Bhut jolokia: ghost pepper. Specifically, the purple ghost pepper. Seeds of the purple ghost pepper are said to be extremely rare and can be purchased only through black markets and shady online sellers. This purple pepper is reported to be the most elusive and hottest pepper on earth. Only one problem: It’s a fake. While the traditional Bhut jolokia indeed grows one of the hottest peppers, the seeds of the “purple ghost” that are sold are likely from a different plant altogether. No such seeds truly even exist.
He calls me while I am still asleep.
“I need to see you.”
“Henry,” I say. I look over at the glowing green numbers on the little clock by the bed. “It’s four thirty in the morning.”
“We have to talk.”
“Now?”
“Tomorrow is fine, I guess. I work at two. Do you want to come by the library?”
“You’re worrying me,” I say. “Why are you up at four thirty in the morning? You sound so awake.”
“I have something important to tell you.”
“Tell me now.” Wait a minute. I don’t know if I want to know what he has to say after all. “No. Don’t tell me. Is it terrible, Henry?”
“Not terrible. I just don’t know what to do.”
“It’s all right,” I say. It’s Millicent, I’m sure. That turned-down picture. That scene in the parking lot.
“You seemed so happy tonight. I feel bad.”
“I changed my mind again. Tell me.” Dread sneaks up wearing his dark cape, pulls me in. How could Henry love me when I’m such a regular girl? I have no amazing talent. I have no elusive, icy charisma. I have no quirky, embroidered shoes. Mom and I usually just went to Payless ShoeSource, for the Buy One–Get One sale.
“There’s no such thing as a pixiebell,” Henry says.
I’ve been clutching my pillow, ready for the blow, and I loosen my grip out of sheer surprise. “What?”
“I’ve been up all night. I’m almost sure of it. The name. Imponerus? It means ‘impostor.’ ”
“Wait. You know Latin?”
Silence. I can almost hear him shrug. “I think your professor was having a little fun with old Grandpa Leopold.”
“You’re kidding.”
“Uh-uh. I knew it the minute you said it, but I’ve been up since, making sure.”
“If it’s not a pixiebell, what is it?” I scrunch my eyes, try to see Pix in the dark.
“No idea.”
“Is it even extinct?”
“No clue.”
“I don’t know what to think about this,” I say.
“Think that we are back to square one. Even one-er than square one.”
The dark of night is lifting ever so slightly, turning from black to a light purple. Birds get up early here apparently. I hear them chattering out there. I am waking up enough to understand what this call means. “You’ve been up all night? Really? Why are you doing this for me, Henry?”
“I can’t stand a mystery.”
“That is such bullshit. You like me, Henry Lark. A lot.”
It’s bold, but I don’t mean to be. It’s more of a curious realization. A kiss is one thing. Four thirty in the morning is another.
“Of course I like you a lot. How can I not like you a lot? You’re so kind.”
“I’m not kind! I barely like babies. I’m too critical. I hate people who talk in bookstores. I’m selfish. I don’t like to share my French fries. I’m impatient. I make that scoffing noise in the back of my throat whenever I see those pictures girls take of themselves holding out their phones—”
“Tess! Stop. Why do you do this? You are so hard on yourself. People can see your good heart from two miles away, whether you like it or not. I want to help because you need help. Now shut up and help me make a plan.”
“It’s late, Henry. Or early. Whichever. My brain is still sleeping. I’ll come by in the morning with all my great ideas.”
“Fine.”
“I’m not full of inspiration at”—I look at the clock again—“four fifty-seven.”
“Tomorrow,” Henry says.
“Tomorrow,” I agree.
“Jesus. You’re a good person. Stop beating yourself up.”
“Henry? Thank you. Ten thousand miles of thank-yous.”
Henry and I hang up. I can see Pix’s sad, sick outline over by the window. All this time, the last pixiebell has kept its own secrets.
I picture Grandpa Leopold opening that drawer. Downstairs, someone plays the piano. The gathered guests begin to sing. O come all ye faithful . . . Grandpa Leopold thinks he looks quite natty in his double-breasted wool suit and Dobbs hat, his silver cigarette lighter in his pocket. He feels so clever as he removes the tiny glass case from the drawer and slips it into his trouser pocket. He is pleased with himself, filled with the glorious buzz of wrongdoing. He rubs his hands together even.
But downstairs, the professor is pleased with himself too. He is downright smug and full of holiday cheer. When he hears the creak of the stairs and the footsteps just above his head where his study would be, the professor smiles. He raises his glass, and he makes a toast to peace on earth and goodwill toward men.
* * *
I finally realize that the weeds in the jar that Jenny uses in painting class are fakes.
