Bliss (24 page)

“Well, that's the only little snag. We'd need the Bliss Cookery Booke. I've gathered a few magical recipes from the Bliss canon in my travels, but only enough for a few episodes.”

“So you want to … steal the cookbook?”

Aunt Lily chuckled nervously. “No, of course not, dear. I'd only borrow it!”

“But won't my parents notice it's gone? How would they do their own baking?” And then she thought of something else she was almost afraid to ask. “Wouldn't they miss me?”

Aunt Lily pointed her finger and wiggled Rose's nose back and forth. “That, my darling, is the simple part. When I was young, I learned a recipe for a wonderful little treat called a Forget-Me Biscuit. You just whisper the name of the thing you'd like the eaters to forget—in our case, that would be you and me and the Bliss Cookery Booke—and you mix the whisper into the biscuit dough. Then we'd feed the biscuits to Ty, Sage, Leigh, Chip, Mrs. Carlson, and your mother and father, and then they'd forget that you or I or the book ever existed. They won't miss you a wink! They'll go on running a lovely bakery with their other lovely children—it just won't be magical. Meanwhile, you and I will become blisteringly, mind-blowingly famous and respected and adored!”

Rose couldn't believe she was even entertaining this notion, but there she was, entertaining it. “Do the biscuits really work?” she found herself asking.

“Oh, I know they work. I've used them before,” Lily said, grinning. “How do you think I escaped my own humdrum family? I was destined for greatness, and they were only holding me back. So I whipped up a batch of biscuits, and they never got in my way again!”

Rose glanced outside again at her brothers as they pushed her sister back and forth in the swing. How could she leave them? Would their lives be the same without her?

On the other hand, how could she stay and let things go back to the way they had been? Rose couldn't take another day of being sent out like an errand girl to buy fruit while her parents did all the magic and her siblings all had better things to do. Not after this week. She'd seen the book in all its glory, and she wasn't about to give it up now. Still, the whole thing seemed a little drastic.

“I don't know if I can,” said Rose.

“Well, it's just a matter of whether you'd like to stay here for the rest of your life and squander your gifts, or whether you want to really make something of yourself, to win the respect of millions and grow up to be a glamorous woman of the world. Like
moi
.”

A glamorous woman of the world. Respected by millions. Those were all that Rose ever wanted to be. But at what price?

“When would we leave?” Rose coughed. “
If
I were going.”

Aunt Lily yawned nonchalantly. “Tomorrow morning. I will be up late preparing the dough for the Forget-Me Biscuits. If you'd like to go, join me in the kitchen late tonight and we'll make magic—”

Just as Aunt Lily was finishing up her instructions, Ty and Sage carried Leigh into the kitchen and settled into the booth with Lily and Rose.

Sage stood next to the table and made a proclamation. “I say we order
pizza
for dinner!” He bowed with one hand in front of him, as if he were wearing a cape. “This is our last night before Mom and Dad come back, and there will be no more fun food after that. And no more magic.”

“Right. No more magic,” Rose said. So it was true. Even Sage thought it. They would never be allowed to touch the cookbook again, even if they didn't mention all the trouble it had caused. Rose's parents just didn't trust her.

After Leigh fell asleep that night, Rose quietly packed her clothes and her alarm clock into the little yellow duffel bag she sometimes brought to sleepovers. Then Rose tiptoed through the hallway and downstairs into the kitchen, where Aunt Lily was standing over the kitchen counter, an empty blue mason jar in her hand.

“Lily,” her aunt whispered into the jar. The whisper glowed a faint purple as it swirled into the jar. Inside, the glowing air congealed into a faint ghostly image of Lily's smiling face.

Thankfully, Aunt Lily hadn't seen her. Rose continued watching.

“The Bliss Cookery Booke,” Lily whispered. And the new whisper floated into the jar and formed an image of the familiar brown leather cover of the Cookery Booke.

