Bloom

by Kenneth Oppel

  Tereza sighed. “I know, I know, it’s terrible, so much neediness.”

  There was a quick knock on the door before it opened and Fleetwood himself bounded in. With his shaggy hair and big hands and feet, he always reminded Anaya of an oversized puppy.

  “You’ve got to see this,” he said.

  “Fleetwood, no,” Tereza said. “Remember, we talked about this. This is yearbook time.”

  “Can it be Fleetwood time for just a second?” He leaned between them with his phone so they could watch the video. “Kangaroo-fighting!”

  “Oh, Fleetwood,” Tereza said sadly.

  Anaya had to admit the kangaroos were impressive. Standing upright, they looked uncannily human. The slope of their shoulders, the muscles of their upper arms, their chests. It was actually a bit creepy. Then she noticed their feet. It looked like they only had three toes, and the middle one was much longer, with a wickedly pointed claw.

  “Look at these guys!” said Fleetwood. “They’re totally pumped! Look at their biceps! Okay, wait for it…check it out!”

  The bigger kangaroo jumped straight up, and seemed to balance in midair—was he actually balanced on the tip of his tail?—then kicked out with both feet and slammed the other kangaroo in the stomach. Anaya winced. At least, he hadn’t drawn blood.

  “Can you believe that?” Fleetwood exclaimed.

  “That was very nice,” said Tereza. “But Anaya and I have work to do. Go play now, Fleetwood. Go find that boy with the baseball cap you like.”

  “See you!” Fleetwood said, and kissed her on the mouth.

  After he left, Anaya turned back to the monitor. In one of the class-photo layouts was a blank rectangle.

  Tereza tapped the screen. “We need a picture of that new boy. He missed photo day.”

  Seth Robertson. He’d arrived just a couple of months ago. No one knew much about him, except he was very quiet and kind of odd-looking and always wore long-sleeved shirts and a hoodie, even in gym class. He was being fostered by Mr. and Mrs. Antos, who had an organic vegetable farm.

  Tereza looked at Anaya. “Can you go and get a picture, please, of this boy.”

  It was Anaya’s turn to sigh. She hated wading out into the hallways, especially when she looked like an extra from a horror movie.

  “Please don’t make me go out there,” she said.

  “I’m going to tell you something,” Tereza said. She looked right and left, as if she were going to impart a big secret. In a hushed voice, she said, “You are way cooler than you think.”

  “No,” Anaya said, but she desperately wanted to believe it anyway. “Really?”

  “Yes. Now get out there! You take better pictures than me.”

  Anaya laughed, still glowing from Tereza’s praise. She stood and grabbed the camera.

  Outside the library, shoulders hunched as if fighting a gale-force wind, Anaya charted a course through the crowded hallway. Todd Salter and some buddy of his were goofing around at the water fountain, splashing each other. She gave them a wide berth, but heard a small cry behind her. When she looked back, Petra Sumner was brushing some water droplets from her neck.

  “Oh my gawwwwd!” said Rachel, Petra’s surgically attached friend. “Are you okay, Petra? Does anyone have a tissue? Petra needs a tissue!”

  Already a little crowd of super-concerned kids was forming around Petra, offering tissues.

  “Way to go, Todd!” said Rachel, who could make any name sound like the worst-smelling thing in the world. “You know she’s allergic, right?”

  “Oh man,” Todd said. “Did I get her?”

  Todd looked like a dog that had just been caught taking a poo on the coffee table.

  “Guys, I’m fine,” Petra said, doing that pouty thing with her lips that guys liked.

  She was very pretty, and wore her blond hair in a pixie cut. Anaya had read that you had to have a beautiful face to carry it off, and Petra Sumner definitely did.

  Anaya now saw two small, angry red splotches on her neck. Petra truly was allergic to water. It was incredibly rare. It had some Latin name, and there were maybe a hundred people on the planet who had it.

