I lie in bed and listen to the rain. Hard, heavy, insistent. I can’t get comfortable. I toss from side to side and turn over and back again. Finally, I give up and reach to turn on the light. I pull the diary off my shelf, and something swirls to the floor. I lean over the edge of the bed and spot the bookmark. The rosemary branches braided around a gold ribbon. I pick it up.
The dry smoothness of the needles reminds me of Shelby.
Shelby! I shoot out of bed and hurry to the door. I have to tell Adam! My hand is on the knob, but it’s the middle of the night. It’s too late to go over there or even to call, but I can’t forget again. I snatch up the diary and grab a pen from my desk.
I hunch on the floor, the book open in front of me.
I turn to a blank page. A blank page like a promise. A promise of not forgetting.
I write fast. We need to remember Shelby. And then I write it again. And again. And again. Shelby. Shelby. Shelby. Shelby. Shelby. Shelby. Shelby. Shelby.
Tears fall onto the page, fast like the rain, and the ink blurs, and a sob rises, and I close my eyes and try to hang on to my friend, but she slips from my grasp. And when I open my eyes, I don’t know why I’m sitting on my floor in the middle of the night sobbing over a blank page.
Nine
I WAIT OUTSIDE SCHOOL under the overhang, watching the occasional raindrop plop into a puddle nearby, vaguely worrying that I’ve somehow missed Adam. I guess we could work on the project separately and put our parts together at the end. That might be easier. A bad mood stalks me.
At lunch, Miranda and Kendall chattered about some stupid drama between Hannah and Isabella. I pretended to listen, but I was distracted watching Adam, two tables over, goofing off with Micah and Josh. As usual, Adam had his chef salad ridiculously separated into the different compartments of his tray.
“Rosemary!” Miranda actually snapped her fingers in my face.
“Sorry, what?”
“Hannah told Isabella that Claire . . .”
I tried to listen, but instead, I watched Adam pluck a cherry tomato from the tray.
“What is with you?” Kendall glared at me.
“Sorry.”
“Why are you staring at Adam?”
Because he’s my friend. Because something dangles unfinished between us. “I don’t know,” I said. “I mean, I’m not.”
Since we went to the island, Adam and I have been weird with each other. I think about last year, when we walked in on his parents arguing about money. We silently agreed never to talk about it, and it became this prickly thing that we skirted ever after. Everything about Adam and me seems prickly now.
I planned to sit with him in Mr. Cates’s class so we could talk about our project, but the desks were in triangular clusters of three. I couldn’t figure out who would take the third spot if I sat with Adam. Kendall and Miranda waved me over, so I sat with them.
Mr. Cates asked Adam to define iambic pentameter, and Kendall snickered when he gave a perfect definition—ten syllables, in an alternating pattern of unstressed and stressed syllables—and I was proud of Adam for knowing. Kendall tried to catch my eye, but I didn’t want to be complicit in the snicker, so I dropped my pencil and rested my hand on the cool tile floor for a few seconds before I picked it up, but it didn’t help me pull myself together, because since when have I avoided siding with Adam?
Finally, he bursts out of the school building in mid-laugh, and his bark echoes in the concrete space. He’s with Micah, who looks pleased with himself.
Micah stops when he sees me. “Hi, Rosemary.”
Adam’s smile dims, though his laugh still echoes around us. “Hey, Rosie.”
He’s not happy to see me.
I swallow pride and confusion. “I thought we better work—”
Adam finishes my sentence. “On our project.”
“Yeah.” I look from him to Micah. “Are you free?”
“It’s okay,” Micah assures him.
The three of us walk together, huddled against the rain, which is falling steadily now. Micah turns right, and Adam and I continue in silence.
Being awkward with him is like being awkward with myself. I have to say something. “Did you write more poems? For the project?” I blurt out. “I liked the one about the cupboard.”
“You made me tear it up,” he reminds me.
“Yeah.” I don’t know what else to say.
“It wasn’t any good, though, so it’s okay,” he assures me, and the kindness in his tone makes the silence more comfortable.
We stride together through the sloppy, cold rain. Even though he’s taller than me, our steps are in sync. We part around a puddle, but step back together.
Adam says, “I was thinking maybe we should focus our project on Alzheimer’s.”
“Alzheimer’s?”
He pushes his soaked hair off his forehead, so it stands up in dark blond spikes. “Some of Constance’s poems are about memory, like the moon one, you know, souvenir is lost, or whatever. And now she has actually lost her memory, so I thought . . . yeah.”
“The diary . . .” I begin. I want to make a connection between the diary and forgetting, but I can’t get the pieces to link up in my head. I focus on Adam. Adam who has been my best friend longer than I can remember. I love the way he eats his salad!
“Alzheimer’s is a great idea,” I gush. “I mean, it’s a terrible idea, but for the project, it’s great. As a topic. You know what I mean.”
He knows. Whatever was between us has moved out of the way. I tell him about how Kendall and Miranda have switched their poet four times, and Adam complains about the last problem on our math test, and we remember how soaking we were when we came back from the island, and I say, “I need to give you back your clothes.”
