The Rosemary Spell

by Virginia Zimmerman

  Past the house, there’s a hill. It’s not very steep, but it’s dotted with pricker bushes, so climbing up is tricky. A thorn jabs me, and I concentrate on moving up the slope without getting stabbed a second time.

  Shelby is the first to reach the top. “It’s alive!” she exclaims.

  “It always is,” I point out.

  Adam offers me a hand up. “It’s weird. It sort of goes against the rules of nature, you know?”

  The three of us stand on a narrow dirt ledge and look at the broad patch of rosemary bushes. The needles are a dark green on the top and a lighter, sort of sage color underneath, clustered together like on a Christmas tree. The sharp piney smell fills the air.

  Years of visits to the island, years of standing on this ledge and wondering at the rosemary crowd together in my memory. “At some point,” I say, “when something is the way it is, it has to stop being weird and, you know, just be.”

  “Very philosophical.” Shelby laughs and strides down a path through the bushes to a tiny clearing.

  We sit cross-legged in a tight circle on the ground.

  “This was bigger before,” Shelby observes as her knee smacks against mine.

  “We were smaller,” I point out.

  The river makes a sound like lazy wind, moving past, carrying the odd bit of something with it. I sit the Barbie between me and Shelby, like she’s another person in the circle. Shelby and Adam both smile.

  We all watch a hawk circle in the sky. I pluck at some rosemary, rub it between my fingers, and inhale the sharp scent.

  Shelby pulls her knees to her chest and leans back, her eyes closed.

  I follow her lead. The thin winter sun rests lightly on my cheeks.

  Adam nudges me with his knee. He wants me to pull out the diary and show Shelby the poem, I can tell, but just knowing she’ll help us make sense of it is enough for now. The layered scent of the rosemary, the gentle brushing sound of the river, the easy warmth on my face. I don’t want the moment to end. I store up all these sensations in the place where memories of the island live. I put them on a shelf in my mind beside all the other times with Adam and Shelby. I keep them nearby, just like the books by my bed. The idea that memories and books are similar swirls around me with the warmth of the sun.

  The sharp pain of Adam’s kneecap emphatically thwacking against my thigh breaks my reverie.

  I glare at him, but he’s eager to show Shelby the poem, and he looks like a little kid, so I can’t be mad.

  “I brought the diary,” I announce, pulling it from my bag.

  Shelby leans forward a little, and her hair sheets down alongside her face. As if on cue, her cell phone pings, but she ignores it. She looks expectantly from me to Adam. “Well?”

  This is what Adam and I were waiting for. It wasn’t that we didn’t want to think about the poem; it was that we didn’t want to think about it without Shelby.

  “So, we told you we found the book in the cupboard,” I begin.

  “And we took it to use for our poetry journal.” Adam speaks firmly, glossing over whether or not writing in the book had been the right decision.

  “Mr. Cates said to use Shakespeare for inspiration,” I tell Shelby. “So, I wrote the line from Hamlet that my name comes from—Rosemary, that’s for remembrance. Pray, love, remember—and then we realized there was actually writing on the page.”

  “What did it say?” she asks.

  The name bursts into my head like a bright light that suddenly floods the darkness. Wilkie Wilkie Wilkie Wilkie.

  Adam and I say the name together. Why couldn’t we remember it before?

  “It said something about how her father told her to write to remember Wilkie,” Adam recalls.

  Yes. That’s what it said. The words clarify in my mind, like a picture coming into focus.

  “So we went to see Constance, to ask her about Wilkie.” I had lost track of why we went. It wasn’t really for the project. It was for Wilkie. But she didn’t tell us about Wilkie.

  “She has Alzheimer’s,” Adam says. “She doesn’t remember most of her own life, so she didn’t remember him.”

  “That’s so sad!” Shelby hugs her knees.

  “But then”—I try to put the next piece in place—“the writing was gone. Like it was erased from the book.”

  “Or it was never there in the first place,” Adam adds.

  “Is it there now?” Shelby asks.

  We all stare at the diary.

  I set the book in the dry leaves in front of me and turn the heavy, stiff pages until I come to my own handwriting. The rosemary line at the top of a page filled with Constance’s frantic cursive.