  Petra’s gaze drifted across the hallway and met Anaya’s. Quickly Anaya turned away and kept walking, knowing she probably looked heartless. But she’d seen all this before, so many times. People loved making a fuss over Petra.

  Anaya had been there when her allergy started. When they were little, she and Petra were best friends. The two of them spent half the summer at the community pool. Then, one day, after they got out of the water, Petra had broken out all over in a scary rash, and her voice got hoarse, and they’d rushed her to the hospital.

  It wasn’t long afterward that Anaya’s own allergies started up, like some weird curse. The difference was that Petra was still beautiful, but Anaya wasn’t, not when she was wheezy and snotty and had acne spread across her face. Petra had dumped her pretty fast.

  Whenever Petra got a splotch, everyone was all over her, asking if she was okay. Anaya could probably swell up to the size of a giant cinnamon bun and people would just go eww and step around her.

  Petra’s allergy was adorable and heartbreaking; Anaya’s was just gross.

  * * *

  ANAYA FOUND SETH Robertson sitting hunched at the bottom of the north stairs, nibbling a sandwich and drawing on a sketch pad.

  It was funny to find him here, because she sometimes sat here herself, despite the crumpled yellow tissue that had been on the floor for almost two years. There it was, lurking in its shadowy corner. This was as deserted as the school got, right here. She liked it that Seth was someone who hid himself away, too. It made her feel less awkward, meeting him. Also, Tereza’s words still chimed pleasantly in her head: cooler than you think.

  Seth had an almost-handsome head, but his body seemed out of proportion. Maybe it was just the hoodie and flannel shirt that made his chest seem so barrel-shaped while everything else was skinny. Skinny stooped neck, long skinny legs in jeans. Bony hands jutting from too-short sleeves.

  Anaya caught a glimpse of a small scar on the underside of each wrist. She wondered if he cut himself sometimes, but the round shiny patches looked more like cigarette burns. Had someone done that to him, or had he done it himself? Either way, it made her feel heavy and sad.

  He still hadn’t looked up from his sketchbook. Anaya couldn’t see much of the page, but she got a glimpse of a wing, and the way he’d drawn it made it look like it had just caught the wind. There was a sense of incredible speed. How had he done that with so few lines?

  “Wow, that’s really good,” she said.

  Now he looked up, startled. He closed the book in his lap and leaned forward, as if protecting it. Swiftly he pulled his sleeves down over his wrists. It looked like a move he did a lot. Anaya found his gaze unsettling. It was the gaze of a startled animal waiting to see what you were going to do next.

  “I’m Anaya Riggs,” she said. “I think we’re in the same—”

  “Math class, yeah.”

  She was surprised, and pleased, that he’d noticed. She felt a sneeze coming on but managed to stop herself. “Do you draw a lot?”

  He shrugged. “It’s nothing much. Just sketches.”

  “Well, I’m working on the yearbook and we could use some good artwork.”

  He looked at her, unblinking. It made her nervous when people looked at her too intently; she always wondered what exactly they saw, and whether they thought she was hideous.

  “It makes the layout a lot more interesting.” She sneezed and had to pause to blow her nose. “I mean, we’ve got a lot of Melanie Drake’s stuff, but there’s only so many unicorns you can take, you know what I mean? But your stuff looks a little edgier.”

  “Yeah, maybe,” he said, and Anaya knew that was a no.

  “Anyway,
like I said, I’m working on the yearbook and we need a photo of you.”

  He looked at the camera around her neck. “Do you have to?”

  Anaya laughed in surprise; she’d never had that reply before. “No, we don’t have to…”

  “What happens if you don’t?”

  He tilted his head to one side, like this was a very serious question, and she couldn’t help smiling at his oddness. She found him just the tiniest bit adorable.

  “Well, nothing. You just get a blank box with your name underneath. And you look like a crazy loner.”

  That got a small smile out of him. “Okay, let’s do the picture.”

  “Can you come out where there’s a bit more light?”

  He got up and shambled closer. She caught a whiff of him. Not unpleasant, exactly. Like warm celery.

