by Jodi Picoult
“It makes no sense. What’s a negative y, anyway?”
Thomas laughed. “A why not.”
Chelsea smiled at him. On the screen, the same sleazy guy was slapping a girl across the face. INAPPROPRIATE. “Does he think we’re morons?” she whispered.
“Uh . . . yes.”
“I heard he used to live on a commune in Vermont. And that he screwed sheep.”
Thomas glanced at the guidance counselor’s Mexican poncho and his straggly gray ponytail. “Well, at least he’s qualified to teach us about being assaulted from behind.”
Chelsea giggled. The next slide clicked into place: the girl and the blond boy with his arm slung over her shoulder. But to Thomas, it looked like the boy’s fingers were getting awfully close to copping a feel. “A trick question,” he murmured.
“Look at her face,” Chelsea said. “She wants it.”
“Appropriate,” Mr. Wood announced.
Thomas shook his head. “Bad call.”
“Obviously, you need some extra help here. A little tutorial.”
“With Wood? Thanks—I don’t think so.”
“With me,” Chelsea said, and just like that, Thomas couldn’t breathe. She snaked her arm over the algebra book until her hand was touching his ribs. Was she thinking how skinny he was? How easy it was to string along a loser?
She pinched him, hard. “Ow!”
Several heads turned. But by then, Chelsea’s hands were folded in her lap and she was staring demurely at the screen.
“Inappropriate,” she mouthed silently.
Thomas rubbed his hand over his side. Shit, she’d probably given him a bruise. Suddenly her fingers slipped over his, weaving, until their two hands were clasped. Thomas stared, speechless at the sight of his own skin flush against an angel’s.
Reluctantly, he met her gaze, certain she would be laughing at him. But she was dead serious, her cheeks bright as poppies. “Appropriate.”
He swallowed. “Really?”
Chelsea nodded and did not pull away.
Thomas was certain the room was going to come crashing in on him, or that his alarm clock would ring out at any moment. But he could feel the pressure of Chelsea’s palm against his own, and it was as real as the blood speeding through his heart. “I think I get it now,” he said softly.
Chelsea smiled, a dimple appearing in one cheek, an invitation. “It’s about time.”
“Do I know astral projection?” Starshine said, the silver bells of her earrings swinging. “Yes. Will I teach you? Not a chance.”
“I can do it,” Gilly insisted. “I know I can.”
“I never said you couldn’t.” The older woman sat down on one of the rocking chairs in the Wiccan Read, stroking the cat that leaped into her lap. “But if you’re looking for a psychic vision, you can get the same effect from trance induction. On the other hand, if you’re just looking to get high, try your local dealer.”
Gillian couldn’t tell Starshine that what she wanted most was to fly—to leave her body behind and to live in her mind. She was destined for more than this insignificant town, she just knew it, and she couldn’t even look forward to college providing a portal out, because her father would never let her move that far away. In Gilly’s mind, that meant taking matters into her own hands. But none of the books at the Wiccan Read held the old recipe for witches’ flying ointment, the herbal oil that had produced such startling psychedelic effects in the Middle Ages that witches who applied it to their foreheads believed they could soar. The newer recipes were safer, more politically correct: a mishmash of chimney soot and mugwort and benzoin. In other words, a poor substitute.
Starshine looked at the girl’s stubborn face and sighed. “No one makes astral projection ointment anymore. The recipe called for the fat of an unbaptized infant, for goodness’ sake. You can’t get that at the supermarket deli counter.”
Gilly thrust out her chin. “That wasn’t the active ingredient.”
“Ah, I forget who I’m talking to . . . the pharmaceuticals heiress. No, it wasn’t. I believe the effect was brought on by tripping on hashish and belladonna—neither of which I sell, because the first will land you in jail and the second can land you in a coma. It just isn’t safe, honey.”
At the girl’s crestfallen expression, Starshine squeezed her hand. “Why not concentrate on Beltane, instead? It’s right around the corner, and it’s such a wonderful sabbat to celebrate. Sensuality and sex, and the earth coming to life again.” She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. “There is nothing like leaping naked over a bonfire.”
