Bliss

  “Good morning,” Aunt Lily said. She plopped a black toiletry bag on the counter. “Time to get to work!”

  “I know,” Rose said, studying her aunt’s outfit—a short-sleeved purple top and a pair of slim-fitting jeans. Aunt Lily looked casual yet elegant. Rose glanced down at her own shirt and wasn’t sure that stripes were such a good choice, after all. “Time to start baking.”

  “That’s not the kind of work I meant.” Aunt Lily unzipped her bag, and Rose could see that it was full of makeup. Purdy never let Rose wear any sort of makeup, claiming that it made girls look “as unappetizing as one of those Stetson donuts.” But Rose had always secretly wondered if maybe a tiny bit of makeup—a little glamour—was exactly what she was missing.

  “Staying pretty isn’t easy, of course,” Aunt Lily said. “I never used to wear makeup at all. I liked the au naturel look. But then someone told me that my lips looked like a turkey’s, and from that day on I’ve never gone without some lipstick.” Rose watched, transfixed, as Aunt Lily outlined her lips with a red pencil. “Even Chapstick works in a pinch. Anything shiny will do.”

  As Aunt Lily applied the rest of her makeup, her already beautiful face began to look even more beautiful. And Rose couldn’t help but think of that voice in the pantry, the voice that told her that she would never be beautiful or powerful or important—the voice that somehow knew her deepest fear: that she would never be enough.

  Aunt Lily was still a suspicious character, but she was also the first person in Rose’s life who understood what it was to be a vibrant, smart, and beautiful woman. Maybe Aunt Lily could teach her what she needed to know so that Rose could grow up and be a vibrant, smart, and beautiful woman too.

  “Aunt Lily?” Rose found herself asking.

  “Yes, dear?”

  “Do you think, maybe … you could do my… I mean, help me with … um?”

  Aunt Lily stopped applying mascara midstroke and said, “You’d like me to help you look beautiful?”

  Rose nodded.

  “Darling,” Aunt Lily said, her voice a gentle purr, “I thought you’d never ask.”

  Rose waltzed into the kitchen feeling like a million dollars. Well, she actually had no idea what a million dollars felt like—but she felt good.

  Pretty.

  Chip was already there, dusting a replacement seven-layer cake with handfuls of fluffy coconut.

  “Good morning!” Rose said.

  “You know, Rose—I cleaned for five hours yesterday,” Chip grumbled. “I had to pick a librarian’s dentures off the floor. That is not part of my job description.”

  “I’m so sorry about that, Chip. I don’t know what got into those gals. The older ones or the younger ones.”

  Just then, Chip looked up from the cake. “You look … different, Rosie.”

  Rose glanced at Aunt Lily, who had a smile stretched across her face. “I think she looks just like herself,” Aunt Lily said. “Only a bit … brighter.”

  Rose liked the sound of that. A bit brighter. “I’ll go open the bakery. There’s probably already a line out there.” Rose glided through the saloon doors, wearing a friendly smile in anticipation of the multitude of friendly customers waiting to greet her.

  But there was no multitude.

  There wasn’t even a modest multitude.

  There wasn’t a single customer. No Mr. Bastable, no Miss Thistle, or Mrs. Havegood; no teachers, no librarians, no summer-school students.

  No one.

  “What do we need, Rose? More muffins?” said Aunt Lily, gliding into the front room. “Oh dear. Seems no one’s here yet.”

  Chip hurled his tanned, muscled torso into the front room to see for himself, a pile of shredded coconut in each hand. “Huh,” he said. “That’s weird. Thursday is usually our busiest morning.”

  “Yes! Bizarre!” Aunt Lily said. “Almost as if something were amiss.”

  Rose shrugged nervously. “Just wait,” she said. “They’ll come. Oh, they’re definitely coming.” Rose quietly consolidated a few nearly empty trays of muffins, adjusted the seven-layer cakes in their handsome glass stands, and then swept the black-and-white tile floor under the swirling wrought-iron café chairs, even though Chip had thoroughly swept the day before. She even shook out the old brown welcome mat.

  And then Rose planted herself behind the counter and waited.

