A Clatter of Jars (6 page)

Lily

F
OCUSING HE
R THOUGHTS AT THE BRIDGE OF HER NOSE,
Lily tugged open the door to the infirmary.

“Didn't expect to see you so soon,” Nurse Bonnie greeted her. “Max is just settling in.” She gestured toward the small room behind the curtain where the sick beds were.

When Max had first broken his leg three weeks ago, the doctor had assured their parents that two weeks of camp would be fine. Lily wondered if that doctor had ever been to camp. With an enormous cast covering his right leg, toe to thigh, Max could hardly do anything. He couldn't participate in cabin canoe races or Color War (Max and Lily would've
trounced
Hannah's cabin, for sure), and he had to sleep in the infirmary, in one of the beds reserved for campers who got sick in the middle of the night. It wasn't exactly what Lily had imagined when they'd signed up together.

“How are you feeling?” Lily asked, pushing through the curtain to find her brother propped up in bed. His crutches were perfectly balanced before a chest of drawers, without even leaning. As a Calibrate, Max could stabilize any object, from the most teetering tower of blocks to his own body, balanced on his head, his elbow, anything. Well, he
used
to be able to do all that. Since the accident, some of it was more difficult.

“My leg itches,” he told Lily.

“You need more pillows?” Lily already had one in the air, focusing her thoughts, when Max shook his head. She let it fall back to the bed. “You really don't remember it?” she asked for the thousandth time. “The accident?” Around and around went the length of yarn.

“It's like I told that doctor,” Max said. “I must've bonked my head too hard. Too bad you weren't there to help me.”

“Yeah.” Around and around and around. “Too bad.”

Ever since they'd signed up for Camp Atropos, Lily had known that they'd need a killer act for the Talent show. It was the last thing they'd get to do before heading home, and everyone's parents would be in the audience. Their father would be there. He'd rearranged his schedule and everything. So when, while inspecting a photo in the Camp Atropos brochure of a girl breathing fire during last year's Talent show, Lily had spotted the bookshelf beside the lodge stage, she knew she'd been walloped with a fantastic idea.

For their act, Max would balance himself upside down on one finger, atop a teetering stack of books, and every time he shouted “
More!
” Lily would focus her thoughts at the bridge of her nose and tug another book off the bookcase. Then she'd shift her concentration back to her brother, and—
focused, focused
—lift up the entire stack of books with Max on top, sliding the new book underneath. Max had agreed to the idea right away. Of course he had. It would be phenomenal. Just the two of them, no Hannah.

Phenomenal.

Maybe Lily hadn't been concentrating enough on the books, during their first practice in the living room. Maybe she'd been concentrating a little too much on how pouty Hannah would look when her birthday buddy stole the show with Lily and not her. Because when Max was busy balancing, high up in the air, shouting “
More!
” Lily tugged a little too hard on the bookcase.

The books toppled first—
Whunk! Whunk! Whunk! Whunk!
—landing on Max in a horrible heap. Lily was so startled that she couldn't refocus. Before she realized what was happening, the bookcase was toppling, too. The entire heavy wooden structure landed—
thu-WHUNK!
—on top of Max's leg. And Max just lay there, eyes closed. Leg bent at a bad angle.

Lily screamed for her mom and Steve in the backyard, and they raced in right away. Lily saw them.

She saw Hannah racing, too.

What Lily did next, it was enough to make her stomach twist inside of her, like that length of yarn around her thumb, every time she remembered.

When she spied Hannah—she didn't know why, she just
did
it—Lily focused her thoughts behind the bridge of her nose, and she lifted the bookcase into the air, pushing it back against the wall, settled into its divots in the carpet. The books she left, scattered across the floor, but the bookcase she'd returned.

“I don't know what happened,” she told everyone. Hannah was hunched over Max, yanking books off him like he was her brother, instead of her stepbrother. “I didn't see it.” The words tasted as bitter as a cup of her father's coffee, but still Lily pushed them out. “I was getting some water.” If Max ever learned the truth, he would never like Lily best. “He must've fallen over.”

Lily had tied the lime green bow around her thumb that evening, so that even if no one else knew the truth, she would always remember.

