A Clatter of Jars by Lisa Graff Page A

it.”
    Renny took the jar. Examined the yellow bracelet inside. “I . . .” He could apologize. Put the jar back on the shelf and lock the office door.
    Renny slid the jar into his pocket.
    â€œYou’re okay,” he told Miles. “Right? It was only water.”
    â€œOnly water,” Miles replied.
    Renny swallowed again.

Lily
    L ILY HAD PLANNED ON SITTING BESIDE M AX DURING THE campfire. (There’d be no room on the log, she hoped, for Hannah.) As the sky grew darker and the fire grew warmer, everyone would sing songs from atop their logs, and Jo’s jars of bracelets with their Mimicked Talents would melt silently away. And Lily would turn to Max and say,
I stopped a criminal.
Max’s eyes would grow wide with amazement.
You did?
he’d say.
Wow. That’s WAY better than making punch.
    That’s what Lily had planned.
    But when she reached the fork in the path—left for the fire circle, right for the lake—Lily noticed the frog. Even in the dim light of the setting sun, the frog was bright green, and white at the throat, with bulby pads at the ends of his toes. He was squatting directly in front of her, tilting his froggy head as though he wanted to tell her something. Lily glanced left, then right. No one else seemed to see him.
    Hdup-hdup!
went the frog. And then he shifted to the right, and hopped away from the fire circle, toward the cold, quiet waters of Lake Atropos.
    Later, Lily wouldn’t be able to say precisely why she did it. Perhaps it was Fate. Perhaps it was simple curiosity. Whatever the reason, Liliana Vera followed the frog.

Jo
    E VERY EVENING FOR THE PAST FIVE YE ARS, J O HAD waited on the southernmost bank of Lake Atropos, watching the tide lap at the shore. Most nights she carried baskets with her, to haul away her loot. Tonight she brought nothing but Grandma Esther’s harmonica. The sky blazed fiery orange nearest the water, edging into watermelon pink farther up, then, at its height, a deep blackberry, and lily pads dotted the shore.
    Precisely at the moment when the sun sank fully below the horizon, a familiar, beautiful sound rang through the darkness. It always began low and slow, growing sharper and more musical as the jars increased in number. Two jars, then ten, emerged from the water, pushing themselves up the pebbly shore. Twenty jars, then dozens and dozens. Soon there were hundreds of them—all glass, sample-size, with the words
Darlington Peanut Butter
embossed on the bottom, and an orb of yellow-purple Talent at their center. Jo pulled out her harmonica and began to play. Searching.
    Los golpes en la vida
    preparan nuestros corazones
    como el fuego forja al acero.
    Pearl, alabaster, porcelain, frost.
    When she spotted it, Jo raced into the water, wading through jars glowing yellow-purple, snatching up the one she wanted. Jo clutched the jar to her chest, like a toddler might with a stuffed bear.
    She didn’t notice that she’d dropped her harmonica onto the pebbles.
    Just in time. Jo had found her Talent for Recollecting just in time. In two short days, Jenny would arrive.
    In two short days, all would be forgotten.
    Jo unscrewed the lid of the jar and pressed it beneath her nose. The yellow-purple orb was dragged through her nostrils in one long
suuuuuuuuuck
. Immediately she felt the Talent seep into her bones.
    Jo reached out for the nearest memory, testing her new abilities. She found one easily, and wound it around her fingers. The memory tasted tart and smooth, like pineapple custard. She was picking out a puppy at the Fifty-Ninth Street shelter, she remembered. Pippet, that’s what she’d named the dog.
    Jo flicked the memory away—
flick-flick-flick-flick-flick!
—and let the empty jar smash to bits on the pebbles. The rest of the jars she left clattering in the lake behind her.
    She left her harmonica as well.

Lily
    L ILY SAT AT THE EDGE OF T HE PIER, HER FEET DANGLING over the water,