The Secret of a Heart Note

by Stacey Lee

  The dense needles scratch at my arms but I manage to duck inside just before the kids rush by like a pack of bloodhounds.

  A chaperone hurries after them, blowing her whistle. “Hey, kids, come back here!”

  Not long after the chaperone passes my tree, I smell Court.

  “Court!” I hiss.

  He puts on the brakes, and quickly finds the entrance. The tree shudders as it swallows him up.

  He’s tied his sweater around his waist and the front of his polo shirt is soaked down the middle. Sweating magnifies a person’s scent by tenfold. His scent, a heady blend of evergreens and roasting hickory nuts, is so strong I can almost wind my fingers through it. It muscles out the Cinderella still flourishing inside the tree, and makes my insides flutter. I lose mass with every bump-bump of my heart, and I’m thankful for the weight of my boots, anchoring me to the ground.

  The kids’ voices grow louder again, and I go still as a pinecone. Our space is barely big enough to fit both of us, but we still manage not to touch. Court looks down at me, cheeks flushed from his game. A blanket of heat knits between us.

  “Lost my flower,” he whispers.

  “We can find you a new one.”

  “I liked the old one.”

  I take a deep breath to beat back the giddy feeling in my stomach. That’s when I catch it. Miso soup. I smell it. Alice’s missing note. It’s part of Court’s scentprint, though a thousand times less intense. Heart notes run in families.

  My startled eyes take in his, brown, flecked with striations of gold and even green. A tiny mole dots his jaw, just like his mother’s. He’s my answer, right in front of me.

  What did Mother say? Immerse yourself. Meditate on the scent. It will tell you where to go.

  The kids run back past us to their teacher, brushing so close, our cedar sways. Court’s eyes, gazing at me, widen a fraction as our bristly capsule shakes. I grab onto a branch so I don’t accidentally fall into him.

  I’m vaguely aware of an adult on a megaphone calling the children back to the buses. But like those bees that are seduced into Cinderella’s slippers, I am trapped, held captive while Court’s pollen flies around me. Only unlike those bees, I don’t want to escape.

  The sound of children laughing diminishes completely.

  Court peeks through the branches. “I think it’s safe.”

  My palms begin to sweat. “I need to focus on something. Will you promise not t-to,” I stammer, “not to move?”

  “Okay. What are you going to do?”

  “Smell you.”

  FIFTEEN

  “DO THEY LOOK LIKE THEY’RE ABOUT TO VOMIT?

  THEY’RE IN LOVE.”

  —Reseda, Aromateur, 1724

  “AREN’T YOU ALREADY smelling me?” Court asks around a smile. “I just played an hour of soccer with twenty-five third graders.” He leans in as if telling me a secret, and my pulse spikes at the warmth of his breath caressing my forehead. “Girls won. And anyway, I thought you already knew how I smelled.”

  His throaty purr nearly liquefies me. Just like someone fixed by an elixir, my feelings for Court multiply like bacteria with each succeeding exposure to him.

  I affect a business tone. “You have a bunch of smaller notes that aren’t obvious. One of those you share with your mom. I haven’t sourced it yet, but if I could get a better smell of it, I might be able to.”

  “Okay. Smell away.” He spreads his arms, and if I were any other teenage girl, I would jump right into them.

  I wrestle down my nervousness over what I’m about to do. Analyze the scents, comes Mother’s voice in my head, don’t give them the upper hand. I am a professional. A love professional. “I have to warn you not to touch me.”

  His eyebrows lift in a question.

  “I don’t want to infect you.” I already sprayed him once, after the bee sting, which should have been enough to last a lifetime. But why take chances? Especially when I’ve never hugged a boy before.

  “Are you sick?”

  “Not exactly.” I lick my lips. “But you could get, er, sick if you touch me.”

  “What do you mean, sick?”

  Wonderful. Now he’s going to think I have some transmittable disease, which isn’t far from the truth. “Lovesick.”

  The corners of his mouth tuck back even more in amusement. “Lovesick?” he asks.

  “Yeah, crazy, I know.” I try to keep a casual tone but I feel the flush.

  My skin has gone clammy. What’s wrong with me? I’ve never felt so nervous in my life. He’s just a boy, human being like me, Homo sapiens. I lean in so that my nose is only an inch away from him and sniff.

