Stop and Spell the Roses

by Stacey Alabaster

  “Well, you don’t have to look too surprised,” Vicky said, and she looked a little hurt.

  “No, no, I’m not. Sorry. It’s just that you didn’t tell me . . .” I shrugged. I guess I was a little hurt. I’d thought we told each other everything!

  “It’s someone you know. Well,” Vicky said. She looked a little bit cheeky, but there was also some guilt mixed in with her expression.

  “Akiro?” I asked, feeling bitterly betrayed for just a second there.

  “No!” she yelled back and laughed a little. Then she blushed. “Kaylan.”

  “Oh. OH.”

  I was just thinking What? I was trying to keep my face straight, but all I could think was Really? Well, maybe they were two peas in a pod, I supposed. They both liked pink milk and music. And they were both kind of weirdos, I supposed.

  “Right! The TV!” Vicky shouted and raced over to turn it on. The familiar blast of static came on, as the stations had all been reset. She found the local news channel after searching through. It wasn’t a channel she usually had on, and she didn’t even know the number for it. “I usually have it set constantly to the country music channel.”

  Sometimes I wished I loved anything as much as Vicky loved country music.

  We settled back and watched as the anchor gave the local headlines for that day. The top story of the night was about Lisa Spears.

  “Whoa,” I said, leaning forward.

  You’d think she committed an actual murder, the way that the anchor talked about the scandal, as though Swift Valley had been living with this evil person in our midst all this time. There was dramatic footage of a renegade reporter stomping up to her door and banging on it before standing back to film the mayhem. Which was the trophy being snatched out of her hands by the second-place winner, Maeve Brewer.

  “Yikes!” Vicky said and made a face, but it was clear that she was enjoying the spectacle. In fact, everyone in town seemed to be reveling in Lisa Spears’ fall from grace. It was the biggest scandal the gardening world had seen. Not just local, but anywhere. I mean, how many gardening scandals are there, really? There’s not a lot of competition for first place.

  Everyone was convinced that Tanner had been in on the whole thing. That he had known that his wife had cheated, and yet handed her first place anyway.

  See? Total scandal. And that was without everyone knowing that Lisa had grown her strawberries in a witch’s garden.

  Akiro and I were back on good terms again. Without anything ever being addressed, of course. That was the way it had always been with us. We would fight or disagree, and things would be stony for a few days. Neither of us would apologize or even mention the issue. And then a week or so later, we would just act like nothing had happened.

  I ordered my triple-strength latte and hopped up onto the bar stool. “Can’t believe what good condition the coffeehouse is still in,” I said, shaking my head. “I mean, apart from a small crack in the window where the hail hit, you couldn’t even tell you’d been part of an environmental disaster.”

  He nodded gratefully as he passed me my coffee. “I am just glad that I forwarded those messages when I did.”

  I was shocked. Though maybe I shouldn’t have been. “You think that’s the reason your coffee shop escaped the storm? Because you sent the chain letter on?”

  He nodded so subtly that it was barely noticeable. But I noticed, all right. My coffee tasted extra bitter than morning.

  Had this entire town lost its collective mind?

  I blew on it to try and cool it down. Then added some sugar to take away the bitter taste. I mean, maybe I wasn’t one to talk, was I? I was a witch, after all, and I’d had more than my fair share of exposure to the weird and the bizarre. But I still did not believe that an entire town could be cursed with bad luck thanks to a text message. That was majorly stretching it.

  I removed myself from the stool and went and holed up in a bench. I knew if I stayed at the front counter that Akiro and I would just get into another fight, and things had only just settled between us.

  My coffee cup was empty by the time a man in a hoodie walked in, the only part of his face visible the red of his cheeks just below his dark shades. There were a few loose streaks of grey hair poking out underneath, but you had to be looking for them.

  It was Tanner Spears. But you could have almost mistaken him for Kaylan, the way he was skulking around. And I dunno, it was just weird to see a guy his age wearing a dark hoodie pulled up over his head like he was a teenager. Even Kaylan was a bit old for it, but he managed to pull the look off better than Tanner Spears did.

