by Tae Keller
We were home before I could prepare myself, because Twig’s house is close to mine, and because maybe I never would have been ready.
“Ready?” Mrs. Menzer asked.
I wanted to laugh or cry—I wasn’t sure. We walked up to my front door, and my parents flung it open before we rang the doorbell. Mom knelt and wrapped me into her, and she smelled like a strange mix of old and new—like her flower shampoo and a newer, deeper scent of dark chocolate. Part of me wanted to pull away, and part of me couldn’t let go.
I could feel Mom look up at Mrs. Menzer over my shoulder, and I don’t know what they were communicating in their silent way, and for once I didn’t want to investigate. I didn’t need all the answers. Not tonight, anyway.
Dad talked to Mrs. Menzer for a few minutes, making a lot of mhmmm and mmmm sounds, already in Therapist Mode. But I didn’t listen to their conversation. I just let myself be held. I let Mom hold me.
I tried to freeze time.
But Mrs. Menzer finally left, and Mom pulled away first, holding me by the shoulders and leaving a gaping empty space between us. “Natalie,” she said. “What happened?”
She sounded tired. I was tired.
I ripped out of her hands, stepping back. “I had to!” I said, vaguely aware that I was screaming. “I had to go because you couldn’t go. I had to. But this whole time, you didn’t care and you didn’t tell me anything. You told me she fired you!” I said, even though, thinking about it, I knew that wasn’t true. I had just assumed.
“Natalie, Natalie, Natalie,” Dad was saying. He knelt, too, so I stood in front of them, slightly taller than both my parents.
I wanted to shove them. I wanted to collapse.
“You gave up on me!”
“Natalie, please,” Mom said, reaching for my hand, but I pulled away again. She had tears in her eyes.
I did, too, and the whole world went blurry. “I just…,” I began, trying to make sense of the jumbled thoughts in my brain, but I couldn’t continue. I couldn’t form words.
Dad put one hand on Mom’s shoulder and one hand on mine. “I think it might be best if we all got some sleep tonight. We can talk about this tomorrow.”
I closed my eyes and nodded, grateful because I couldn’t possibly talk anymore. I couldn’t possibly feel anymore.
He and Mom stood, and they walked me to my bedroom. Dad hugged me. “Get some sleep, Natalie. We love you.”
My parents exchanged one of those looks I couldn’t understand, and he went back to bed while Mom stayed by my bed, stroking my hair as sleep reached up and sucked me under.
* Once, Twig tried to crash some poor kid’s birthday bowling party by saying we were Russian orphans. We tried to speak with Russian accents. We got kicked out.
When I came downstairs this morning, Mom and Dad were already sitting on the couch, all dressed and waiting for me. I was nervous after the scene I’d caused, and I knew I was about to get hard-core Therapisted.
I sat down in the chair across from them, but Dad shook his head. “Sit with us, Nats,” he said, so I moved over to the couch and sat right between them. Mom started stroking my hair again, but she didn’t say anything. Dad was leading the show now, like he had been since summer.
“What were you thinking?” he asked, trying to keep his voice steady and level, trying to keep the exasperation and fear and frustration out. Trying, and failing.
I couldn’t say anything. I didn’t want to explode like I had last night. I bit my lip and curled my knees into my chest and stared at my toes. Mom wrapped her arm around my shoulders and squeezed me into her, just as Dad said, “Natalie, why did you go there?”
I felt myself curling in, into my sleeping-grass silence, but it was time to stop holding back. “The Cobalt Blue Orchid died, and I had to get another one.” It sounded so simple, but there it was.
“But, Natalie, the orchid…,” Mom began, and then: understanding.
Horror pierced Mom’s face, the first true emotion to shatter her wall of pleasant, half-true smiles and utter, utter blankness. The first emotion, and it was horror, and that was all my fault.
“Oh, Natalie,” Mom said. She looked lost, and Dad kept quiet.
I saw him struggle to keep quiet, and I knew he was letting the silence build, but I started talking before the silence could take over. I wouldn’t be tricked into talking—I didn’t need to be. Because I was done with the secrets and the quiet and the walking on eggshells. This time I chose to speak.
I turned to Mom. “You said the orchid is magic. And you loved it. You loved it. And then it was dead, and I thought maybe if I could replace it, we could start all over. We could have another chance and it would be like none of this ever happened. I wanted to win the egg drop money to go to New Mexico, but we lost, and Twig was saying let’s fly to New Mexico, but we knew we couldn’t, so we went to the lab instead—”
“Natalie—” Mom said again, but I wasn’t ready to stop. I was finally getting my thoughts in order. I was finally telling the truth.
“I thought maybe that’s why you were so sad, because your miracle flower—because you couldn’t do your research anymore and you loved that research more than anything. But our orchid died and that was the last one you had and you couldn’t go back to the lab….” I didn’t finish that last part, because I guess it wasn’t true. She could have gone back.
Mom was shaking her head and she wore the exact same expression that Mikayla’s mom had last night, and I wanted to shout, Don’t say it! But I bit my lip and let her speak. “That flower in our greenhouse, Natalie, it wasn’t an orchid. Mrs. Menzer gave you a Blue Bearded Iris.”