  Unlayering the mood notes, I find his scentprint. The nutmeg and cinnamon are especially strong and enticing.

  I sniff again, and though his scentprint plays like a chord to my nose, I can still barely make out the miso.

  I laugh nervously. “Don’t mind me.”

  Hesitantly, I slip my arms around his slim waist and press my cheek against his chest. He takes in a short gasp of air and his chest clutches. The perfume of honeysuckle, heady and narcoleptic, escapes from him, the note of desire. Then again, we’re so close, it could be coming from me. Court doesn’t shrink away, but I feel him fidget as I hold him. His fists clench at his sides and his face is a tight mask. The two-step of his heartbeat chases after mine. I close my mind to the confusingly hard yet comfortable pillow under my cheek, and hone in on the miso note.

  The scents are there, playing for you. Listen to them.

  The miso note creeps, rather than sails into my nose, and I open my mind to its character, its essence. The saltiness doesn’t have a lick of bitter, unlike table salt, and reminds me of seashells. It has to be a marine plant or a plant found near the ocean. I shut down thoughts of Court, shirtless and surfing, almost as soon as they crop up, and refocus. There’s a buttery roundness to the scent, like it’s used to sunshine. I inhale one more time.

  Five years old, the beach. The fog sits on the ocean thick as cotton batting. Mother is wearing a floppy hat and sorting through a shiny black plant with floats that resemble lightbulbs. I close my fist around the clam and trudge over to a little girl about my age with daisies on her bathing suit.

  I hold my clam out to the girl. “It smells like sea grass.”

  She scrunches her nose. “No, it smells like clams.”

  “Old oranges, too, and sunshine, and the lint trap. See?” I push the clam farther toward her nose. She backs away, her face crumpling. “Stop it! You’re gross!”

  I sway as all the ugly scents swoop in through my nose and pour down my cheeks like hot fire.

  That was the day Mother explained to me how our noses differed from everyone else’s. The day she began to train me to objectify those emotions into scents, to protect myself the way a scientist can study diseases without getting infected. The day I began to wall myself into the brambles.

  Tears prick my eyes, and as I look up into Court’s confused gaze, his face softens.

  I inhale his scent for the third time, and this time I don’t let myself linger. My mind’s eye zooms out from the beach to the cliff overlooking the beach. The water was peacock blue, frothing into a crescent of sand. Marine scents hung in the ocean’s misty breath, which swirled all around me.

  I remember where I was. “Playa del Rey.” I slowly release Court. “I need to go there.”

  “Playa del Rey? In Las Ballenas?” He sounds short of breath, and his eyes look pinched, like he’s in pain. I think I catch the fleeting note of wisteria, but wistful notes have always been quick to hide.

  “Yes. That’s where I’ll find the missing plant.”

  “The missing plant. Right.” He sags against a tangle of branches. “That’s an hour from Santa Guadalupe in the other direction. Can you find it in the dark?”

  It’s already late afternoon. “Yes, but”—I chew on my lip—“Mother’s supposed to call this evening. If she doesn’t reach me, she might worry.” She migh
t even call the police. Plus, I need to get my plants home and properly stashed. “We can’t go until tomorrow. Is that okay?”

  “Yeah,” he murmurs. I’m distracted by his chin, rounded like a guitar pick. I distract myself by focusing on a cluster of dark berries above his head.

  His mouth opens, soft as the petals of a sweet pea. I can’t stop staring, wondering how it would feel to kiss him. And the more I think about kissing him, the closer he comes to me. Or maybe I’m falling into him.

  His physical proximity is screwing up my emotions, the way the Bermuda Triangle can make compasses malfunction. But I can’t add kissing to my rap sheet. Remember Aunt Bryony. No falling in love.

  His face hovers just inches from mine, drawing me in like a bee to a patch of sweet Williams. I try to fight it, distract myself with the berries, but now it strikes me that the sprigs look rather like mistletoe.

  I tear my eyes away from his mouth just as he catches my wrist.

