The four of us stand in the garden near the well, which overflows with gardenia.
“Aunt Bryony is the one with the earrings.”
My best friend looks like a Polynesian princess in her homecoming attire—white lavalava, styled with flip-flops and a gold bracelet. For me, she procured a dress of blush-colored silk from Twice Loved with balloon sleeves that my aunt snipped off with the sewing scissors. I float my arms above my head, reveling in the freedom of my strapless gown. According to Aunt Bryony, the dramatic decrease in the number of botanicals going in through my nose means a proportionate reduction in aromateur pollen. In other words, I’m no longer so contagious. For the time being.
Aunt Bryony places a tuberose lei around Kali’s neck, while Mother produces a corsage from a box. I gasp when I see it. It’s the second bud from Layla’s Sacrifice. It’s no longer shriveled like a dried corn nut, but a white bud edged with pink, like the head of a brush dragged through paint. Mother wrapped it with tiny loops of pearls.
“How? I burned it.”
Mother fusses with its placement. “Some things never die. It’s useless for elixirs now, but it’ll still smell sweet.” Then she sprays BBG on my hair like a beautician. “Just in case.”
Aunt Bryony swats her arm. “She hardly needs No Mister anymore, I told you. And that stuff is expensive.”
“I know that. You used half my jasmine to make it.” She stops spraying and fiddles with one of my hairpins. “How would you like to spend the summer with Aunt Bryony in Hawaii?”
I pull away from her to see if she’s serious. She clamps a hairpin between her lips.
Kali clasps her hands together. “Say yes, Nosey.”
“Yes! But, who’s going to help you?”
She removes the hairpin from her mouth. “I decided it’s time to modernize.”
Aunt Bryony snorts. “It was that time twenty years ago.” She removes the lens cover from an expensive-looking camera and aims it at Kali. “More attitude. Come on, work it!”
Kali unleashes a supermodel pout, and Aunt Bryony snaps away.
“Your aunt’s going to order some new equipment for me. But I’m keeping my beam scale.” She throws Aunt Bryony a warning look.
Loud squawking from overhead halts further conversation. A swarm of birds with bright-green feathers swoops down out of nowhere and dives into our palm trees.
Aunt Bryony shades her eyes with her hand. “Well, isn’t that something? I haven’t seen them since Mother died.”
“Neither have I. They haven’t been back for twenty years.”
“Those are the parrots?” I stretch my eyes open as wide as they can go.
Kali covers her ears. “They sure make a lot of noise.”
The parrots leave the trees and start circling above us. “That’s not all they make.” Mother covers her head with her arms. “Let’s go inside before they ruin your finery.”
From the minute I lay eyes on my tuxedoed escort aboard the SS Argonaut, I’m floating. Even when Kali is crowned homecoming queen to the squeals of her date, Cassandra, I’m still so starry-eyed that I almost forget to snap their picture.
One table over, I hear Vicky boast, “I knew Kali was a lesbian all along.”
Everyone’s too busy cheering to notice. After a nod from his date, Lauren, a freshly shampooed Drew coaxes the sour-faced Vicky onto the dance floor.
Though I will never be chummy with Vicky, the sight of her giggling gives me a weirdly warm feeling. All it took was a cheerful heart like the one inside Drew to break through the ice. Did I ever think in a million years the most popular girl at school could be BFF with the gamer nerd? No. Then again, I never dreamed that the soccer star would be holding my hand.
A Michael Jackson mash-up hits the airwaves, and that’s my cue. I pull Court to the dance floor and he shows me just how light he is on his feet. Behind him, Kali desperately tries to feed me dance moves, like always. But I’ve found my own groove, and even though it makes me look like a whirling dervish, I don’t fall once. If people wonder why Warrior Sawyer is getting down with the school love witch, no one says anything. Turns out, people care less about me than they care about not tripping on the dance floor.
When the song ends, Court leads me by the hand to the upper deck. The ship lurches as we climb the narrow staircase, passing by the newly crowned homecoming king, Whit, who is snuggling with Pascha. They don’t even notice us pass.
