A Clatter of Jars (14 page)

Jo

J
O WOKE WITH
A CRICK IN HER NECK
, WRENCHING HER
head from her desk. She'd fallen asleep practicing her new Talent—tugging memories from campers as they watched their movie on the lodge floor. She'd wound the recollections around her fingertips like cobwebs, sampling their varied flavors before flicking them away.

As the first hints of morning shone their way through the office window, Jo switched on her radio, hoping to clear the fog from her mind. The station was just gearing up for a weekend marathon of El Picaflor's most popular hits, in anticipation of his newly extended tour dates.

Jo let the melancholy lullaby sweep her away.
One short day,
she told herself, allowing her chest to fill with hope. In one short day, Jenny would forget everything, and they'd once more be a family.

Los golpes en la vida

preparan nuestros corazones

como el fuego forja al acero.

“Come in!” Jo replied to the knock on the door. It was Del, carrying a large wicker basket. Behind him on the lodge floor, the campers still dozed in their sleeping bags. “Out with it,” she said, noticing his sheepish grimace.

“I went to get the jars you asked for,” Del said. He lifted the basket, seeming to mistake Jo's groggy blinking for confusion. “From the lake? Last night you said I had to get them first thing?”

Jo peered inside the basket, which contained fewer than ten jars. “Where are the rest of them?”

“Yeah. I sort of”—Del winced, as though anticipating a strike—“tripped? And most of the jars sort of . . . smashed?” He drew the basket before him like a shield. “These were the only ones that didn't break.”

“Put them over there,” she told Del, gesturing to the completely empty shelves behind her. That Fennelbridge boy had clearly taken all of her Talents last night, instead of the one she'd offered, but at the moment, Jo's happiness left little room for fury.

Del set the basket on the floor. “What are they for, if you don't mind my asking? Some kind of arts-and-crafts project, or . . . ?” He plucked up a jar, inspecting it. “And why were they in the lake?”

One short day.
The smile that twitched itself onto Jo's face felt unfamiliar. She clanked three jars out of the basket. “You realize your shoes are untied,” she said, by way of changing the subject.

“I still can't seem to do it,” Del replied. “It's like the memory got lifted right out of my brain.”

“I bet I can help with that,” Jo said. She was feeling generous this morning. Nestling the last jar beside its brothers on the shelf, Jo began flicking her fingers—
flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!
—feeling around for a shoe-tying memory from one of the campers sleeping in the lodge. It should have been an easy enough thing to retrieve.

She found nothing.

“I am pretty exhausted,” Jo said, mostly to herself.

Del nodded. “It's only six-oh-two and thirty-one seconds.” He tapped the side of his head. “I got Molly's Talent for time-telling.”

“Ah,” Jo responded, only half listening.

“You're going to get Chuck to swap everything back first thing this morning, right? Because we have dress rehearsal today, and, well, in the mornings I like to freeze my coffee so the cream is a little slushy, and all Daria's doing with my Talent is making punch snowballs, so—”

Jo was still searching the lodge for a shoe-tying memory. Still coming up short. “Sorry?” she said.

“Is it too early to grab Chuck from the infirmary?” Del asked. “So she can swap our Talents back?”

“Sure,” Jo said, attempting to blink herself awake. “Sure, go get Chuck.”

No sooner had Del left the office than the phone on Jo's desk jerked to life. Jo snatched the receiver from its base.

“The Talents are wearing off,” Caleb informed her, without so much as a hello.

“Caleb, I don't have time for this.” Out of habit, Jo patted her sweater pocket and, horrified, discovered that Grandma Esther's harmonica wasn't there. “You can save your tricks.” She tugged open the top drawer of her desk. Not there. “I'm not lowering my prices.”

“This isn't a trick, Jo,” Caleb replied. “I'm telling you this as your friend.”

Jo yanked open the middle drawer. Nothing.

“It's been less than three weeks since I got that lock-picking Talent,” Caleb went on. “And I can hardly unlock a door with a key.”

The next drawer down. Nothing.

“I told myself I must be coming down with something, because Danny put on his bracelet for the first time this past Thursday, and I swear, he could've spotted a lump of coal in a chimney at midnight—the Talent was that good. This morning? Jo, I'd be surprised if any new Talents stuck around longer than a few hours.”

Jo slammed the last drawer closed. “No,” she told Caleb. “I can't have lost it. I
need
it.” But suddenly it wasn't the harmonica she was worried about.

“My clients are
angry
, Jo. They're practically sharpening their pitchforks. I'll do what I can so they don't come demanding their money back, but I can't buy any more Talents from you. I'm sorry.”