  Then again, Tanner was copping a lot of abuse in town, so I supposed this was just his way of staying undercover and incognito. He was being shunned by the town, assumed to be in on the scandal and the cover-up. Maybe even in charge of it.

  I was eyeing him carefully. Maybe even in charge of killing Jolene, I thought as I shuffled my empty cup around the table, never taking my eyes off him.

  Even Akiro thought twice about serving him. But Akiro wasn’t one to get involved with town squabbles or politics, and so he eventually made Tanner’s long black. Tanner pulled his hoodie on tighter and was about to turn and leave when he spotted me in the booth two tables down from the exit.

  “Ruby?” he said.

  We hadn’t exactly parted on good terms after our last interaction, and yet he looked strangely relieved to see me. Maybe it was because I was the only one in town who would actually speak to him, even if my words were not always so pleasant.

  But I felt bad for the guy.

  He held up his cup of coffee. “Maybe I should be making this at home,” he said with a heavy, dejected sigh. “I can see I am not welcome in here.”

  “Hey, everyone deserves to have their morning coffee,” I said, shrugging a little. I hesitated for just a moment and then invited him to sit with me at the other side of the booth. This was the perfect opportunity to talk to him while his guard was down, and he was so vulnerable and just plain grateful to have a human to talk to. He slid in on the other side and actually took his hoodie down.

  “I didn’t know that Lisa grew those strawberries anywhere except our very own yard,” Tanner said, staring me straight in the eyes. “She always called it the Secret Garden.”

  I paused for a moment. Now I knew where the confusion might have arisen. Maybe Lisa would talk about her “Secret Garden” with Tanner, and he didn’t realize what she was talking about, that she meant Geri’s garden and not the spot around the side of her house. I suppose that way, she could claim that she had never actually lied.

  I also recalled Vicky pulling a face that first day I had mentioned that Lisa had a Secret Garden. But that was back when I didn’t even know about the witch’s garden or the many weird secrets that lay on the other side of its golden gate.

  Tanner was still gripping his long black. “But maybe I did . . . play favorites, just a little.”

  A small gasp escaped me. “You mean that you did only award Lisa the prize because she is your wife?”

  He looked down into his coffee with embarrassment all over his face. “Lisa has had a tough year. What kind of husband would I be if I didn’t give her the trophy? You understand, don’t you, Ruby? I just wanted to protect my wife from disappointment.”

  Oh, I understood, all right.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to Kaylan. “This is going to be the last day that I can afford to pay you.”

  We didn’t need to look at the menus at Han’s this time. Kaylan always got a cheeseburger and strawberry shake, and I always got the only thing that wasn’t covered in grease—a glass of water.

  He didn’t exactly look thrilled, but he did seem to understand. “Guess I’ll just have to paint a few more houses, then.”

  The real reason I didn’t need Kaylan anymore was because I almost had Tanner Spears right where I wanted him. By that stage, the chain letter message seemed like a moot point. It was Jolene who had hired me to investigate it, an
d she was no longer around.

  “You’re getting out of the hacking game, anyway, right?” I asked him as I took a sip of my glass of water. Hmm. Even that had a slight taste of burger grease to it.

  He ripped into his burger and nodded a little. For the first time, he looked his age. Maybe it was because he was dressed in a button-up shirt rather than his usual hoodie. “So, why do you want to drop the investigation, then?” he asked me.

  I shrugged and paid the bill. “I don’t think that Jolene’s death had anything to do with the chain letter. I think that was just an unfortunate coincidence.”

  He still looked disappointed and like he might be able to change my mind.

  But I had another motivation as well. And it wasn’t just his outrageously high fees.

