A Clatter of Jars

by Lisa Graff

  Miles pulled his gaze away from the murky water. “You’re right here,” he repeated, his eyes wide and wet.

  “Why don’t you tell me some Talent history?” Renny said. “How about old Howard Greenspan?”

  “Howard Greenspan,” Miles started. “Thirty”—he let out a tiny whelp! as the canoe rocked, but then went on—“Thirty-six as of his last birthday. Talent: Obliv-Obliviator.”

  Toes to hair, that was what Jo had told Renny, in a hushed whisper so Miles wouldn’t overhear. Miles needed to be fully submerged in the lake for Jo to get her copy of his Talent. She hadn’t explained any further.

  As Renny pressed them into deeper water, Miles continued his shaky recitation. “Able to erase objects from the visual field of any pers—” He let out another whelp! when the canoe rocked again.

  “It’s okay,” Renny assured him. It was hard to push out the words, caught as they were behind the lump of guilt in his throat. “It’s only water. It can’t hurt you.” He swallowed the guilt down.

  Miles nodded, but he didn’t finish his Talent history. Instead, he stared at the water around them and flicked his fingers. Busy with his paddling, Renny was unable to stop him.

  Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!

  The lake was quiet, except for the soft slook! of the paddle in the water. The occasional hdup-hdup! of a frog.

  Renny could row back to shore right now, he thought, watching his brother. Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick! They could still make it to the arts-and-crafts cabin with enough time to join the Talent show rehearsal.

  Except, if they did that, Renny wouldn’t have anything real to rehearse.

  It’s only water, he told himself.

  As Miles continued to flick his fingers—flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!—Renny stowed the paddle beneath his seat. Then, gripping the sides of the canoe, he took a deep breath and jerked, with all his might, to the right.

  There was a fraction of a second when Renny thought the canoe would stay upright. And he was surprised to find that he was actually relieved. Renny didn’t need a Talent. He’d been a disappointment his whole life, so why stop now?

  He heard the splash before he realized the boat had tipped.

  “Miles!” Renny shrieked, once he’d bobbed to the surface. He splashed in a frantic circle until he spotted his brother.

  “WATER!” Miles shrieked, bobbing and flailing. His fingers flicked wildly. “WATER! RENNY! WATER!”

  Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!

  “It’s okay,” Renny said, swimming the few strokes to Miles. The frigid water clutched at every inch of Renny’s body, squeezing the breath out of him. “It’s okay.” Even though it wasn’t. It wasn’t at all. “Here. Grab on here.” Renny tugged the overturned canoe toward them. Squeezed Miles’s hands until he stopped his flicking. “It’s only water.” And then, from the shore, Renny heard Jo.

  “Toes to hair, Renwick Fennelbridge!”

  Miles’s head, Renny realized, was still dry. In his life vest, Miles hadn’t gone completely under.

  “No water!” Miles shrieked. “No—!”

  Renny grabbed hold of Miles’s shoulders, and—swallowing down that lump of guilt—he pushed his brother under.

  When Miles popped back above the surface, gasping and sputtering, Renny latched his brother’s flicking fingers around the canoe’s rope handles. “We need to kick, all right?” he said. Miles was fine. “I have a Caramel Crème bar back at the cabin. I’ve been saving it for you.” Just fine. “Can you kick?”

  Miles didn’t kick. It was all Renny could do to keep his brother clinging to the canoe. By the time they reached the shore, Renny’s legs were practically icicles, and his teeth were chattering. Renny grabbed Miles under his arms and walked him up the pebbly beach.

  Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!

  Jo was grinning when they reached her. “Why, Renwick Fennelbridge,” she said, and she looked proud. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  For the first time, Renny wished he were a disappointment.

  Jo tossed him a key. Silver, with a square top. The key to her office. “Help yourself to any jar you want,” she said, her eyes fixed on the sun, which was just considering a dip toward the water.

  Renny pressed the key into his palm, slicing at his skin. “Come on,” he told Miles. “We’ll change into some dry clothes.”

  Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!

