“So how can you be a love witch if you’ve never experiencedel amor?” She purrs out the Spanish word so that it sounds dirty.
Everyone watches me squirm. The bummer about blackmail is that it always gets worse. The blackmailer keeps testing limits, never stopping until the thing valued no longer seems worth it. But she hasn’t cornered me yet.
Court and Whit close the distance, and Vicky’s spidery lashes flick toward them. Whit holds his hands up for the ball,but I don’t throw it to him.
Court frowns. “Vick, stop—”
I toss back my head, thankful my beret doesn’t go flying off. “The same way I don’t have to be a sanitation engineer to recognize garbage.” This time, a few people laugh. Time to go. I hurry by Vicky and deposit the ball into Court’s hands, at the same time slipping him his keys. “The sun did not shine, it was too wet to play,” I murmur.
He lowers his eyelids and cocks an ear toward me. But that’s the only line fromThe Cat in the Hatthat I remember, and I hope it’s enough to lead him to Dr. Seuss’s hat, the windsock on the other side of the building. I beat a hasty retreat back toward the school. The scent of Vicky’s anger stays in my nose long after I’ve left the parking lot, foul as burning rubber.
THIRTEEN
“WE ARE EACH A RAINBOW.EVERY RANK ONE OF US.”
—Gladys, Aromateur, 1855
ON THE FARside of the stadium field, a break in the shrubs leads to the main street. The red-and-white windsock fronting the school points east. It’s been there so long, no one notices it anymore, much less uses it, even though the wind can tell a lot about the weather. It strikes me that windsocks are like most people’s noses, outdated sources of information, more seen than used.
Near the windsock, Court waits in his Jeep. I slide into the leather seat. There’s a sports magazine on the floor along with a box of number-two pencils. A soccer ball medallion swings from the mirror. How many girls would pay to be in my shoes? How many girlshavebeen in my shoes?
I sniff. The synthetic scents almost always overpower the natural ones and can stick around for months. I count seven different perfumes billowing around me, trapped and ripened inthe closed car. One of them is Vicky’s Poison Apple. Though the scent’s months old, my stomach tightens. I also detect potato chips, a whiff of marijuana, and sand mingling with Court’s own scent.
We swing onto northbound 101. Court merges, waving in his mirror to the guy who let us in.
The tan leather of the backseat has been worn shiny. I sniff out of habit, and the human smells from that part of the car bring a blush to my cheeks. I have to stop snooping with my nose. Just because it’s second nature doesn’t mean it’s right, like unlocking every door you encounter just because you own a skeleton key.
Court glances at me sitting stiffly in my seat, my cheeks baking. “Is everything okay?”
“Sure.”
“I’m sorry about that back there.” His face is somber, and so is his smell—yarrow with undertones of barn dust, like opening an old photo album.
“You don’t need to apologize for Vicky.” I weigh whether to tell him of the blackmail. No. He would confront her, and she’d know we ratted on her.
I could swear him to secrecy before I told him, but if he thought I was keeping things from him, the fragile threads of our temporary alliance could break. Besides, secrets have a way of untying on their own, though I cringe to think of my own secrets.
Court presses his fingers into the bones at the base of hisneck, glancing at me uncertainly. “I’m also sorry about yesterday. I was kind of a jerk.”
“That’s okay. I would be angry, too.”
“Well, I’m not mad anymore. I’m more—I don’t know how I feel.”
I sniff, though his mood scents are as loud to my nose as the trio of Harley-Davidson motorcycles rumbling by. “You smell sad—”
He blinks, but when he notices me watching him, he shrugs. “Go on.”
Awkwardly, I nose on. “I also smell guilt, which smells like cough syrup, mixed with loneliness—baby’s tears.”
“Baby’s tears?”
“It’s a kind of moss. There’s also rabbit litter. Er, that means insecurity.”
“I smell like rabbit litter.” His face has acquired a pinched look. Clearly I’ve gone too far. He glances at me biting my lip. “Please continue. I’m enjoying this.”
I clear my throat. “On the bright side, there’s a healthy dose of excitement”—I falter, hoping that didn’t come out wrong—“which smells like the strawberry tree, and, well—nervousness.”
He swallows, then produces a queasy grin. “And what does that smell like?”