She was fluffing another pillow for Max when she heard her least-favorite voice behind her.

“Hi, Max! I brought you something.” Hannah stepped through the gap in the curtains, holding a glass of red juice. Her blond hair, perfectly straight and incredibly long, swished past her waist. “I would've brought you a drink, too, Lily, but I didn't know you'd be here.”

Lily rolled her eyes at that, all the way to one side and back again. The Talent Hannah had been born with, she would tell you (and
tell
you, and
tell
you), was for tasting the flavors of her memories—good ones, bad ones, scary ones. But about seven years ago, when she'd been a baby, Hannah's mother had taken her to a cake-baking competition in New York City, and the most curious thing had happened. One of the contestants—a girl, just about as old then as Lily was now, with a remarkable Talent for knowing the perfect cake to bake for anyone she met—had had her Talent stolen by an Eker, right in the middle of the bakeoff. The Talent had escaped, flooded the air that filled the room. And everyone who attended the competition had absorbed a tiny bit of it. The smallest of slivers.

Everyone, including Hannah.

With that sliver of new Talent, Hannah's memory-tasting had morphed into something different. Now she could bring out the flavor of other people's memories, too, by making one of her special concoctions. Hannah served drinks to practically everyone she met, whether they asked for them or not—juices, punches, smoothies, teas. Whoever drank one of Hannah's beverages could recall memories in vivid, sharp detail. Lily had tasted a few before, mostly by accident, and the clarity of the memories was, she hated to admit it, rather incredible.

“It's a strawberry basil juice bomb,” Hannah told Max. “Wait till you taste it.”

Max sucked down half the drink in one gulp, eyes closed. “First day I discovered my Talent,” he said, popping his eyes open. “Thanks, Hannah.”

Their stepsister plopped herself down on the edge of Max's bed, far too close to his injured leg. “I figured out what I'm going to do for the Talent show,” she said. Not that anyone had asked. “I'm going to make a punch for the whole camp and serve it while everyone's performing. It's going to have memories from every single camper. Chef Sheldon said I could practice in the kitchen during free swim.”

“Cool,” Max said, taking another glug of his juice.

“Free swim sounds way better,” Lily muttered.

“Wanna help me?” Hannah asked Max. “You can help, too, Lily.”

“Sure,” Max said, slapping his empty glass on the chest of drawers. “Sounds fun.”

Lily sputtered at that, sending Max's crutches crashing to the floor. “You can't help Hannah,” she told her brother. “You're doing an act with me.” What would their father think if he rearranged his whole schedule and then all he saw was Max serving stupid punch with stupid Hannah?

Max frowned at her. “I can't balance upside down with my cast,” he said. “I tried, and I can't.” He turned back to Hannah. “Your idea sounds good.”

“It does
not
sound good,” Lily argued. She did her best to focus her thoughts and set Max's crutches upright again, but only managed to shoot them under the bed. “I already came up with a new act for us, just you and me.”

“You did?” Hannah asked.

“You did?” Max said.

“Yeah,” Lily replied. Around and around went the length of yarn. “I just have to work on a few more details, and I'll tell you all about it.”

Max thought that over, sticking one finger underneath the ridge of his cast to scratch his leg. “I guess I could wait a few days to decide what to do,” he said. “But I think we're supposed to start practicing soon.”

“Don't worry,” Lily said. “Our act's going to be
amazing
. Way better than punch.”

• • •

As she made her way back to Cabin Eight, Lily wound the length of swampy yarn around her thumb, grumbling to herself. How was she supposed to come up with a brand-new act in only a few—

Peaches.

Lily stopped walking. There was the most curious feeling, like an itch in her mind. Something wiggling its way in. A memory.

A memory that tasted of crisp peaches.

She had broken a jar, she remembered. Lily scratched the itch harder. The glass had shattered across the toes of her Kelly-green high-tops. And there'd been a frog, and a silver knot . . .

Scratch scratch scratch.

There had been a bracelet in that jar. Lily remembered. A bracelet that stored a Talent.
Scratch scratch scratch.

If Jo had one Talent in her office, then she might have more.

If Max had a different Talent, then it would be easy to create a new act.