  The whole way back to Cabin Eight, Renny swallowed and swallowed, but that lump in his throat simply wouldn’t budge.

  • • •

  There were hundreds of memories coursing through the woods of Camp Atropos—big ones and small ones, heavy and light. Memories about building sand castles and practicing long division. Memories about trips to the eye doctor and visits to the shore with second cousins. One fellow even lost the memory of how to tie his own shoes. Some of the memories went whizzing on their way, eager to locate the perfect mind to settle into. Others took their time, floating along on the breeze with the birds. Miles had tugged many memories out of many minds, and most people didn’t even notice their absence.

  One memory—bitter like coffee and heavy like bricks—had been plucked from the mind of Liliana Vera, while she was standing outside the arts-and-crafts cabin. Lily didn’t miss the coffee-flavored memory when it left. Truth be told, Lily might have been happiest if the memory had never encountered her again. But sometimes memories have a way of cropping up in the most unfortunate places.

  The coffee-flavored memory crept along the dirt path, danced among the ants, and then slunk its way beneath the door to the kitchen, where a certain blond-haired someone was working on a batch of punch.

  Lily

  “LILY, WE’RE SUPPOSED TO BE REHEARSING!” ELLIE called from inside the arts-and-crafts cabin. “It’s on the schedule!”

  Lily wound the length of yarn around her thumb. There was an itch below her ear, but as hard as she scratched, she couldn’t seem to reach it.

  “No one else is even here,” Lily replied through the window. Miles and Renny had branched off somewhere on their way over. “Where’s Chuck?”

  “I haven’t seen her since free swim,” Ellie said, and Lily could practically hear her frown.

  Lily looked left, then right. The coast was clear.

  “Tomorrow’s dress rehearsal, you know,” Ellie called through the window. “Are you going to practice with me or not?”

  It was now or never.

  “Lily?”

  But Lily was already kicking up dirt on the path to the lodge. When she reached Jo’s office window, Lily focused her thoughts at the bridge of her nose, twisted the latch, and cre-eeak!ed the window open.

  Hundreds and hundreds of jars, lined up on the shelf. All of them with brightly colored bracelets at the bottom, holding Mimicked Talents.

  Lily shifted her focus and concentrated hard.

  Together, the jars began to rise.

  Up.

  Up.

  Up.

  Straight off the shelves, into the air.

  Everyone was busy rehearsing for the Talent show, so they didn’t see it: the jars, floating out the window, clanking against one another. Lily, her thoughts focused, focused, at the bridge of her nose, walking backward down the path. The jars, clattering in the dirt as they followed, past the archery ring, through the trees, to the center of the camp, like a long row of glass ducklings.

  No one saw as the jars wove their way to the Camp Atropos fire circle, through the spiral of logs, through the ring of rocks, under the heap of chopped wood, down deep into the ash at the heart of the fire pit where, once the fire was set that evening, the jars, along with the Talent bracelets inside them, would be sure to melt into nothingness.

  Every last jar.

  Well, every last jar save two.

  • • •

 
; As Fate would have it, two jars remained in Jo’s office.

  One was the jar that had wedged itself under the filing cabinet the week before, its label firmly affixed, with a green Talent bracelet settled at the bottom.

  The second, with a yellow bracelet inside, was one that, as Fate would have it, Lily had failed to carry off with the others. That jar sat all alone on the very bottom shelf, and the ink on its label was so smeared that it was nearly impossible to read.

  Renny

  MILES HAD BEEN ACTING STRANGE—STRANGER THAN usual—since the lake.

  “We’re supposed to be at the campfire,” Renny told him, when he’d finished rubbing the lake water out of Miles’s hair. “That’s what it says on the schedule. Friday Night Campfire. Then the slumber party, in the lodge.” Out the window, Renny watched orange sparks light up the darkening sky as campers streamed to the fire circle at the center of the camp.

  But Miles seemed completely uninterested in schedules. “You have to get a jar from Jo’s office.” He picked the key off the dresser beside their bunk and pressed it into Renny’s hand. It felt cold. Sharp. “Jo said.”