Another knock on the door.

“I have to go.” Jo hung up the phone. “
What?
” she sneered when she whipped the door open.

It was Del again, out of breath and clutching Grandma Esther's harmonica.

“Oh, thank
goodness
,” Jo exclaimed, snatching the instrument from him. She flipped it end over end, savoring the familiar coolness of the steel, its sharp corners. “I think you were right, Del,” she said. “We should have Chuck swap back the Talents as soon as possible.” Someone in that lodge had gotten Miles Fennelbridge's Recollecting Talent. And perhaps Jo's copy of it had worn off—but why Mimic something when you could have the thing itself Coaxed right into you? “Have her come straight to my office as soon as she's up.”

For the first time, Jo noticed that the grimace had returned to Del's face.

“Chuck wasn't in the infirmary,” he told her. “Nurse Bonnie said she must've slipped out this morning.”

The fury inside Jo boiled quickly. “Well then, what are you doing
here
?” she shouted. “Go
find
her! I want you back by noon on the dot with that girl!” Del went scurrying beneath the moose head and down the lodge steps. “On the
dot
, you hear me?” she called after him. “You think you can manage that,
time-teller
?”

With the last ounce of her rage, Jo whipped the radio from the wall, robbing Juan's song of its grand finale, and hurled it toward the window. But she missed her target. As the shelves collapsed on one another, the glass jars smashed to the floor, their useless Talents escaping in a whirl of dust.

One short day. Jenny would arrive in one short day.

Jo clutched her harmonica, taking stock of the scene on the lodge floor. Rows and rows of campers and counselors, snoring in their sleeping bags. Somewhere among them was a Talent for Recollecting. And fortunately, Jo possessed the exact tool to find it.

Jo pulled the harmonica to her lips and began to play, sweeping the notes across the room. Searching, searching . . .

Los golpes en la vida

preparan nuestros cora—

She saw no colors. Instead, Jo lifted hundreds of sleeping bags—with hundreds of snoring bodies inside—two feet into the air.

As Jo halted her song, the campers and counselors of Camp Atropos all smashed to the ground. The room was filled with the startled “
oh!
”s and “
ouch!
”s of children lurching into consciousness.

Jo examined the harmonica. It was Grandma Esther's, all right. Well used and well loved, silver, scuffed, and slightly dented at one end.

But it had been
altered
somehow.

“Campers!” Jo greeted the group, clapping her hands around the instrument. She foisted a smile onto her face. “How about we stretch our new Talent muscles, hmm?”

Jolene Mallory had been running a summer camp, in one form or another, for a long time. And if there was one thing she'd learned, it was that when things didn't turn out as expected, you needed to improvise.

Somewhere in the midst of that lodge was the very Talent Jo needed. (It wasn't, but Jo didn't know that yet.) So if
she
couldn't find it—Jo raised the harmonica to her lips once more—then she'd simply have the campers hunt for it themselves. Aiming her gaze at the moose head keeping guard above the double doors, Jo played her song once more. The animal plummeted down, sending a thunderous shiver across the lodge floor, blocking the room's main entrance and—more important—its exit.

“It's time for a little rehearsal,” Jo announced.

• • •

In her haste, Jo forgot to ask Del about his mail run the previous evening.

In his, he failed to mention the letter currently stuffed in his back pocket.

Chuck

A
S THE F
IRST RAYS OF SUNLIGH
T NUDGED THEIR WAY
between the trees' needles, Chuck strolled down the dirt path toward the sparkling waters of Lake Atropos. She kicked off her Kelly-green high-tops as soon as she reached the pier. Still in her infirmary pajamas, Chuck leapt for the water, dunking herself toes to hair. The water was both bone-chilling and delightful at once.

It didn't feel a bit, she would note later, as though the lake were Coaxing away every last stitch of her Talent.

Lily

“
S
O YOU'RE NOT EV
EN TALKING TO ME NOW?”
L
ILY GRUMBLED
at her brother. They were sitting on two of the folding chairs that had been set up in the lodge. On the stage before them, Jo was calling up campers and counselors one by one. “Try on your new Talent for size!” she'd tell them. “Show off what you can do!” Then, with help from the audience, the person would attempt to deduce whose Talent he'd been given, and Jo would make a notation on her clipboard and declare, “Lovely! Lovely!
Next!
”

This was clearly not a typical dress rehearsal. Jo was looking for something.

“I just can't believe you put your Talent in an Artifact,” Max said, his arms across his chest. “Why would you
do
that? You know you can't ever get it back.”