  Three hours went by, and still no one had passed through the bakery, except for Mrs. Carlson, who had come downstairs to announce that Leigh was “a lazy mollusk” who refused to wake up, and that Mrs. Carlson herself would have to miss a day of tanning so that she could stay inside and watch the child until she had the decency to get out of bed. Then she had taken one look at Rose and her new look, harrumphed, and gone back upstairs.

  No one had passed in front of the bakery, not even in a car. Rose had called her friend Alexandra to hang out, like she promised herself she’d do, but no one had answered. It was like the world had stopped moving and the Bliss house just hadn’t gotten the memo.

  Chip abandoned baking for the day and sat in the kitchen doing a Sudoku puzzle. Aunt Lily wiped down the glass front of the counter for a third time that morning while Rose did some math in her head:

  Ty had gotten back from delivering the last of the cakes around ten. It was noon now. The recipe said the cake took twelve hours to reach its maximum potential. So why had no one come to the bakery? Were they too satiated from eating cake the night before to even think about buying muffins? Who was ever too full for a muffin?

  Just then, Ty and Sage came downstairs, both dressed in matching blue button-down dress shirts, their hair gelled into matching red faux hawks. Sage looked like a shrunken version of Ty, with rounder cheeks.

  “Don’t you both look handsome!” said Aunt Lily.

  The moment they saw Rose, they spoke at the same time. “What’s wrong?”

  “Jinx!” cried Sage.

  “No one says that anymore,” Rose said.

  “You look different.” Ty walked a circle around Rose, crossing his arms in front of his chest. “What is it?”

  Rose couldn’t help but smile. “Why don’t you guess?”

  “I know!” said Sage. “You’re not wearing any underwear!”

  Rose shook her head. “Wrong. Try again.”

  “New shirt?” Ty grimaced. “No, you’ve had that ugly striped thing forever.”

  “No!” Could her brothers really not tell what was different? “I’m wearing makeup!”

  “Oh, is that all?” said Ty, instantly bored. “Is that why the bakery isn’t open? Because you put on makeup?”

  “No. What does makeup have to do with the bakery?”

  “I don’t know,” he said, picking up a muffin and sniffing it. “It’s just strange that no one’s here.”

  “Exactly—no one came to the bakery this morning,” Rose began, trying not to get too upset in front of Aunt Lily. “Not one single person. Which is weird. I think maybe something is, you know”—she winked—“wrong.” Her lip trembled a little. It was scary to admit that something might be wrong after having been so thoroughly and comfortably convinced that all was, at last, right.

  “Maybe they blocked off the street ’cause they’re filming an episode of Law & Order or something!” Sage volunteered, pumping a fist into the air.

  Ty went to the window and peeked around the corner, where the only movement came from a lazy July breeze rustling through their neighbor’s hedges. He turned to her and scratched the back of his neck, which was something Ty did only when he was genuinely concerned. “You’re right: It’s weird. Let’s just pop into the town square to make sure everything is copacetic, okay? Just to soothe our minds?”

  “Aunt Lily,” Rose asked, in the sort of calm, professional voice that her guidance counselor used to help her plan out her class schedule, “would you mind manning the counter while we pop over to the town square for a minute?”

  Aunt Lily used the same voice. “I don’t mind at all! G
o forth and prosper!”

  Standing in the center of the town square, Rose’s mind was anything but soothed.

  On the way, they’d passed by a quiet school, an empty church parking lot, a deserted firehouse, and a people’s court with no people. Cars sat abandoned in driveways. Rows of storefronts were a blur of red and white signs bearing the same seven ugly letters: CLOSED.

  The brick plaza of the town square was hot and empty as a desert. Rose could see the heat rising off the statue of Reginald Calamity and the roof of Pierre Guillaume’s and the silver awning of Calamity Cream, but no one was tossing coins in the fountain, waiting for coq au vin, or selling scoops of coffee ice cream.

  Rose spun around when she heard a scuffle from across the plaza, hoping that it was a person.

  But no. It was just a pigeon, a fat gray pigeon waddling over the brick searching desperately for crumbs from sandwiches and potato chips that weren’t being eaten on this hot, still, alien day.

  “I don’t get it,” said Sage. “Shouldn’t everyone be back to normal?”