I didn’t understand. I wanted to tell her she was confused and wasn’t making sense, because of course our plant was a Cobalt Blue Orchid.
“We had a very limited amount of the Cobalt Blue Orchids, Nats, and they’re very delicate—we had to keep all of them in the lab. We couldn’t have given any away.”
She seemed desperate to make me understand, but I didn’t.
“Mrs. Menzer was feeling bad about your friendship with Mikayla, and she thought it might help if you had your own project. I guess the Blue Bearded Iris looks similar to the Cobalt Blue Orchid, but I didn’t realize…” She shook her head slowly, her eyes fixed on a different time, a different life. “I probably should’ve known you’d think that. We’d been talking about the orchid just a few days before.”
I should’ve known the difference between an iris and an orchid—they weren’t that similar—but I’d been too caught up in the magic.
Mom kept talking. This was the most I’d heard her talk in months, as if all of a sudden she remembered how. “We were doing research on the Cobalt Blue Orchid because we thought its ability to process those chemicals might have some big implications for diseases. If we got lucky. But we didn’t.
“We weren’t able to isolate those properties or graft them onto other plants. The funding fell through. Dana had to make a tough call as the department head when she decided to shut down the project. It wasn’t easy for either of us.”
Mom took a big breath. Silent tears spilled from her eyes, and she looked at Dad with such desperation, like she wanted him to save her. And Dad, he looked right back, and I could see the desperation in his eyes, because he wanted to save her, too, but he didn’t know how.
“Natalie,” she said, and then she looked at me—really looked at me. “I should have talked to you about all this. We should have been talking.”
I shook my head and buried myself into my knees, because I couldn’t stand to see the apologies written in my parents’ eyes. I hurt for all of us, even for that little dead iris that was never as special as I wanted it to be.
“I love you, Natalie,” Mom said into my ear. “I’ve been—I’ve been depressed, but that doesn’t mean I don’t love you, always. I am s
o sorry.” Her voice shook, as if the words were heavy, impossible to lift out of her, but she did it anyway, because she loved us.
“We will get through this,” Dad said. His voice was rough and strong, and even if he was broken, he would put himself back together. For us, he would pick up all the little pieces.
“I’m so sorry, my Natalie,” Mom said again.
And that was when I started crying. I cracked open and cried like I would never stop crying, like I would cry until all of me was gone. I was too afraid to look up from my curled-up cocoon and see my parents, because they weren’t the Mom and Dad I used to know. They were so much more now. Not perfect, not magic—but real.
I was a different Natalie, too, and I’m not sure how we’re supposed to fit together as a family anymore.
I cried until somehow, impossibly, I had no tears left, and they held me and didn’t let go. They didn’t leave, and we kept moving, swinging forward. One breath at a time.
Twig called today after school. “I’m only able to call because my mom is at work and Hélène took pity on me.” Our cell phones were confiscated, on account of the whole sneaking-out-and-breaking-and-entering thing.
“I’m only able to talk because my dad is standing right next to me,” I said. Dad gave a sad smile from across the table. Mom was actually seeing a therapist this afternoon,* so it was just Dad and me, and he wasn’t about to let me out of his sight. Trust was an issue now, and I couldn’t exactly blame him.
“Are you grounded?” Twig asked.
“More or less,” I said, because I wasn’t quite sure. I was supposed to come home after school every day, and we were going to spend more Family Time together, but somehow that didn’t seem like a punishment. “You?”
“Same,” said Twig. “My mom isn’t too thrilled about our grand adventure. But we’ll still see each other at school.” We’d seen each other today, but it hadn’t felt like enough. We’d had to act like everything was fine, especially around Mikayla, who kept shooting us looks that we tried to ignore.
“We’ll still be friends after this,” I said.
Twig laughed. I loved Twig for that, for her infectious happiness. “Duh.”
“Have you talked to Dari?” I asked. He hadn’t been in school today.
She hesitated. “No. I called, but nobody picked up.”
“Hopefully he’ll be in class tomorrow.”
“Yeah. I’m worried about him.” Twig’s voice broke, and I realized she was different from the Twig I had always known. I wondered if Twig had changed last night or sometime long before that. Perhaps she’d been this new Twig for a long time, and I just hadn’t noticed.
“I better go. Hélène’s giving me a look. I just wanted to see how you were.”
“I’m okay,” I said.
“I’ll see you tomorrow.”
“Yeah. Love you, Twig.”
She laughed. “I love you, too, you freak of nature.”
We had changed and would continue to change, but Twig would always be my best friend.
When we hung up, Dad grimaced and shook his head. “The three of you really shouldn’t have snuck out.”
“I know.”
And then Dad made like he was going to say something else but decided not to.
“What is it?” I asked, because I wanted him to speak. I wanted him to always speak, no matter what.
“But since you did,” he sighed, “I’m glad the three of you were together. I’m glad none of you were alone.”
I looked down at my hands, but Dad kept talking. “You have good friends, Natalie.” I couldn’t look at him, because he was right—I did—so maybe I did get lucky after all.
