The Rosemary Spell (3 page)

We almost miss the handwritten phrase just above the middle of the page. The ink's faded to a tea brown, only a shade darker than the parchment.

“
Diary of
. . . who? What does it say?” I pull back, the way Mom does when she's trying to read something small, but it doesn't help.

Adam runs a finger below the writing, marking each letter. “
A Poet,
” he reads. “
Diary of a Poet.
”

“It's Constance's diary!”

“This is just totally unbelievable.” He thrusts his hands through his hair, making it stand up in little tufts.

“I have to try Shelby again,” I say. She still doesn't pick up.

We study the old diary in awed silence. I imagine going on a talk show to describe how we made the greatest literary discovery of the twenty-first century while Mom stands in the wings, ferociously proud of me.

There's more writing on the next page. A list in two columns. The handwriting seems the same as the title but even more faded. Some items are just pale ghosts of words. Others are darker, and we take turns figuring out the loops and frills that form strange letters.

“That curl is just a decoration,” I murmur. “And that funny squiggle is an
s,
I think.” I point to a double letter in the middle of a word.

“Looks like an
f
to me,” Adam says.

“Yeah, but look . . . that must be
sage
and so this one would be
hyssop.
That's more likely than
hyffop
, I guess, but what's hyssop?”

“No idea.” Adam grabs a notebook and pencil from my desk. He makes columns, using his special power of being able to draw crazy straight lines without a ruler, and sorts the words. He copies
sage
into a column labeled “Qualities” and puts
hyssop
in the question-mark category.

The next word is
chamomile,
and Adam labels another column “Types of Tea.”

“Wait.” I put a hand on his arm. “Sage, hyssop, chamomile, this one's lemon balm, marjoram, right? Next is lavender. This is basil. Thyme. Mint, and—”

“Rosemary!” Adam cuts in with a smile. “They're herbs!” He pushes away the notebook. “But why? What for?”

“Maybe she was making notes for poems about herbs?” I suggest.

I turn the page.

Nothing. And more nothing.

Just blank sheets of parchment, yellowed and stiff.

Disappointment settles over me like an itchy blanket.

“Maybe she realized poems about herbs would be insanely boring,” Adam suggests.

“But Constance Brooke wrote lots of poems,” I protest, still turning pages, less carefully now. “I mean, even if you only count the ones we've had to read in school, that's, I don't know, twenty at least, and she won prizes and stuff. She's famous!”

Adam clasps his hands like an old-fashioned schoolboy and recites:

Through the window poke twigs and grass

A robin nests at my room's edge

A wooden frame pokes in the nest

A woman's room beyond my ledge.

I stare at him. “Why is that taking up space in your head?”

He shrugs. “It's hard to forget something once you memorize it. Like,
Four score and seven years ago
—”

I cut him off. “Maybe the diary was a present, like a blank book or a journal, you know? And she started to use it but then abandoned it.”

“Maybe,” he agrees. “Or maybe she found it. Maybe it belonged to someone else before it was hers.” He carefully flips between the list and the inside cover. “The handwritings are different, see? Like the
s
and
f
thing. Constance has a regular
s,
not like these ones in
hyssop.
”

“So there could be two different poets.” I like this idea. Layers of poets.

“You know what I think?” Adam's eyes are huge. “I think this book's been waiting for you. Constance left it in the cupboard for a future poet.”

Sometimes I recognize younger Adams in his face. The one that looks at me now, all eager and earnest, is about five and sincerely believes that we can build a secret tunnel between our houses. Adam's faith that people might leave ancient books hidden in cupboards for future generations to find is infectious. I believe he could be right.

My phone buzzes loudly against the hardwood floor. Shelby!

“Hey, Rosie. You called?”

“Hi, Sh . . . Michelle.” I look at Adam.

He mouths, “Cupboard.”

“We got the cupboard open. You know the one in my dad's . . . in my room?”

