“Hey.”
“Hi,” I answer back.
“You ready?”
I nod, and we make our way into the open-air lobby. The normal y bare concrete floor is now marked with bright neon tape, indicating where visitors can stand while maintaining social distance. Evan shows the attendant the tickets he purchased before coming, and we’re handed an information booklet and put into a queue for entry.
Once it’s our turn, we’re ushered into a dimly lit room, where another attendant directs us to the first numbered display. After we check out a few displays, Evan taps me on the shoulder, gesturing toward a smal alcove. We find two seats on a bench in the back and sit down as a short film plays on a projector. When the only other person inside walks out, Evan scoots closer.
“I’m glad you came.” His words are slow, hesitant. “Considering what happened the other day, I didn’t know if you…”
“Would want to meet up?”
He nods. Impulsively, perhaps spurred by the courage one only finds in darkness, I reach out and touch his forearm. He tenses, and I instantly regret it. I pul away and clasp my hands in my lap.
“I owe you an explanation for what happened the other day. It’s just kind of hard to put into words.”
“I’m a good listener,” he says with a gentle smile.
I heave a sigh. “Okay. My mom is very superstitious. Like, go-see-a-fortune-tel er-every-week kind of superstitious. Every year, she makes me go with her to get a birthday fortune. This time, the fortune-tel er said I might find…um, love.”
I pause, cheeks flaming. “But she also warned me that a winter horse would break my heart.”
Evan looks confused. “Your mom sent me away because I mentioned winter?”
“Yes.” I reach up with my free hand to fiddle with my earring. “Not that it justifies how she acted, but Mom thought she was protecting me.”
“Do you believe what the fortune-tel er said?” he asks after a beat.
“I—” I take a deep breath. “No, I’m not like my mom. I’m not superstitious, but…”
“But?”
“No one wants to get their heart broken,” I admit.
“I don’t think anyone does,” he agrees softly.
I drum up the courage to look up at him. There’s a lot to decipher in those dark brown eyes, but the uncertainty I find in them mirrors my own.
Evan looks away, brows furrowed as he swal ows hard. His hand inches across the bench, pausing halfway in the space between us.
It’s an invitation, and just like when we were messaging, he’s waiting patiently for me to accept.
I place my hand in his and thread our fingers together. He smiles, and I do too. We stay like this for as long as we dare, savoring the moment before leaving behind the privacy of the alcove to explore the rest of the exhibit.
Standing before a replica display of King Tut’s tomb paintings, Evan suddenly turns to me with a frown.
“I stil can’t believe your mom got upset over my family’s winter vacation.”
I shake my head. “It’s not that. It’s because you have a winter birthday.”
“Wait…that’s what you meant by a winter horse?”
I nod, and I’m stunned when he throws his head back and laughs. The museum attendant glares in our direction, and I poke Evan in the side.
“What’s so funny?”
“I wasn’t born in the winter,” he explains. “My birthday’s in July. The reason we celebrate during winter break is because that’s when my parents can take time off from work.”
“What?” I stare at him, incredulous. “You’ve got to be kidding me! I just risked being grounded for life to come here!”
“Oh, come on, it can’t real y be that bad,” he counters. “I’m sure your mom wil forgive you.”
“Says the guy she kicked out of our restaurant over a birthday.”
He bursts into laughter again. This time, the other visitors join in frowning at us. I give Evan a warning look, but al he does is lean closer.
“Does that mean you have to get home soon?”
I can hear the pout in his voice. I find myself smiling.
“If I’m getting grounded anyway, I might as wel enjoy my last moments of freedom.”
Evan grins, the crinkle of his eyes enough to send my heart skittering.
His hand tightens around mine.
“Then what are we waiting for?”
BILLIE VS. THE PLANTS
Normal y, my therapist is pretty chil . Even when I tel her how cluttered and sad my brain is.
But not today.
Today, she recommended that I take up a new hobby, like juggling or hula hooping, or moving my favorite reading spot from my bedroom to the bay window in the living room. Anything to get me some fresh air and some of this “lovely spring sunshine we’ve been having,” she says.
So, here I am, pausing in the fourth-floor stairwel to catch my breath, lugging a crate ful of tiny green herb starter plants that wil be dead by the end of the week. Somehow, I’ve managed to nourish myself for sixteen years, and keep my cat Ruby alive for nine, but everything else that comes home with me dies. Especial y plants.
