The Secret of a Heart Note

by Stacey Lee

  Kali stiffens and her face turns red. “It was?” The boggy note of anxiety trickles from her direction, even though the poet Gertrude Stein is one of Kali’s heroes. Unlike Gertrude, Kali is not yet out, herself.

  Alice nods with her whole body. “Absolutely.” She doesn’t seem to notice Kali’s discomfort. “‘Kite’ was about individuality, about being yourself—”

  Kali clears her throat. “Actually, I have another poem I was thinking about doing.”

  “Oh, here’s Court.” Alice waves toward a late-model BMW pulling up beside us. “Kali, if you prefer to do another piece, I’m sure that’s fine, as long as it doesn’t have any F-bombs. Are you girls coming to Melanie’s birthday party tomorrow? The Bandits will be there. Melanie even hired bouncers.”

  Kali snorts too loudly, and Alice’s smile wavers.

  “I’m sorry, Mrs. Sawy—I mean, Alice,” I say. “But we might be the riffraff your daughter hired the bouncers for.”

  “Of course not. It’s my home. I’m paying for the party, and I’d love for you to come.” Her voice takes on an edge. “I’ve been wanting Melanie to make friends with more sensible girls. See you girls later. Oops, I forgot something.” She disappears into the library, then, moments later, her kitten heels clack toward the BMW. Court gets out, and his mom takes his place.

  Kali’s still frowning; I bump her arm with mine. “I like that poem. ‘Kite’ is more about being yourself even if it means you’re flying solo. It’s not about being gay. I think you should still do it.”

  “Right. And end up like Barry the Fairy.”

  Her freshman year, a kid named Barry had to move out of state after bullies spread rumors that he must be gay since he was a violinist, and Photoshopped pictures of him in a compromising position with a male quartet.

  The door of the BMW closes with a whump. Court hops to the curb. Before Alice drives away, she lifts a cup to her lips, and drinks.

  A Starbucks cup, with the letter D inked on the side. The car smoothly peels away.

  Holy gladiola. I just fixed Court’s mother.

  FOUR

  “BAD DEEDS, LIKE PESKY SEEDS,

  GROW INTO MOST VICIOUS WEEDS.”

  —Primrose, Aromateur, 1715

  MOTHER IS ONE of the gentlest human beings I know. Despite the tight rein she keeps on her emotions, she gets weepy whenever one of the soil engineers (earthworms) has a run-in with her shovel. Her fingers move light as mosquito legs as she nurtures the plants in our garden, hardly leaving a trace of her scent anywhere, unlike me, who tracks fingerprints all over everything I touch. But as sure as the hair standing up on my arm, she will kill me for fixing the wrong person.

  Kali bumps my elbow with hers, jolting me from my frozen state. “Snap out of it, Nosey. We’re late for Cardio.”

  “I—I just fixed Alice.”

  Her eyes bulge. She’s the only one who knows the intricacies of what Mother and I do. When we were thirteen, Kali’s father brought her to help him build our trellis and Mother hired her on the spot. She said Kali “smelled good”—despite all the loneliness wafting off her like the moss baby’s tears.

  In a few sentences, I tell Kali what happened.

  “It was an honest mistake. Your mom will understand.”

  “I can’t tell her. I screwed up a job.” I should have watched to make sure I fixed the right person. I flouted one of our basic procedural rules, but I was distracted. “She’s going to know it was because of a boy.”

  “How?”

  “She’ll figure it out. She’ll question me, and I can’t lie to her.”

  “At least Alice’s elixir won’t kick in for another few days.”

  A group of boys saunter toward us, pushing one another and laughing. I move out of their pathway so that I don’t accidentally contaminate them, when the one in front slows, causing a traffic jam with the rest. The boy wipes his palms on his ripped jeans and shuffles up to me. He clears his throat, toggling his Adam’s apple. “Um, hi, Mim. Remember me from Spanish?”

  “Er, sure.” I remember the smell at least, elementary moss, and a salty licorice from the Netherlands. The latter triggers the memory of the seed vendor in Amsterdam on whom I dumped my yogurt muesli shake when he tried to kiss Mother.

  I realize I’m lingering and shake myself from the unpleasant memory.