“Really? That's great. How—Wait, hold on.” A loud jumble of voices and laughter makes me pull the phone away from my ear. “Rosie? Was there anything inside? Oh, hang on again. Rosie? I'm so sorry, but I have to go. John! Yeah, I'm coming. Rosie, we'll talk later, okay? See ya.”

She's gone. “Bye,” I whisper to the silence.

“She'll be excited when she sees what we found,” Adam says quickly. “She just doesn't get it yet.”

I decide to look forward to showing Shelby the book instead of thinking about the way her call left me dangling. Adam's right. She'll be just as excited as we are once she sees it.

“You know who else would love this?” I start to shape a plan.

“Your mom?”

“Mr. Cates! We should use this for our poetry journal. For class.”

Adam frowns. “But we can't write in it. It's probably valuable.”

I shove away reason. “It would be in a library if it was valuable. Or a museum. Besides, it's mostly blank.”

“Maybe we should ask your mom—”

“No!” I didn't mean to shout. I take a breath. “No.”

Adam looks at me the same way he did three years ago when I wanted to go swimming in the river. He was right: That would have been stupid. But this is just a book. An old book, sure. But it's just paper or parchment sewed together and left in a cupboard.

I blaze ahead. “There are already two layers of people who wrote in it. That's like an invitation to us to be a third. What should we write? All those blank pages . . . We should use a pen . . .” I riffle through a box of desk stuff and pull out the bookmark Adam made for my birthday last month. Sprigs of rosemary from the patch on the island braided around a piece of gold ribbon and pressed flat.

When he gave it to me last month, I asked, “How'd you get the rosemary?” because we hadn't been to the island since August. The thought that maybe he and Shelby went without me made my heart squirm.

“I got it when we went in the summer,” he explained. “It's taken two months just to get it so flat!” They didn't go without me. He'd been thinking about my birthday for months.

I set the rosemary in the diary, and its piney scent wafts up.

“Here's a pen.” I pull one from the box. “Let's put our names.”

I know we shouldn't. The diary belonged to Constance Brooke and maybe someone else before her. Mom would have a fit. Worse, she would be disappointed in me. But I write my name. Not on the parchment but on the inside cover, which is a soft, yellowed paper glued to the leather binding. It takes the ink a second to settle into the page.

Adam leans close to me and writes his first name below mine. His familiar handwriting—the way his capital
A
is super pointy at the top—reassures me.

He looks up at me. “How old do you think it is, really?” What he means is, “Are we going to get in trouble for this?”

I answer truthfully. “Old enough that my mom would completely have a seizure if she knew we were writing in it.” I'm half smiling and half terrified. And also a little proud. We've marked this valuable, important, ancient book as our own. “But even though it's old, it's empty. It's just paper. Or parchment.”

Adam sets his concern aside and writes his last name slowly and neatly, so now there is another list in the book:
Constance Brooke. Rosemary Bennett. Adam Steiner.

Shelby's name should be there, too. She makes her
S
's so that they kind of underline the rest of her name. Now that she's Michelle, I wonder if she does that somehow with the
M.

Adam gazes at the book. He pushes his hair off his forehead again. He looks hopeful, expectant.

The book lies on the floor. The names rest on the page. Nothing happens.

“It kind of seems like an ancient, hidden book might be—I don't know,” he stammers. “It ought to be, like, magic.”

“You mean you thought the book would write back?” I joke, but I'm not really joking. Somewhere deep inside my imagination, I was hoping the book might be magic too.

Suddenly I'm heavy with the business of being real in a world that offers stories about wizards and spells and fantastical lands but confines all that wonder to books. I thought the diary was wonderful, but it's not. It's just old and dusty.

Deflated, we stash the book in the secret compartment under the floorboard and busy ourselves organizing my desk. The joy of sorting rescues Adam's mood, but disappointment pecks at me.

It's gotten dark, and it's almost time for dinner.

Before he goes, Adam checks his work. Like always. He pulls out each tidy desk drawer to admire his system. He found a bunch of those little boxes for jewelry in Mom's wrapping paper stash, and they're are all lined up in my drawer, one with paper clips, one with rubber bands, even a long necklace one for pencils. “You have to try to keep it like this.”