And then, “Rosemary.” When Aunt Lily whispered her name, Rose's arms instantly broke out into cold, clammy goose bumps.

Rose watched as Lily's whisper formed a glowing image of Rose's whole body inside the jar. She couldn't say for sure, but it looked from her perch on the steps like her image was banging on the glass walls of the jar, screaming to be let out.

Aunt Lily screwed the top on the mason jar and shook it, then opened it over a metal mixing bowl in which she'd prepared a crumbly, buttery dough. The whispers whipped out of the jar and into the bowl. The ball of dough rose out of the bowl and shattered into a thousand little pieces that hung suspended in the hot, dark air of the kitchen.

The crumbles of dough swirled around, slowly at first, then faster, like leaves in an eddy, until all the minuscule pieces swirled back into the bowl like they were going down a drain.

Aunt Lily patted the dough with her hands. “All right! That's done.”

That's when she looked up and noticed Rose standing on the stairs.

Aunt Lily smiled widely. They both knew what this meant.

“I'm coming to New York,” Rose whispered.

CHAPTER 17

Homecoming

B
efore the crack of dawn the next morning, Aunt Lily went to Rose's room and shook her awake. “Let's go, my darling! The biscuits are baking downstairs.”

Rose slipped on a pair of jeans and a blue T-shirt that she'd laid out for the trip. Then, once Aunt Lily had disappeared downstairs, Rose slipped into the bathroom to brush her teeth one final time.

Rose was surprised to see Ty and Sage and Leigh inside, having a brush party. Ty looked annoyingly handsome as ever in his navy basketball shorts. Sage's hair was a wild curly mess. Leigh stared up at Rose with dark, trusting eyes that seemed to take up the entire upper half of her face. It had been easier to imagine being away from them the night before, when they weren't right in front of her, looking so earnest.

“What are you guys doing up so early?”

“We're gonna make breakfast for Mom and Dad when they come home,” said Sage.

“Will you help us?” asked Ty. “We don't actually know how to make anything.”

Leigh ran up to Rose and tugged on the leg of her jeans. “Look what I found, Rosie!” Rose looked down and saw Leigh clutching her old Polaroid camera.

“Why do you have that?” Rose asked.

“I wanna picture!” Leigh said, her eyes wide and her voice high and squeaky. She pointed at Rose and her brothers.

“Come in for a picture,
mi hermana
,” said Ty. And he put one arm around Rose and another around Sage, and then Rose picked up Leigh and held her close, the camera turned around in her hands so that it was aimed at the four of them. There was a flash as Leigh snapped a photo.

Sage blew on the picture when it fell out of the camera and handed it to Leigh. Everyone leaned in to watch the picture develop.

After a minute, the images of Rose and her siblings came to life on paper: Ty standing tall with his spiky red hair; Sage, pudgy, with his curly orange hair; Leigh, whose mouth was wide-open; and Rose, with her long dark hair, the black sheep.

“I'm going to keep this one,” Rose told her sister. She took the picture and stuffed it in the pocket of her shirt, right over her heart.

“Why are you crying, Rose?” Sage asked. “You don't look
that
bad in the picture.”

Rose wiped a salty tear from her cheek. “I just… I love you guys, is all.”

Ty and Sage looked at Rose like she had five heads. Leigh just hugged her big sister's leg.

“I mean, we love you too, Rosita,” said Ty. “Duh! That goes without saying!”

Rose peeled off her sister and ran from the bathroom. She couldn't stand to look at their faces anymore.

“Where are you going, weirdo?” Sage yelled. “What is wrong with girls?”

“I'll be right back!” Rose shouted from the top of the stairs. But she wouldn't be right back. At least they wouldn't have to miss her.

Downstairs she found Aunt Lily, who had baked the biscuits and arranged them in a picnic basket on the table with a note that said, “Please Eat.”

“Ready?” said Aunt Lily eagerly. Her hair was glossy and clean and dark like Rose's own, and her dress was white with tiny colored flowers along the hem.