  The kid, blue eyes staring at me, blushes, and I detect the grassy sweet smell of heartsease. I contaminated him. Maybe I breathed on him in the hallway. I jam my hand into my bag, feeling for my Boy-Be-Gone.

  Kali slides her eyes from me to them and sighs. I give her a slight nod.

  “Well, would you look at that?” Kali says loudly, pointing behind them.

  The boys’ heads snap in the direction of her finger, toward Principal Swizinger in her dark suit and hose. The principal stoops and picks up an empty Doritos bag, which she deposits into a nearby trash can.

  I depress the pump of my mister, disinfecting not only the kid with the blue eyes but the two closest to him in one pass. If nothing else, at least Mother will be happy at my economy.

  Kali rests her chin in her fingers. “Someone should nominate the Swiz for a peace prize. A Greenpeace prize.”

  As Blue Eyes turns back around, his grin fades. His whole face droops like he’s trying to remember the constant for pi. He stares at a cloud. Maybe the pi’s in the sky. Before he can speak again, Kali pulls me away.

  “Could’ve sworn you sprayed him before. They’re all starting to look alike.”

  “Mother will pull me out of school,” I hiss, back to worrying about Alice. “I haven’t even made it through the first quarter!”

  “How are you gonna fix it?”

  “I’ll have to make a Potion to Undo Feelings, though I’ve never done one before.” I put my hands to my cheeks, which feel rubbery and cold. “Mother made one ages ago. I don’t even remember what the Rulebook says about it.”

  “Maybe you should go home now.”

  “No way. Then she’ll definitely know something’s wrong.”

  “Tell her you’re sick. It’s not a lie. You do look a little green.”

  “Love witches don’t get sick.” Another side effect of growing up in a garden is the self-healing. I never had a wound that didn’t disappear by the next day and I’ve had a cold only once. We just make others sick. Lovesick.

  Twenty-five juniors follow me as I lead them through a Michael Jackson song in Cardio Fitness, though I’m really just copying Kali, who’s at the far end of the room. She’s on fire, jumping higher and squatting lower than anyone else, and she’s not even breaking a sweat. This is certainly the kind of experience I would never get in the garden.

  In our stuffy gym, the high school smells, which I thought I had habituated to, take turns slapping me around; the sharp tang of twenty-six sweating bodies, the tinny juice of appley angst, combined with the nose-curdling fumes of recent paint lifting off the white walls.

  Our Czech instructor, Ms. Bobrov, stands in the back, clutching a clipboard and appraising the class. “Move forward everyone!” She makes sweeping motions at the students, most of whom seem to be shrinking toward the back wall away from me. At her order, they move forward, but by only a few inches.

  Of all the days Ms. Bobrov could choose me to be dance leader, naturally it would be today, when I’m so unhinged, I can barely stay on tempo. She must have smelled I was weak. Scientists say smell is our most complex sense, stirring people to act instinctually, often without us even realizing it.

  Kali does a body roll, and I nearly injure myself trying to replicate it for the class. After I catch my balance again, I find the beat and shuffle from side to side, which I can do without hurting myself. I have to unfix Alice before the elixir begins to work its magic, or I’m toast. Lives are at stake here, love lives. Assuming I can figure out how to make the Potion to Undo Feelings, how am I going to do it without setting off Mother’s nose alarm?

  I stumble over my own feet despite the easy shuffle a
nd Vicky, in the front row, snickers. The jealous scent from the previous day has ripened into something different, something calculating, like spiky holly. Beside her, Court’s sister, Melanie, echoes the snicker, halfheartedly jogging in place like her batteries are dying. I do my best to ignore them.

  Finally, the song ends, putting us all out of our misery.

  “Very good, B plus,” Ms. Bobrov announces in front of everyone.

  On the way to the locker room, Kali and I pass through the courtyard formed by a main block of classrooms and two wings in the art-deco style. Panels of young pioneers adorn the upper walls, boys panning for gold, girls contentedly quilting. Bet they never had to worry about their mothers banishing them to the far Arctic Circle for one teeny little mistake.

  The crisp Northern California air pecks at my skin but fails to cool my anxiety. Students shrink away as I stumble along, their expressions changing, their voices lowering. I try to ignore the mothball smell of their suspicion, like a closet that is rarely opened. But today, every wrong scent rattles my cage.