“I'll try.” We both know I won't succeed. I'm not exactly a slob, but organization is not high on my list of priorities. That's why I need Adam.

He echoes my thought. “I'll help you.”

The doorbell rings, and Mom's clogs clomp across the floor downstairs. Adam and I stand still, listening. Could it be? Voices rise up the stairs.

“It's Shelby!” I announce, and we turn to greet her.

“Hey, I came to get you,” she says to Adam. Her hair is tumbled up on top of her head again. She's wearing yoga pants, which used to mean she'd been at dance class, but she stopped taking dance.

Adam mumbles, “I can walk home by my—”

But I cut in. “You won't believe what we found in the cupboard!”

“Oh, right!” She remembers the call. “How'd you get it open?”

“There was this hidden latch,” I begin, and then Adam's explanation and mine tumble over each other. We tell her about the floorboard and the J-shaped handle.

“And the door just swung open!” Adam announces.

“And?” Her hands are on her hips. “What was inside?”

Adam and I look at each other and grin.

“A book.” We answer together, like a small choir. The word resonates in the room.

Shelby looks appropriately awestruck. “Wow! What book?”

“You won't even believe—” I start.

“It's really old,” Adam says.

“Like, with parchment!” I add.

“And two handwritings. One is definitely ancient.”

Together we remove the floorboard and set it aside. Adam steps back, and I use two hands to lift the book from the hiding space. I hold it out to Shelby.

She stares at the cracked burgundy cover, brighter since Adam and I wiped away most of the dust. She pushes a stray lock of hair behind her ear. “It looks just like—”

“
Seven-Day Magic,
” Adam says.

“Riddle's diary from
Harry Potter,
” I say.

“Something from a book.” Shelby smiles.

The three of us sit on the floor. We show Shelby where
Diary of a Poet
is written, and she leans forward to squint at the list of herbs while Adam and I translate the faded letters for her.

“But how do you know it belonged to Constance Brooke?” she asks.

I show her the inside cover.

“You wrote in it?” She is aghast.

“It's mostly all blank, so we figured . . .” Adam knows this is a lame excuse.

I go defensive. “We found it. In my room. If it was valuable, it would be locked up somewhere, so . . .”

“It was locked up here,” Shelby protests, enunciating each syllable in that way adults do when you willfully misunderstand them.

I take the book from her. “Yes. Here. In
my
room.”

“Your new room.”

“Whatever.” I shrug.

“Look.” Adam tries to make peace. “It probably is old and maybe even valuable, but all that's in it is the list, so we figured Constance abandoned it.”

“And someone else abandoned it even before her,” I add. “So Constance double-abandoned it.”

“Right,” Adam agrees, relief in his voice. Even Mom might agree that a book double abandoned is fair game.

“You have to be on our side.” My voice comes out in a whine. I add in a more solid tone, “It's going to be our poetry journal.”

Shelby uncrosses her arms and runs her hands down her sides as if smoothing away better judgment. “Mr. Cates will love it,” she concedes. “I forgot how he makes partners share a journal. ‘So your ideas can stand on each other's shoulders,'” she remembers. “Come on, Adam. Mom actually cooked dinner. We need to go.” As we file down the stairs, Shelby asks, “Does he still talk about the muse all the time?”

“I think Mr. Cates gets kickbacks from muses,” Adam says.

Shelby laughs. “That was such an awesome class.” She reaches the front door but stops. The laugh is gone. Her eyes dart from Adam to me. “Does it . . .” She stops, crosses her arms again. “Does it do anything? The book? Does the book do anything?”

Adam and I shake our heads.

“Oh, well. I mean I didn't really think . . . You put the idea in my head with
Seven-Day Magic
and whatnot.” She laughs again, hollowly this time. She pulls her hair out of its clasp, and it sheets down her back. She and Adam disappear down the street.