“You have a greenhouse?”
“Yes, built it myself this spring. Wait until you see it.”
Piper frowned and started tugging on her sash again, even though it was perfectly aligned and all the glittered lettering was readable. Tad was sure she’d turn him down, but then she nodded and said, “All right.”
“All right?”
“Yes, I’ll stop by, but it’ll be around six, if that’s okay. Like I said, I already promised the girls I’d meet up with them this afternoon.”
Tad lit up. He could barely mask his joy. “Six is perfect!”
“Okay.”
“Six it is!” he called to her as he watched her walk away.
But six it wasn’t. Six o’clock came, but Piper didn’t. As the minutes ticked on, Tad descended gradually through the stages of grief: denial, anger, depression, and finally totally bummed. He gave up on her, went inside the house, and ransacked the freezer for bad-mood-food. He was about to kick off a world-class pity party featuring a sandwich made out of cookie dough ice cream smashed between two Pop-Tarts when Piper’s text came through.
Running behind. Be there in 15 min.
Never before had seven words so quickly reversed the tide of despair. Tad checked himself in the mirror by the coatrack, combed his hair with his fingers, and searched his pants pockets for gum but found none. He headed back outside. The sun was setting. The interior of the greenhouse would be dark soon, and since his mother forbade Tad from doing the electrical wiring himself, the greenhouse didn’t have lights yet. Piper wouldn’t be able to stay long. Maybe that was her plan. Tad lifted the door latch, opened the door wide, and propped it with a brick. He went inside.
The greenhouse was Tad’s crowning achievement. Thirty-five feet long by eighteen feet wide, with an A-frame ceiling. Both roof and walls were made of clear, shatterproof polycarbonate panels he’d cut to size with a chop saw. He’d spent many evenings and weekends assembling the building with the help of Mr. Patel, Tad’s cantankerous next-door neighbor. Mr. Patel had bartered labor in exchange for some space to store his outdoor plants during the winter months. Jesup wasn’t exactly Alaska, but at times the temperatures did drop below freezing.
Tad set to work watering flowers to keep from going crazy while he waited, but mostly he just went over in his head the lines he would say to Piper. Good lines. The kind of lines that won the girl over in the chick flicks he’d sometimes watch with his mother because when she watched them alone she cried. Tad was so lost in thought that he jumped when Piper rapped her knuckles on the inside of the door frame.
“Sorry I’m late,” she said.
Tad waved her inside. He tried to act nonchalant, hoping she wouldn’t notice that his hands were shaking. “No problem. I was just finishing up some work.”
“Wow…” She panned around the greenhouse. “This is impressive. I was expecting something a little more…amateur.”
“You know what they say: go big or go home.” He shouldn’t have said “go home.” He had to choose his words more carefully. His future hinged on careful words.
Piper peeked down at the time on her phone. “I can’t stay long—I’ve already missed dinner. You said you had something for me?”
“I do. Can you spare ten minutes? Please? I’ll give you a tour.”
Before Piper could object, Tad started down the center aisle, pointing out his various projects. Piper lagged behind, keeping a fair distance between them. He could tell by her body language—arms folded close to her chest, hands knifed deep into her armpits, eyes darting everywhere except for his face—that she was uncomfortable being alone with him.
“We’ve got your standard salad fixings here.…” He moved the tour along at a brisk pace. “Some perennial flowers over here…Potatoes…Did you know potatoes are in the poisonous nightshade family? Here’s my mom’s herb garden—mostly stuff you’d find in Indian food. She loves Indian food.”
“What about these plants?” Piper asked. Her curiosity was piqued by a lone potter’s bench set against the back wall. It looked like a table in a mad scientist’s lab. The plants on its shelves were experiments in various stages. “Are you going all Frankenstein in here, Tad?”
“Not exactly.” He laughed. “I’ve been reading up on Charles Darwin, the guy who came up with the theory of evolution. In the years before he died, his interest shifted his focus from animals to plants. He conducted a bunch of experiments on them.”
“What kind of experiments?”