  The only sign Kali exercised is a mustache of perspiration over her generous mouth. Even her braids are still tight as chocolate Twizzlers. She frowns at me, and I can smell her concern, but then she bumps my elbow. “You were killing me with boredom in there. It’s the moonwalk, not the sleepwalk.”

  “Mimosa, could I talk to you?” says a raspy voice from behind me. I recognize the black elder of Vicky’s scent, ripe like a skulking vagabond, before I turn around. It’s joined by celery, creating a scent combination that’s familiar in a way I can’t put my finger on.

  Vicky, flanked by Melanie, manages to rock even a polyester gym outfit. She stretched the neckline of her shirt to hang over one shoulder and rolled the shorts as high as they can go. Without her trademark heels, I can see the top of her head.

  “Yes?”

  Melanie frees a strand of blond hair from the trap of her lip gloss, and leans in toward Vicky like she wants to share a secret. Her face roughly approximates her mother’s, but with bigger eyes and a spotty complexion spackled with foundation.

  Vicky elbows her away. “I need you to make a love potion for me.”

  “They’re called elixirs. And we don’t work with people under eighteen.”

  Vicky laughs in the self-assured way of the very wealthy. When she flips back her thick black hair, her gold earrings nearly blind me and I detect the bitter reek of tobacco under a canopy of Poison Apple perfume.

  “Well, see you later.” I grab Kali’s arm and steer her away.

  “No, wait, por favor,” Vicky says, working her accent. “Court and I were meant to be together.”

  I freeze in my tracks. Court? I should have known.

  “I just need a little help unconfusing him.” Her voice trembles. “For his own good.” Any rookie aromateur could smell that their chords clash. Certain notes do that, just like music. Invisible airborne warfare.

  Casually, I glance at the lunch tables a few paces to our right that form straight lines all the way down to the field. Court and his friends always eat lunch at the last table, but I don’t see him there today.

  “Pssh,” says Kali. “No use crying over spilled oil. Probably found someone else who floats his boat.”

  The juniors’ mouths form two O’s of indignation. Melanie recovers first. She rubs Vicky’s arm. “Of course not. He loves you.” She overarticulates, making sure each word is perfectly formed before she sends it out into the world. “Your Christmas formal picture is still on our mantle.”

  “I want our homecoming picture to be on your mantle. He’s the one.” Vicky’s eyes plead with me to see reason. “I love him so much it hurts. Don’t you understand?” She clasps her hands as if praying.

  Though I never had a boyfriend, or even a boy who was a friend, I do understand the washing machine nature of love: the hot churning, the hand wringing, the head spinning, the sometimes final rinse with cold water. Aromateur is my name, and love is my game. But rules are rules. No minors.

  Plus, we would never take someone like Vicky for a client. She reeks of insincerity, like dirty bathwater and pond salt. “Sorry, can’t help you.”

  Vicky crosses her arms over her chest, and her tone turns snappish. “Court’s almost an adult. He’ll be eighteen in six months. Can’t you round up?”

  At the nearest lunch table, a bunch of gamer nerds are playing video games on their phones. Drew Reaver squints at us through his thick-rimmed red glasses. The poor guy’s got it bad over Vicky; I can smell the heartsease from here. She might have the personality of a wet porcupine, but the boys still go gaga over her. Must be the celery, whose stalks are known to induce lust.

  I shake my head. “Again, sorry. You’ll have to hook him the old-fashioned way.”

  “My brother is not a he-ho.” Melanie flips back her blond hair and stomps one of her pink Nike sneakers.

  I look at Kali for help, having no idea what a he-ho is. She snorts loudly.

  “I’ll pay you double.” Vicky whips out a credit card from somewhere in her bra. “Platinum.” She holds it out as if she actually expects me to swipe it through something.

  Kali flicks her eyes to the sky and shakes her head. “Are we in a bad movie? Attack of the Killer Bimbos? Close Encounters of the Turd Kind?”

  Vicky’s sweat glands ooze the angry scent of rubber tires, and I quickly say, “Money’s not the issue.” Clients don’t know our no-fee rule until we take them on, and then we swear them to secrecy. Aromateurs have always been obsessive about privacy.