  “Do I have to smile?” he asked.

  “Just do your thing,” she said, looking through the viewfinder.

  He looked at her straight on. He didn’t smile. His eyes were slightly too close together, but it didn’t make him look goofy. It made him look incredibly focused, like a bird of prey.

  * * *

  IT WAS STILL raining hard as Anaya walked home from school. She took a deep breath. The air smelled wonderful. When she inhaled, her whole chest felt like it was filling—which was rare. She’d hardly sneezed at all.

  She turned up their driveway. Having a botanist father did not mean their front yard was a wonderland of sculpted bushes, exotic flowers, and ornamental trees. Quite the opposite. Dad never paid the yard one bit of attention. He was, after all, more of a weed man. Their yard was definitely one of the weediest going.

  Scraggly cedar shrubs lined the driveway, except for the gap where nothing grew. The dead patch was a bit of a family legend. Every so often, Mom tried to plant something there and it would die within weeks. Another cedar, a fern, a hydrangea, native drought-resistant ground cover—it all croaked. Dad said they should just plonk down a garden gnome and call it quits.

  As Anaya walked past the dead patch, she stopped.

  Rain drip-dripped from the edges of her umbrella.

  Her first thought was that someone had jammed a stake into the dead patch. She went closer. From the muddy earth, a black shoot jutted a full foot high.

  It was sturdy, its sheath bristling with a spiral of tiny hairs. The very tip of the plant was pointy.

  This thing hadn’t been here this morning. She would’ve noticed it.

  Which meant that it had grown a full foot in a matter of hours.

  In the dead patch, where nothing grew.

  PETRA WALKED INTO TOWN, hoping this new doctor would be able to cure her.

  From school it was only a five-minute walk to downtown—if you could even call it that. There was a supermarket, a couple of bakeries, a hardware store and banks, and a bunch of bookstores—people liked reading on the island. The town was built around the marina, where there was a boardwalk and a few restaurants. There weren’t that many cool places to hang out. The Royal Cinema got movies weeks later than anywhere else. There was the pizza place, the gross donut place and the good donut place, and a bowling alley, which always smelled faintly of cat pee. When the weather was good, you could hang out on the playground at night.

  The town was pretty, everyone said so. In summer the main street bloomed with hanging flower baskets. Every Saturday a market was held in the field near the marina, and day-trippers would pour off the ferries from Vancouver and Victoria to buy organic fruits and vegetables, and beeswax candles, and weird crafts made out of yarn, or driftwood, or beach glass.

  Rain clattered against Petra’s umbrella as she walked down the main street. Luckily, Petra had probably the best umbrella in the world. It was the biggest you could buy. She knew because she’d searched online. It was like a plastic torpedo that covered her entire body down to her waist. It kept her completely dry, so long as she had pants—and rain boots, which she did because she watched the forecast constantly. If you were going to live in a coastal rainfall zone with a water allergy, you needed an umbrella like this and a lot of Gore-Tex clothing.

  Mom and Dad were always talking about moving someplace drier—apparently, Saskatoon got the least rain in Canada—and there were places in the US that were even drier, but they’d lived on the island their entire lives, and moving, especially to another country, was a big deal.

  Next to the Scotiabank was a small office building. Inside the lobby, Petra carefully folded her umbrella so it didn’t splash her, then walked down the corridor until she came to a door that said ALICIA DUMONT ND.

  She reached for the doorknob and faltered.

  Her parents didn’t know that she’d secretly made herself an appointment with a doctor of naturopathic medicine. Dad especially would flip out. He was a nurse practitioner at the island hospital, and he didn’t think naturopaths should even be called doctors: their medicine wasn’t scientific and it didn’t work, and it only distracted people from getting real treatment.

  But it seemed to Petra like no one really knew what the real treatment for her was, not even her specialist in Vancouver. The disease was so rare. Aquagenic urticaria.