“I’ll bet.”
“Well, except maybe for a handfasting ceremony. I did that one Beltane, you know, when I wasn’t much older than you.”
“Handfasting?”
“A trial marriage. For a year and a day. A test period, if you will, before the final commitment.”
“What happened after that?”
“After a year I chose to go my separate way. But that Beltane . . . oh, we danced barefoot with my coven and wove the maypole, and then the two of us celebrated the Great Rite like the God and Goddess right there in the meadow.”
Gilly’s eyes widened. “You had sex right in front of everyone else?”
“Guess so, because I still remember it. On Beltane, the first thing to go are your inhibitions.” She began to move around the tiny shop, plucking herbs and dried flowers off the cluttered shelves. “Here. Use primrose and St.-John’s-wort, cowslip and rosemary, some bloodstone on your altar. Courage, Gillian. Beltane’s all about filling your soul with the courage to do the things you might not otherwise be able to do.”
Gillian took the collection from Starshine’s hands. Courage. If she couldn’t fly, maybe this would be the next best thing.
“Figures,” Delilah said, shaking her head. “First time I let you behind the stove and you make a mess of it.”
Jack grimaced and tried to scrape the worst of the spaghetti sauce off his clothing. Okay, so it hadn’t been brilliant to leave the vat sitting on the edge of the cold table while he cleared a spot on the stove for it to heat. Now that it had fallen and splattered everywhere, he was going to have to make another pot from scratch, because Delilah had a thing about using canned sauce for her pasta dishes. “We don’t have any more tomatoes,” she said, handing Jack another clean dishrag.
“Good thing you’ve got me to go get some, then,” he said without missing a beat.
Addie walked into the kitchen to hand Delilah an order. “What happened to you?” she asked, glancing at Jack.
“He got on the wrong side of a pot of sauce. I’m sending him out for fresh produce,” Delilah said.
“Better change first. People are going to think you’ve been gut-shot.”
Jack didn’t answer, just huffed his way up the set of stairs that led from the kitchen to Roy’s apartment. In his bedroom, he bent down to retrieve a clean shirt from his bottom drawer. Suddenly, above him, the window exploded.
Jack flattened himself on the carpet, aware of all the places his hands were being cut as they pressed against shards of glass. Heart pounding, he cautiously got to his feet and looked out the broken pane.
He smelled the smoke first. The brick had landed on the carpet, and the flaming newspaper it was wrapped in had already started to burn. “Fire,” Jack whispered hoarsely. Then he lifted his head, and bellowed. “Fire!”
Addie was the first one into the room, holding the extinguisher they kept next to the stove. She sprayed the foam all over the flames, all over Jack’s feet. By the time Jack gathered his wits, Roy and Delilah had crowded into the doorway of the room, too. “What the hell did you do?” Roy demanded.
Addie reached into the foam and pulled out the thick brick, still wrapped with a rope and some residual paper. “Jack didn’t do anything. Someone did it to him.”
“Better call Charlie Saxton,” Delilah said.
“No.” This, flat, from Jack. “What if I hadn’t been here? What if we were all worki
ng downstairs, and this happened, and the whole place burned down?”
He began to pull his clothes from the drawers: a few pairs of jeans, some underwear, his T-shirts. “What are you doing?” Addie asked.
“Moving. I’m not staying here while all this is going on. It’s too dangerous.”
“Where are you going to go?”
“I don’t know yet.”
Addie stepped forward, staring at his clothes. These Hanes T-shirts and Levi’s were the most beautiful things she had ever seen, simply because they were his. She thought about opening her closet and seeing Jack’s things pressed up against her own. “Come live with me,” she said, but what she really meant was: Here is my heart; have a care.
Their eyes met as if there was no one else in the room. “I won’t put you in danger either, Addie.”
“No one has to know. I’m the last person in the world this town would expect to have a . . . a . . .”
One corner of Jack’s mouth turned up. “A boyfriend?”
“I’ll be damned,” Delilah whispered.