The itch completely scratched, Lily spun on her heel and headed toward the lodge.

Jo's Blackberry Sage Iced Tea

a drink reminiscent of summer evenings on family porches

FOR THE TEA:

approximately 7 cups water, divided

2 cups (12 oz) fresh or thawed frozen blackberries

2 tbsp sugar

4 black tea bags

8 fresh sage leaves

1. In a medium pot, bring 4 cups of the water to a boil.

2. Meanwhile, combine the blackberries and sugar in a medium bowl. Mash well with a fork.

3. When the water has reached a boil, remove it from the heat. Add the blackberry mixture, tea bags, and sage leaves. Cover and let sit 20 minutes.

4. Remove the tea bags from the pot and discard them. Carefully pour the tea through a wire-mesh strainer into a 2-quart pitcher, then discard the solids.

5. Add additional cold water (approximately 3 cups) to fill the pitcher. Stir the tea with a wooden spoon, and chill it in the refrigerator, about 1 hour. Serve over ice.

[Serves 6]

Jo

J
O SWEPT THE SHARDS
OF BROKEN GLASS INT
O THE
dustbin, her insides boiling with each new
clank!

That girl Chuck knew about her Talent bracelets. Which meant that soon there would be questions. Phone calls from parents. Trouble, and lots of it.

Jo patted the pocket of her knitted sweater, where she kept Grandma Esther's harmonica. Some people, she knew, were skittish about the buying and selling of Talents. But Jo found it perfectly natural. If you didn't like your hair, you could dye it. Cut it. Have it braided, permed, relaxed, shaved off completely. So why not change your Talent, if you had the inclination?

Jolene Mallory understood more than most people about Talent, and the lack of it, and how either could define you. Jo had grown up Fair. So had her older sister, and so had the boy next door. Jenny and Juan, both six years older, would pull little Jo around the backyard in their wagon, and climb trees with her, and tell her wild stories. As they grew older, the trio found wilder adventures, getting lost in museums, diving to the darkest depths of the coldest lake. All three of them were Fair—a rarity in a world of Talented people—and they formed a tight-knit club, making plans for their future. Three houses, side by side by side. Gardens out front they all helped tend to.

When Jenny and Juan fell in love, Jo was thrilled. When they got engaged, she was overjoyed.

And then Grandma Esther had died.

In her will, Grandma Esther had left Jo, then thirteen, her harmonica. She'd left Jenny, nineteen, her gold pocket watch.
For my two beloved granddaughters,
she'd written.
So they each may know a Talent.
The harmonica and the pocket watch were Grandma Esther's two most precious possessions, from a lifetime of collecting. Everyone knew that. But no one understood what they truly were until Jo put the harmonica to her lips.

Gold and tangerine and walnut and sunshine. Those were the colors Jo saw when she played the harmonica. And she was playing for
Jenny
.

“You're Talented,” Jo had told her sister, pulling the harmonica—an
Artifact
—from her mouth. “Jenny, you're very, very Talented.” Jennifer Mallory, it turned out, had a Talent for matching orphans with the perfect adoptive parents. As soon as Jo had seen the colors, she'd known.

And she'd known, almost immediately after, that she herself had no Talent at all. Not without the harmonica.

“Wind the pocket watch,” Jo had urged Jenny. In order to reap the benefits of an Artifact, a person needed to use it, but even without winding its gears, Jo had seen the colors swirling around the watch when she played—chartreuse and fern, sea foam and pickle. It was a gorgeous Talent, mesmerizing. A Talent for singing.

But Jenny merely held the watch in her hand, studying its gears beneath the glass. “Maybe it's best to stick with the Talents we're born with,” she'd replied—which, Jo would later decide, was easy enough to say when you'd been born with
something
. And then Jenny had snapped the watch shut.

Jo did not shut away her harmonica. She played it for nearly everyone she met. She played it for Juan—who, she discovered, was completely Fair, just as she was. But unlike Jo, he didn't seem to mind so much. He had Jenny, he said, and that was enough. Asking for more would be greedy.

