Perfume by Caroline B. Cooney Page B

Timmy, smiling.
    His hand was extended toward her. Her heart seemed to race right down her own arm and into her own fingers. He would feel it beating when their skin touched.
    Part of her was lost in fear of Wing and pyramids.
    Part of her was in love with Timmy O’Hay.
    She had never held hands with a boy before. She took, his hand as timidly as a child on the first day of kindergarten. The two hands seemed to stick out, as if the world were pointing and laughing and staring.
    Dove could not take her eyes off the place where their two bodies met.
    Timmy could not look down at all, but kept his eyes on the mall entrance, saying, “Is this the right one? Is this closest to the shoe store?”
    “All mall entrances are close to a shoe store,” said Connie. “The mall must have fifty shoe stores.”
    “I want to go in the nearest door. I hate walking around the mall,” said Timmy.
    Connie stared at him. “That’s the point,” she said. “Walking around the mall is why we’re here.”
    A row of dark glass doors with dark metal edges stared at them like huge sunglasses over the mall’s eyes.
    Dove swallowed.
    Timmy’s hand tightened.
    Or was that her imagination?
    They entered the wing of the mall.
    She had no sooner thought the word wing than the word became real, and flapped in her head, and brushed her brain with its terrible feathers.
    Dove shook her head hard.
    It shook their hands loose, and Timmy didn’t take hers back.
    Dove blinked in the soft indoor light. Had the mall always had this strange brown floor? These ancient bricks? Had those weathered stone benches always sat there, and that water garden, with a lotus leaning out of the pot?
    From far away she heard her friends’ voices. “Pizza,” they were saying, “french fries, soda.” “Sneakers,” they were saying, “escalator, stairs.”
    Dove was still in control of the body they shared. And yet she was tipping backward, into the very far back of the mind. Come back, Dove! She called to herself. Come back here, pay attention, listen up, don’t leave yet!
    “What’s your vote?” said Timmy to Dove. He was smiling the friendly but not-too-friendly smile he had, waiting for her cue.
    She lurched toward him, grabbing him.
    “Sneakers,” she said. Her lips were thick. She had been without water for a hundred years, out there in the desert sand. “No. Soda,” she corrected herself.
    They had reached the center of the mall. Above them, the glass pyramid slanted toward the sky.
    Wing fluttered in her skull.
    “Let’s go find Dry Ice,” said Connie.
    “I looked on the Directory when we came in,” said Timmy, frowning slightly, “and I didn’t see a listing for a store named Dry Ice.”
    “You probably don’t know the alphabet,” said Luce.
    “It’s up here,” said Connie, getting on the escalator, and they all got on the escalator and it drew them higher into the peak of the pyramid.
    Dove was out of breath now, although she had done no climbing. The escalator had climbed for her. They seemed to be at a very high altitude, as if they had been climbing mountains in Tibet. The air was thin. Her head swam.
    They walked around the third level.
    They walked and walked and walked.
    I will get blisters, thought Dove. I will have cramps, I will collapse. We must have hiked a hundred miles.
    “See?” said Timmy. “What did I tell you? No such store.”
    “There has to be,” said Connie. “We go in there all the time. Don’t we, Luce?”
    Luce did not answer.
    “Don’t we, Dove?” said Connie.
    Dove did not answer.
    “It’s that store that makes its own fog,” said Connie. “You know! The one where the vapor comes right out into the mall and catches your feet and forces you into the store!”
    Timmy laughed. “Right. Just like the sneaker with lace memory.”
    “Let’s get a pizza,” said Laurence.
    There’s no Dry Ice, thought Dove. Where did it go? Was it ever there?
    “There’s something wrong with this picture,” said