“This may sound crazy.…” Tad said. “Darwin wondered if plants had souls. Or at least some sort of higher awareness than we give them credit for. In order to make a determination, he first had to find out what plants know, which meant finding out which senses plants possessed, if any.”
“Senses?”
“The five senses: sight, touch, smell, taste, and hearing.”
Piper chuckled. “So you’re saying Darwin went a little bonkers toward the end?”
“Not at all! In fact, his experiments proved that plants possess many of the same senses we do. They just receive and process the information a little differently. For example, we know now that plants can see certain colors, like white, red, and blue. The sensory cells that detect and process colored light are located in the tips of a plant. If you shine a red light in the dark, a plant will grow toward it. But if you cover the tip of the plant with an opaque cap, then the plant stays dormant. It doesn’t grow or flower. Different colors of light have different effects on plants. Blue light is good for leaf growth, while red light encourages the plant to bloom.”
“Cool. What about the other four senses?”
“Well, there’s touch.…” Tad’s fingertips accidentally brushed against Piper’s arm and his heart fluttered. “Plants know when something brushes up against them.”
“Nuh-uh,” she said.
“It’s true. I’ll show you.” He lifted a leafy plant from the potter’s bench and held it out to Piper. “This species is called Mimosa pudica. Go ahead. Pet it.”
“Excuse me?”
“Stroke the plant,” he insisted.
Piper ran her fingertips over the leaves. Immediately, they folded in half like tiny books and moved away from her touch. She yanked her hand back. “Oh no! Did I hurt it?”
Tad smiled. He thought her concern was adorable. “No, it’ll forget about you in a few seconds, and then it’ll open back up.” Forget about you? Who could forget about you?
Sure enough, the plant sprang back to form.
“I didn’t know plants could move so fast,” said Piper. “Or at all.”
“It’s called rapid plant movement,” Tad explained. “Most plants aren’t capable of it—just a few, like my mimosa and the shrinking violet. It happens when electrical signals acting on motor cells make the leaves move. Now, the plant’s awareness of your touch is called something different: tropism. Most plants experience tropism, but unlike the Mimosa pudica, they can’t react to it quickly. When they get scared, they can’t just uproot and run away.” Like you did.
Piper pondered this. “If plants can feel touch, can they also feel pain?”
Tad shook his head. “No. Plants don’t have brains like animals do. Without a brain, they can’t process pain.” Lucky them.
“That’s good,” said Piper. “I’d hate to think the broccoli au gratin I had for lunch suffered horribly. Can they hear too?”
“Some scientists believe so,” Tad said. “But if I had to guess, I’d say plants are as deaf as a doornail.”
Piper giggled.
“What’s so funny?”
“My mom. She sings to her house ferns every day. She thinks it helps them grow. She has a terrible singing voice, so I was worried she was doing more harm than good.”
“Ha! I know what you mean. Mr. Patel, the neighbor who helped me build this greenhouse, curses up a storm. If plants could hear, all of his would have shriveled up and died a long time ago.”
They were having fun. Tad dec
ided this was the moment he’d waited for. It was time to tell her exactly how he felt about her.
A tiny flicker of green light outside caught Piper’s attention through the glass wall. Then another. Her smile disappeared. “Fireflies are out. It’s dark. I really need to go.”
“Oh. Okay. I’ll get that thing you came for.”
Tad led Piper to the greenhouse sink. Above the shelf was a solitary shelf. It held a single plant, an orchid in a clay pot. He’d written the words FOR PIPER! MR. PATEL, PLEASE DO NOT USE THIS POT! in permanent marker on the side. The orchid rose from the soil and hooked at the point on the stem where its gorgeous pink-and-white flowers began. “It’s a hybrid. A new species. I named it Denbrobium Piper Anne.”
Piper was confused. Piper Anne was her name.
“I made it for you,” Tad said, holding the pot out to her. “This orchid is a brand-new hybrid species. Took me a year to grow. Take it. It’s yours.”
“Oh.” Piper blushed. “Thanks.” Other than the sudden color change, her face was stony. Unreadable.
“No problem.”
She accepted the orchid from his hands. “It’s pretty.”
