The Scent Keeper(26)

As I was standing there, trying to refold the slippery thing, the door opened. A woman stepped inside, freezing in place as she saw me.

“What are you doing with that?” she asked.

I dropped the nightgown and it floated to the floor like seaweed moving in the ocean.

“I was just changing the bed,” I stammered. My skin was on fire.

“Give me that,” she said, her face every bit as red as mine. As she came closer, I smelled the buttery-white scent of coconut, a hint of sweat. I picked up the silky thing and handed it to her, shaking. Even as I did so, my nose automatically inhaled again and I noticed something. There was no human scent on the fabric, no fragrance of dreams and warmth. They’d been here a week. It didn’t make sense.

“I’m sorry,” I said, “I’m sure it’s still clean. I just swept the floor.”

She looked at me. “I’m going to wear it, you know,” she said. “It just hasn’t been the right…” She stopped. “Oh, for God’s sake, I’m not discussing this with you.”

She went into the bathroom, locked the door. Turned on the water in the sink and let it run. I stood there for a moment, unsure of what to do. I didn’t know what had happened, really, but the one thing I did understand was the scent of loneliness that waited beneath the coconut and sweat on her skin.

I finished making the bed, as neatly as I could. Later, when I knew she had gone, I slipped back into the cottage and left a wild rose on her pillow, pink against the white fabric.



* * *



The next morning I saw the woman and her husband, strolling along the boardwalk. Her hand was tucked in his arm, his head bent down toward hers. The rose was tucked in the brim of her straw hat.

A stupid smile overtook my face. Perhaps I could understand people after all. Perhaps school wouldn’t be so bad.

I was wrong.





SCHOOL


The old truck clattered up the dirt road, and I watched as everything I knew slipped away with alarming rapidity. My fingers gripped the door handle and I could feel every jolt in my feet, my spine, my brain. The trees, tightly packed on both sides of the road, surged around us like breaking waves. We rounded a curve, and I gasped as I felt my body press against the door.

Colette glanced over at me. “I’m sorry,” she said. “I was going to take you into town—get you used to everything before school started. But then the guests came, and…”

“It’s so fast,” I said, unsure whether I meant the truck or everything else.

Colette tapped at a circle on the panel in front of her. “Look,” she said. “Not too bad.”

The circle had a single pointer, hovering at fifteen. Fifteen was how many minutes there were in a quarter hour. More hours than half a day. Older than I was. What it had to do with a truck, I had no idea.

“It’ll be smoother once we hit the main road,” Colette added as the truck dipped into a rut with a gut-wrenching lurch.

When we finally reached the top of the hill, the woods disappeared. I looked down on an open bowl of land covered with stacks of what looked like sticks. When we got closer, I realized they were trees. Hundreds upon hundreds of them, stripped of their branches, piled up. I could smell the scent of sap and sawdust filling the air where once there had been branches, trunks, bark, green.

“What is that?” I asked Colette.

“The mill,” she said. “It used to be a lot bigger.”

I couldn’t imagine bigger. My father and I had cut wood, certainly, but a tree at a time, and only when there were none that had not already fallen. This place looked like our lives after the bear was done with them.

Colette and I descended into the bowl, skirting its edge to the far side, where the dirt gave way to something smooth and black, and the wheels sighed in relief. Just like that, the sides of the road were lined in trees again, as if what we had just passed had never existed.

“Not too long now,” Colette said.



* * *



We reached another break in the trees and there was the town of Port Hubbard, a set of dirty white buildings crowded together like barnacles on a rock. Colette ticked off names as we passed—grocery store, coffee shop, hardware store—as if they meant something to me. I let my eyes unfocus and everything became a blur. I wondered how long it would take to break off each barnacle of a store, let the trees come back.

“Here we are,” Colette said a few moments later, forcing me back to the real world. I saw a patch of grass and a rectangular building with evenly spaced square windows. It was the most boring thing I had ever seen.

“All right,” Colette said, and I could hear the extra brightness in her voice. “We’ve got an early appointment so we can get you settled in before the other students arrive. Shall we go meet the principal?”

No, I thought—but even I knew when a question wasn’t a question.

“Okay,” I said.



* * *



The principal’s office was in the center of the building, its door almost hidden behind a tall counter, as if it didn’t really want to be found.

“I’m sorry, but there’s no money for special attention,” the principal was saying to Colette. “I’ve got K through twelve here, all in one building, and more budget cuts than students. You say she just turned thirteen…”