  Ty nervously scratched the back of his neck with one hand and his smooth chin with the other. “Maybe everyone just overslept! Heck—me and Sage did! Maybe they’ll be up by dinnertime.”

  But by seven o’clock that evening, still no one had stirred—including Leigh, who had been snoring contentedly for over twenty-four hours. Mrs. Carlson had called the doctor at four to ask what might be the matter, but no one had answered. At around five p.m., Chip went home for the day, declaring, “Well, that was a waste! I could have done my laundry today.”

  As the sky began to darken, Aunt Lily cornered Rose in the kitchen.

  “Something is wrong. It seems that everyone in town has either taken a sleeping pill or has fallen under the spell of a wicked witch.”

  Rose was heartened by the thought that perhaps there was an actual wicked witch in Calamity Falls who had caused some sleeping enchantment, but her heart sank again when she realized that the wicked witch was, in fact, Rose Bliss.

  “This wouldn’t have anything to do with the cake that you all distributed to the entire town yesterday, would it? The one that ‘fixed everything?’” Aunt Lily’s voice was an unsettling mix of worry and anger.

  Rose drooped as she thought of how thoroughly she had broken her parents’ rules. Her only goal for the week had been to prove to her parents that she was worthy of their respect, of using the family cookbook, of being a real baker.

  Instead, she had cooked up a huge mess, a mess so dark and deep that being at the center of it felt a lot like being at the bottom of a swamp.

  As if Lily could read her mind, she said, “Rose, I know what it’s like to feel like everyone else outshines you, like you need to scream for their attention. I used to be an entirely plain person—then I discovered baking. You and I both bake because we enjoy it, but we also bake because we want to be extraordinary. And sometimes when you’re trying to be extraordinary, you go too far. Do you know what I mean?”

  Rose nodded. No one had ever put it so succinctly.

  And for putting it so succinctly, Rose felt that perhaps Lily wouldn’t judge her if she just buckled down and told the truth. She began with a big breath.

  “Well, it started when we made some Love Muffins and gave them to Mr. Bastable and Miss Thistle and then we made Cookies of Truth and tried to give them to Mrs. Havegood but Chip accidentally gave them out to everyone in the town including the librarians, who had a catfight in the lobby of the bakery, and then Ty gave Love Muffins and Cookies of Truth to all the girls in his class because I think beneath it all he’s kind of insecure and attention-seeking like everyone else, and the girls went crazy like they were at a Justin Bieber concert and they all fainted but we gave them a Turn-Around-Inside-Out-Upside-Down Cake that reversed everything we did before and then Ty gave the Upside-Down Cake to every single person in town so they’d go back to normal and basically we had it covered, but now I’m thinking maybe something might have gone a little bit wrong because the town seems to have, you know, frozen….” Rose drifted off as she huffed for air. She’d expected to feel a wonderful lightness after sharing the truth, but instead she felt shooting stomach pains.

  Lily held Rose’s cheeks in her soft hands. “Rose, you are incredible. You are quite simply the cleverest, most talented young person I have ever seen. There is true greatness in you.”

  Rose wanted to freeze that moment and live in it, like a dollhouse. She couldn’t remember ever feeling so filled with potential. She felt like gold was coursing through her veins. She didn’t question why Lily was being so encouraging, so complimentary. She just wanted to bottle the feeling and take a sip each morning before floating out of bed and skipping gracefully through the day.

  “But,” Aunt Lily went on, snapping Rose out of her euphoria, “part of greatness is admitting when you need help. And if something has gone wrong, there’s a chance I can help. I do have some experience with this sort of thing.” Lily’s eyes went wide, and Rose couldn’t help but wonder if Lily meant that she had experience with baking, or with managing magical disasters.

  There was no time to wonder, because at that moment they heard Mrs. Carlson screaming from upstairs. “Help! It’s Leigh!”

  Rose and Lily ran upstairs and found Mrs. Carlson hunched over on the hall carpet, pinning Leigh to the floor. Leigh didn’t seem to mind—she just giggled happily and flailed her arms. Sage arrived in the hall a moment later, panting.

  “Where’s Ty?” asked Rose.

  “Taking out the garbage,” Sage answered. “Geez, Louise! What’s wrong with Leigh?”

  “The child is possessed! Call the priest!” Mrs. Carlson shouted in her thick brogue.