“I’m glad you think so.”
“I should go.” Piper turned and headed for the door. Tad followed.
They walked across the lawn toward the street. The porch light from Tad’s house illuminated the way. Neither of them spoke. Tad scoured his mind for the right words. Words that would reopen the door that had closed between them a year ago when the sick wolverine changed everything. He wanted things to be the way they used to be. He wanted Piper to be the way she used to be. But as desperate as he was for those magic words, they never came.
They reached Piper’s bike, and she unchained it from pole of the basketball hoop in Tad’s driveway. It was the first time anyone had used the hoop all year. Shooting baskets after school used to be their thing.
Piper set the orchid in her book bag. The flowers poked out of the unzipped top.
“Well…I’ll see you at school,” she said coolly, then straddled her bike seat.
In a moment of panic, Tad said the stupidest thing (which was, ironically, the most honest thing). “I’ve missed you, Piper.”
Piper didn’t reply. She just froze, staring at the handlebars, with one foot up on a pedal and the other on the pavement.
Tad forgot to breathe. Say something, Piper! Say anything!
A fat firefly floated in front of Piper’s face and blinked on. Green light means go.
“Good night, Tad.”
She rode off into the night.
The Field Notes of Botanist Dr. Brisbane Cole
June 31, 1823
In my travel-worn Bible, the apostle Paul warns that money is the root of all evil. Today, in this humble botanist’s view, the common gingerroot is the source of all that is good.
I, Dr. Brisbane Cole, am a passenger aboard the tea clipper Eastern Sun, a trade ship packed to the gunwales with teas and silk, sailing from Kwangchow, China, to New York. For five days I endured the most wicked bout of seasickness. At times the vomiting was so severe I considered flinging myself overboard for relief. The ship’s crew members, an unsavory lot who resent sharing our limited supply of freshwater with the three hundred exotic plant specimens I gathered along the Biejiang River, have taken no pity on my condition.
It was the chief cook who resolved my tender stomach! The cure? A teaspoon of infused gingerroot added to a cup of water every day has soothed my flopping innards. I shall be in the man’s eternal debt. It has not escaped this botanist’s sense of irony that my deliverance “stems” from a type of plant. The curative properties of plants have been recorded in modern science and in ancient legends, in the epic tales of Gilgamesh and Achilles, for example....I believe that the most enduring myths spring from seeds of truth. And perhaps I believe in these stories of miracle plants because it gives me hope to do so.
We find ourselves in a golden age of medicine. The Silk Road trade between China’s Qing dynasty and the Americas has opened a whole new world of discovery. The Orient is a great source of plant species previously unknown to Westerners. The people there have used these plants as medicine for thousands of years and have guarded their healing secrets from foreigners with ferocity, but I was able to earn their trust. In the span of three months, I gathered a trove of unique plant specimens and learned of their medicinal uses: dang gui for the health of the heart, chai hu for the stomach and liver, gan cao to harmonize the body, to name but a few. While I was forced to end my visit abruptly, it brings me great satisfaction to return to the States with a wealth of wellness as my reward. Now that the gingerroot has lifted my spirits, I am able to gather my thoughts, which are as roiling and dark as the tumultuous sea below. I think of my wife, Edwina. My beloved. Two weeks ago I received an urgent missive from our estate’s caretaker, Mrs. Muldoon, and learned that Edwina is eight months pregnant with our firstborn, and while this should be cause for much jubilation, it seems that my wife’s condition is complicated. She has taken sick with a mysterious ailment. Her body grows weaker by the day, and the doctors hold little hope that she will survive childbirth. I cannot accept this prognosis, and yet I feel helpless to change the outcome. For despite their curative potential, there is not a sprig or seed or sapling among our cargo that can save her life. And so my thoughts and sights return to America. It is with steely determination that I will venture into a dark, foreboding realm to seek the flower of Edwina’s salvation in the black heart of Georgia’s Okefenokee Swamp.