They turned, suddenly remembering the presence of the others. “If you say a single word,” Addie said fiercely, “I’ll—”
Delilah pantomimed locking her lips and throwing away the key, then led Roy back downstairs. Jack stepped closer to Addie, a fistful of socks in his hands. “It doesn’t have to be . . . well, you know. Like that. I could stay on the couch.”
“I know.”
“Are you doing this to save your father?” Jack asked quietly. “Or me?”
She cradled the empty fire extinguisher in her arms, like an infant. “I’m doing this to save myself,” she said.
Gilly had been five the first time she had seen medicine made—an aspirin—and its unlikely source was a tree. “Salicylic acid,” her father had explained. “It comes from willow bark. It’s why the Indians used to brew willow bark tea to bring down a fever.” Nowadays, of course, her father’s R & D lab was the biggest, most impressive part of Duncan Pharmaceuticals, filled with an alphabet soup of Ph.D.s who could create synthetic compounds used to heal. Sometimes it freaked her out to walk through the lab—it always smelled of science, and there were those creepy lab rats and rabbits that had tumors pulsing out of their sides or had gone hairless from the doses of medicine sent into their bloodstreams. But Gilly knew this was where her father preferred to spend the lion’s share of his day.
“Daddy?” she said, poking her head into the restricted area. She shrugged into a white coat and goggles and plastic gloves, required couture for the R & D area. It was quiet today, staffed with a few of the grunts—the guys who only had master’s degrees, not doctorates. They looked up as Gilly entered but weren’t surprised; most knew her by sight.
She found her father—and most of the other scientists—gathered in the rear of the lab, near those disgusting animals. Gilly’s father was carrying a bowl of what looked like hairy white carrots. Like everyone else, he seemed to be holding his breath. Gilly followed his gaze to the gas chromatograph, and its capillary tube, which held the substance that was being tested. Zap—the flash of light from the mass spectrophotometer hit the gas in the tube. The technician let a computer printout feed into his hungry hands, a graph full of peaks and valleys that measured exactly what was floating around inside the thin glass thread. He handed it to Gilly’s dad, who compared it for several long moments to a reference graph from a chemical library. “Ladies and gentlemen,” Amos said, his face breaking into a smile, “natural atropine!”
There was a volley of cheering, and Amos clapped the shoulder of his lab tech. “Great work, Arthur. See if you can isolate one hundredth of a gram on the gelatin disc.” As the group broke up, he walked to his daughter. “To what do I owe this surprise?”
“Just passing by,” Gilly said absently. “Did you make a new drug?”
“No. An incredibly old one,” Amos said, leading her out of the R & D room. “We’re trying to break into the homeopathic market—going back to nature to find the sources we’ve been imitating in the lab. Atropine’s amazingly cost effective. Did you see that tiny bit of gas? Just that much alone could provide ten thousand doses.”
Gilly tuned him out. For all that her father loved what he did, he could be talking about drawing blood from a stone and it would have made the same impression on her. As they reached his office, she sprawled across the white couch along the far wall. “Did you hear about the fire at the Do-Or-Diner?”
“No,” he said, sitting down. “What happened?”
“It was upstairs in Roy Peabody’s apartment. Meg’s mom was having lunch there when it happened.”
“Was anyone hurt?” her father asked, his hands steepled before him.
“Not that I heard.” Gilly sat up, reaching for a bowl of mints. “But people are saying it wasn’t an accident.”
“Addie couldn’t get much insurance money even if she burned the place to the ground.”
“Not her. Supposedly, someone else set the fire. As a warning.” She stared hard at her father, waiting for him to confide in her.
“Gilly,” he said softly, shocked. “You don’t think I’d do anything like that?”
Something in her chest loosened. “No. I just wondered if you knew someone who would.”
“Oh, I imagine any one of a hundred people in this town might have done it.”
“But that’s awful!” Gilly burst out. “He could have gotten hurt!”
“Better him than one of you.”
There was a knock on the door. “Mr. Duncan,” the secretary said, “how much more belladonna did you want ordered?”
