The Perfume Read online

  Then one of the boys said lightly, “Trying out for the stage, Dove Bar? That’s a nice second voice you’ve learned there.”

  Don’t say anything else, please, Wing? thought Dove.

  But Wing, of course, said something else. Something Dove would never even have read to herself, let alone thought or spoken. Inside the dark skull Dove cringed. How will I ever go back again? she thought. Wing is ruining my life for me!

  What if Dove now had to spend fifteen years up here, locked in the prison of the mind? Listening to Wing’s voice, rattling under the pressure of Wing’s thoughts, trembling with the violence of Wing’s hostility? “Let me out!” Dove shouted, and she began running around inside, biting and clawing at the gray matter, trying to get loose, trying to break free.

  Wing whacked her head hard with her fist.

  The bus arrived at school.

  The rest got off.

  Quickly. In ancient history, Wing uncapped the vial of Venom.

  Here’s how it will work, said Wing silently to Dove.

  This will summon up his vanished twin. What’s happening to us will happen to him. That will fix him! All vanished twins are just in there, you know, waiting to be set free. And of course we’re all very angry, because we lost our bodies and you didn’t.

  What vanished twin? Dove asked. Everybody doesn’t have a vanished twin.

  Wing looked puzzled. Then she fluffed herself like a bird on a cold day, feathery fat with pleasure. Imagine Phinney actually saying the history of snakes is a lousy choice for a project, she said to Dove. I’ll show him venom.

  She lifted the snake bottle from the book bag and caressed the smoky crystal.

  “It’s that terrible perfume again!” said Connie. “I can’t stand that stuff. Dove, put it away. It’s too strong. It’s too—too something.”

  “Smells like a sewer,” said Hesta.

  “It sure doesn’t remind me of doves,” said Timmy O’Hay.

  He was ever so slightly flirtatious; he wanted to exchange a quick intimate smile with Dove, and make another dove joke. Dove tried not to let Wing’s mind see what Dove had seen, or Wing would go after Timmy.

  But Wing was intent on destroying Mr. Phinney.

  Nothing happened during the class period, however, so Wing got up to take the perfume closer to Mr. Phinney. Perhaps he was not breathing deeply enough.

  “Dove, you do not have permission to wander around the room,” Mr. Phinney said sharply.

  Dove’s body, of course, continued to cross the room.

  “Dove, what’s the matter with you?”

  Wing was there, waving the perfume at him.

  Mr. Phinney laughed. “Dove, kiddo, I coach boys’ soccer. There is no smell you can hit me with worse than a boys’ locker room after a soccer game. In fact, if that perfume of yours smells like anything, it smells like Eau de Athlete’s Foot.”

  The class broke up laughing.

  Wing was outraged. They were not taking Venom seriously.

  For one terrible moment, Dove thought she would throw the Venom in their faces, and who knew what that would do? Was it really perfume? Or was it some terrible ancient acid that would burn off their personalities and their lives?

  “I gotta get some fresh air,” said Timmy O’Hay. He made a big deal of flapping his homework papers in his face for a fan. He yanked up the window nearest him, blowing Dove a kiss as he did so.

  The cool May morning breezed into the hot stuffy classroom.

  The winds were filled with their own invisible personalities: new leaves and buds, pollens and scents, flowers and sap. It was the smell of new life and summer to come.

  Wing dissolved.

  As quickly as she had come, she was gone.

  Dove was back in her body. Back in her mouth. Back at the front of her eyes.

  She stoppered the Venom.

  “I should never have bought this stuff,” she said, going back to her seat, leaving the Venom on Mr. Phinney’s desk. “It’s garbage. Leave it for the janitor to toss, okay? It’s making me crazy.”

  “It’s toxic waste,” said Timmy O’Hay. “Needs a special disposal technique.”

  Dove’s were the eyes focused on him and suddenly they were both anxious, the way ordinary teenagers are when they have ordinary crushes on each other. Neither knows what to say or where to look.

  So they said nothing and looked nowhere.

