Page 5 of Under the Orchard’s Spell

He catches one of my curls between his fingers, then tucks it behind my ear. “Not just the butterflies.”

And my heart can’t help but answer in frantic pulses.

Stay, it beats. Stay. Stay. Stay.

“You’ll only be in Apple Valley for another couple months,” I say.

Logan edges closer, ignoring the goldenrod wings that glance off my cheek and the cobalt pair that rests on his shoulder.

“And in two weeks,” I continue, “I’m leaving for Alaska.”

“Which means…” Logan’s nose tips forward, so close it brushes mine. So close that when he exhales, I can feel the warmth of his breath. “For the next two weeks we’ll both be here.”

Stay, my heart keens once more.

I can’t, I tell it. He won’t.

And yet. Even though it can’t last, because nothing in my life ever can, I edge forward. He closes the rest of the gap between us. And with a thousand beating wings circling our bodies, Logan kisses me.

Chapter One

This Season

“Well, if this ain’t weirder than a scarecrow on a trampoline.”

Ahead of me, Val storms down a row of trees, white hair spiking like a wild crown. She skids to a stop and glares at a branch in her eyeline, reminding me of the time she suspected she’d caught Uncle Martin counting cards.

“Do orchardists even use scarecrows anymore?” I ask as I hoist a ladder off the Gator and hurry to her side, brushing past branches that slap my shoulders like they’re urging me along. It’s still late afternoon, but the whole orchard is steeped in that golden hour light that September always brings a touch too soon. “Those machines with the percussive sounds seem much more effective.”

“Cherry guns, you mean.” Val claps her fingers against a palm to marshal me and the ladder to the spot where she wants us, then digs a pressure gauge out of her back pocket and scales the steps. “Sure, but it wouldn’t have been so funny if I’d said it was weirder than a cherry gun on a trampoline.”

“I mean the scarecrow thing wasn’t that funny, either,” I tell her.

She frowns down at me, brown skin breaking into even more lines than usual. “Because you have to picture it. Did you picture it?”

“I’m trying.”

“And?”

“And it’s a bit unclear. Is the scarecrow, like, bending its legs or—”

Val plucks up a half-rotten pear and chucks it at my forehead.

I snicker as I duck. “But I was right? Something is wrong with the color.”

I noticed it this morning. The pears looked like…green bananas. When they should be the color of a honeydew rind, right near the flesh.

It’s a color seared into my mind from the year Mom and I moved to Grand Rapids, Michigan. That fall, I didn’t start school until after Labor Day, so I walked this exact row with Uncle Martin at this exact time of year. He asked me what the fruit reminded me of, and when I said “a honeydew rind,” he wheezed out a laugh before cupping one of the pears in his hand and shout whispering: “Very good, but don’t let them hear you comparing them to a buffet fruit.”

Now, Uncle Martin is gone and the orchard is mine—far, far sooner than either of us would have wanted—and I’m always looking for that exact shade of greenish yellow, as if finding it might bring back an echo of his wheezy laugh from halfway down a row.

Val nods as she picks a fresh pear, expertly angling it upward to snap the weakest part of the stem, then flattens it against a ladder step while she spears it with the pressure gauge. The reading loads as she lumbers down.

“You sure were right.” She tips up the face of her gauge. “See it now?”

With a glance at the needle, realization dawns. What’s off isn’t just the color; it’s this pear’s color relative to the others.

“These should be the first to go,” I say, “but the pears in the Thompson block had higher readings.”