And for a heartbeat, I’m embarrassed, but then we’re laughing, and everything’s fine.
“Maybe we should go see Constance again today,” Adam suggests. “And pay more attention to the Alzheimer’s part.”
“Sure,” I agree. “My mom’ll take us. She’ll love that we want her help.”
“Yeah, okay.” He smiles. “And after, we can write about it.”
So we have a plan for getting our project done. A good plan. Way better than Googling our poet, or whatever the other pairs are doing. But isn’t there something else we want from Constance? A thought tries to gain purchase but slips away. I don’t mind, because after that totally inexplicable weirdness, I have my best friend back.
It’s really pouring now, and Mom leans forward, struggling to see the road. Slush mixes in with the rain, gliding just out of the windshield wipers’ frantic reach.
“This is turning to snow,” Mom grumbles as she pulls in front of River House. “I’ll just return these library books and be back in half an hour, before the roads get slippery.”
We dash through the pelting slush into the flowered lobby. We don’t bother with the sunroom this time, but as we hurry past, the wheelchair man in the doorway reaches out a bony arm.
“Maud?” he cries.
“No, sorry,” I squeak as I skirt him.
Constance’s door is open, and she sits in front of the window, framed by the winter light. She has the black headband on again, but she’s wearing a different outfit. A dark green dress with buttons up the front.
“Hello.” She smiles, her paper cheeks crinkling. “Do I know you?”
“I’m Adam. This is Rosemary. We came last week.” Adam opens a spiral notebook filled with graph paper. “We’re working on a project. For school.”
“About poetry and memory,” I add. “We picked you as our poet.”
Her look is polite and bland. She doesn’t seem to understand.
“You wrote some poems about memory,” Adam reminds her. “Like, uh, the one about the daughter looking out over the river, and also one about a ruined house and how it still holds all the memories from before it was ruined.”
“Good job remembering the titles,” I say under my breath.
He glares at me. “Do you remember them?”
I fish the thin volume of Constance’s early poems out of my bag. Constance watches me with mild interest.
I hold the book out to her, and she squints at the photograph on the cover. Her brow collapses into deep furrows. “Do I know that woman?”
She doesn’t recognize herself.
“That’s you,” Adam answers, his voice gentle.
She smiles uncertainly. She takes in a breath, the start of a laugh that doesn’t follow, then catches herself with her mouth open and quickly presses her lips together in a pale line.
I find “Moon Mangled Memory” in the book and read the first verse out loud. “Do you remember this one?” I ask.
Her smile is detached. “No, I’m afraid I don’t know that poem. I won the recitation prize in the third grade for Wordsworth’s ‘I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud.’ Do you know it? Shall I say it for you?”
She clasps her hands together like a schoolgirl and begins:
I wandered lonely as a cloud
that floats on high o’er . . .
I recognize the words. “That’s one of Mr. Cates’s poems of the day.”
Constance frowns and wrings her hands. “I wandered lonely . . . I can’t . . .” She looks up as if she might find the words written in the air.
“She doesn’t remember that she wrote the moon poem,” I murmur.
“Constance.” Adam pulls her attention to him. “You were a poet, like Wordsworth. Do you remember?”
She nods solemnly. “Father says I am quite the poet.”
“You wrote this book.” I hold it up again. “We mark time by the moon. You wrote that. Do you remember?”
Constance hugs herself and says softly, “The new moon.”
“That’s right!” I congratulate her. “That’s in the next verse: The new moon is nothing.”
“Nothing and everything.” Constance fingers a button at her waist.
“Does it say that?” Adam asks, reading over my shoulder.
“No . . . I’ll try a different poem.” I flip ahead to one called “Dead Echo” and read:
Listen to the stones that have no voice
Only silence echoes back my choice
“Constance? You wrote that. Do you remember?”
She smiles. “Hello. Do I know you?”
“He’s Adam. I’m Rosemary. We came last week, and you told us about the false codex.”
“Did I?” She frowns. “I hate that horrible book. A nasty thing. Full of nothing.” She clutches the button now, and the fabric of her dress puckers at her waist.
“Void and nothing,” I quote.
Her head whips back like I slapped her. The button snaps off her dress. “What did you say?”
“It—it’s from, uh, a poem. It was in the diary. I mean, the codex,” I stammer.
“It conjures,” she whispers.
“Yeah, the poem has conjure in it.” I sit forward.
“It conjures nothing.” Her hands are idle on her lap now. Her dress gapes where she pulled the button off.
“Nothing,” Adam echoes. His gaze darts around the room.
“What’s wrong with you?” I hiss.
“That poem . . .” he begins. “The void poem . . .”
“You too?” Constance whispers.
Adam twists the notebook. The metal spiral detaches from the paper and pokes out.
I blaze ahead. “We wanted to talk to you about memory.”
“Would you care for some candy?” Constance gestures toward the dish.
“No, thank you,” I reply.
She frowns at the button in her hand.
“We should go,” I whisper. “This is just sad.”
Constance smiles. “Hello. Do I know you?”
“This is Adam. I’m Rosemary.”
She nods. “Yes. That’s right. Father is magical with rosemary. Truly. Have you seen the patch on the island? He says he could grow rosemary at the North Pole if given the chance, and I think he could. I do!”