  “We can do that later,” Renny told him. Swallowing. “Right now we should go to the campfire.”

  “You need to get a jar!” Miles shouted suddenly. He began flicking his fingers. Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!

  Renny grabbed at his brother’s hands. “Fine,” he said, with as much calm as he could muster. “Fine, Miles, if that’s what you want, we’ll go, okay? But then the campfire.”

  “Then the campfire,” Miles agreed.

  • • •

  There was a single jar sitting on the shelf in Jo’s office, on the very edge of the very bottom row. Miles plucked it up and held it out to Renny, who was still gripping the silver key in the door lock.

  “Here,” Miles said. “This is yours now.”

  Renny examined the jar. A yellow Talent bracelet was coiled at the bottom, holding a Mimic of a real Talent. Even if that bracelet would only grant him a Talent for a single year, it was a million times better than the useless bracelet at his ankle, still murky with lake water, dyeing his sock a hazy blue-green. Renny squinted at the smeared ink on the jar’s label, nearly impossible to read. COST, perhaps. Or COAT. All he had to do was slip the bracelet on.

  “I don’t need it,” Renny told his brother, pressing his fingers tighter around the key in the lock. “Put it back. Let’s go.”

  Miles didn’t put the jar back. “But it’s yours,” he insisted. “Jo said for you to have it, because you pushed me under the water.”

  Renny was certain then that no amount of swallowing would ever dislodge the lump of guilt in his throat. “You heard that?” he said. He searched Miles’s eyes for anger. Disappointment. Betrayal. Something.

  But Miles just looked like Miles.

  “It’s yours,” Miles told him again. “You earned it.”

  Renny took the jar. Examined the yellow bracelet inside. “I . . .” He could apologize. Put the jar back on the shelf and lock the office door.

  Renny slid the jar into his pocket.

  “You’re okay,” he told Miles. “Right? It was only water.”

  “Only water,” Miles replied.

  Renny swallowed again.

  Lily

  LILY HAD PLANNED ON SITTING BESIDE MAX DURING THE campfire. (There’d be no room on the log, she hoped, for Hannah.) As the sky grew darker and the fire grew warmer, everyone would sing songs from atop their logs, and Jo’s jars of bracelets with their Mimicked Talents would melt silently away. And Lily would turn to Max and say, I stopped a criminal. Max’s eyes would grow wide with amazement. You did? he’d say. Wow. That’s WAY better than making punch.

  That’s what Lily had planned.

  But when she reached the fork in the path—left for the fire circle, right for the lake—Lily noticed the frog. Even in the dim light of the setting sun, the frog was bright green, and white at the throat, with bulby pads at the ends of his toes. He was squatting directly in front of her, tilting his froggy head as though he wanted to tell her something. Lily glanced left, then right. No one else seemed to see him.

  Hdup-hdup! went the frog. And then he shifted to the right, and hopped away from the fire circle, toward the cold, quiet waters of Lake Atropos.

  Later, Lily wouldn’t be able to say precisely why she did it. Perhaps it was Fate. Perhaps it was simple curiosity. Whatever the reason, Liliana Vera followed the frog.

  Jo

  EVERY EVENING FOR THE PAST FIVE YEARS, JO HAD waited on the southernmost bank of Lake Atropos, watching the tide lap at the shore. Most nights she carried baskets with her, to haul away her loot. Tonight she brought nothing but Grandma Esther’s harmonica. The sky blazed fiery orange nearest the water, edging into watermelon pink farther up, then, at its height, a deep blackberry, and lily pads dotted the shore.

  Precisely at the moment when the sun sank fully below the horizon, a familiar, beautiful sound rang through the darkness. It always began low and slow, growing sharper and more musical as the jars increased in number. Two jars, then ten, emerged from the water, pushing themselves up the pebbly shore. Twenty jars, then dozens and dozens. Soon there were hundreds of them—all glass, sample-size, with the words Darlington Peanut Butter embossed on the bottom, and an orb of yellow-purple Talent at their center. Jo pulled out her harmonica and began to play. Searching.

  Los golpes en la vida

  preparan nuestros corazones

  como el fuego forja al acero.