“They’re plastic,” I say. I am rubbing a leaf between two fingers.
“Silk,” Jenny corrects. She claps her hands together twice, getting everyone to settle in and get to work. She wants this class to be over quickly, she confessed earlier. She’s got a new painting she wants to work on.
“All this time, I thought they were real.”
Jenny tilts her head just like Dad and gives the weeds a look. “Not what you thought? Still beautiful,” she says.
“I guess.” I’m having a hard time seeing the beauty through my own disappointment.
“Sorry we’re late,” Nathan says. Margaret follows behind him, red cheeked and hurrying. “The baby escaped out the dog door and into the garden.”
“They thought it was another Lindbergh kidnapping,” Margaret says.
I am watching Elijah and Millicent, their blond heads bent together. They are the kind of people who turn your insecurity into one of those out-of-control monsters that invades a city in the movies. Right now my insecurity is raging and stomping and eating parked cars. I am sure they are talking about me.
Cora Lee from the Theosophical Society grabs my wrist. Her hand is a little claw. Her white hair is piled up on her head like a wedding cake. A tiny bride and groom at the top would finish the look.
“Here,” she says. She is pressing something into my palm. It’s the same way my great-aunt used to try to slip me ten bucks whenever she visited. All that covertness and whispering, you’d think old auntie was giving me a couple of ounces of cocaine.
But Cora Lee has not slipped me spending money. It’s a tiny vial, one of those thin glass ones like perfume samples come in, with a teeny-tiny stopper.
“What’s this?” I whisper back.
“A tincture. For the ill. Sprinkle a little on the soil.”
Word gets around fast on Parrish Island.
“Thank you,” I say. Cora Lee winks.
Behind me, Elijah and Millicent laugh. The monster chomps on a building and eats a baby stroller. I’m sure they’re laughing at me. I even start to get a little pissed. I run through my options. Spin around with a glare. Make a snotty comment about that little white skirt Millicent is wearing. It’s so tiny, you could bake a cupcake in it.
I choose a combo plate—I spin and I comment. “Shrunk in the wash, huh?”
It all worked out so beautifully when I imagined it, but they are not following along with the thoughts in my head. They only look at me as if I’ve begun speaking in tongues. No one says anything. Elijah taps the hard end of his paintbrush against his teeth. He’s waiting for something.
“Um,” Millicent says. “Excuse me, Tess.”
She is looking up and around me dramatically. She is leaning far to the right, sending me a message. I’m standing in front of the fake wildflowers, and she can’t see them.
“Sorry,” I say.
I want to leave, but I’m too humiliated to go anywhere. I feel shame, but also rushing roils of hatred—partly for them, but mostly for myself. The monster turns inward. He always does. Back to the lair. I return to the chair Jenny has set up for me and paint more brown smears as Margaret hums something sweet and Elijah perfects one of the two noses in profile. I sneak glances at Millicent and count all of the ways we aren’t alike.
Four ways, five. I make the crosshatch with brown paint. Six: She does not have a good heart that you can see two miles away. But love isn’t always about good hearts or even good reasons. Sometimes it is wild and unaccountable, I know. I can feel that wildness in my own heart when I look at Henry. It is beyond reason. I don’t feel the way I do because he is good with small children, or intelligent, or talented. I feel the way I do because he stirs something in me. He could be a bank robber and I’d offer to drive the getaway car.
Margaret is motioning to me. She’s making an urgent Come here! face and tossing her head in a manner that resembles a slight seizure. All right, okay. Now she crooks her finger so that I lean down.
“Throw that bottle away,” she whispers fiercely. “Cora Lee once gave me a ‘tincture’ and I had gastrointestinal distress for a week.”
There is definitely something in the water here.
* * *
When I arrive, they are making fun of each other with the library puppets. Sasha’s got a princess. It’s wearing a pink shiny dress and has gold ringlet hair and a sparkly crown. It’s holding a wand, which is mixing metaphors, but oh well. “I’m lying there, asleep!” Sasha says in a squeaky princess voice. “And the jerk comes and kisses me! Slips me some tongue! Do I know you? Hands off me, buddy! You’re busting my REMs!”
“Do you know I’m one of the most deadly animals around?” Librarian Larry flaps the wide mouth of his hippo, showing off two stuffed teeth.
“Doesn’t anyone actually work around here?” I say.
“Watch what you say, lady.” Larry points his hippo in my direction. “Just ’cause I wallow, don’t think I ain’t lethal.”
“Henry’s working,” the princess puppet says. “But royalty is above the lowly masses. Let them eat cake! Or cookies!”
