A Clatter of Jars (17 page)

Chuck

A
S
C
HUCK AND
E
LLIE CUT
THROUGH THE TREES TO
THE
lake, the preposterous scene came fully into view. Campers churning in the water like carrots in a boiling stew, Jo's melancholy lullaby a bizarre accompaniment to the chaos. The orbs of Talent, glowing yellow-purple, that soared above it all, as Jo dashed jars on the shore.

Chuck turned to her sister to ask what they should do.

Hdup-hdup!

It wasn't a frog that made the noise.

It was
Ellie
.

In response to the call, the bright green frog with the white throat and the bulby pads at the ends of his toes leapt from the dirt, plopping directly onto Ellie's shoulder.

“You can talk to them, too,” Ellie told Chuck, squeezing her hand.

Hdup-hdup!
agreed the frog. Chuck understood the creature, she realized. If she strained. If she
wanted
to.

Forty-one Eastern spadefoot toads, seventeen male and twenty-four female. Burrowed into the dirt. Burying themselves under damp leaves.

Sixty spring peepers. Sleeping in trees.

Twelve mink frogs. Thirty-three leopard frogs. Eighteen common tree frogs. Thirty-seven pickerels.

Big frogs, little frogs.

Fat frogs, skinny frogs.

Green and brown and spotted and striped.

Chuck could talk to them all.

She threw back her head, releasing a vibratey song for the spotted pickerels.

Rut-rut-rut-a-rut-rut!

The pickerels emerged from the darkness—one, then another, then another—in response to her call. They hopped themselves into a line before her, froggy soldiers at attention.

Ellie called to the mink frogs.

Didda-didda-didda-did!

Chuck called to the leopard frogs.

Huuuuuuh-dut! Huuuuuuh-dut!

And when every last amphibian was assembled, Chuck and Ellie told them what to do.

Creeeee-creeeee!

First to respond were the spadefoot toads, speckled with orange dots. They leapt for the water, where flocks of Talents were escaping to the darkness. Hopping from canoe to canoe to lily pad to canoe, the creatures, one—
gulp!
—by one—
gulp!
—by one—
gulp!
—by one, snagged the yellow-purple orbs on the ends of their sticky tongues. The leopard frogs followed. Then the pickerels.

As fast as Jo smashed, the Frog Twins' hopping helpers snatched the Talents up, cradling them in their mouths, where they glowed yellow-purple through the thin-stretched skin of their froggy throats. After catching the Talents, they returned to the sisters on the shore,
puff-puff-puffing
. Waiting for Chuck and Ellie to tell them what to do next.

“Now what?” Ellie whispered to Chuck.

Chuck looked at the long row of glowing creatures before them. A little froggy army. “No idea,” she admitted. But she knew that whatever they did next, she and Ellie would do it together.

Jo

J
O DID NOT NOTICE
THE FROGS.
S
HE WAS TOO BUSY LIFTING
every jar from the lake. Unscrewing every lid. Smashing the unwanted jars to bits.

Como el fuego forja al acero
 . . .

The Talent Jo needed was not there.

As the rage welled in her chest—a rage so fierce Jo felt she needed to smash anything,
everything
, around her, just to squelch it—the last lingering notes of El Picaflor's song lifted an object from the water that Jo had not expected. An envelope. Soggy at the corner but, wedged as it had been between two lily pads, mostly dry throughout.

Jolene Mallory
, it said on the front, in Jenny's loopy cursive. Jo stuffed her harmonica into her pocket and snatched the envelope from the air. Her heart thudded in her chest as she tore open the envelope and unfolded the letter she'd waited half a life to read.

Dear Jo,

I wish I could tell you that I'm coming, as you've asked me to.

Jo hadn't realized that she'd sunk to the water, crouched in the shattered remnants of the jars. Frogs snatched yellow-purple Talents from the sky around her, the tide lapped at her bare legs, chilling and raw. And Jo forced herself to read on.

I've read every letter you've ever written me, Jo. And I want to reconcile. I don't want to hold on to my anger any longer. I want to let it go. But you want me to forget what happened, and I know I can't.

In every letter you've ever written me, Jo, you've never once apologized. That's what I need. That's all I've ever needed.

I've waited, and I'll keep waiting, until you understand.

Ever your sister,
Jenny

Frigid from the water, Jo at last looked up, blinking at the scene before her.