As the wedding drew nearer, Jenny and Juan made more plans for their future. Once they were married, it was decided, they would open an orphanage—Jenny and Juan's Home for Lost Children. Jenny would match orphans with their lucky parents, and Juan would run the place, tending the garden, fixing broken steps. For the first time, Jo realized, their plans did not include her. She watched the calendar, her stomach twisting inside her, as the date she would lose her sister loomed ever nearer.

So Jo, thirteen and fearing the future, began a campaign to stop it from coming.

“Do you ever worry . . . ?” she'd said to Juan one night, when they were sipping blackberry iced tea on the porch swing. Jenny was inside being fitted for her wedding dress. “Do you ever worry that Jenny might get . . . ?” Jo trailed off, darting her eyes to her lap, as though consumed by words unsaid.

“Might get what?” Juan asked, taking a sip of his tea.

“Might get . . . bored,” Jo finished, her voice thick with hesitation. “I mean, because she has such an incredible Talent, and you . . . It's just that, since she's
so
Talented, maybe she'd want . . .” She let her gaze drift to the thick of the woods. “You don't ever feel bad without a Talent?”

“Oh, Joley.” Juan slugged Jo in the shoulder, the way a big brother slugs a little sister. “I don't need Talent to be happy.” He took another long sip of his tea. And then, just when Jo's heart had begun to sink, he looked up. “Did Jenny say something to you?” he asked.

“Hmm?” Jo shook her head quickly. Too quickly. “Oh. Oh, no. She didn't say anything. I promise. I was just thinking.”

But she could tell that a thought had wiggled its way into Juan's brain. And when thoughts wiggle their way in, sometimes it can be very difficult for them to wiggle out again. Sometimes, after months of wiggling, after a dozen more similar thoughts, if a little sister happened to leave out a gold pocket watch where her soon-to-be-brother-in-law might find it, you couldn't entirely say that it was her fault if he decided to wind it.

The Talent was even more mesmerizing than Jo had anticipated. As soon as Juan twisted the watch key and set the gears in motion, he was singing. Full-voiced and gorgeous.

Los golpes en la vida

preparan nuestros corazones

como el fuego forja al acero.

The postman stopped his rounds to come listen. The town barber left his post to find the source of the sound. Children ceased their jump-roping. Even the squirrels seemed mesmerized.

“Remarkable,” they all declared.

Jenny didn't think it was remarkable. She was angry, as Jo had expected she would be.

“That's not your Talent,” Jenny had hissed at her fiancé. Jo listened through the front window, her toes anchored against the porch to stop the creak of the swing from betraying her.

“But no one was using it,” Juan had argued. “Don't you think Talents are meant to be used? Joley said . . .” Jo wasn't sure if Juan trailed off then, or if his words simply grew too quiet to hear.

The argument continued so long into the night that when Jo's parents found her, she was curled on the porch swing, asleep.

Jenny and Juan did not get married. Jenny returned his engagement ring, but left him the watch. By then, word of Juan's Talent had spread far beyond postmen and barbers, and soon he left on a six-month world tour. He found a new love, Jo read in the magazines, and started a new family, and with each new tour, his fame grew greater. El Picaflor, they called him. The Hummingbird. Journalists were particularly fascinated by his beautiful pocket watch—his good luck charm, they wrote, never suspecting the truth behind it—and how he wound it carefully before each performance, and kept it in a special glass case when he slept or bathed, so no dust or moisture would muss its gears.

Jenny, in turn, forged a much quieter life for herself. Jo picked up snippets of information here and there, from news articles or bits of gossip around town. Jenny had named her orphanage Miss Mallory's Home for Lost Girls. She'd found a daughter, Cady, and a home in a peanut butter factory, of all places. But no matter how much time passed, Jenny never forgot the original thought that had wiggled a crack into her relationship, and the person who had planted it.

Jo had tried to stop the future from coming, but it came.

Which was why, when she'd found those first jars at the edge of the lake five summers ago, glowing yellow-purple, hope had finally risen in her chest. If Jenny couldn't forget on her own, maybe Jo could help her along a little.

There was a knock on the office door.

“And you are?” Jo asked, tugging it open. The girl before her was short and slim, with light brown skin and shoulder-length brown hair. Hers was a familiar face, although one at the very edges of Jo's memory.

