Bliss

by Kathryn Littlewood

  This was not going to be pretty.

  CHAPTER 8

  Truth and Consequences

  Rose sat down hard on the floor.

  She hadn’t meant to, but her knees gave way, and when your knees give way, you just sit wherever you are.

  “What’s wrong, darling?” Lily lilted, a look of concern on her perfectly pretty face. For an instant, Rose was extremely jealous—why did Aunt Lily always look so beautiful? Rose, on the other hand, didn’t even need to look in a mirror—she was sure that her own cheeks were red and flushed, her forehead was sweaty, and her eyes were still squinty from sleep.

  Sometimes life really wasn’t fair.

  Chip looked down at her and said, “You want a chair?”

  Chip had given out 120 of the magical cookies that were intended only for Mrs. Havegood. Was that so bad? The instructions had said that the Koekjes van Waarheid would prove a “mild corrective for the most heinous liars,” and Mrs. Havegood was the only truly heinous liar she knew.

  Although… Rose had become something of a heinous liar herself in the past few days: She’d lied to Aunt Lily, she’d lied to Chip, she’d lied to Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle, and worst of all, she’d lied to her parents.

  Yes, if Rose had eaten one of the Cookies of Truth, she’d be toast. But the rest of Calamity Falls should be safe enough. Right?

  “Rose!” Sage called. “Come play with us!”

  Sage and Leigh were bouncing on the trampoline in the backyard while Mrs. Carlson sat nearby in a lawn chair, sipping an iced tea and watching a soap opera on her portable TV, a sad little cube with rabbit-ear antennae that she’d likely been toting around since the mid-1980s.

  “The kids have been asking for you all morning!” said Aunt Lily. Normally this would have made Rose feel a certain pride, but at the moment it felt like a nuisance.

  “Not now!” Rose screamed out the door. Then she turned politely to Chip. “Who exactly did you give the cookies to?”

  Chip folded his massive arms across his chest and squinted. “What is this, twenty questions? Were the cookies poisoned? What’s the big deal?”

  Aunt Lily gently touched Chip’s massive shoulder and he relaxed. “Now, Chipper…”

  Rose improvised. “Well, they had some … pulverized pecan dust in them, and I just want to make sure you didn’t give them to anyone with a nut allergy.”

  Chip smiled and began again. “I understand. I gave some to Mr. Bastable the frog sweatshirt guy, and Miss Thistle the teacher—all the teachers, actually—and the men’s golf association, and the bankers, and the doctor, and the hairdresser. People really loved them. But don’t worry—I kept a few for the family,” he said, indicating a platter of the little brown nuggets sitting on the counter.

  “You’re sure that’s everybody?”

  Chip took a deep breath and scratched his bald head. “Let me think. Who else?” A thick blue vein in Chip’s forehead pulsed like a river. “Aha!” he cried. “A bunch of librarians came by. They were all on a yellow school bus.”

  “Oh,” said Rose. “The Triple L.”

  Chip and Lily looked at Rose, puzzled.

  “The League of Lady Librarians. They take field trips all over town once a week. Sometimes they go to the museum, sometimes they go to the park, sometimes they go horseback riding, and sometimes they come here. Mom loves them.”

  “They were nice gals,” Chip said. “Real polite.”

  Rose was about to ask him again if that was everyone he’d given cookies to when there was a screeching sound outside. Rose turned her head and stared out one of the large windows: A yellow school bus with the letters LLL painted on the side in electric blue squealed to a halt right in front of the bakery, nearly crashing into a line of parked cars.

  The high-school librarian, Mrs. Canterbury, emerged from the bus, her bangs wet with sweat and her cheeks flushed. Mrs. Canterbury bustled through the door and up to the counter.

  Rose pushed through the saloon doors into the front room to greet her.

  “Hello, young Rose,” Mrs. Canterbury began in a worried whisper. “The Ladies would like more of the little brown cookies that were given away here earlier. I personally cannot eat sweets, so I didn’t partake of the cookies—no offense—but they enjoyed them very, very much and told me that if I didn’t come back with three dozen more right away, they would ‘punch my lights out.’”

  “That doesn’t sound like a very Triple-L thing to say,” Rose ventured.

