The Rosemary Spell (12 page)

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.

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.

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.”