance my attention. I watch her chest rise and fall. It shudders with each breath as her body labors to do its job, the job of keeping her alive.
The Rosemary Spell Page 13