Stars, like sequins, scatter the black cloak of the sky. We find a secluded spot near the bow. The ocean’s so black, it’s invisible, only felt through the shushing of the waves against the hull of the ship. I revel in the velvety sounds, in the way they echo in my ear.
My orchid corsage is open now, its scent so honey-sweet, it even sings to my ordinary nose. Freesia on the front end and muscat on the back. That’s all I can do for now, but with luck, one day I shall smell the hundreds of notes in between.
Mother said some things never die. Inhaling again, I finally see. Layla’s Sacrifice smells exactly like a mother’s love, honed by fire, tested through time.
Paper crackles as Court pulls something out of his jacket pocket. He holds up a brown packet. “When I asked you what three things you would do if you couldn’t smell, you said eat movie snacks and float. M&M’s were easier to fit in my pocket than the Dead Sea.”
He pulls the M&M’s just out of my reach. “You never told me what the third one was.”
My heart begins to applaud in my chest, growing more urgent as the moment stretches out. I tilt my face up to his and just before I kiss him, I whisper, “This.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
“LET US BE GRATEFUL TO PEOPLE WHO MAKE US HAPPY.
THEY ARE THE CHARMING GARDENERS WHO MAKE
OUR SOULS BLOSSOM.”
—Marcel Proust
I have several people to thank for helping me nurture Mim’s story to full bloom: my intrepid agent, Kristin Nelson, and the Nelson Literary Agency, and my publisher, Katherine Tegen, and her vibrant team—in particular my scent-sational editor, Maria Barbo, and her whip-smart assistant, Rebecca Schwarz. A full field of beaming sunflowers for you in gratitude.
To several key plants in my garden: stargazer lilies for Stephanie Garber, purple freesia for Mónica Bustamante Wagner, Creamsicle tulips for Jeanne Schriel, Zahara zinnias for Caitin Swift, and edelweiss for Evelyn Skye. Thank you also to all the people who blow their magic flower dust my way: Anna Shinoda, Beth Hull, Janice Hardy, Kat Brauer, Marieke Nijkamp, Jodi Meadows, I. W. Gregorio, Kelly Loy Gilbert, Virginia Boecker, Alice Chen, Ana Inglis, Adlai Coronel, Sabaa Tahir, Abigail Hing Wen, Parker Peevyhouse, Jessica Taylor, Amie Kaufman, MacKenzie Van Engelenhoven, Dahlia Adler, Rachel Evangelista, Angela Mann, Eric Elfman, Bijal Vakil, Susan Repo, Angela Hum, Jennifer Fan, Ariele Wildwind, and Vasanthi Suresh. May heirloom Damask rose petals ever be strewn in your path.
To my amazing family, Laura Ly, Alyssa Cheng, Dolores and Wai Lee, Evelyn and Carl Leong, and to my sweet peas, Avalon, Bennett, and Jonathan: You are the rare flowers that make my life beautiful.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo credit Steven Cotton Photography
STACEY LEE is a fourth-generation Californian who graduated from UCLA and got her law degree at UC Davis School of Law. After discovering her synesthetic ability to smell musical notes, she dabbled in natural perfumery, collected over one hundred bottled botanicals (her favorite is clary sage), and found the inspiration to write this novel. Stacey plays classical piano and lives with her husband and two children outside San Francisco, California.
www.staceyhlee.com
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CREDITS
Cover art and hand lettering © 2016 by Shauna Lynn Panczyszyn
Cover photograph © 2016 by Evelina Kremsdorf
Cover design by Heather Daugherty
COPYRIGHT
Katherine Tegen Books is an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers.
THE SECRET OF A HEART NOTE. Copyright © 2016 by Stacey Lee. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the nonexclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, downloaded, decompiled, reverse-engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
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* * *
Library of Congress Control Number: 2016938951
ISBN 978-0-06-242832-5
EPub Edition © December 2016 ISBN 9780062428349
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FIRST EDITION
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Stacey Lee, The Secret of a Heart Note
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