They say plants can sense good people and thrive when they’re around them. Maybe deep down, I’m just not a good person. Maybe I just don’t deserve them.
No, Bil ie, I tel myself, hoisting the crate up into my arms and starting up the stairs again, stop that deprecating self-talk. What would Jordyn say?
Jordyn, my therapist, would probably say that it’s okay to catch myself talking down to myself, and that I can’t course-correct until I notice I’m off-course.
So here I go, up the stairs, quietly course-correcting.
I reach our apartment door, set the little plants down, and unlock it. Ruby meows at me from her favorite spot in the window, and as I heave the carton of plants through the door and set them down on the kitchen table, I smile.
“Hey, fluffy girl,” I say, shrugging out of my hoodie and tucking my hair behind my ear. I scoop her fat ass up in my arms and nuzzle my face in her white and orange fur. She squirms out of my arms and slinks her way back up onto the window.
“Glad you see you too, Rubles,” I say. I look past her and out the window. There’s a sad little planter box just on the other side, covered in spiderwebs, dead roots, and what I’m pretty sure is the remains of a bird’s nest.
From like three years ago.
And I sigh, because al I want to do is kick off my shoes and socks, slip into some shorts, curl up in bed with a cup of tea and a good book and Ruby on my lap, and read my troubles away.
But I can’t.
Because I’m now the mother of a tarragon plant, a cilantro plant, a basil plant, and a parsley plant, and they can’t survive on the kitchen table al afternoon.
So I rol up my sleeves and get to it, wondering why I forced myself into this. I slip on some rubber kitchen gloves—because we don’t have gardening ones, because nobody’s gardened here since before we moved in—and I start scooping. Al of the old gray soil that’s been caking itself into bricks in the planter basket for years goes straight into the paper bag in my hand, handful by dusty handful.
I think of how much cheaper a hula hoop would’ve been. And then I remember I can’t hula hoop.
I think of how much easier it would’ve been to find things around the house to juggle. And then I remember we live on the fifth floor and the neighbors below us get mad if we walk around too angrily in socks.
So I sigh, and I keep scooping.
Putting in the new soil is actual y kind of…I won’t say fun…interesting. It feels soft and lush under my gloved fingers. So soft that I actual y decide to take the gloves off and feel the dirt.
It’s strangely…nice.
And then…
THE WILD BARKING OF AN UNTAMED CANINE!
I nearly drop the bag of soil the whole five stories to the ground below and brace myself against the sil to keep from fal ing out the window. R
uby is freaking the hel out, fur sky-high off her back and tail and claws dug into the bay window cushion.
My fear gives way to rage as I look out the window and across the eight-foot gap between where I stand and the next building over, at the wild fluffy mutt in the window barking away at my sweet Ruby darling. The dog owned by none other than the menace next door sitting at his desk: Sebastian.
I only know his name from al the times I’ve cal ed the front desk about this yapping dog—more times than I can remember—and yet here he stil is, harassing my poor kitty baby.
I growl and consider slamming the window shut. That’s what I’d normal y do. But I look down at my little plant babies—I’m already kind of getting attached to them, I’l admit it—and decide that if I’m going to get through planting al four of them, I have to end that racket.
Now.
“Hey!” I hol er out the window. But Sebastian is wearing enormous headphones over his black curls, shirtless with his back turned to me at his desk. Ruby doesn’t like me yel ing, though, apparently, because she panics.
Her claws dig into the windowsil , her fur stands on end, her tail coils up against her ass like a corkscrew, and she yeets herself across the gap between my apartment and the building next door.
“Ruby!” I hol er, reaching out for her.
But it’s too late.
She lands on Sebastian’s windowsil and leaps inside onto the carpet. The dog lunges at her, and she jumps off his closet door and runs straight into the desk lamp, shattering it into pieces.
Oh shit.
But Sebastian doesn’t flinch.
Seriously?
I stare, mouth agape at how oblivious this boy is while his dog and my cat chase each other around his room.
“Ruby, come back, girl, it’s okay!” I hol er again, irritated at how ironic it is that now I’ve become the loud one. His headphones must be noise-canceling because he doesn’t turn around. At al . Instead he bends down and fluffs his dog’s fur, then looks at the floor, fol ows the trail of glass over to his desk, and then up to the broken desk lamp.