  Dove thought: I’m safe now. Was it Timmy’s kiss? Snow White was awakened from a hundred years’ sleep by a kiss. Perhaps a kiss in the wind can really save a life that way.

  No more Venom.

  But the other person in her skull laughed and laughed and laughed.

  It was a horrid prickly tickly feeling, up out of reach, behind her eyes and her bones.

  Without sound Wing said, No, Dove, I will be back. There is more Venom where this came from. There will never be safety for you again, Dove. You will never know, when you open your mouth to speak, which one of us will do the talking: And your life—your precious dull little life—it will be mine again.

  Chapter 10

  AFTER SCHOOL.

  It was a special space in time—classes done, dinner in the future—after school. As special and different a place in time as ancient Egypt.

  And where had the soft spring gone?

  Dissolved like a vanished twin.

  After school, outside, the sky was as blue as the Nile. The sidewalks throbbed with reflected heat, as stones waiting to be made into pyramids must have throbbed thousands of years ago.

  “This heat!” shrieked Connie. “I cannot bear it!”

  (Connie had spent all winter saying she could not bear the cold.)

  “Let’s go to the lake,” said Luce.

  This meant a long drive, and a parking fee, and not quite enough time to do homework. Nobody was interested in going to the lake.

  “The mall!” shrieked Connie. “The mall is air-conditioned. We have got to go to the mall.”

  (Connie had spent the entire winter saying she was sick of the mall.)

  “What do you think, Dove?” said Luce.

  Dove was not paying much attention to Connie and Luce. She was very much aware of two other people close by and listening. Two boy people. Timmy and Laurence hadn’t quite joined the girls, weren’t entering the conversation, weren’t making suggestions … but they were there.

  Now that she was back in control of her eyes again, owner of the hands, dictator of the body, Dove was also nervous again. Anxious. Wanting to do and say just the right thing at just the right moment to just the right boy.

  It occurred to Dove that although she had been terrified, lying down in the back of the brain while Wing assaulted the world, she had also been slightly more comfortable. She had had no social choices to make—no recourse but to let somebody else function in the real world.

  Dove tried to think of a casual meaningless way to invite Timmy and Laurence to go to the mall with them in Luce’s car, but nothing came to mind.

  Because I hate Timmy and Laurence, said the other person in her mind.

  Dove held her jaws together to keep Wing from saying this out loud.

  “You shouldn’t do that,” said Laurence seriously. (At least one of them had found an opening for talk.) “My sister grinds her teeth together like that and she’s ruined her jaw joints and has to take medication and maybe even have surgery.”

  Dove dared not lose her hold on her jaw muscles, so she said with her teeth crunched hard together, “How awful.”

  Laurence told Dove in boring detail about his sister’s medical problems. Everybody listened as if they cared.

  Timmy said, “I wouldn’t mind going to the mall, actually. I want to look at that new kind of sneaker. I haven’t tried them on yet.”

  “The double airlift kind?” said Luce.

  “With the memory laces,” Timmy said, nodding.

  “What’s a memory lace?” said Connie.

  “The shoelace remembers how tight you
like it,” he said, “and it retracts by itself and ties itself.”

  “Wow!” said Connie, who would believe anything. “Wow, I want to try those on, too. Where did you see those advertised, Timmy? Who makes those? They sound really really really neat.”

  Dove giggled. “They sound really really really made up,” she said. She felt at ease again. She could keep Wing out of her mouth; Timmy’s kiss had done it. She was safe. So Wing rattled around in her head; somehow Dove had not noticed this for the first fifteen years, and she would learn how not to notice it for the next fifteen, as well.

  So there.

  Luce said, “You guys want to meet us at the mall? We could all have a pizza at the Food Court and then go look at sneakers.”

  Connie ruined it. “And Dry Ice,” she said, “I want to go into Dry Ice. You just never know what they will stock!”

  The teenagers headed slowly for their cars, giggling, changing partners, making jokes, deciding which highway to take.

  “Are you going to get more Venom?” said Timmy to Dove.

  “No. I’m not even going into Dry Ice.”