  “Maybe it’s better for us not to work together if you are going to be dating my best friend,” I said, raising an eyebrow as I got up to leave. I was hoping I never had to come to Han’s Burger Joint ever again. “And maybe it is best if you give up the hacking as well. Vicky is my best friend. She is sweet and trusting, and I don’t want to see her getting dragged into anything. Or getting hurt.”

  Sometimes you just need a little magic.

  The plums had already started to burst out of the flowers, and within a day or two, some of them would be at full size already. I didn’t want to erect the strange-looking man, but I was no longer confident that the crows and I were allies. Sure, they saved me from the maze, but they’d also destroyed my plums.

  They looked on in disgust as I propped the lumpy and floppy fellow up onto a post and tied him still. He would be visible from my bedroom window, just like the plum trees were, so I’d be able to keep an eye on things.

  The crows seemed to be rolling their eyes at the whole charade, if it was possible for crows to roll their eyes. And they also looked like they were not scared one little bit by this ridiculous-looking man, nor were they fooled by him.

  Maybe it was all pointless. And the scarecrow did look ridiculous.

  But I couldn’t risk my new crop being destroyed just as quickly as they had grown back again.

  The next morning, I got up at the crack of dawn and marched straight up to the plum trees. I even did a little squeal of glee, as my exceptions had been exceeded. Some of them were at full size already! One looked particularly ripe and red, and so I reached up, picked it, and took a bite. It was sort of like they had been grown in the soil of the Secret Garden. They hadn’t been, but I had always had some sort of magical ability to grow the plums like this. I’d never known why. Four months earlier, I hadn’t even known I was a witch. But I’d had this dormant magic that had always given my plums this special quality. And I wondered if it would have been cheating for me to enter them into the show in the first place.

  I was picking the best ones to sell but spun around when I heard a car coming up the hill. It was Violet. She stepped out of her car with a shocked look on her face and told me that she’d only come to visit, and to ask if I needed any help with my trees.

  I laughed it off. “No, as you can see, they don’t need much help!”

  Violet frowned. “But how did they grow back so quickly?”

  “Special manure,” I said and picked up a basket of plums which I intended to give to her.

  She peered into the box with suspicion. “You know, everyone is saying that you would have won if you’d been able to enter.” She looked up at me. “And there is talk of a re-do being held in two weeks. A brand-new show, with the judges completely replaced this time, of course. No spouses of contestants will be allowed.”

  I felt a little flutter of excitement. “Ooh.” But would it be right to enter my plums?

  “Do I still get to take these?” Violet asked a little unsurely, and I realized I was still clutching the basket close to my chest.

  “Of course,” I said and passed them to her. They would be too soft and rotten by the time the new competition rolled around anyway.

  But for the next few days, I was extra vigilant. Made sure that I picked off all the dark leaves and stuck to a strict watering schedule. I didn’t use any magic. Just good, old-fashioned gardening skills.

  The crows didn’t go near them.

  The scarecrow had worked.

  There were things that went bump in the night.

  It was a creaking noise, then a weird scraping noise, like nails on a chalkboard times a hundred. At first I thought I was only dreaming and rolled over. Then I heard a banging and sat straight up in bed, looking at the window. I assumed that Indy had climbed up onto my window sill instead of staying in her cat bed like I had instructed her to.

  I saw the man bobbing and weaving outside my window, and screamed and threw the covers off. I grabbed a vase that was beside my bed, ready to defend myself if he came in through the window, my arm raised right up—and then I realized it was just the scarecrow.

  “Boy, these things really work,” I said, heaving a sigh of relief, about to pull the curtain back when I saw what the source of the noise truly was.

  It wasn’t the scarecrow at all.

  There was a strange figure in my yard, but it was human. And it was a woman.

  Lisa Spears.

  Lisa was halfway up my plum tree, holding a little hacksaw in her hands. But it looked like that hadn’t done the job she’d wanted, and so, she had started to pull the plums off one by one, mushing them up to look like they had been eaten by birds and then throwing them to the ground. I watched as she jumped down and started stomping the fallen fruit into the ground to make sure they were completely destroyed.