She thinks he’s still alive. She doesn’t remember the poems she wrote because she doesn’t remember that she grew up and lived a whole lifetime.
The patter of the freezing rain suddenly quiets, and outside, heavy snow drops past the window. “It’s snowing,” I point out.
“So it is!” Her face lights up. “Do have a candy,” she urges, as if snow demands a celebration.
I take a cellophane-wrapped peppermint.
In the dish, a slip of paper curls, released when I removed the battered old candy. I unfurl it, and there the phrase is again: Rosemary, that’s for remembrance.
I call her away from the window. “Constance, why do you have this?”
I thrust the slip of paper into her hand. It shakes in her frail claw. She whispers the words aloud. “Pray, love, remember.” She looks up, but not at me. “Wilkie.” She’s pleading with him to stay, with her memory to hold on to him. A tear meanders along the wrinkles etched in her cheek.
“Shelby,” Adam whispers. “Michelle?”
Shelby emerges from a fog in my head. She draws a map of a made-up island country called Marat. She shows me how there are two rivers and when they flood, they join together. I point out how the two branches look like the V tree, and Shelby laughs. “You’re right, Rosie!” The fog rises. I clutch at Shelby. At her map. Her laugh, faint and fading.
The silence in the room presses against me.
Constance releases the scrap of paper. It drifts to the ground, keeping pace with the snow falling outside. She twists her black headband, and her eyes move slowly from her own hands to Adam’s. She gazes at the notebook screwed up in his hands.
She raises her eyes to his face. “Hello. I’m Constance. Do I know you?”
“No,” I snap. “You don’t.”
“Rosemary!” she cries suddenly.
I’m shocked and flattered that she finally remembers my name.
“You need the other one,” she whimpers, and then she shouts, “Rosemary is not enough!”
And from down the hall, the wheelchair man answers, “But you’re not Maud!”
She doesn’t mean me. Of course she doesn’t. These people are all lost in the nonsense of their failing brains. I never, ever want to lose my mind, but something nags at me, something I’ve forgotten. Maybe I’m already losing my mind.
I pull on Adam’s sleeve. “My mom’ll be waiting.”
He nods, defeated.
“Goodbye. Thanks,” I say. “We’ll bring you the poems that we write.”
She smiles like I said something friendly sounding in a foreign language. “Yes. Yes. Poems are a good way to remember.”
I go back and kneel in front of her. “To remember what?”
“To remember who?” Adam echoes behind me.
Her mouth opens. No sound comes out. Her eyes catch at something and then go blank. “Why ever are you down there on the floor? Have you lost something?”
I take her hand. It feels like a tissue, like the first one in a new box still pulled tight in the package. “Look, Constance. It’s snowing.”
“Why, so it is!” She gazes out the window.
I place her hand gently on her lap and look away from the embarrassing gap in her dress. Adam and I slip into the hallway and walk in silence through the too-bright corridor.
The automatic glass doors seal behind us.
“It’s worse than dying.” Adam forces his voice to be steady. “Dying is the end of life, but Alzheimer’s undoes life, like the life never even happened.” His voice is muffled by the blankness of the snow.
“Her poems are a record of her life,” I point out.
“But she doesn’t know that.”
I try to hold on to what Constance said. “What do you think she meant about rosemary isn’t enough and we need the other one?”
He shakes his head, grief tugging at his face. A snowflake drifts onto his eyelashes and clings there for less than a second before diss
olving to nothing.
Ten
ADAM AND I sit on my bed, trying to organize what we know.
“The poem is the only thing that stays in the codex,” I say.
“And the list,” Adam adds. “And the stuff we wrote.”
“But the poem is the problem. The void . . . It’s dangerous.”
“Read it,” Adam suggests.
I unfold the page and speak the strange verse:
Ah, treble words of absence spoken low;
For ears of fam’ly, friend, or willful foe.
Speak thrice to conjure nothing on the spot.
Who harkens here will present be forgot.
I don’t say the last two lines out loud. The snow falls outside, and it softens the night, like the universe sighing with relief.
“If it’s a spell,” Adam begins, “then it seems like those first four lines are sort of an introduction. Because it says about speaking three times for the ears of family, friend, or foe, and then the last two lines are what you speak.”
“Void and nothing,” I say. The phrase begins strong and glaring with the harsh oi sound in void and then trails away into the softer sounds of nothing. I remember Mr. Cates talking about sound in poems, the words performing what they describe.
Then Adam says the thing that’s been resolving into clarity ever since we followed Constance’s skeletal hands to the folded page. “The poem makes the person listening disappear. Constance said what it does, but we didn’t understand. She said it conjures nothing.”
“It sends people into the void. It makes them disappear even from memory,” I add, and a raw feeling of panic rushes into the space left by someone I’ve forgotten.
“Do you think that’s why Constance has Alzheimer’s?” Adam asks.
“Lots of people have Alzheimer’s,” I answer. “The poem is supernatural, and Alzheimer’s is, you know, biological. Constance is the victim of both.”
The Rosemary Spell Page 9