  “She looks fine!” Rose cried.

  “I’m telling you, Satan has invaded her soul!”

  “Oh, nonsense,” Lily said, gently pulling Mrs. Carlson away.

  “Release me, harlot! The child must be contained!”

  And then Rose understood what Mrs. Carlson was ranting about: Once she was free, Leigh got up on all fours and began to shuffle backward over the carpet of the upstairs hallway, butt first, like a lamb being herded backward into a pen.

  Then Leigh opened her mouth, and the weird got even weirder. “Ym eman si Yelsrap!” she gurgled. “Ym eman si Yelsrap!”

  Sage pointed to Leigh and said, “Whoa. I think she really is possessed!”

  Suddenly from outside there came the sound of someone screaming. Rose and Sage and Lily rushed to the bathroom window, which overlooked the side of the house.

  The scream had come from Ty, who was standing by the garbage cans, paralyzed with fear.

  He was surrounded by a circle of eight men in gray uniforms, each hugging a bulging black plastic sack in his arms. Rose thought at first that the men were walking away from Ty, but it soon became clear that they were moving toward Ty—backward. These grown men were walking backward. All eight of them.

  They planted their toes in the ground behind them and then rocked back onto their heels. Their heads faced forward. As the circle of men drew tighter around Ty, he huddled behind the trash cans and screamed for help.

  But the men ignored him.

  They simply dropped their sacks on the ground, then turned around and walked backward toward the street, one or another of them stumbling to the ground or bumping into a shrub every few feet. Through the window, Rose could finally see the labels on the breast pockets of their uniforms: CALAMITY FALLS SANITATION.

  When finally they bumped into the side of their truck, all eight of them awkwardly piled backward into the cab, then drove—backward—to the next house, the truck beeping down the street.

  “That’s not right,” Aunt Lily said. “Come on.”

  Downstairs, they flew out the backdoor and circled Ty.

  “What was that all about?” Rose asked, brushing away a stray piece of garbage that had fallen on Ty’s sleeve during the drop-off.

  “Those garbage men just delivered garbage,?
?? said Ty, kicking at one of the bags. “They delivered it instead of doing what they’re supposed to do: take it away.”

  “Is this even our garbage?” Sage asked. “It smells kind of funky.”

  “Why were they walking backward?” Rose asked.

  Ty gasped, his lips forming an O. “I don’t think that’s all. Look!”

  Rose gazed down the driveway at the street that, in the dark, had finally come to life. Lights had flickered on in all of the houses, and a few people in bathrobes were backing down their front walks, depositing their folded newspapers in the grass, and then walking backward inside again. A few garage doors were raised, and cars reversed out into the street, then swerved backward to the end of the block and around the corner. Mr. Roller was busily wiping dirt onto his Corvette with a muddy sponge, as Peter Strickland, the paperboy, slowly rolled his bike backward down the sidewalk, stopping every now and again to steal a newspaper off a lawn. Mrs. Burns dragged her sheltie down the opposite side of the street, a blue plastic bag in her hand.

  “I don’t even want to know what she’s going to do with that dog,” Ty said.

  Across the street, Rose saw Mrs. Calhoun kiss little Kenny on the head and hand him his lunch box. Kenny ran off backward with his backpack in the direction of the elementary school.

  “What is everyone doing?” she asked. “It’s nighttime! They should be getting ready for bed.”

  Lily smoothed Rose’s bangs over her forehead. “It seems that the Turn-Around-Inside-Out-Upside-Down Cake is doing just what it claimed to do.”

  “Yeah, I’m starting to think the Upside-Down cake was maybe not the best idea,” Ty said, frowning. “In retrospect.”

  “So it’s the cake’s fault?” Sage asked.

  “It’s our fault,” Rose said, feeling like she was going to throw up. She and Ty hadn’t fixed everything—they’d made it worse.

  Their next-door-neighbor Mrs. Daublin walked backward in front of the house wearing her muumuu and turban. She looked at Rose with a friendly expression—a stark reversal for their very cranky neighbor. “Olleh, Esor!” she shouted, lifting one foot in the air and shaking it back and forth like she was waving. She lost her balance and fell to the pavement, laughing hysterically.