The Scent Keeper(29)

“I can smell it,” I said. “I mean, I can see it.”

The boy pushed the girl and sent her sprawling. She started crying, and the teacher came over, dusting her off and ushering her away. The boy sat on the swing and started pumping his legs.

“The teacher’s scared of him,” Fisher said. Then, “What do the smells tell you?” he asked abruptly.

I listened, but heard only curiosity in his voice.

“Everything,” I said finally.

Fisher nodded.

“You know, I found one of those bottles once,” he said. “The ones on the beaches?”

I didn’t move.

“I smelled something on the paper, but nobody else believed me.”

My heart beat fast and heavy at the same time. “What did it smell like?”

“Like nowhere I’d ever been.” A faint smile crossed his face.

Red wax, I thought.

I tried to calm my breathing. He’d smelled what no one else could. I couldn’t tell him how the bottles got in the water, not without explaining a lot of other things I didn’t want anyone to know, but I basked in the knowledge that here was someone who thought the way I did.

“What happened to the bottle?” I asked.

“My father took it.” Fisher shrugged. “He said I wrecked its value by opening it.”



* * *



It was becoming apparent that my scattered academic background was going to cause a lot of trouble for the teachers. Add to that my utter abhorrence of participating, and most of them found it easier to ignore me, which suited me just fine. The one exception to this rule was the science teacher, Ms. Boyd, who seemed to have taken it as her personal mission to make me feel special—which, of course, only made things worse with the other kids.

One Monday she came into the classroom, the smell of excitement buzzing on her skin.

“We’re going to travel to France today,” she said, “and learn about some truly amazing animals.” She looked all the way to the back of the room, found my eyes, and smiled.

“They have some of the best noses in the world,” she continued. “They can find truffles, hidden underground.”

“What’s a truffle?” one of the kids asked.

“It’s a kind of mushroom.”

“We have mushrooms all over the place.” Dylan was unimpressed.

“This is a special kind,” Ms. Boyd said. “Just this year, a single two-pound truffle sold for three hundred and thirty thousand U.S. dollars. See how important a good nose is?”

There was a collective gasp in the classroom. Again, Ms. Boyd smiled at me. I took in the warmth of it, pulled it close.

“What kind of animals?” Dylan asked, leaning back in his chair.

Ms. Boyd opened a big book and held it up. I couldn’t quite see the illustration.

“Is that a pig?” said the strawberry girl, turning and staring at me with jaw-gaping delight. I’d hoped she would forget our encounter on the playground, but it was clear that wasn’t going to happen.

Ms. Boyd realized her mistake, but there was nothing she could do. From that point on, I was Miss Piggy. Dirt Sniffer. Snuffles and snorts followed me down the hall and haunted my chair in the classroom. By the end of the week, it felt as if there was nowhere I could go.

“I know a good place,” Fisher said that Friday.

At lunchtime, he took me down the corridor and opened a door that said Library. I saw rows of books, rising to the ceiling like drawers of secrets.

“Oh,” I said, relaxing for the first time since Miss Piggy had entered my life, and Fisher smiled.

“Let me show you the computer,” he said, and led me over to a row of three boxes with screens like a television. Fisher sat down in front of one and his fingers typed out a series of letters. The word Google came up in front of us.

“Look,” he said. “Magic.” He entered the word cat and then he showed me images and movies of cats and puppies until a woman came over and told him that the computers were for research, and we reluctantly allowed ourselves to be ushered away.

That weekend, the computer was pretty much all I thought about. Here was a machine more magical, more powerful, than my father’s. It didn’t have scents, but like them it could take me anywhere, and unlike them or television, I got to say where I wanted to go.

I had almost given up on the idea of ever learning anything more about my father, or where I came from. Now, however, I saw a chance.



* * *



Fisher wasn’t in school Monday morning. I hadn’t realized how much I counted on the emotional armor of his friendship until it wasn’t there, and by midday, I was overwhelmed. I threw my lunch in the trash and fled to the library.

Other kids were on the computers, so I had to wait. I wandered through the aisles of books, stopping in the little kids’ section, when I saw several books of fairy tales laid out on a low table. I checked every cover, looking for gold writing, for the princess and the crumpled man, but none of them was the one I had grown up with. Even so, it was calming to be near the volumes—though I knew that if anybody from my class saw me, I’d have even more to contend with.

When a computer was finally available, I went over and looked at its blank screen. It reminded me of the time my father had given me my own scent-paper. I hadn’t known what it meant, what it could do. I’d learned what I needed to know by playing scientist.