  “They’re a little … on edge today,” said Mrs. Canterbury, glancing back at the bus. Librarians in their blazers and V-neck sweaters had their faces pressed to the windows of the bus, staring maniacally into the bakery.

  Rose had never seen anything like it. Perhaps the Koekjes van Waarheid were to blame, but how could they be? They were supposed to affect only “the most heinous liars,” which the ladies of the Triple L were most certainly not.

  Or were they?

  “Hurry, please!” Mrs. Canterbury said. “I’m worried. The Ladies aren’t themselves today.”

  Another librarian burst forth from the bus. Rose recognized her as Miss Karnopolis, who used to read stories aloud during library time in elementary school. She had taken her hair down from its usual French twist and it was flying around her head in a frizzy mane.

  “Good morning!” screeched Miss Karnopolis. “Or is it? My face itches and I have not had a successful encounter with a bathroom in three days now! So I suppose it is, in fact, a so-so morning. A mediocre morning at best! And the bizarre décor in here is not helping matters one bit! I mean, stripes? Is this a bakery or a circus tent?”

  “Augustine, please!” hushed Mrs. Canterbury.

  “Please yourself, Pat!” Miss Karnopolis snapped. “It’s about time someone told the truth about this place. Whoever picked the wallpaper in this room should be slapped!”

  Chip stepped out into the front room, the vein in his forehead pulsing like the throat of a groaning frog. “I picked the wallpaper,” he growled.

  Lily burst in after him. “It’s great wallpaper, Chippy,” she said. “At least, as far as wallpaper goes.” She turned to Miss Karnopolis. “I’ve always preferred a nice coat of paint.”

  But Miss Karnopolis wasn’t paying Aunt Lily any attention—instead, her jaw had dropped at the sight of Chip and his muscle-bound chest. “Oh my,” Miss Karnopolis stammered. “Oh my, my, my. Oh ME, oh me, oh my. Oh. My.”

  Chip gulped and started backing through the saloon doors. “Never mind,” he said, the doors swinging in front of him.

  Aunt Lily stifled a giggle, then turned her attention back to the unfolding drama, somehow managing to stay cool.

  “Augustine! What on earth has gotten into you?” Mrs. Canterbury pleaded.

  Miss Karnopolis leaned over the countertop and pulled Rose close. “Rose, your hair is nice. You should be satisfied with it—as long as it doesn’t fall out in your old age. Your face, taken by itself, is not as pretty as your brother Thyme’s face is handsome. What I mean is that if Thyme were a girl, he would be prettier than you, and if you were a boy, you would be less handsome than Thyme.”

  Rose was horrified. This was something she sometimes worried about in the privacy of her own head when she was falling asleep—it never occurred to her that other people might be thinking it as well, let alone her beloved elementary-school librarian.

  Rose coughed and said, “Um, thanks.”

  Aunt Lily put a reassuring hand on Rose’s shoulder. “Don’t worry, my pet,” Lily said. “You have something that Ty doesn’t have.”

  Before Rose could ask what Lily was talking about, ten angry librarians came stomping into the bakery, setting off a cacophony of jingling from the bells that hung from the door handle.

  The librarians stood in groups of twos and threes and argued back and forth about anything and everything. Mrs. Hackett, Calamity Falls adult fiction specialist, and Mrs. Crisp, Calamity Falls adult reference specialist, began a shouting match near
the counter.

  “You couldn’t archive scholarly articles if you tried!” yelled Mrs. Crisp.

  “Oh, peacock poop!” Mrs. Hackett retorted.

  It went on like that, the din in the front room growing unbearable. Chip peeked worriedly over the tops of the saloon doors.

  “I’m sure they’re all just having a bad day,” Rose told him, even though she knew it was much more than that.

  Mrs. Hackett and Mrs. Crisp drifted over to the far-right counter, where the Bliss family displayed all of the seven-layer cakes they made, a Bliss specialty: coconut cream, pineapple, chocolate, banana, carrot, strawberry shortcake, and a moist, pecan-riddled tower that Purdy had named, simply, Heaven. The cakes sat on white porcelain stands, covered by glass domes with little red knobs on top.

  “Admit it, Crisp,” said Mrs. Hackett. “You don’t take me seriously! Just because I’m not a reference nerd, like you!”

