Perfume (15 page)

I don’t even know, thought Dove, facing the terrible possibility at last, whether I am real or Wing is real. I don’t know if there are two of us or one of us. I don’t know if there is a vanished twin … or a sick girl.

The car sped along. Hesta’s eyes flickered constantly over Wing, assessing the situation, taking care, while Wing waited patiently for her chance, as she had waited the first fifteen years.

Hesta was not evil. She just wasn’t very nice. It was kind of a middle ground, Dove supposed.

But I was nice, thought Dove. I’m still nice. I’m just not here.

She remembered an unpleasant bumper sticker:
Nice guys finish last.
Dove struggled for life and breath.
If they finish at all,
she thought.

The stutter of the engine ceased. The car jerked. The seat belts detached. The door opened. Dove felt herself leaving the car.

They were at the mall.

This is where Wing came in, thought Dove. If only she would leave as easily as she arrived!

And then she knew.

She knew a truth as ancient as Egypt, as blue as the Nile, as certain as eternity.

Nothing is easy.

Fighting evil cannot be easy.

It can’t be accomplished by lying there. Nor by wishing. Nor by feeling sorry for herself.

She had to get up and fight.

Kick.

Scream.

Bite.

Raise hell.

Named for peace, thought Dove. Going to war.

You cannot fight evil except by waging war against it. I’m in here. I just have to pull myself together. I have to stop thinking of antidotes. I have to stop wondering what that fragrance was that half-saved me those other times. I have to stand up and fight.

Hesta and Wing passed The Gap, and Lord & Taylor’s. They passed Brookstone’s and Häagen-Dazs. Hesta kept saying, “Let’s go in here. Let’s go in this one. Come on, Dove, where are you going? Let’s look in here.”

Dove gathered her molecules and her energy. Dove reached for her thoughts and her soul.

“This is where Dry Ice used to be,” said Hesta. “I wonder whatever happened to that store?”

“It served its purpose,” said Wing softly.

“Let’s go in the new store,” said Hesta. It was filled with rose-scented soaps, mauve ribbons, potpourri, and lace-trimmed sachets.

“No,” said Wing scornfully. “It’s a stupid store. An old ladies’ store.”

Dove struggled and suddenly she came together, and was there, and had substance. In the prison of the back of the mind, she began fighting to get out.

“Stop that!” said Wing sharply, and she hit her head to get rid of the buzzing and the banging.

I’m getting somewhere! thought Dove, and she struggled harder, and finally took a breath and began screaming as well.

Wing banged her head against one of the huge pillars that circled the center of the mall and held up the high, high ceilings of glass.

“Stop it,” whispered Hesta. “You look too weird, Dove. We’re going in this other store so you can get a grip, Dove.

I’m trying, thought Dove, but it’s slippery.

The store smelled grandmotherly. Hesta hauled her friend into the store. Sweet fragrance wafted up from a stack of antique linen handkerchiefs edged in hand-done crochet. Wing’s hand and Dove’s hand fought on the same body for the same reach.

Dove got hold of one of the two hands. She seized the top handkerchief.

“Lilac perfume,” said the storekeeper, smiling. “I’ve always thought it’s the fragrance of gentleness. Of serenity and safety. Of good times and loving families.”

Dove was up and running now, and she could see through the eyes at last, and hear through the ears; she was halfway there.
I’m going to throw you out, Wing!
she cried.
I’m giving you back to the sky. You came down the skylight at the condo, and you’re going up the skylight in the mall. It’s the same sky
—
the same blue
—
the same evil. Wing
—
you are about to say good-bye.

Never
, said Wing.

Hesta said to the counter person, “Do you remember a perfume called
Venom
?”

“Oh my goodness, it was out only a few days. Very poor consumer reaction, as I recall. No. People don’t want a perfume like that. They want soft sweet scents, to make them feel romantic and gentle and friendly.”

Dove pounded on the sides of the mind, biting at it, gouging it with her fingernails.

Let me out of here!
screamed Dove.
Give me back my body and my mind and my soul!

“I’m keeping it!” said Wing through gritted teeth. “Leave me alone.”

Dove pressed the white handkerchief against her face, and their shared lungs—driven by biology and not by evil—filled with air.

Lilac-scented air.

Lilac sachets, too. And drawer lining paper. Scented writing paper. And cologne. The store was all perfume.

Wing wrenched free, and strode toward the center of the mall, toward the place where the great glass pyramid raised its apex to the sky. She laughed, with her ancient history in her genes, and her terrible future in her hands.

It was not quite an antidote, that lilac. It was a boost, a step, a strengthener. But only Dove could throw off the evil.

It’s you who will vanish,
said Wing.
Forever, Dove. I am destroying you. I am going to satisfy myself at last! I am going to keep this body and you are vanishing! My strength is too ancient for yours
, said Wing.
You can make me pause, and you can make me stumble, but in the end, I am evil, and evil always wins.

They were beneath the shimmering glass of the pyramid.

Dove did not look up. She did not look around. She did not look back.

She did not dream of a better past or a better future.

She just did what she had to do.

Evil cannot win, she thought. Evil cannot always be stronger than good. I have strength, too.

“Take her back!” cried Dove. “I will not be owned by evil. I will not let evil hurt my friends and my family. Take Wing back!” Dove stepped into the cool tumbling water of the fountain.

Hesta was saying something, but it was not worth listening to.

“Go!” ordered Dove, and her voice was as strong as a general’s at war. With the lilac handkerchief she waved up a wind, and on the wind she threw the evil that was Wing. “Fly away, Wing,” whispered Dove. “You were given a wing, use it.”

“I don’t want to go,” said Wing, but her voice was only a tremble on the wind, and the wind was going up.