  I gasp. No one besides Mother and Kali ever touches me. It’s a strange sensation, the warmth of his hand on my skin. His fingertips slide to my grubby palm, then stop. Oh, sweet marjoram, I may never leave this tree again. As he holds my hand, we gaze at each other, so close now that I feel his breath graze my forehead and the happiness scent of sugar maple tickles my nose.

  I break into a sweat as a chilling realization settles on me. I’m already in love. I don’t know when it happened, but it happened. Invisible threads of attraction sewed him to me when I wasn’t watching, trapping me tight. That’s why I feel so sick every time he’s near. I tug my hand away, and it’s as painful as ripping out my own heart.

  The future of love depends on me remaining true to our purpose. If not me, then who else? Mother and I are the world’s last aromateurs.

  My shoulders sag under the weight of my lineage. Perhaps this is why Mother let me go to school—because in the end, she knew I had no real choice. Like Ruth Meyer, the plants will haunt me if I leave them, and so in the garden I must stay.

  I fumble around my bag for the BBG, nearly dropping the bottle in my agitation. I never had to respray before, but apparently, I didn’t do it right the first time.

  “Mim?” Court whispers almost shyly.

  “We should go now.” This is a business relationship, nothing more.

  He winces, and the blue hydrangea of his disappointment is so strong, it almost makes me weep. I peer out at the now-empty garden, hoping he follows my gaze.

  He does. I’m about to depress the pump of my bottle when his eyes snap back to me. I snatch my hand behind my back. Real smooth.

  “What . . . ?” One eyebrow quirks. “Was that a perfume bottle?”

  Guiltily, I open my hand. “Oh, this?”

  “Yeah, that.” The gluey notes of confusion dribble out. “Did you spray something?”

  I deflate. It’s not a secret. We just spray in secret to avoid awkward explanations. “It’s a special type of elixir.” I gesture with my free hand. “You touched me, so I have to disinfect you.”

  “Or I’ll get lovesick?” A grin tugs at his mouth, but when I don’t change my expression, his own becomes serious. “Wait. You used it after the bee stung me. I remember now.” He rubs a hand over his mouth and chin. “How long does it take for that thing to work?”

  “It’s almost always immediate.”

  “Well then, I guess I’m still waiting.”

  His words send a trill of happiness through me. For a nanosecond, a vision of us strolling hand in hand through a golden meadow teases me. But then a thick and thorny vine entangles us, and all the flowers of ancestors past like the ones on Aunt Bryony’s quilt look on, quietly censuring me with their gaze.

  A branch pokes me in the thigh, jarring me back to the present. It’s possible the BBG hasn’t taken effect yet. Or a breeze might have blown it away, though that’s never happened before. “I definitely should remist you.”

  “What if the guy doesn’t want those feelings taken away? Doesn’t he get a say?”

  My tongue stalls. This is where it gets messy. Mother warned me that men are just as emotional as women when they feel rejected.

  “Yes, you get a say. But, love witches can’t like people that way.” The trouty odor of my doubt makes me wince. “So it’s in your best interest for you to, er, not be interested.” That is probably the oddest thing anyone has ever said to him. Seeing the good-natured face he puts on drives a cactus spine into my tender spots. I focus on a smudge of dirt on his cheek as my train of thought veers offtrack.

  “So you’re saying I can never take you out to smell dinner.”

  I sink my heels deeper into the bark-covered ground, wishing it would compost me. If you only knew I would trade an arm for a date with you.

  But not my nose.

  “I’m sorry.” His eyes, probing mine, flicker, but don’t lose their intensity. My knees begin to buckle, though I don’t know if it’s from standing so long inside these tree branches or standing so long next to Court.

  His chest deflates and he gives the tiniest shrug. “Well then. Spray away.”

  Before he changes his mind, before I change mine, I spritz near his breathing space. I try to pump twice, just to be extra sure, but the lever catches at the end, meaning now I’m all out.

  Mist shimmers between us like a rainbow veil. “Breathe in, please.” I can’t even meet his eyes. “Just to be sure.”

  He lets out a cough of tart disbelief. But after a last look at me, he closes his eyes and deeply inhales, a simple reflex that somehow devastates me.

  His eyes flutter open, and an unseen ocean of blue notes fill the space between us. The bump on his throat hitches as he swallows. “Let’s get out of here.”