The glass.

The frogs.

The campers—her campers. Drenched and tired and scared, most likely.

It couldn't all be for nothing.

The rage welling in her chest fiercer than she'd ever felt it, Jo reached for Grandma Esther's harmonica in her pocket. But when she put the instrument to her lips, she found that it wasn't an instrument at all.

Grandma Esther's precious Artifact had been replaced, somehow, by a Caramel Crème bar.

Renny

R
ENWICK
C
HESTER
U
LYS
SES
F
ENNELBRIDGE MAY HAVE
been born without a Talent, but there was one thing he'd always been very skilled at.

“That was
my
Caramel Crème bar,” Miles said as Renny picked his way back across the pebbly shore, slipping the harmonica into his pocket. Miles was clearly anxious, this close to the water, but Renny was impressed with how well he was holding up.

Renny pressed his fidgeting hands to his sides, taking in the splashing and shrieking in the water. The frogs with their iridescent throats, lined up before Chuck and Ellie like troops on the shore.

“I wish there was some other way to help,” he said.

“Fun fact,” Miles said in response, his voice flat. “Only two people know about Renny Fennelbridge's Talent, and they have a brother bond.”

Renny's head jerked up on his neck. “
Renny's
Talent?” he asked. But when he glanced down at his hands, he understood. He hadn't been
fidgeting
at all.

Flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!

That saltwater memory, Renny realized, that was one he himself had collected, wrapped around his fingers like a cobweb. He'd flicked Miles the memory from the pier, too.

“Can I get another Caramel Crème bar when you're done helping?” Miles asked.

Renny reached his mind out to the line of frogs, their throats glowing as they puffed. He found a memory easily, fresh like basil, and wrapped it around his fingers.

A spring peeper, swallowing a Talent for heat.

Renny reached his mind off into the water next, where chilly campers clutched at canoes. He found another memory, this one meaty like thick-cut steak. Hal Bernstein, first discovering that he could heat liquid between his two hands. Renny wrapped this new memory around his fingers, too. And then—
flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!
—he sent it to the frog.

The spring peeper tilted her head, and then, once she had fully digested the steak-flavored memory, she took a great leap toward Hal in the water.

The frogs on the shore, every last one of them, turned to Renny, their throats illuminated, as though waiting for the memories he could give to them.

Renny let his fingers flick.

• • •

Renny didn't notice Jo scooping up a canoe paddle. He didn't notice either that, in her rage, she began to whack her way toward the spring peeper leaping for Hal in the water. He didn't notice Miles, pulling the harmonica from his pocket as easily as Renny had pulled it from Jo's.

“I can play the harmonica,” Miles said. “I learned last year in music class.”

But Renny did notice when Miles began to play.

Lily

L
ILY AND
H
ANNAH KIC
KED THEIR WAY THROUGH THE
frigid water, bumping up against everyone else in the rush for the shore. At last they reached a spot where their feet touched the bottom, but with the press of boats and bodies, there was nowhere for them to go. There was no way to reach Lily's cabinmates, and no way to stop Jo, who was whacking furiously at frogs with a canoe paddle.

The music that drifted across the water then was a shaky song, by an inexperienced musician, but Lily recognized it all the same.

Los golpes en la vida

preparan nuestros corazones

como el fuego forja al acero.

It was Lily's father's song, the melody he'd made so famous that he'd earned the nickname El Picaflor. The Hummingbird. As renowned for his arresting voice as for his inability to stay in one place. The song was coming from Jo's harmonica. But it wasn't Jo who was playing.

At first, Lily thought that the water in the lake was being tugged from underneath somehow, like draining bathwater. And then she realized that it wasn't the water that was moving.

As Miles played her father's song, Lily rose higher and higher into the black sky. Water gushed from the tips of her shoes as she was pulled from the lake completely, and she let her arms fall, heavy at her sides. Soon she was floating,
flying
, above the splashing campers, being tugged through the air toward her cabinmates on the shore. The wind clung to Lily's wet clothes, and she shivered with cold.

She had never felt quite so alive.

Miles pulled the harmonica down from his lips just as Lily's feet thumped against the pebbles.

“Liliana Vera,” he said. “Talent: Pinnacle.” He held out the harmonica, shining silver in the moonlight.