Hesta was not the only one saying something now. A great many people had gathered around and were saying things.

They did not understand. Dove was dancing out evil. It was an important dance, and it had to be danced now, and it had to danced here. You could not choose your battleground, or combat evil safely and neatly behind closed doors.

“Go!” shouted Dove.

And Wing went.

She faded like a newspaper left in the sun. Crinkled, kindling that flamed for a moment, and then went up the chimney. Not perfume, but smoke. Not venom, but vapor. Not even evil. Just nothingness.

“Fly well, Wing!” Dove cried after her vanished twin. “I’m not mad at you, I’m really not. I even understand. But this is my body, Wing. Only one person to a body, Wing. Don’t come back.”

Wing was gone.

She passed into the pyramid and the sky above as she had passed into Dove’s body, without other people seeing or believing.

I saved them, thought Dove. I saved Timmy and Luce and Hesta and my parents. And they don’t even know. They will never know.

I might as well have burned myself at the stake. They will call me crazy and I will be abandoned.

Dove turned to face the music of angry voices.

T
HE SCHOOL YEAR ENDED, AND
with it, Dove’s friendships.

The only person with whom she could really talk, strangely enough, was Mr. Phinney.

“Maybe it’s because you understand the ancient world,” said Dove.

Mr. Phinney sat comfortably on the edge of his desk. He was free for the summer from papers and projects. “It is true,” said Mr. Phinney, “that evil is ancient.”

And perfume is ancient, thought Dove. But the scent of lilac is even older. It is as old as gardens. I sent the perfume spinning back into the past, but lilac I kept.

“I suppose,” said Mr. Phinney, “that we study history in order to understand the evil that came before us, and continue the struggle to prevent evil in our time. Evil will always assault the innocent. We must always be ready.” He smiled at her. “You were ready, Dove.”

“I didn’t even know what evil was,” she said. She thought of the perfume bottle, its sensuous curves and glittering prisms. She thought of the
Venom
inside. Gone now. Both gone forever.

Hesta had spilled the perfume when she left it at Dove’s. What little had been still in the bottle had evaporated. In the end, nature had taken the perfume; Dove had been left with a piece of glass. She had smashed it before she threw it away, so nobody would ever find it and be tempted to keep the bottle—touch it, wash it—perhaps even put other scents inside it.

Mr. Phinney and Dove shook hands when they parted for the summer, rather as if they were sealing a pact, and perhaps they were, because in all the world, only Mr. Phinney believed her story.

Dove left the ancient history classroom. She left the second floor and the high school. She left the year in which another person had lived inside her mind.

She left the terrible memories of an ancient vial of ancient scent.

She emerged into the softness of summer. The only smells were natural, the only shapes were ordinary. The only emotion Dove felt was pleasure: a good, sturdy, kind emotion.

Good-bye perfume! thought Dove.

“Hi, Dove.”

It was not the voice of a perfume evaporated and a bottle cracked. It was Luce. She was smiling. “Wanna come over to my house?” said Luce. “Celebrate the end of school?”

“Sure.”

They walked together. Nothing is better than walking with a friend.

“Isn’t it a beautiful day?” said Luce.

It was a beautiful day. A friend had forgiven and come back for her, and weather hardly mattered in the face of such beauty.

Dove stroked the handkerchief in her pocket. Her fingertips ran along the soft crocheted edging, as old as great-grandmothers, as aged as a more comfortable century. The scent of lilac drifted gently into the car, and held her in its sweet protection.

Caroline B. Cooney is the author of ninety books for teen readers, including the bestselling thriller
The Face on the Milk Carton
. Her books have won awards and nominations for more than one hundred state reading prizes. They are also on recommended-reading lists from the American Library Association, the New York Public Library, and more. Cooney is best known for her distinctive suspense novels and romances.

Born in 1947, in Geneva, New York, Cooney grew up in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, where she was a library page at the Perrot Memorial Library and became a church organist before she could drive. Music and books have remained staples in her life. 

Cooney has attended lots of colleges, picking up classes wherever she lives. Several years ago, she went to college to relearn her high school Latin and begin ancient Greek, and went to a total of four universities for those subjects alone!

Her sixth-grade teacher was a huge influence. Mr. Albert taught short story writing, and after his class, Cooney never stopped writing short stories. By the time she was twenty-five, she had written eight novels and countless short stories, none of which were ever published. Her ninth book,
Safe as the Grave
, a mystery for middle readers, became her first published book in 1979. Her real success began when her agent, Marilyn Marlow, introduced her to editors Ann Reit and Beverly Horowitz.

Cooney’s books often depict realistic family issues, even in the midst of dramatic adventures and plot twists. Her fondness for her characters comes through in her prose: “I love writing and do not know why it is considered such a difficult, agonizing profession. I love all of it, thinking up the plots, getting to know the kids in the story, their parents, backyards, pizza toppings.” Her fast-paced, plot-driven works explore themes of good and evil, love and hatred, right and wrong, and moral ambiguity.

Among her earliest published work is the Fog, Snow, and Fire trilogy (1989–1992), a series of young adult psychological thrillers set in a boarding school run by an evil, manipulative headmaster. In 1990, Cooney published the award-winning
The Face on the Milk Carton,
about a girl named Janie who recognizes herself as the missing child on the back of a milk carton. The series continued in
Whatever Happened to Janie?
(1993),
The Voice on the Radio
(1996), and
What Janie Found
(2000). The first two books in the Janie series were adapted for television in 1995. A fifth book,
Janie Face to Face
, will be released in 2013.

Cooney has three children and four grandchildren. She lives in South Carolina, and is currently researching a book about the children on the
Mayflower
.