  Mrs. Crisp turned up her nose. “I would rather be a reference nerd than an expert in romance novels!”

  Every member of the League of Lady Librarians gasped and stopped their fighting. They turned to Mrs. Hackett and Mrs. Crisp and watched, terrified.

  “What did you say?” Mrs. Hackett asked in a hushed growl.

  “You heard me,” said Mrs. Crisp, her lower lip trembling.

  Mrs. Hackett reached over, pulled the glass dome off the seven-layer coconut-cream cake, picked it up, and shoved the cake into Mrs. Crisp’s face—all seven layers.

  Mrs. Crisp was speechless, her eyes and hair and entire face covered with a layer of thick white icing, flecked with strands of white coconut. She licked a blob off her lips and said, “I don’t like coconut.”

  Then a volcano of sound erupted as all of the librarians shrieked and screamed and clawed at one another. Mrs. Canterbury cowered behind the wrought-iron café table to shield her eyes, while Miss Karnopolis stormed behind the counter and pelted her with blueberry muffins. Mrs. Hackett and Mrs. Crisp were wrestling on the floor in the smeared remains of the coconut-cream cake, while others stood in a circle around them and cheered.

  Sage and Leigh ran in from the backyard to watch, and Mrs. Carlson ran after them. “Animals!” she said. The fight woke up Ty as well, and he staggered into the front room, rubbing sleep from his eyes.

  “Chip gave our cookies away to the Triple L,” Rose hissed. “I think they worked.”

  The corners of Ty’s mouth raised just a little bit. “Cool,” he said.

  But it wasn’t cool, Rose thought. It was dangerous.

  “I’ll save the littl’uns!” Mrs. Carlson shouted as she herded Sage and Leigh out of the kitchen and upstairs.

  A moment later, Chip came to the rescue. He burst through the doors wielding a cordless electric beater and a crème brûlée torch like they were jousting weapons. “Enough!” he shouted, whirring the beaters and igniting the torch. A jet of blue flame shot into the air.

  The librarians stopped fighting and backed toward the exit, muttering to one another about how Chip was handsome as the devil but not really the life of the party. When the last one was back on the bus, Chip nervously locked the front door of the bakery.

  “I think it’s best to close up shop for the day,” he said, sounding deeply shaken. Whatever horrors he’d seen as a fighting marine didn’t hold a crème brûlée torch to the cake-flinging war that had just broken out in the shop.

  “Let’s clean up this mess, Chip,” said Lily.

  “That’s a good idea,” said Rose. “I’ll help in a minute. I just need to get something from the walk-in.” And she dragged Ty deep into the depths of the fridge.

  Rose and Ty frantically flipped through the pages of the Bliss Cookery Booke and found the recipe for the Cookies of Truth. In the margins was an etching of a scene much like the one they had just witnessed: men and women in wooden clogs and double-pointed Dutch hats throwing loaves of bread in each other’s faces and screaming at one another.

  Rose found the passage she’d been looking for:

  Lady Birgitta Bliss did combine two fists of flour with two fists of brown sugar, three chicken’s eggs, and the gentle sleeping breath of one who has never lied. This proved to be a mild corrective for the most heinous of liars.*

  But there was no “etcetera”—it was an asterisk.

  At the bottom of the page she found a note hidden in the filigree of the illustration. It was very hard to make out the writing, particularly by the light of the miniature flashlight that Rose had stuffed in her pocket, but she got the gist of it.

  *When administered with a glass of milke. Without the coating of milk from cow, sheep, goat, or cat, not only will the tongues of liars be corrected, but all the venom wisely restricted by the tongues of the merely polite will be unloosed. Chaos will reign.

  “Ty! You told me this stuff wasn’t important! It’s very important!”

  “Harsh, Rosita. Mucho harsh,” he said. “I’m going back to bed.” He glanced at her before shutting the door and said, “It’s like I can’t do anything right. You sound just like Mom.”

  At that, Rose shuddered. She knew exactly how he felt.

  Rose shut the book and rushed out of the library, barely remembering to lock the door, then ran out of the fridge, knocking over a very tall woman in long pinstripe pants and a pinafore.

  Rose stood up and brushed herself off, panting.

  Aunt Lily.

  Aunt Lily had been leaning against the fridge, waiting. Her face was a mixture of makeup and mystery. “Care to tell me what you’ve been doing in there?” she asked.