  Petra had seen the way Anaya rolled her eyes today in the hallway. Anaya thought she was such a martyr because she was sniffly and had zits, but at least Anaya’s allergies weren’t degenerative. Petra felt afraid every time she even thought that word. Degenerative: getting worse, and never stopping.

  Maybe her skin would become a permanent red, itchy mess, and maybe one day she wouldn’t even be able to drink water! She’d heard of a woman who could only drink soda. Tap water was literally dissolving her esophagus. But there must be water in soda, too! So it didn’t make sense, did it? You needed water or you died. What if it got so bad she couldn’t drink anything? What if she needed an IV in her arm? What if she got allergic to her own saliva and couldn’t even swallow? She would become a hideous monster and no one would love her and she would die.

  Her heart started to race, and Petra took slow, deep breaths, the way her therapist had taught her. She knew she was supposed to look calmly back at all her catastrophic thoughts, and question them scientifically. So.

  Her allergy might not be degenerative. So far, it hadn’t gotten any worse. She could still drink water. Even if her skin did get worse, it didn’t mean she would be hideous. And if she did get hideous…This one always stalled her.

  This exercise was supposed to make her feel better. She wasn’t sure it did this time. She took one last deep, slow breath and turned the doorknob.

  She didn’t know much about naturopaths, except they used different medicines that were supposed to help the body heal itself. That sounded pretty good to her. Being cured. She pushed the door open and went inside.

  Petra had expected the naturopath’s office to look like a medieval alchemist’s shop, with shelves crammed with dried herbs and weird-smelling elixirs. But it was just a normal waiting room with ugly chairs and old magazines she didn’t want to read, and a window with a male receptionist behind it, looking up at her with a smile.

  He looked like an older version of the high school principal on that TV show about the kid who keeps skipping school because he’s a supermodel, and the principal keeps trying to expel him but never can.

  “Hi, Petra,” the receptionist said cheerily.

  Oh great, Petra thought, wincing at the sound of her name. This island was way too small. With only ten thousand people, practically everyone knew, or at least recognized, everyone else.

  The receptionist’s name tag said TOM THRESHER, and Petra figured he was probably the father of Marlene Thresher, who was in the grade above her. Petra glanced furtively at the two other people in the waiting room. She didn’t want anyone telling her parents they’d seen her here.

  She tilted her dripping umbrella against the wall.
>
  “Still pouring out there, Petra?”

  Petra wished he’d stop calling her by name. She went to the window and handed over her health card. “Yep.”

  “Your mom or dad here with you?”

  “They couldn’t make it.”

  Mr. Thresher’s smile folded itself into a frown.

  “Oh. Our office policy with minors is we can’t give a consultation without a parent present.”

  Petra had prepared for this. “I have a note from my mom.” She pulled it from her pocket and slid it over the counter.

  She tried not to look concerned while Mr. Thresher read it. She’d written it in her best handwriting, used her best old-person vocabulary, and practiced her mother’s signature before signing it.

  Mr. Thresher said, “Maybe I’ll just give her a call.”

  Petra’s heart sank. “Really?”

  “If I could just get her number—”

  “She’s at work,” said Petra hurriedly. “You’d probably just get voice mail. Isn’t the note enough?”

  Mr. Thresher leaned forward and lowered his voice. “Petra, there are two spelling mistakes in this note. I went to school with your mother, and she was the best speller in our grade.”

  Cursing inwardly, Petra forced herself not to blink. Of course they went to school together. And of course her mother would be an excellent speller. Mom loved rules! The more the better!

  “She wrote it in kind of a hurry,” Petra persisted.

  “They don’t know you’re here, do they?”

  She decided she needed a new strategy: pity.

  She made her eyes as big as possible. “I have a really, really serious allergy…,” she began.

  Mr. Thresher’s forehead creased sympathetically. “I know, Petra, I have heard about that, and—”

  “And I’m sorry I forged the note—that was wrong—but my parents would never let me come.” She was whispering now. “They think it’s all fake, like witchcraft.”