“Sure am.” Rose nodded gravely. She pulled the Polaroid picture of her and her family from her pocket and looked at it.

“Isn't that darling?” Aunt Lily said, leaning over her shoulder. And then she slid the picture from Rose's fingers and placed it in the trash.

“Why did you do that?” Rose asked, furious.

“I can't let you take any pictures with you, Rose. They mess with the magic of the Forget-Me Biscuits. If you look at a picture of someone who has eaten the biscuit, they'll be able to remember you. And that would be very painful for them, because then they'll know you're gone. So I'm sorry, but it's got to be a clean break. You'll have to leave your pictures. It's best for everyone.”

And with that, Aunt Lily picked up her little tweed suitcase and stepped out the back door. “Coming, darling?”

Rose looked at Aunt Lily, her chic haircut, her painted lips, the arch of her perfect eyebrows. Then an impatience flashed through Aunt Lily's eyes—the same impatience that had made Rose pause so many times before trusting Aunt Lily with the truth.

Rose hadn't planned on tossing the Forget-Me Biscuits in the garbage, but that's exactly what she did. It was as if her hands were working quite on their own. Rose reached beneath the steaming pile of trashed biscuits, pulled out the Polaroid, and stuffed it back into her pocket.

“No!” Aunt Lily cried. “What are you doing?”

“I'm sorry, Aunt Lily,” Rose said quietly. “But I just can't leave my family. They're not perfect, not by a long shot, but I can't steal the cookbook and run away. It's not right. And even if they ate these biscuits and never thought about me, I'd be thinking about them the whole time. What's the point of being famous if the people who love you most don't even know you anymore?”

Rose took the first deep breath she'd taken in a week. There, at last, was the truth of the matter.

Aunt Lily was fuming. She had lost all her cool. Rose had never seen her crack anything but a smile—now her skin had gone all red, and the corners of her mouth turned down into an angry, ugly growl. “But they don't appreciate you! When your parents get back, they'll lock up the book and they won't let you bake anything, and your brothers will go back to ignoring you! They don't love you, Rose;
I
love you.”

“You don't even know who I am.”

“What do you mean?” Aunt Lily shouted. “Of course I know who you are!”

“You've known me one week. If you loved me, you'd have been here from the beginning. You'd have stuck with me, like my parents and my brothers have. You wouldn't just come around when they're gone to try to steal our cookbook.”

Lily didn't even try to argue that one. Rose finally saw the truth. Lily had come for the book.

“If you come with me, you'll be famous. You'll be glamorous. People will look up to you. I'll teach you all the tricks! You think boys like Devin Stetson will fawn all over you when they're not under a magical stupor?” Aunt Lily wagged her finger. “Wrong. You need me, Rose. Without me you're nothing.”

Rose's nose wrinkled in disgust. Something snapped into place inside of Rose. Aunt Lily wasn't the strong, independent woman Rose had imagined her to be. Aunt Lily was the weak one. Maybe Devin Stetson wouldn't like her without any makeup. Maybe her parents wouldn't let her bake magical recipes once they were back home.

But at least they loved her.

Aunt Lily loved only herself.

“Actually, Aunt Lily, I'm doing just fine.” Rose said. “You're the one who has nothing.” Rose held out her open palm. “Now, give me the key.”

With a sneer, Lily removed the key from around her neck and plopped it into Rose's outstretched hand. “Knock yourself out,” she said coldly.

And then Aunt Lily hitched her tweed suitcase to her motorcycle and sped away.

At the roar of Lily's motor and the sound of squealing tires, Ty and Sage hurried downstairs with Leigh. “Did Aunt Lily just go?” Sage asked. “Why didn't she say good-bye?”

“She was in a hurry,” said Rose. She couldn't help but smile. Then she put an arm around both of her brothers, stared down at Leigh, and said, “Now let's go make that breakfast.”