  CHAPTER 9

  Love from On High

  Lily repeated her question: “What were you up to in there, Rose? Your color is all gone.”

  Rose turned and surveyed her reflection in the gray steel of the walk-in fridge and saw that her skin was, in fact, the color of dental floss.

  “I was just … getting a glass of orange juice,” Rose lied.

  Lily knelt down and touched Rose’s cheek and said, “Rose, you were in there for ten minutes, and you haven’t brought out any juice. And you’re freezing!” She wrapped her arms around Rose. “Sit here on my knee.”

  Rose lowered herself onto the thigh of her fake aunt’s gray pinstripes and sat there awkwardly, like a child on a mall Santa.

  “Now, tell me the truth,” Lily said gently. “What are you hiding back there, behind that tapestry?”

  Rose tried to hide her surprise. How did Lily know there was something behind that tapestry? She must have eavesdropped on Rose and Ty and Sage arguing back and forth as they copied down the recipes the morning before, when Rose found a purple sequin from Lily’s pants on the floor of the fridge.

  Rose wanted to tell her aunt about the book and the Love Muffins gone wrong and the Cookies of Truth gone, unfortunately, right—but her parents had told her to protect the secret of the Bliss Cookery Booke, and she had to obey her parents.

  So instead of spilling her guts, Rose countered with an equally important question: “Why were you eavesdropping on us yesterday morning?”

  Aunt Lily looked her straight in the eye, and Rose stared right back, marveling at the dark glimmer of Lily’s brown eyes and the jaunty ramp of her eyelashes, which were so long that they looked like the kind of eyelashes a woman in a cartoon bats for attention. “I eavesdropped because I was worried, Rose. The three of you, getting up that early to hang out in a refrigerator, and then staying up all night to make cookies—”

  Rose barely managed a whisper: “But we were so quiet!”

  Lily laughed. “Rose! I am a creature of the night.” She patted Rose on the head like Rose was five and not twelve. Rose hated that. “Now, I appreciate your enthusiasm for baking, I really do. You are a natural. But if you are doing all this sneaking around because you’re in some kind of trouble, or because you’re hiding a secret…”

  Rose’s pulse quickened and she felt a movement in her throat, the kind you feel when you’re about to vomit up either the truth or your
dinner. Aunt Lily was too smart. There was no hiding anything from her.

  “Maybe a secret that someone else asked you to keep. A friend, maybe, or … a parent.”

  Rose twitched.

  “An adult should never ask a child to keep one of their secrets,” Lily said gravely. “It isn’t fair.” She gave Rose’s shoulder a squeeze.

  Rose was about to come out with it, the whole thing. Lily was right: It wasn’t fair for her parents to ask Rose to keep this tremendous secret—not just the secret of the locked-away Cookery Booke, but the secret of their family magic. Rose had been hiding it her whole life. The only people she could ever tell about the lightning in the bottle or the clouds or the nightingale or the warlock’s eye were her brothers, and they didn’t care. Her parents had made it so that she could never really be honest with anyone.

  “I—I—I—” Rose began.

  A look of impatience flashed over Lily’s face—it was a subtle narrowing of her eyes and crinkling of her eyebrows. It passed like the shadow of a quickly moving cloud, but it lingered just long enough to make Rose hold her tongue.

  What was it about Aunt Lily that made Rose suspicious? Until she figured out what that was, she couldn’t expose her family’s secret.

  “Behind that tapestry is another refrigerator where my parents keep the really good chocolate,” said Rose. “We snuck in there the other morning and ate some. It was wrong of us. So I locked it, and I’m holding the key so Ty and Sage can’t get in there again.” Rose exhaled so hard that she coughed, then got up off her fake aunt’s knee.

  Lily stood up too. “Thank you for being honest,” she said, a little gruffly.

  A moment of uncomfortable silence was broken when Leigh and Sage ran into the kitchen and began jumping up and down, rattling all the pots and pans.

  “Mrs. Carlson fell asleep in front of her little TV,” Sage said, the words getting lost amid his jumps.

  “Stop jumping, guys,” said Rose.

  “I can’t!” cried Sage. “I’ve been doing it for so long, I can’t stop! I have to eat something to weigh me down!”