  Vicky’s eyes harden. “I know all about how you work. You have ethical rules, blah, blah, blah.” She waves her credit card. “But I bet you haven’t splurged on yourself in a long time. I mean, your hair . . .”

  My hand flies to my unruly bob, which I trimmed myself with hedge clippers when I couldn’t find the scissors. A flash of heat passes over my face.

  “Now, Mim, you’re new, but you should know something about me.” Vicky leans closer. “When I was two, a Rottweiler tried to take my binky. Guess who won?”

  Kali replies. “I’d say whoever didn’t have to suck your stinky binky. C’mon, we don’t have to listen to this crap.”

  She begins to haul me off to the locker room, when Vicky says in a singsongy voice, “A lady walked along the beach, as lovely as a summer day. And when I asked her for a kiss, mermaid-like, she slipped away.”

  Kali’s eyes snap to Vicky’s. In one quick motion, Kali shrugs off her backpack and feels the front pocket. It’s empty. “You stole my journal.”

  “I learned so much about you and your”—Vicky winks—“preferences.”

  I gasp at the same time Kali lets out a Samoan curse. Kali’s hands bunch into fists, and she shifts her weight from one flip-flop to the other, glaring at Vicky hard enough to sear holes. “Give it back, or I’ll make you into jam.”

  She could do it with one swipe of her tattooed knuckles. Kali used to eat girls like Vicky for lunch back when she hung out with her brother’s friends. Her parents worked late hours—her mom as a nurse and her dad on construction—and left the upbringing of their youngest to their sons.

  Vicky tilts her head, and her asphalt tresses cascade to one side. “You wouldn’t dare. Unless you want everyone to know. Remember what happened to Barry the Fairy?”

  “Blackmail is a crime,” I huff.

  “You mean, black female.” Vicky winks at me and her spidery lashes nearly tangle. “You can have the journal back when Court falls back in love with me. Bring the elixir to Melanie’s party tomorrow.”

  Melanie frowns, and Vicky’s the only one left smiling.

  “Elixirs take time. I can’t just snap my fingers—”

  “The homecoming dance is in two weeks. I’m in kind of a hurry.” Her tweezed brows squeeze closer together, as if to invoke sympathy, but then she snaps her gum and the effect is lost. A moment later, she breezes toward the locker room. Melanie hurries after her.

  Kali scratches at the b
lack tattoo bands on her upper arm, then her neck and her shoulder blades. Hives have started popping up on her skin.

  “Come on.” Instead of continuing to the locker room, I pull her to a planter of aloe vera near the lunch tables. The plant grows wild in this area. “We’ll think of something.” I break off an aloe vera tip and hand it to her. “Rub this on the itchy spots.”

  Kali rubs the plant on the welts on her arms. “Nasty she-squirrels. Wish I could dump ’em.”

  According to Kali, squirrels are the most vicious animals, cute but dangerous. She eyes a rubber trash can at the end of Drew Reaver’s table. The year I met her, Kali got suspended from the eighth grade for dumping a boy in the trash bin.

  She clenches a fist and begins to get to her feet. “Maybe I will dump her.”

  I pull her back down by the arm. “No. You’re always telling those Puddle Jumpers, ‘If the puddles get too big to jump over, just step through them,’ remember?” Kali said if her mom hadn’t started bringing her to hip-hop classes at the Puddle Jumpers Center, she’d probably be in juvie by now.

  She scowls, but doesn’t get up. From Drew Reaver’s table, someone yells, “Eat dust, baby!” Drew opens a carton of chocolate milk and guzzles it.

  I take a long drink from my own water bottle, though it doesn’t erase the bad taste in my mouth. Blackmail. If I don’t make Vicky’s potion, she’ll out Kali. People love their traditional values here in Santa Guadalupe, where the grass even grows to the right. But I would never do something so wrong as fix Court.

  I’ll give Vicky a potion. A sprinkle of durian in her powder will make her olive skin turn orange for a day. “I could give her a fake elixir . . .”

  “She’d know when Court doesn’t ask her to the ball.”

  I cut my eyes back to Drew, sprawled over the table like a spider with his pale white arms poking out from a T-shirt with a picture of a succubus. His dark blond hair hangs in greasy ringlets below his ears, but his face is scrubbed. “What happened on that episode of Animal Planet when the tiger was chasing the gazelle, then another gazelle came along?”