Page 68 of Junk Magic

Yeah, it was definitely them. I could hear the Rodriguez’s little yappy dog going nuts next door, because it was a vicious creature who hated all known forms of life. Or maybe it was just hungry, as Mrs. Rodriquez was cooking something that smelled wonderful. I could discern it in flashes through the haze of barbeque smoke, something with chili and lime and coriander. And then somebody cracked open a bottle of tequila, and the pungent, spicy smell cut like a knife through the haze, making me whine slightly.

“Lia?”

The word drifted over the scene, but wasn’t important. I was beginning to understand why dogs stared blankly out of windows for hours, seemingly well entertained. Because they were, I thought, almost laughing as the world around me exploded outward.

I didn’t know how far a dog’s senses extended, but mine felt like they went on for days. Literally. It was like they could time travel, with the sounds coming to my ears all being in the present, but the smells . . .

Went back for weeks.

The newer ones were thick, like the boys’ shadows I’d seen darting around Cyrus’s apartment. As if I could reach out and touch them if I tried. Others were more like smoke, torn apart and shredded by the passage of time, some a little, some a lot, but often still recognizable. And the ones that repeated, over and over, gouged colorful scent trails in the landscape.

I didn’t know why they were colorful, but they were, creating a topographical map of the neighborhood, only with people instead of mountains. Like the old woman whose name I didn’t know who lived several streets over. I’d never paid her any attention; probably never even seen her, but I could see her now. She was vividly depicted in my mental landscape, with her trips with her walker to the mailbox every day carving a dark blue scent scar into the world.

I suddenly knew other people’s habits, too, including ones that they’d probably prefer I didn’t. Like Mrs. Lake’s visits to the hunky new neighbor’s house, where the pink color that my mind had assigned her and his dark blue merged into a shade of purple that I doubted her husband would like. Or the stoner down the street, who had bright green ganja leaves painted on the side of his van but whose house was suffused by a sickly yellow, as he’d recently moved on to heroin. Or the hoarder three streets over, with the stench of human decay emanating from his living room; how long had it been since anyone saw him?

I could see him; he was white and gray in my mental landscape, the color of ashes, and staring sightlessly at a T.V. It was still on; I could hear the tinny sounds from here, but not make out the show. And wouldn’t have been able to concentrate on it if I could, not with that smell in my nostrils.

It reminded me of beef jerky: dried out and concentrated. He had a window open and must have died in the spring, when the weather was still cool. The air had desiccated him over the intervening months, sucking all the water from his flesh until it left behind something almost mummified, except with no wrappings.

And that, and the open window, had allowed little visitors to pay their respects.

“Lia!” Somebody was shaking me now, but I barely noticed, being too busy recoiling from the insect-covered cadaver. I could hear the little scritch-scritch sounds they made; and almost feel their tiny legs moving over my own skin.

I backed away, not able to deal with the immediacy of it. And burst back out of the house of death to find the rest of the neighborhood vibrant and alive, with rainbow hues zipping about everywhere. My senses careened right along with them, out of control for a moment until I managed to steady them again.

Only that didn’t work so well since they were all flowing together, as if into one uber sense stronger than any of the original five on their own.

I didn’t understand it, and no Weres had ever described anything like this to me. But maybe they hadn’t understood how, or hadn’t wanted me to know all that I was missing. And I had been missing a lot, so much that it felt like I’d been blind all my life and was suddenly able to see.

It was overwhelming and intense and strange and wonderful, and I didn’t know how to process it. All I knew was that the colorful scent trails were everywhere, crisscrossing the landscape like a subway map, some as dark as the Marianas Trench in front of the old lady’s house, others barely a sheen on the day. But all of them were trying to tell me their stories.

And they were so easy to read!

I discovered that I could pick one out and follow it like a trail without moving an inch. The one I chose was gold, as vivid as Sophie’s eyes, and followed a young boy on a bike, his tires threatening to melt into the hot asphalt. I hopped from there to the bright orange spilling out of a family’s car; there were groceries in the trunk, including a bag of oranges that smelled so sweet that I could taste them, their flavor bursting on my tongue. And then I jumped to two little girls in a kiddie pool, splashing in the water, their delighted laughter causing their light-yellow color to flash brighter and brighter, like sunlight.

One of them was healthy; the other wore a bandage where the ports for the chemotherapy she was taking had scarred her tender flesh. She was sick, but she was happy. Her friend had come to visit—her scent was faint on the house, instead of well rooted like the sick girl’s—and they had had baloney sandwiches for lunch. It was a good day—

A dog ran by, cutting across their yard. He and I hopped a fence, chased a squirrel down a sidewalk, and dodged out in front of a car, the exhaust strong in our noses. The driver of a car had been in an argument with her boyfriend. I could smell his scent on her, like I could taste the blood pooling under the skin of her cheek where he’d hit her, and the salt of the tears in her eyes. They were as distinct as the Cheetos on the floor mat, which one of her kids had spilled when she was bundling them into the car.

Then she was gone, in a panicked swerve around a group of children getting off a school bus. The dog spun on a dime and ducked through them, too, only that proved to be a mistake. Because there were so many, all with different scent stories, all hurrying off in different directions, that it broke my brain a little.

A dead goldfish resided in a leaking thermos, having been stolen by a boy who didn’t understand that it wouldn’t make it back alive on tap water from the school’s water fountain and the remains of his apple juice; a girl had started her period and it must have been her first one, because she was panicking, her heart going a mile a minute as she raced to get home before anybody noticed; another girl had thrown up her lunch, and it was probably deliberate, since she’d brought mouthwash to try to hide it; a third girl greeted the dog, laughing as he jumped up to lick her face, and rewarded him with a piece of chicken she’d kept out of her lunch . . .

And then it sped up, all the information flooding at me, as if a dam had burst. I suddenly knew that the bus driver chewed tobacco despite the ulcer that had already formed in his mouth; that a back tire on the bus was worn and about to blow out; that one of the older guys had half a blunt in his pocket, which had been shared around by at least three of the other students earlier because their scents were still on it; that a girl had just had a perm, the sharp, chemical scent pervasive in the air around her; that a boy had been wearing the same clothes for three days, a probable sign of neglect; that somebody had a cavity forming in a tooth; that somebody else was chewing spearmint gum; that several more kids were throwing a football around behind the bus, the sunlight on the rubber allowing me to trace its arc across the sky—

I mewled in confusion, as understanding hit of why dogs spun about when engulfed in a crowd, unable to decide what to sniff first. But I wasn’t a canine and couldn’t manage it, or even sort out which senses I was supposed to be using to try. Sight, smell, and taste had no discernable difference anymore, and the strangeness of it was threatening to overwhelm me.

“I think she’s sick,” someone said, the words enough to jolt me out of the other-mind I’d slid into. They were harsh, angular, foreign. For a moment, I didn’t even understand the meaning. Just looked at them, floating in the air in front of me, like jagged, transparent shapes distorting my mental landscape. “I don’t know what’s wrong; she was all right a minute ago. But when I came back—”

“She’s not sick,” someone else said.

“How do you know?”

“I’ve seen this before. She just needs to eat.”

And then the confusion snapped and my eyes flew open, to see Sophie looking stressed and holding a couple of beers, and Cyrus—

Holding something else.

---