Gilly turned. “Belladonna?”
“Let’s start with seven hundred fifty plants,” Amos said. As his secretary left, he turned to Gilly. “What about it?”
“How come you need it?”
“It’s the plant we extracted the atropine from,” Amos explained. “Why?”
Gilly truly believed in fate. It was why, she knew, she had chosen to visit her father on the afternoon that he was working with belladonna, the same plant Starshine had mentioned a day ago when they were discussing witches’ flying ointment. Hash and belladonna, Gilly remembered. Well, she could probably get hashish with a single query to one of the Goths at her school. But even if she didn’t, maybe belladonna had enough strength to work by itself. Maybe she could mix her own flying ointment and no one would be the wiser. And what better time to soar than Beltane?
Courage, she thought. “Nothing,” Gilly lied. “It’s the name of this really phat band.” She leaned over the desk to kiss her father’s cheek. “I’ll see you later.”
“You’re going home,” he ordered. “I don’t want you walking around town alone.”
“It’s not like he’s Jack the Ripper, Daddy.”
“Gilly.”
“Whatever,” she muttered, already halfway out the door. But she didn’t turn left at the hallway, toward the exit. Instead, she retraced her steps back to the R & D lab. Arthur, the lab technician, was mashing those furry white carrots—belladonna. “Miss Duncan,” he said without glancing up. “What can I do for you?”
“Um, my dad asked me to bring a sample of atropine to his office.”
“What for?”
Gilly blanched. She hadn’t gotten this far in her mind. “I don’t know. He just asked me to get it.”
“How much?”
She pointed to a little pool in the base of a test tube. “He didn’t say. I guess that’s enough.”
The supervisor capped the tube and handed it to her. “Wear your gloves out of the lab. You don’t want to touch that stuff with your bare hands.”
“Thanks.” She slipped the vial into the pocket of her fleece jacket, keeping her hand fisted around her treasure as she walked straight home, just like her father had wanted.
“This is the bathroom,” Addie said, blushing faintly.
Jack smiled. “You don’t have to give me the grand tour. Really.” It had been some time since Addie
had had to share her space. Add to that the forced intimacy in a relationship still so new Jack could still see the shine on it, and he could not help but wonder if he was making a tremendous mistake.
“And this,” Addie said, her hand on a doorknob, “is Chloe’s room.”
It was the only room in the house Jack had not seen. And as Addie slowly opened the door, he also realized it was the only room in the house that was not neat. Toys littered the floor like landmines, and clothes were draped over the back of a chair. A poster of a boys’ band that hadn’t made a record in nearly a decade was taped to the wall, peeling from one corner. On a shelf sat a parade of outgrown teddy bears, missing eyes and frayed at the limbs. The bed, a confection of pink ruffles, was unmade, as if Addie slept in it from time to time—a thought that tugged at Jack but seemed less heartbreaking than the alternative: that for eleven years, Addie had simply left this room as a shrine.
Still, it was only a bed, and linens could be changed. Toys could be put away. “I could stay here,” Jack suggested. “Give you a little more privacy.”
“No. You can’t.” She stood beside the chair, smoothing her hand over the fabric of an impossibly small white shirt.
“Addie—”
“You can’t,” she repeated. “You just can’t.”
“All right,” he said softly, understanding that this was a line he could not cross. He followed her out and closed the door quickly, thinking all the while of Pandora’s box: of what he had let loose by breaching the seal of this room, and of hope, which might still have been trapped inside.
The scent of smoke was strong at the diner, but it didn’t bother Selena. “It’s like a barbecue,” she said, watching Jordan wrinkle his nose as he slid into the booth.
“Yeah. Except it’s the facility that’s roasting.”
Addie came to the table carrying two mugs and a pot full of coffee. “Cream and sugar, right?”
Selena smiled at the waitress. “Can I get a cup of hot water, with lemon?”
Addie nodded and went off toward the counter. “It’s disgusting, you know, the way you drink that,” Jordan said. “People use the same thing to wash their dishes.”