  Pearl, alabaster, porcelain, frost.

  When she spotted it, Jo raced into the water, wading through jars glowing yellow-purple, snatching up the one she wanted. Jo clutched the jar to her chest, like a toddler might with a stuffed bear.

  She didn’t notice that she’d dropped her harmonica onto the pebbles.

  Just in time. Jo had found her Talent for Recollecting just in time. In two short days, Jenny would arrive.

  In two short days, all would be forgotten.

  Jo unscrewed the lid of the jar and pressed it beneath her nose. The yellow-purple orb was dragged through her nostrils in one long suuuuuuuuuck. Immediately she felt the Talent seep into her bones.

  Jo reached out for the nearest memory, testing her new abilities. She found one easily, and wound it around her fingers. The memory tasted tart and smooth, like pineapple custard. She was picking out a puppy at the Fifty-Ninth Street shelter, she remembered. Pippet, that’s what she’d named the dog.

  Jo flicked the memory away—flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!—and let the empty jar smash to bits on the pebbles. The rest of the jars she left clattering in the lake behind her.

  She left her harmonica as well.

  Lily

  LILY SAT AT THE EDGE OF THE PIER, HER FEET DANGLING over the water, wondering why the frog might have led her here. Far off in the woods, campers were singing, enjoying their campfire. Lily watched the sun sink lower, stretching its long rays across the lake. The sky blazed fiery orange nearest the water, edging into watermelon pink farther up, then, at its height, a deep blackberry, and lily pads dotted the shore.

  “You think those Talents have melted yet?” Lily asked the frog beside her—even though she knew it was ridiculous to talk to a frog.

  The creature’s white throat was luminous against the darkening sky. Hdup-hdup! he replied. Then, precisely at the moment when the sun sank fully below the horizon, the frog leapt off the pier into the black below.

  “Well, good-bye to you, too,” Lily said, and she rose to join the others at the campfire.

  She stopped when she heard the noise.

  It was quiet at first, a whisper above the singing in the woods, but it grew steadily sharper and more musical.

  Jars, Lily saw, searching the water. They lapped their way up the pebbly shore not fifty yards away. Hundreds and h
undreds of them, glowing yellow-purple at the center. Talents, Lily was sure of it. She may have destroyed the jars in Jo’s office, but here, somehow, were new ones, emerged from the lake, and glowing. The sight was delicious and frightening both at once, made all the more peculiar by a sudden familiar lullaby.

  Los golpes en la vida

  preparan nuestros corazones

  como el fuego forja al acero.

  It was Jo, a shadow against the trees, playing the tune on her harmonica. Lily twisted the length of yarn around her thumb. An Artifact. Jo had an Artifact.

  Lily was so focused on the glowing jars and the haunting music floating across the water, that it took her a moment to notice the footsteps on the pier behind her. Footsteps, and crutch steps, too.

  “Max,” she said, spinning around to find her brother. He was balanced on his good foot, using only one crutch, and he was holding a glass of something. A memory Hannah had concocted for him, most likely.

  “When were you going to tell me about the accident?” Max asked.

  Chuck

  AS THE SUN CONCEALED ITSELF BEHIND THE TREES, ALL three hundred campers of Camp Atropos (well, all except two, but Chuck didn’t know that) settled themselves onto the thick logs that spiraled the fire pit. Counselors fed the fire, scattering bits of blaze to the dark wind.

  “There are two seats in the front,” Ellie said, grabbing Chuck’s hand. Ellie had found her when Chuck had gone to use the bathroom. Chuck had never felt so betrayed by her own bladder.

  Chuck wrenched her hand free. “Can’t I do something by myself for once?” she snapped.

  There were plenty of sounds, all around them. The thunk! of wood onto the fire. The chattering of campers. The hdup-hdup! of a frog in the distance. But to Chuck, it seemed that her sister’s silence swallowed up every noise in the woods.

  “Sit wherever you want,” Ellie said at last. And she left Chuck to take a seat beside Renny and Miles and Lily’s stepsister, Hannah, in the front row.