I hear the rustle of little people, and I also hear Henry reading aloud. A second later, he storms over and snatches the puppet off of Larry’s hand and then goes for Sasha’s. He’s got the princess around the neck, and she is squealing as if being strangled until Henry grabs her, and Sasha sighs in defeat.
“Really, people,” Henry snaps. “Hey, Tess.” He shakes his head to convey his parental-like frustration, and then hurries back to his audience.
Sasha removes her glasses. She huffs hot air onto one lens and wipes it with the tail of her shirt and then does the same with the other. It’s the eyewear equivalent of Clark Kent dressing in the phone booth, because now Sasha turns all business.
“Imponerus,” she says. “No wonder we couldn’t find it.”
“Don’t tell me he called you at four thirty too.”
“Six,” Sasha says.
“So that’s why Henry’s cranky,” Larry says. “Up all night. The kid’s obsessed.”
“No biggie. I was awake anyway,” Sasha says. “I haven’t slept in weeks.”
“ ‘Heartbreak overlo-oad . . . ,’ ” Larry sings, then rubs his mangy beard thoughtfully. “You should try yoga. Help you relax.”
“Anything called Downward Dog should be done in private.” Sasha comes around to my side of the counter. “We have a plan.”
“We do?” I ask.
“I’m going to call a doctor.”
Not again. “Cora Lee from the Theosophical Society already gave me medicine.”
“Not that kind of a doctor. A PhD doctor. A dean I know. We’re going to call Dr. Abby Sidhu.”
“We are?” Larry says. “You made us promise that if you tried to call her, we’d lock you in the Franciscan Sisters Memorial Reading Room.”
“This is business.”
Larry makes that scoffing noise in the back of his throat, the one I make whenever I see those pictures girls take of themselves holding out their phones. “She’s in the math department!”
“She’s friends with the guy in Botany and Plant Pathology.”
“Fine. But if you end up at my place crying and clutching another box of Twinkies, don’t say I didn’t tell you so.”
* * *
“She’s been in there a long time,” I say to Henry. He is sitting across the table from me. Nathan’s little boy, Max, has placed an open copy of Frog and Toad Are Friends on Henry’s head. Henry is balancing it there with perfect posture, like a debutante.
“Read,” Max demands. “Read from your head.” He thinks this is hilarious. He starts laughing like it’s the best five-year-old joke ever.
Nathan appears now, holding his baby daughter under one arm as if she’s a bundle of firewood. He’s got a bunch of stuff under the other arm. Man, parents come with a lot of baggage. The sleeve of somebody’s jacket drags on the ground. “Max! Come on! We gotta go! Bye, guys. Bye, Tess.”
There are people I know here. It feels good. I haven’t thought of Meg or my other friends or Dillon or my old house in days.
Henry leans forward, catches Frog and Toad in one hand. “Here she comes.”
Yep, Sasha is heading our way, all right. She’s got her hands jammed in her front pockets. She’s beaming.
“We’re going on a little trip.”
“Who’s ‘we’?” Henry asks. “You told us to chain you to the book drop if you went anywhere with Abby.”
“Us-we. The three-of-us-we.”
“We-we?” Henry and I say at the same time. This is pretty hilarious, so insert a couple of minutes of laughing and elbowing each other here.
“We and the plant formerly known as the pixiebell, people. To Seattle. To the University of Washington. You will meet with Professor Harv Johansson. Dr. Johansson. Plant doctor Johansson. This Friday? Maybe we should take two cars. I might be staying.”
She smiles.
“I wanna go,” Larry whines from somewhere over in Fiction.
“You stay, we leave,” she says, too loudly for the library.
“Okay.” I shrug. “Why not?”
“Timing couldn’t be better,” Henry says.
Sasha is positively strutting around. Her chest is out. “Well, well, well,” she says, and then says it again.
“Friday,” Henry says.
“Friday,” I reply.
“At least we’ll have an answer,” he says. He rubs his face, tired. “Answers are good.”
“I should let you get back to work.”
“Yeah, look how the place is hopping.” He is cranky. “Let me walk you out. The boss won’t care. I could shelve all the red-covered sex books in YA, and I doubt she’d even notice. Look at her.”
It’s true. Sasha is acting like she just won a prizefight. She might as well pump her fists in the air.
Outside, Henry gives me a quick kiss and hugs me good-bye. It isn’t quite the kiss I’m looking for, but no matter. I walk down Friday steps and into the Friday street and get into Jenny’s Friday car. My heart sings Friday joy all the way home.
It is still singing when I turn by the mailbox, but then it stops. It stops abruptly, abruptly enough to qualify as a screeching halt because my father’s truck is in the driveway, and my father himself is leaning against it.
I park Jenny’s van. I sit in there for a while. I don’t want to get out. Finally, I do.
“Time to go,” he says.