“I did it for
you
!” The words practically exploded out of her. “So you'd . . .”

So you'd like me again.
That's what Lily had been about to say.
So you'd like me better than her.
But as soon as they met her lips, the words seemed silly, and she couldn't bring herself to push them out. “Jo's calling someone new,” she said instead. And then she noticed who the someone was.

Hannah.

“I already know what Talent I got,” Hannah announced, marching center stage. “It's Gracie's Talent for lie-detecting.” From the front row, Gracie let out an excited cheer. “Someone say something, and I'll tell you if it's true or not.”

“My favorite cheese is bleu!” cried a boy named Alfie.

“Lie!” Hannah shot back, with hardly a moment's debate.

“Yep!” Alfie seemed delighted to be caught in a fib. “My favorite's really ricotta.”

“Don't you miss it?” Max said quietly. It took Lily a moment to realize he was speaking to her.

“Being a Pinnacle?” she asked. Around and around she twisted the yarn at her thumb. “Not really.”

She missed it. It was like a hunger, almost, inside her. Aching. Gnawing.

“Not at all.”

Up on the stage, Jo made a mark on her clipboard. “Amazing,” she told Hannah. “Next!”

“This dress rehearsal stinks!” someone called from the audience. It was the large kid, Hal. “When are we going to switch our Talents back?” All through breakfast, which Chef Sheldon had served inside the lodge while Jo continued to help everyone “rehearse,” Hal had complained loudly about receiving Liam's Aroma Talent.

“Soon enough,” Jo told him. She flipped her harmonica end over end. Lily felt a pang in her chest every time she caught sight of the instrument. “Chuck needs a little more rest. In the meantime, shall we continue on,
hmmm
?”

“That's a lie,” Hannah said. “About Ch—” But Jo was already ushering her down the stage steps.

Lily was certain that Jo was looking for a specific Talent. But what could she do with it, now that the Talent in her harmonica had been Coaxed aw—?

It was in that moment that Lily spied Chuck out the window, making her way across the mess deck toward the back kitchen door.

“
Fine,
” Jo was saying to Teagan up on the stage. “The children can eat lunch. Is it really nearly noon already?” And while Teagan was herding campers into a line behind the kitchen window, Lily snuck past them and ducked out the back kitchen door. She met Chuck on the deck, and tugged her cabinmate beneath a table.

“You can't go in there,” Lily hissed.

“What? Why?” Droplets of water beaded from Chuck's cornrows onto the shoulders of her Camp Atropos T-shirt. “Nurse Bonnie said I was supposed to come as fast as I could. Am I in trouble?”

“Jo wants to use your Talent to steal someone else's,” Lily told her. She was sure of it.

“Whose?”

“I don't know,” Lily admitted. “But we have to get you out of here.”

Before they could make their way down the steps, Lily spied a shadow of movement—Chef Sheldon, crossing the mess deck to the dirt below, letting the back kitchen door swing shut behind him. “This way.” Lily jerked Chuck back across the deck to the kitchen door, and they slid inside unnoticed.

Through the frosted window that separated the kitchen from the lodge, Lily could make out silhouettes of campers waiting in line for Chef Sheldon's return. But the kitchen, at least, was empty.

And then the door was flung open.

“
There
you are!”

Lily's skin prickled with fright, until she saw who had entered the kitchen.

“Where have you
been
, Chuck?” Ellie said, hands on her hips. The door swung shut behind her. “Were you hiding from me again?”

“I wasn't
hiding
,” Chuck growled. “I was swimming in the lake.” Something flitted through Lily's mind then. An orange-flavored memory, something about the lake. But she couldn't fully taste it. “How'd you even know I was in here?”

“The frog told me,” Ellie replied.

That's when Lily noticed the frog squatting at Ellie's heel. He was the same one that had led her to the pier the night before. Bright green on top and white at the throat, with bulby pads at the ends of his toes.

Hdup-hdup!
went the frog.

“You
cannot
,” Chuck told her twin, “talk to frogs.”

“I
can
talk to frogs,” Ellie snapped back. “You can, too, Chuck, always could, whenever you Coaxed away my Talent. See?” And she reached out and grabbed Chuck's hand.

A look passed between the twins then. A look of confusion, maybe. Or concern.

“It . . .,” Chuck said. “It's not . . .
working
.”

There were footsteps on the mess deck.

Lily grabbed Chuck with one hand and Ellie with the other, and dragged them both to the large metal cabinets under the sink. She swept aside the cleaning supplies as quickly as she could and drew them all inside.

Just before she closed the cabinet doors, the frog hopped inside with them.