  As we leave the garden, Court stuffs two crisp Benjamins into the donation box. “Hope that covers it.”

  SIXTEEN

  “IF WE ARE THE MAGICIANS, LOVE IS THE MAGIC,

  WITHOUT WHICH WE COULD PULL NO RABBITS,

  WE COULD CONJURE NO COIN.”

  —Poppy, Aromateur, 1819

  ON THE RIDE home, we stick to neutral subjects like math and soccer.

  Court fiddles with the radio. “Whit’s a better player than me. He should’ve been the one on Sports Illustrated cover. Cassandra says they chose me because I look more all-American.”

  Cassandra, the school songstress with the corkscrew hair. My toes clench.

  “She told me not to get any tattoos or it’d ruin my image.”

  “Is she your”—I stop myself in time—“publicist?” It’s none of my business if Cassandra is his girlfriend.

  He chuckles. “She thinks she is. She set up a website for me, too.” With his gaze still fixed on the UPS truck ahead of us, he adds, “Cass is just a friend, you know. I mean”—he releases the steering wheel with one hand and gestures with it—“obviously.”

  What’s obvious? I don’t ask in case it leads to tricky topics, like feelings. I have to keep things professional for his benefit and mine. Or at least neutral. “I like this music.”

  “Los Solitarios.” He turns up the radio. The rich, rhythmic sounds of the Spanish guitar fill the void between us.

  Before we drive back to Parrot Hill, we fetch my bike from school. The parking lot is mostly vacant. Court wedges my rusty steed into the back of his Jeep next to a pile of surfing gear.

  Once we get home, he sets my bike down on the driveway. The familiar scents of our plants rush at me like children, wanting my attention. Not today, kids. I have an elixir to make, the most important elixir of my career so far.

  “You live here? It’s like something out of Disneyland.” Court’s gaze wanders up the stone blocks, skips around the hand-blown windows and stops at the corner turret with the pointed top.

  “Is it? I’ve never been there.”

  “You’ve never went to Disneyland?”

  “We don’t do vacations.” A chicken squawks. I slap my forehead. “I forgot to feed the chickens. They’ll revolt soon. I should—”
r />   Lingering thyme, the note of reluctance, tickles my nose. Saying good-bye has never been more complicated. I sigh. “Be right back.”

  I hurry down the path to our solid wooden gate and stand on my toes to unlatch it from the inside. The chickens peck the ground near our wishing well. “Sorry, guys.”

  I retrieve Mother’s nut-and-seed mix from the kitchen. When I return, Court is towing my bike into our courtyard.

  “Um, thanks. Set it anywhere.” I sprinkle the mix on the ground. The chickens dive for the goodies. “They get cranky when they don’t get their treats.”

  Court lifts his eyes from the chickens to the bright clumps of rhododendron that spread across the ground like melting scoops of ice cream. Our plot of land could be the centerfold of Extreme Home and Garden, not that Mother would ever allow photographers in. “It’s”—he searches for the word, and the awed scent of glory-of-the-snow, a plant that bursts with plum-scented flowers even in the highest alpines, thrums all around him—“unreal.”

  He walks to the first stone of our path and stares out at the grand procession of ancient oaks, crepe myrtles, and ash trees that lead to our workshop. Papery white poppies with yellow centers bloom along the path, nature’s egg served sunny-side up. I consider giving him a tour, but I’m afraid of where that will lead. Our garden of aphrodisiacs could be a blooming love trap, especially if he’s resistant to BBG.

  Then again, I sprayed him good and through, twice. There’s no real danger, despite the fact that he’s lingering.

  Court shakes himself out of his daze and walks back to where I’m leaning on the edge of the well. “A wishing well,” he says in awe. “It looks old.”

  “Yes. People used to come here to draw their water in the nineteenth century.”

  He takes in the pile of rubble under the broken lip. “You should repair that before it leaks.”

  “Haven’t found the right contractor.” An affordable one, that is. For him, the repair would simply mean a trip to the ATM. For us, well maintenance doesn’t qualify for the Aromateur Trust Fund withdrawal since it’s not a business necessity. During the medieval age when the trust was started, aromateurs were highly revered as healers, and society provided for their living much like they did for the clergy. Nowadays, any well repair money would have to come from our meager living allowance.