  “What is that? I never heard of it,” said Timmy.

  “It’s a store Connie and Luce like,” said Dove. The usual shiver did not come. How surprising! Under the circumstances, Dove would have expected to pass out just thinking about Dry Ice. It’s because I left the perfume sitting on Mr. Phinney’s desk, thought Dove, and the janitors will toss it, and I’m safe with a nice boy named Timmy O’Hay. Such a nice solid ordinary name. What could go wrong with a person like Timmy O’Hay around?

  “You want to come try on sneakers with me?” said Timmy.

  “Oh, yes,” said Dove eagerly. She had absolutely no desire to have a pump sneaker; in fact, she hated sneakers that were as big as truck tires. She liked flimsy sneakers. Her favorite sneakers were light canvas, covered in lace. But for Timmy she would try on a hundred pairs that weighed as much as army boots.

  She wanted to suggest that Laurence could drive to the mall with Connie and Luce, while she went with Timmy. She wanted to suggest that the other three go have pizza and visit Dry Ice while she and Timmy ran off and got married.

  But of course she didn’t say anything, and Timmy got into his car, punching Laurence and throwing his book bag into the bushes the way boys did, and Laurence hit Timmy in the head with his trumpet case and, all in all, they seemed to be friends, insofar as boys ever seemed to be friends.

  Dove found boys quite mysterious.

  They drove to the mall, Luce at the wheel, Connie in the front seat changing radio stations at about the same speed Luce was driving, and Dove in the back, trying to restrain herself from turning around like a little kid, getting on her knees, and waving to Timmy.

  Then she thought: What am I restraining myself for? I want Timmy to know I adore him, don’t I?

  So she took off her seat belt and got on her knees and waved at the boys in the car behind.

  Laurence made terrible faces, yanking sideways on his throat so he looked as if he had a toothbrush stuck down there, while Timmy simply grinned.

  And then, because Timmy was a boy, and would prefer death to driving behind anybody else, Timmy put the pedal to the metal, streaked around Luce, and generally was a menace to everybody dumb enough to be on the road that afternoon.

  “What a rotten driver,” observed Luce.

  Dove sank back into her seat and thought about first dates and kisses that were not blown in the wind, but set gently on lips.

  Chapter 11

  IN THE MALL PARKING LOT, the sun beat on them like a golden whip.

  A thousand cars glittered, metal hot enough to burn a hand.

  A thousand white-lined slots waited, like unused plots in an asphalt cemetery.

  Every fear and every shiver she had ever had, got in the back seat with her. Dove did not want to get out of the car.

  There was Laurence, leaping and bounding around, like a dog let out of a kennel. There was Timmy, a maniac in motion, but parked, the epitome of carefulness: locking each door and opening the cardboard sunblock under the windshield. There was Luce, slightly stern, in control. There was Connie, giggly and simpleminded and not in control of a thing.

  They were her friends.

  And this was just a mall, just a lot of stores gathered indoors.

  Just a place where you could shop or not shop. Look or not look.

  Dove tried to catch her breath. There did not seem to be enough of it to go around. As if Wing had seized a substantial portion of Dove’s lungs, was at work on Dove’s oxygen, taking Dove’s life and breath.

  She wet her lips but they stayed dry. She touched her hair but could not feel it. Vaguely, at great distance, she could hear Connie calling. Get out, Dove, hurry up, Dove, come on, Dove, said the voice, over and over.

  She bent, and hooked a foot out the front door, and emerged from the back seat of the little tin car.

  At the heart of the mall, where stores and halls converged, a high sharp-angled glass roof let in the sun. Inside, trees in stone gardens grew year-round. A fountain tossed water while strange sculptures played games only they understood.

  The glass glittered. It struck her eyes like a missile trying to blind her.

  It was shaped like a pyramid.

  A pyramid of glass, not stone.

  Of shoppers, not Egyptian kings.

  But nevertheless … a pyramid. Beneath which snakes curled and venom waited.

  In her head Wing began to laugh, with the insane intensity of the locked-up.