  Shelby takes the book and stares at the writing, crinkling her nose as she tries to make sense of the looping letters. She turns a few pages. “You say all this disappeared?” I hear the doubt in her voice.

  “I know it doesn’t make any sense.” Adam argues against her skepticism and his own.

  “I’m not really sure what happened,” I confess.

  Shelby reads aloud, slowly, haltingly.

  Father thinks Shakespeare actually did magic or, rather, that he borrowed magic. Magic! Who believes in such nonsense?

  Shelby leans away from the book. “So she wrote about magic, and you guys are playing it’s real?”

  It’s like she slapped me. The bright red spots in Adam’s cheeks mean he feels the same way.

  “We’re not playing,” I say.

  “The words really do come and go,” Adam insists. He’s pulled the graph paper out of his pocket and clutches it as if anything on graph paper has to be true.

  “Okay. Okay.” She leans in again, the book still in front of her. “I believe there’s something weird going on, or at least you both think there is.”

  That’ll just have to do until she sees it for herself. I didn’t believe it either. Why should she?

  She reads aloud:

  I’ve taken the codex! If father doesn’t have the book, this horrible false thing, then he will come back to Wilkie and me. And it is false! There’s nothing here except a list of herbs and a poem, and Shakespeare hardly invented herbs, or poetry, for that matter. It’s like saying there is a bear in a Shakespeare play, and here is a bear, and therefore it must be Shakespeare’s bear. Ridiculous!

  “The bear!” Adam echoes. “She said that same thing to us at River House.”

  “So where’s the poem?” Shelby asks.

  I lean over the book. Like Constance’s, my hands know the way. I feel the thickness of the folded page before I see it. I unfold the parchment and sit back so Shelby can see the poem.

  Her nose crinkles again. “You can read this? Is it even English?”

  “It took a long time to figure out,” I explain. “Like, hours.”

  “I’m sure.” She looks up, from me to Adam. “Well? What does it say?”

  We look at each other and recite. As we end with “To void and nothing turn life,” something flutters in my peripheral vision. The hawk? A sudden ache tugs at my stomach.

  “Guys . . .” Panic swoops down and makes me dizzy. “Something’s wrong . . .”

  Adam stares, but not at me. His eyes widen, and he lunges toward Shelby, or where Shelby was. Now there’s nothing there. No one.

  Adam and I and the broken Barbie with her frozen smile sit in a circle, and there’s a horrible gap. Shelby is gone.

  Eight

  ADAM SORT OF collapses in mid-lunge and leans awkwardly on his forearms. “What happened?”

  The stomach pain is gone as quickly as it came, and my mind staggers through a strange fog. “I don’t . . .” I rub my hand over my mouth. The sharp smell of rosemary rises off my fingers. “Shelby!” I cry.

  “Shelby?” Adam frowns. Then horror splashes across his face. He leaps up. Steps on the Barbie, who stares out, still smiling, from between his shoe and the dried leaves on the ground.

  “Shelby!” he calls, his hand above his eyes as he surveys the island. “Where’d she
go?”

  “She was just here.” It’s impossible that she could be anywhere but right here with us. I stand with him and look out over the rosemary patch. The crumbled ruins. A glimpse of the riverbank, almost visible through the thick perimeter of bushes. I turn back, expecting to see Shelby crouched behind Adam in the rosemary, a finger raised to her lips, mischief lighting her eyes, but she’s not there.

  Adam’s arms hang awkwardly as if he was reaching for something but has forgotten what. His cheeks are flushed. “What happened?”

  My hand hovers near my mouth. The smell of the rosemary mingles with an acrid something that must be fear.

  “Shelby,” I whisper. “She disappeared.”

  My senses can’t reach past the weird feeling of the world knocked off its axis. My eyes can’t focus. My ears fill with the roar of silence. My fingertips are numb.

  I clench my fists at my sides. Breathe in the pungent smell of decaying leaves and sleeping soil.

  The fog drifts away, and the weird fear goes with it.

  Adam looks more confused than panicked now.

  “You okay?” I ask.

  He rubs a hand vigorously over his forehead. “I feel really weird. What were we . . . ?”