  I ran out the side door of my house and over to the plum tree, shouting at her to stop.

  “Lisa!”

  She froze for a second and then straightened up, a stricken look on her face. Then she had the audacity to actually smile at me and shrug, as though she was doing nothing wrong. “Ruby. I was just, um, sampling your produce. You know, you did promise me that you would repay me for the strawberries you ate, as soon as you got the chance.” She pointed up at the tree, where only a quarter of the plums were still intact. “Well, now you have the chance.”

  Did she really think that I was buying this ridiculous cover story?

  I walked over to her slowly. “Lisa, all this time I thought the crows had betrayed me. But it was you who ruined my crops the first time, wasn’t it?”

  It was the middle of the night—well, two a.m.—but the light of the moon was strong enough to show that Lisa’s face had gone completely red.

  I smacked my forehead. So much for bad luck. It had just been a jealous fellow competitor.

  And the poor crows, taking the brunt.

  I glared at Lisa. She had really crossed a line. “Did you even think how that would affect my relationship with them?” I asked, pointing up to the birds in the trees in the paddock to our left. “You didn’t have to go dragging them into it, framing them just to serve your own purposes. They are some of my closest friends . . .”

  She was looking at me very strangely by this point. Okay, I just realized how that must have sounded to a non-witch.

  “Er, okay, yeah. Sorry about that.” She shrugged a little, but she really didn’t seem sorry at all.

  No, no, no! I wasn’t going to let her get away with what she had done that easily. “And what are you doing out here tonight, Lisa? You find out that my plums have regrown, and so you come out here to sabotage me again?” I raised my eyebrows. “You must be pretty desperate for me to lose, if you are willing to climb a plum tree in the middle of the night and start sawing off the branches.”

  She went red again and glanced up at the tree. “I’m sorry. I feel rather foolish now. It was just jealousy, pure and simple.”

  I sighed. I did feel bad for her. She had been through an awful lot in the past fortnight. Losing her friend Jolene. Losing her crown as best gardener in the district. And now, losing her dignity, becoming the most despised person in town.

  One might even call it a terribl
e streak of bad luck.

  I gave her a thin smile, and then shrugged. And asked her indoors for a cup of tea.

  “I feel dreadfully embarrassed about all this now,” Lisa said after placing her tea cup down and glancing out the window where my redundant scarecrow was still dancing around. “Please don’t ever tell Tanner what you witnessed here tonight. He will think that he’s married to a madwoman.”

  I chose my words carefully. “He sounds like a good husband, Lisa. I mean, maybe he wasn’t fair on the other contestants, but he was trying to make you happy by giving you first prize.”

  Lisa looked a little guilty. “I feel like I gave him no choice in the end.”

  I frowned. “What do you mean?”

  She bit her lip and paused before she spoke. “When I found out that Tanner had been selected as the new judge, I was devastated. Not thrilled, as people probably imagined. I knew then that any win I had wouldn’t look legitimate.” She stared down into her tea. “And so, I had to make sure that no one would question my win. If I had the most amazingly out of this world strawberries that anyone had ever seen, how could I not win?” She looked upset. “I thought my plan was solid. But then someone found out what I had done.”

  Gulp. I was that someone. Tanner had kept my identity anonymous.

  “Lisa, how did you even find that garden?” I asked her, frowning. “It’s quite out of the way. Hidden between two hills on a private property. You can’t just stumble across it while you’re hiking or anything like that.”

  She looked at me curiously. “You’ve been there?” she asked me. She held her eyes on me for a moment and then slowly turned her head and stared out my window again, the light of the moon hitting against the plum tree. “I thought those plums had grown suspiciously fast,” she murmured.

  “I’ve seen the garden, yes, but I haven’t grown anything in it,” I was quick to add. I couldn’t control the way my magic affected my plums, and I’d only used good, old-fashioned gardening skills to grow them. The rest was up to luck, just like for everyone else.