When Piper got home, her mother had nearly finished clearing the table. Her dad was dunking dishes into the sudsy sink. Neither of them scolded her for missing dinner. She’d called ahead to let them know she was stopping by Tad’s, and this seemed to make them happy and surprised. Happy because they’d always liked Tad, and surprised because the last time he’d been a visitor in their home (the day the Canfields had flown back from Washington), Piper had screamed at him and shoved him out the door, slamming it in his baffled face. He’d teetered on her welcome mat, stunned. The last words she’d said to him were “I never want to talk to you again!” and despite her parents’ repeated efforts to convince her that Tad had done nothing wrong, she’d stubbornly stuck to her guns.
“There’s some leftover chicken in the fridge,” Jane told her. “Help yourself.”
“I’m not hungry, thanks.”
Jane noticed the orchid sticking up like plumage from the top of Piper’s backpack and gushed over it. “Wow, that’s gorgeous! Did Tad give it to you?”
Piper slipped off the pack to give her mother a better peek. “Yes. That’s why he asked me over.”
“Well, it’s positively lovely,” said Jane.
With the last dinner plate set upright in the drying rack, Brad wiped his hands with a dish towel. “He’s such a nice kid, that Tad. It’s a shame…” He didn’t finish his thought. He didn’t he have to. Piper knew how her parents felt about her ex–best friend.
“I’m going to put the plant in my room. I have homework to do, so I’ll see you tomorrow.”
She said good night to Creeper, who was playing with his Xbox in the living room, his eyes glued to the TV screen. He waved good night or he waved her away—she couldn’t tell which.
On the way to her bedroom, Piper stopped by the open door of the nursery. The lights were off inside, but she could make out the silhouette shapes of the crib and the teddy bear mobile dangling above it. The room’s occupant was awake, standing up on short sausage legs, smiling and reaching out to Piper with little clutching hands.
“Pippy!” the baby squealed.
Piper sighed and stepped into the nursery. She reached into the crib, but instead of picking Grace up, she fished the plastic baby monitor from the bedding and spoke into the microphone, knowing her voice would be received in the kitchen. “Mom, your youngest is awake. I told you I have to do homework—she’s all yours.”
Piper considered her sister’s joy-filled f
ace and chubby arms reaching eagerly for her Pippy.
“Go to sleep,” Piper whispered, diverting her gaze to the mobile. She pressed its button, prodding the plush teddy bears into a slow circular waltz to the tune of “Rock-a-bye Baby” and the faint clicking of the mobile’s motor. “I’ll see you tomorrow.” Piper turned her back on Grace and left the bedroom. She waited in the hallway until she heard her mother starting up the stairs, then she ducked into her own room and quickly shut the door. Inside her safe zone, she made a place of prominence for Tad’s orchid by pushing some of her pageant trophies to the back of her dresser top. She kicked off her shoes, changed into her nightclothes, washed up (in the bathroom adjoining her room to Creeper’s), and then sprawled out on her bed. She set her alarm clock to go off an hour earlier than usual; homework would wait until morning.
Piper’s phone pinged with a text message. She checked the screen thinking it might be from Tad. He had her new number now because she’d texted him earlier to tell him she’d be late. But the text was from her friend, Olivia Price.
Hey, bestie! Don’t forget we’re going dress shopping for the pageant this Saturday. Let me know what time. P.S. I saw you at the new nature center, cornered by some geek. Do you need me to print more restraining orders? ROFL!
Piper didn’t reply. She was friends with Olivia and the other girls in their clique, but she didn’t agree with some of their crueler antics. The restraining orders were especially stupid. If she didn’t feel like talking to someone, she just wouldn’t. She didn’t need to make a spectacle out of it.
Piper knew that people thought her friends were shallow. She knew that people thought she was shallow too. Even her guidance counselor had lowered his expectations of her. During their last visit, he’d suggested she consider a career as a showcase model. A showcase model! The kind that stands by expensive cars at auto shows and waves vapidly at people as they pass by. Her counselor said, “It’s super easy. All you have to do is smile and occasionally ask people to sign up for raffles.” She would have been offended if she’d actually cared. Nobody asked much of her anymore. That’s exactly how she wanted it.
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