  “Coming, Dove?” said Timmy, smiling.

  His hand was extended toward her. Her heart seemed to race right down her own arm and into her own fingers. He would feel it beating when their skin touched.

  Part of her was lost in fear of Wing and pyramids.

  Part of her was in love with Timmy O’Hay.

  She had never held hands with a boy before. She took, his hand as timidly as a child on the first day of kindergarten. The two hands seemed to stick out, as if the world were pointing and laughing and staring.

  Dove could not take her eyes off the place where their two bodies met.

  Timmy could not look down at all, but kept his eyes on the mall entrance, saying, “Is this the right one? Is this closest to the shoe store?”

  “All mall entrances are close to a shoe store,” said Connie. “The mall must have fifty shoe stores.”

  “I want to go in the nearest door. I hate walking around the mall,” said Timmy.

  Connie stared at him. “That’s the point,” she said. “Walking around the mall is why we’re here.”

  A row of dark glass doors with dark metal edges stared at them like huge sunglasses over the mall’s eyes.

  Dove swallowed.

  Timmy’s hand tightened.

  Or was that her imagination?

  They entered the wing of the mall.

  She had no sooner thought the word wing than the word became real, and flapped in her head, and brushed her brain with its terrible feathers.

  Dove shook her head hard.

  It shook their hands loose, and Timmy didn’t take hers back.

  Dove blinked in the soft indoor light. Had the mall always had this strange brown floor? These ancient bricks? Had those weathered stone benches always sat there, and that water garden, with a lotus leaning out of the pot?

  From far away she heard her friends’ voices. “Pizza,” they were saying, “french fries, soda.” “Sneakers,” they were saying, “escalator, stairs.”

  Dove was still in control of the body they shared. And yet she was tipping backward, into the very far back of the mind. Come back, Dove! She called to herself. Come back here, pay attention, listen up, don’t leave yet!

  “What’s your vote?” said Timmy to Dove. He was smiling the friendly but not-too-friendly smile he had, waiting for her cue.

  She lurched toward him, grabbing him.

  “Sneakers,” she said. Her lips were thick. She had been wit
hout water for a hundred years, out there in the desert sand. “No. Soda,” she corrected herself.

  They had reached the center of the mall. Above them, the glass pyramid slanted toward the sky.

  Wing fluttered in her skull.

  “Let’s go find Dry Ice,” said Connie.

  “I looked on the Directory when we came in,” said Timmy, frowning slightly, “and I didn’t see a listing for a store named Dry Ice.”

  “You probably don’t know the alphabet,” said Luce.

  “It’s up here,” said Connie, getting on the escalator, and they all got on the escalator and it drew them higher into the peak of the pyramid.

  Dove was out of breath now, although she had done no climbing. The escalator had climbed for her. They seemed to be at a very high altitude, as if they had been climbing mountains in Tibet. The air was thin. Her head swam.

  They walked around the third level.

  They walked and walked and walked.

  I will get blisters, thought Dove. I will have cramps, I will collapse. We must have hiked a hundred miles.

  “See?” said Timmy. “What did I tell you? No such store.”

  “There has to be,” said Connie. “We go in there all the time. Don’t we, Luce?”

  Luce did not answer.

  “Don’t we, Dove?” said Connie.

  Dove did not answer.

  “It’s that store that makes its own fog,” said Connie. “You know! The one where the vapor comes right out into the mall and catches your feet and forces you into the store!”

  Timmy laughed. “Right. Just like the sneaker with lace memory.”

  “Let’s get a pizza,” said Laurence.

  There’s no Dry Ice, thought Dove. Where did it go? Was it ever there?

  “There’s something wrong with this picture,” said Connie. Connie did not like being teased.

  “You’re just jealous because now Dove is the only girl in the world with Venom perfume,” said Timmy. He ruffled Dove’s hair. How soft and affectionate the gesture was. Dove would have given him the world then if she had owned it. How starved she was for affection! She had not even known this fact until Timmy touched her. Her parents could have their phones and their faxes. She wanted affection.