Lily took the instrument, put it to her lips, and drew a tentative breath. It wasn't the way she'd used her Talent before—easy and focused and familiar. And Lily didn't know how to play any song. She could only draw in one note, then release another.
In
then
out
.
In
then
out
.

But it was so good to have her Talent back.

Lily played, focusing her thoughts on the frogs with the Talents in their throats, who were scattering this way and that to avoid Jo's rage. The frogs rose with the notes, higher and higher, away from Jo, through the moonlight, toward the campers in the water. Beside her, Renny flicked his fingers, and Chuck and Ellie
croak!
ed and
cree!
ed, and Miles filled them in on all the Talent history he knew. And together, the campers of Cabin Eight matched up frogs with campers. Lily watched as a spring peeper settled herself on the canoe in front of Hal Bernstein, and—
bur-RAAAAAAAAP!
—burped her yellow-purple orb of Talent directly in his face.

Hal gasped in surprise. And with that gasp—Lily watched it happen—he swallowed the glowing orb of yellow-purple Talent down.

Lily continued to play—
in
then
out
,
in
then
out
—and one by one, each frog found his way to the correct camper, and burped out a Talent. One by one, each camper swallowed the Talent down.

A frog burped at Chuck.

A frog burped at Max.

A frog burped at Hannah.

A frog burped at every person who had lost a Talent in the lake. (Well, all except one, but Lily didn't know that yet.)

When the final frog had burped out the final Talent, and the final camper had swallowed it down, Lily slipped the harmonica deep into her pocket and stepped into the water, where her father was paddling closer to shore. Lily helped him tug the canoe onto the rocks, and the campers scrambled out.

Max nearly stumbled, awkward on his cast. Then, rolling his shoulders as though testing out his rediscovered Talent, he balanced himself, hopping easily to shore. Lily led him to drier land. “I'm glad you're safe,” she told him.

Max surveyed the scene around him. “I can't believe you did this,” he said. And he sounded impressed.

“Well.” Lily glanced at her Cabin Eight bunkmates. “I had some help.”

Lily was so focused on the hug Max gave her then that she didn't notice Jo making her way toward them. But she needn't have worried.

“
Juan?
” Jo said. Her canoe paddle clanked to the ground. “What are you doing here? Did Jenny tell you to—?”

Lily squinted at her camp director, dripping with madness, and then at her father.

“
Joley?
” he said, his face dawning with recognition.

“You know each other?” Lily asked. But then she was struck by something even more troubling. “Dad, your pocket watch.”

Lily's father's Artifact—the source of his great Talent and the object he'd protected obsessively since before Lily was born—hung from its chain at his waistband, rivulets of lake water escaping the hinge. He must have jumped into the water without thinking to remove it.

Horrified, Lily snatched the watch. “Maybe it can still . . .” She popped open the face and twisted the watch key. But the gears would not budge.

It was Jo who said it. “You lost your Talent,” she breathed. She sounded even more distraught than Lily.

Lily's father drew one arm around his daughter. With the other, he tugged Max closer, too. “Oh, Joley,” he said. “I don't need Talent to be happy.”

And Jo did something surprising then.

She began to cry.

“I'm sorry,” she told Lily's father. “I wanted to erase things. But I'm sorry. I should have said so, long ago.”

In most ways, Lily thought, Jolene Mallory was someone whose behavior she would never, ever want to copy. But there was one thing Jo had done that didn't seem so terrible.

“Max?” Lily said, leaning across her father to face her brother.

“Yeah?”

Lily reached for her thumb, where for so many weeks she'd twisted that swampy length of yarn. But the yarn wasn't there. She glanced down and found it draped across the toe of her sneaker. Just as she bent to pick it up, the frog that had been squatting beside her—bright green on top and white at the throat, with bulby pads at the ends of his toes—opened his froggy mouth, stretched out his pink tongue, and gulped the length of yarn down.

When he spit it out a moment later, the yarn had been twisted into the most intricate knot Lily had ever seen. She plucked it up.

As the frog disappeared into the thick of the trees, Lily turned the knot over in her palm, inspecting it. It was quirky and complicated and beautiful . . . and completely impossible to tie around a thumb.

“Yeah?” Max said again.

Lily slid the knot into her pocket beside the harmonica.

“I'm sorry,” she told her brother.

It was time, she decided, to make some new memories.