The girl gulped. “I'm Lily,” she said. “Liliana.”

The Pinnacle, Jo remembered now. She'd seen her photo on the camp application. “And what is it that you need, Liliana?”

Lily wound a swampy length of yarn around her thumb. “I was hoping,” she said slowly, “that you could give me a Talent bracelet.”

In one swift movement, Jo yanked Lily into the office, slamming the door behind them.

“I don't know what she told you.” Jo could tell that the finger she was jabbing in the girl's face was making her nervous. Good. “But it's lies, all of it.”

“What wh-who told me?” Lily stammered.

Jo wasn't buying the act. “There are no Talent bracelets here,” she said. And that, at least for the moment, was the truth. “So you can scurry on back to your cabin and stop bothering me.”

“B-But,” Lily said, “I was standing right here.” She pointed to the spot on the floor where, mere moments ago, Jo had finished sweeping. “And I dropped the jar. And the frog swallowed the bracelet, and then he was . . .
Talented
. The glass shattered all over my green high—”

Even as she spoke the words, Lily seemed confused by them. As though she'd begun watching a movie halfway through and couldn't quite piece together the plot. She frowned at her faded brown sneakers.

“
You
broke the jar?” Jo asked, hope rising in her chest.

“Yes,” Lily said. “I was standing right there.” But she seemed less certain with every word. “Wasn't I?”

Jo placed an arm on the girl's shoulder. “Honey,” she said, with all the sweetness she could muster, “I think you're having some sort of episode. Why don't you lie down for a bit?”

“An episode?” Lily asked.

“If it persists, have Nurse Bonnie take your temperature.” And she pressed Lily out of the office.

Well, how about that?
Jo thought, patting Grandma Esther's harmonica in her sweater pocket. After all this time, after all her searching, Fate had sent her a Recollector.

Jo quickly got to work.

Dear Jenny,
she wrote.
Of all the letters I've written you, this is the most important.

A Recollector could take memories from one person—the way Chuck had had her memory taken, right before Jo's eyes—and, if he or she wanted to, give those memories to somebody else—the way Lily had been given a memory that most certainly wasn't hers.

No matter what may have happened between us, I need to you to come now. It's crucial that I see you.

It wasn't so much the giving of memories that Jo was interested in.

Next Sunday,
she wrote, in her neat blocky letters.
After my campers' Talent show.
That ought to give her plenty of time.

I'm begging you, Jenny. Please come. I want nothing more than to be a family again.

Your sister,
Jo

Jo folded the letter into thirds and slid it into an envelope for Del's next mail run.

Jenny would come. She had to. And when she did, she'd forget why she'd never come before. All Jo had to do was ensure that the Recollector, whoever the person was, took a good, long dip in the lake.

Passing beneath the moose head keeping guard above the lodge's double doors, Jo stepped into the sunlight and pulled Grandma Esther's harmonica to her lips.

Turquoise, plum, salmon, teal. Marigold, coral, slate, snow. With every camper Jo played for, she saw colors. An abundance of Singular Talents.

“Renny, that's her again,” Jo heard a camper whine. “She'll make us go in the lake.”

“You don't have to go swimming, Miles,” came the reply.

“
No water!
”

Miles shouted the words just as Jo turned to face him, her harmonica at her lips.

Pearl, alabaster, porcelain, frost. She drew in a breath of surprise, making the colors even more vivid. She never would have guessed if she hadn't seen it for herself.

Miles Patrick Francis Fennelbridge, the disappointment of his family, was a Recollector.

“
No water!
” Miles flicked his fingers.
Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!

Jo stopped playing. Pulled her harmonica down from her mouth. Blinked at the bright afternoon sky.

There was an itch, just below her ear.

She glanced at the harmonica in her hands, certain she'd been playing it only moments earlier, but befuddled as to why.

“Jo?”

When she looked up, Jo saw Del, her head counselor.

“Teagan asked me to give this to you,” Del said, holding out a thick white envelope. Jo took it and peeked inside. It was the money Caleb had given her earlier. She scratched below her ear. “Got anything for the mail run?”