  The metallic taste of blood blooms from the inside of my cheek. I’ve bitten it again. I press my hand to my face. Shelby’s long hair floats to the surface of my memory. “Shelby,” I say. “Or is it Michelle?”

  Adam is blank. “Sorry. Who?”

  “Not funny, Adam.” I hug myself against a sudden biting cold.

  His eyebrows arch. He seems to think I’m making a joke that he doesn’t get, and he’s half waiting for me to explain and half pretending it’s funny.

  “Shelby,” I say again. I have to force out the word, and the shape of it is clumsy in my mouth. For a second, I don’t know why I said it, but then I do. “Shelby!” I shout.

  “Who the heck is Shelby?” Adam follows my panicked gaze around the island. “No one else is here, Rosie.”

  “But—” I can’t quite get my breath. We came here with Shelby. Michelle Steiner. Sixteen years old. Hands at ten and two on the steering wheel. Leaning towers of books. The V tree. Rowing the boat. My friend. “Your sister?” I whisper, and I can’t keep the question out of my voice.

  Adam barks out a single laugh, and it makes me wince. “I don’t have a sister.”

  I shiver in that whole-body, someone-walked-over-my-grave way.

  He notices. “You’re cold. Let’s go home.”

  I pull the sweatshirt tightly against the damp chill. Adam was right. I needed an extra layer.

  Did Adam bring the sweatshirt?

  I search his face. The soft blue-gray of his eyes is calm, untroubled, like still water.

  “Come on, Rosie.” Adam starts back to the boat. He walks along the low, ruined wall like it’s a balance beam. Picks up a hard green walnut. Shouts, “Incoming!” and chucks the nut in my direction.

  I watch it land next to me. I try to see through the fog in my head.

  Adam unties the boat, like he always does. I get in and grip the oars. He shoves off and jumps in at once. He takes the other set of oars and sings loudly in made-up Italian.

  As we push through the current, a cold rain starts. A drop plops on my cheek.

  I let go of the oar to wipe the rain away. My hand still smells like rosemary. From the patch. The Rosie patch. Shelby!

  “Adam!” I twist around to look at him. “Where’s Shelby? How’d we forget? What—”

  The current snatches my oar.

  “No!”

  I hurl myself to the edge of the boat and grasp the wooden handle just before it escapes my reach. My hands plunge into the water. The day may be unseasonably warm, but the water is frigid. I wedge the oar under my arm and vigorously rub my hands on my sweatshirt. Rub them dry and warm.

  Adam sings again. I paddle. Wipe another raindrop from my nose with the back of my hand. This time I keep my grip on the oar. My hand smells like rotting leaves and mud.

  “The river stinks!” I call over my shoulder.

  “La riverio is estinkio!” Adam sings.

  I laugh. “Adamini is estinkini!”

  “Rosa Maria is a-stinky like—”

  “Shut up!” I giggle.

  It’s raining hard by the time we get to the bank, and Adam ties the boat quickly while I hop from one foot to the other.

  We run through the rain and are soaked to the skin when we get to Adam’s house. We burst in the front door, laughing.

  “Gracious!” Mrs. Steiner exclaims, stepping back from us and the puddle seeping into her carpet. “Adam!” she scolds. “Get out of those wet clothes! And find something of yours Rosemary can change into.”

  A thought tries to catch in my brain. Something about clothes I could change into. Not Adam’s, but . . . certainly not Mrs. Steiner’s.

  I trot after him up to his room and take the sweats he tosses me to the bathroom. They’re a little too big, but soft and warm, and I’m content as I hang my wet things on the edge of the tub and towel dry my hair. I grin at Adam’s toothbrush, sitting in the left hand of a ceramic gnome hunched next to the sink. The other hand is empty.

  I turn off the bathroom light. Stop in the doorway. Adam stands across the hall in front of the guest room. He’s silhouetted in the gray light coming from the window. He stands very still. Staring into the empty room.

  The off-white bedspread, the off-white walls, the framed print that someone gave the Steiners but no one really likes, the low chest at the foot of the bed where they keep the extra blankets we always used to make forts. Adam and . . . I. We made the forts. The two of us.

  The blandness of the room in front of me is sad, like a blank page. No, like an erased page. A memory tries to surface, but something hard and cruel holds it down.