Dad got up from his seat and walked over to me. He knelt by my chair and held my hands in his. “And you have your mom and me, too. I know we haven’t been perfect, but we will always love you. No matter what happens, Natalie, you will never, ever be alone.”
I kept my eyes on our hands. He had long, thin fingers, like my grandmother. “Dad?” I forced myself to speak. I already knew—but I still needed to hear the truth, spoken aloud. “Mom was sick like this before. She was depressed before.” I’d meant to ask it as a question, but it didn’t come out that way.
Dad squeezed my hands. “When you were very young. The two of you stayed in bed together for a month.”
I had already known, but now I knew. This terrible, incomprehensible thing that had descended upon our lives wasn’t new at all. It had always been there. I just hadn’t understood it. I wasn’t even sure I completely understood now, but I was doing my best.
“This situation—this depression—isn’t her fault. She’s trying, Natalie,” he said.
“I know.”
“I’m trying, too.” Dad sounded like he was pleading his case. “I wanted to get her help earlier. I really did.”
He looked at me like I was going to be angry. And I was, but I surprised myself by feeling hopeful, too. “I know,” I said, and I squeezed his hands right back.
* Not Doris, though. Guiltily, I had kind of been relieved about that. I’ve come to like her, believe it or not, and I want her to be just mine.
I found Mom in the greenhouse, where the windows fogged from the warmth inside. Entering felt like walking into a different reality.
Mom looked real again, with her long strawberry-blond hair clipped back and her hands coated with dirt. “The little plant was dying,” she said. “I found it in a pot in the corner.”
She tucked my little Korean Fire plant into the soil, and so I told her about its name and its story and about how it blooms, always, even in the winter.
“It was your Christmas present,” I said. She already knew that last part—it had been wrapped with a bow and a card—but I still wanted her to hear it. I was still angry with her.
She was quiet for a long time, patting the soil, even though the flower was already planted. But her voice was strong and clear when she said, “I love it.”
She looked like Mom again, with her Serious Business hair and her dirty hands and her crackling eyes, but she wasn’t exactly the same. I hadn’t really known the sad version of her, but I didn’t know this version, either. The version of her that was everything put together—hope and hopelessness, curiosity and courage, failure and fight. She wasn’t perfect. She didn’t know everything. But she was still my mom, still here. And I still loved her.
“I planted the iris seed,” she said, gesturing to the empty spot where the old iris once lived. The iris that was nothing special, nothing magical or important, just a plain old nothing iris.
“Why?” I said. I wish I could’ve kept the anger out of my voice, but I had buried everything deep for so long, and now all of it was bursting through the surface.
Mom always planted seeds, anywhere and everywhere. If there wasn’t room in the greenhouse, she’d find a tiny patch, and if there really wasn’t room, she’d find a space on the side of the road. Whenever I’d ask her about it, she’d shrug and say, “Plants are beautiful.”
And so when I asked why, I expected her usual answer: beauty for beauty’s sake. But instead she looked right at me, eyes full of hope and the shimmery hint of tears, and said, “Because we deserve a second chance.”
Mr. Neely had us present our scientific process projects this week. Twig, Dari, and I would be giving a joint presentation about the egg drop, and since Twig was in charge of bringing our poster board presentation, she was getting a ride with her mom that morning. I biked to school alone and was locking up my bike just as Mikayla got out of her car. I guess that’s what Mom and Dad would call coincidence, but I kind of think it was fate.
There were two sides of me, right then, the old Natalie, who would have tucked her head down and walked into the classroom, and the new Natalie, who walked right up to the car. I kept my head up and my feet mo
ving forward.
“Hi,” I said once I reached the car.
Mikayla was pulling a cardboard tray full of potted plants out of the backseat, and she looked at me with an expression that was not quite surprise.
Mikayla’s mom rolled the passenger window down and said, “Hello, Natalie.”
“Hi,” I said again, because sometimes, after someone has seen the truest parts of you, little words are enough. “Do you need help?” I asked Mikayla, not because I really wanted to help, but because I felt like I should offer.
“I got it,” she said as she readjusted the tray and slammed the car door shut with her thigh. I was kind of glad she said no. It’s not like we were about to skip into school, carrying the plants and singing songs.
“Have a nice day,” Mrs. Menzer said, and her smile was kind and knowing, and I didn’t turn away. I smiled back.
When she drove off, Mikayla and I walked into the school and started up the steps to the third floor. I hooked my thumbs into my backpack straps, just to have something to do with my hands. And the old me wouldn’t have said anything, but this whole say-what-you’re-feeling thing? It’s pretty nice. “I’m not really sure why you stopped being my friend,” I said.
Mikayla looked over at me, and for a second, her face opened up. Her eyebrows rose and her lips parted, like she was so surprised by what I’d said that she didn’t have time to roll her eyes or sneer. “I didn’t stop being your friend.”
I stared at her, trying to come up with a good response. But what are you supposed to say when you find out someone’s living in a totally different universe?
“You became best friends with Twig, and I couldn’t compete with that. Like, the second you saw her, you thought she was so shiny and awesome and whatever, so what was I supposed to do?” Then she did roll her eyes, just for good measure. “And anyway, you guys are too weird for me.”