The Scent Keeper(27)

On the first day of spring, I thought. Colette had brought in a cake one evening after dinner. There had been candles. She’d showed me the date on the calendar. I hadn’t had the heart to tell her that Dodge and I had followed our noses to the edge of the woods and found violets two days before. I’d put my face in them and cried.

“… that would put her in eighth grade,” the principal was saying. “We’ll start her there and see how it goes.”

I sat in a chair, barely listening. I had learned that sometimes it was better to let go of words and listen to smells. The principal’s were sturdy, unexceptional—scrambled eggs and soap that didn’t have flowers in it.

“She’s extraordinary…” Colette began.

“I’m sure she is,” the principal replied.

I breathed in the scents of faded couch cushions, old tea and older grief, rough and dry as sandpaper. The principal tapped her pencil, looking up at the clock.

“Okay then,” she said. “We’ll take it from here.”

Colette hesitated, looking at me. I had known she was going to leave, but the loss struck me suddenly. If I watched her go, I would break, so I shut my eyes hard.

“Emmeline?” Colette said. I kept them closed. “Maybe it’s too soon…?”

“She’s thirteen years old. She’ll be fine.” The principal’s voice was firm. There was a long silence.

Finally, I heard Colette stand. “I’ll be back at the end of the day, Emmeline. You can tell me all about your adventures.” I felt her hand, soft on the top of my head. Smelled the scents of coffee and fresh bread; felt them leave with her.

“Caroline,” the principal called out, and I heard bustling footsteps behind me. “Can you take this young lady down to room seven?”

“Is she blind?” a woman’s voice asked tentatively. I opened my eyes, stared at her.

“Oh!” she said, then recovered. “Well okay then, let’s go.”



* * *



We went down a hall that smelled of hot oil and potatoes. The corridor was easily three times as wide as any of the wooded paths on our island, but I felt the walls closing in on me all the same.

After about forty paces, the woman opened a door on the right, and ushered me in. The room was square and white, with narrow windows along one side and a big black desk at the front. Facing the desk were rows of strange little tables, each one attached to a seat like the shell of a hermit crab.

“Sit anywhere you’d like,” the woman said. “The others will be in soon.” She put a piece of paper on the big black desk and left.

I went to the back row and slid into a chair in the corner, waiting. After a few minutes, I could hear voices bouncing off one another and starting to fill the halls. The door opened and in came a flood of noise and bodies. Boys, long limbed and smelling of sweat and too much energy. Girls, drenched in lemon or flowers or strawberries, except the scents weren’t actually any of those things. They were like the saturated colors I’d seen in magazines. Too sweet. Too strong. It made me rub my nose.

“Whatcha doing, new girl?” A boy stood next to my desk. “Going on a booger hunt?”

I didn’t know what he meant, but the odor that came off him was like the flare of a match, tight and excited. In my mind, I could almost hear Dodge’s low growl of warning.



* * *



The room filled up, girls and boys jostling for seats. The match boy sat in front of me, scooting his desk back so I had to pull my feet in, but the chair next to me stayed empty. The teacher arrived, a thin, brisk woman with dark eyes.

“All right,” she said, inhaling on the word. “Welcome back, everybody. We all know each other by now. Are we ready for another year?”

I heard muffled groans. The teacher picked up the paper the other woman had left on the desk and scanned the room.

“Emmaleen?” the teacher said. I watched the others, waiting. “Emmaleen,” she repeated, walking up one of the aisles and stopping when she reached me. “We don’t have time for games here. You’re supposed to answer when I call your name.”

“That’s not my name,” I said, confused.

“What is your name, then?”

“Emmeline. Like Once upon a time, Emmeline.” I could see my father’s smile, hear his voice, rolling around the rhyme.

There was a burst of laughter. I looked about, startled by the wide, unbelieving faces of the kids in the seats.

“Weirdo,” the boy in front of me said. The words invaded the memory, curled its edges.

“That’s enough, Dylan,” the teacher said sharply. She turned to me. “All right, Emmeline,” and she pulled out that last syllable like it was a potato stuck in the ground, “now that we’ve had our pronunciation class, can we start our school year?”

I slipped deeper into my chair, staring at her back as she returned to her desk.



* * *



I had thought, perhaps, I could handle school. I’d read people’s scents like I’d read the bedsheets in the cottages and everything would be okay. But that room was filled with so many smells, so many needs and fears and secrets. The teachers cycled through—math and English and history—and I tried to listen to what they were saying, but the words had to make their way through all the other messages floating in the air, and I couldn’t concentrate. The teachers asked me questions, and the glee of the boy in front of me grew with each of my fumbled responses. Finally they gave up.