  The emptiness of the room is terrible and wrong.

  I swallow the knot that rises in my throat.

  Adam’s eyes catch at mine. “What did we do?”

  I don’t know. I don’t know what we did. We did something. Didn’t we? Did we?

  “I don’t know,” I moan. “But something’s wrong.”

  “Isn’t it?” He stares at me, desperate. His arm rises weakly toward the guest room. “It’s too . . . it shouldn’t be . . .”

  “It shouldn’t be empty,” I offer.

  He stares at me. “But what . . . not what, who. Who should be in there?”

  “The diary . . .” I grope through confusion. “Maybe the diary did it.”

  He looks defeated.

  I take his arm and lead him to his room. Pick up my bag from the floor. Pull out the diary. A streak of damp dashes across the burgundy leather. I wipe it with my palm, and the leather darkens as the water soaks in. I wonder if the cover could actually be skin. I guess that’s what leather is, after all. The thought troubles me, and the book looks menacing.

  I sit on the floor with my knees pulled up to my chest, a sort of shield against whatever lurks in the book. I reach awkwardly past myself and open the cover. Constance Brooke, Rosemary Bennett, Adam Steiner. Seeing our names there, with Constance’s, makes me feel uneasy, like the ground beneath me is unstable. And also something else . . . My name there, like I own this book, like I own what it does, fills me with a horrible, sickening guilt. All I want is to hide the book away. Get it out of sight. Shut the guilt up and lock it away and never, ever let it go free.

  But I have to turn the page. I have to understand what’s happening.

  The parchment is thick between my fingers. Sage, hyssop, chamomile, lemon balm . . .

  Adam still stands, his hands dangling uselessly at his sides.

  “Sit,” I plead.

  He looks around helplessly.

  “Adam!”

  He struggles to focus on me.

  Did we eat something weird? I had that stomach pain. Now I’m achy. Maybe we’re sick.

  The real-world-ness of that possibility settles me. Gives me something
solid to get my head around. “Adam, sit with me.” My voice is calm and sure.

  He crumples beside me, an awkward sprawl of limbs.

  “Here’s the list,” I say, a little too loudly.

  He reaches out and aimlessly turns the page. He fingers the bookmark he made for me and reads my writing, the line from Hamlet.

  His whole body tenses. “Remember,” he repeats.

  Giggling in a blanket fort. An arm steadying me from behind. A sheet of blond hair.

  “The Rosie patch,” I murmur.

  “Shelby.” Adam mouths the name. And then says it out loud, “Shelby.”

  “Shelby,” I repeat.

  “Where did she go?” His voice is high, panicky.

  The girl with the blond hair goes blurry around the edges like she’s dissolving. All I can picture is that horrible Barbie. Her eyes too blue. Her false smile.

  “Rosemary!” Adam shakes me. “Where did she go?”

  When he says my name, Shelby snaps into focus. I grasp at the idea of her like it’s a person dangling off a cliff. Slipping. Hang on!

  “We all went to the island together.” He stands and paces. “You and she rowed. I did the ropes. We went to the rosemary patch.”

  He stops. Ferociously rubs at his forehead with the palm of his hand.

  “We told her about the disappearing writing in the book,” I say. The words taste like a lie, but they’re not. I know they’re not.

  “Yes!” Adam seizes the memory of the conversation. “And we showed her some stuff Constance wrote and then . . .”

  “And then she wasn’t there anymore,” I finish.

  “Was she ever there?” he asks. A tear falls down his cheek and clings to his jaw. I want to brush it away, but I’m too busy hanging on to the blond girl. The one who . . . the one with . . . like a sigh, she goes.

  “What was her name?” Adam asks.

  “Barbie?” I toss over my shoulder as I close the diary and put it back in my bag.

  “Duh,” Adam grumbles. “That’s not what I meant . . .”

  Something needs to be said, but neither of us knows what it is.

  I go home wearing his sweats, with my damp clothes in a tight bundle that I carry in the crook of my arm. I have that nagging feeling you get when you go on a trip and forget to pack something. I have my clothes. The canvas bag with the diary thumps against my leg as I walk. Nope, nothing is missing.