Before I can react or think to warn him, he’s getting up—no wait, he’s barefoot! He stumbles backward, holding his foot, and goes careening into his closet with a crash.
He groans with pain. I cover my mouth with my hands and freeze where I am, looking guilty as hel , just as he looks up and out the window at me. I can’t move. I want to run away and disappear forever to save myself from this embarrassment. But I also need my cat back.
As if she can hear my thoughts, she bounds back into view in the window, up onto Sebastian’s sil , and across the gap. I catch her in my arms and in one fel swoop, I set Ruby on the bay window seat, slam the window shut, run to my room, and dive under the covers.
I hope I never have to see that boy again.
And I hope he’s okay.
SEBASTIAN VS. THE PITS
It’s been three weeks since I’ve been able to sit at my keyboard and play.
I didn’t real y care that I needed stitches in my foot after they took out the glass, or that I shattered my wrist and needed surgery after I went flying into my own closet.
Or I wouldn’t have cared if my arm cast had stopped at my elbow.
But no, Mr. Doctor Man just had to go halfway up my humerus, leaving my arm stuck at an awkward L-shape for the rest of the summer, right before I was about to learn to play “Kil ing in the Name.”
I light the candle sitting on the sheet music stand and watch the flame flicker while the scent of citronel a fil s my room. That scent always chil s me out. Reminds me of sitting around in the communal garden and staving off the early summer mosquitoes. My mom got me into aromatherapy for a science project I did in the fifth grade, and it just kinda…stuck.
I sigh and look just past the candle, at Hopscotch in his terrarium.
“You don’t care, huh?” I smile at the frog. “Long as I have one good hand so I can play with you.”
I reach in and pick him up gently, feeling his slippery little body settle into the palm of my right hand as he blinks one eye, then the other, in hel o.
He doesn’t ribbit much anymore since he’s old now, but I can look at his eyes and know when he’s smiling at me.
And right now, he’s smiling.
“Yeah, man, you’re right,” I say, setting him back inside next to his water pot. “Gotta keep positive.”
As if on cue, the fluffy little mop of chaos in the family bolts through the door and jumps up on my leg, panting up at me.
“Yo, Oscar, I’m a little laid-up now, you cain’t just be runnin’ up on me like that.” But I laugh and floof his snow white fur. I can’t stay mad at him.
And then I look up at the windowsil , at my third species of little ones to take care of. My plants. Specifical y, my herbs—sage, rosemary, lavender, and oregano. I’ve never taken care of plants before. But they’re quieter than dogs, they’re cleaner than frogs, and they only need three things: water, sunlight, and company.
I scoot my keyboard seat up to the planter box outside the window and look down at them al . Arthur—my therapist, and feelings organizer extraordinaire—told me that talking to them can help fil in the gaps he can’t fil virtual y, especial y now that I’ve gone and injured myself and can’t go out for walks as often as I’d like. It just hasn’t been the same meeting with him over video cal . I can’t sit on that huge emerald couch in his living room with the peach wal s and the fresh plants, the soft sound of running water in the fountain on the coffee table, or the faint scent of eucalyptus—he’s into aromatherapy, too.
But here, in my almost-empty room, where al my anxieties sit with me 24/7, where I lie awake at night catastrophizing everything while Mom is out driving for people al day? How am I supposed to relax here?
So I fold my arms on the sil and look at my little green friends. Mr.
Lavender is coming in nicely, but he grows slow so he won’t be ready until the end of summer, while Mrs. Oregano is already sprouted and ready to go. I lean down and smel her—that herby, delicious smel that I’m used to sprinkling in dried form over pizza.
“But that’s a disgraceful fate for a plant as pretty as you, huh, ma’am?
You deserve to be used for something greater, fresher. Not sure what that is yet, but—”
The sound of a sliding window catches me off guard, and I look up to see
—for the first time in three weeks—the girl across the gap. That’s what Mom cal s the space between our buildings—the gap. The girl looks about my age, with the bel -shaped curls that brush her shoulders when she turns each page of whatever book she’s reading. The one with the round face and the eyes as big and dark as wine grapes and sparkly as marbles.
“Hey,” she says, leaning on the windowsil and clasping her hands together as if she has more to say. She’s looking down at me with a piercing stare, and I can’t tel if she’s mad or nervous or something else.
“Hey,” I say back, leaning on my windowsil , too, and nodding at her planter box. “Nice plants. What kind?”
She seems to prickle at my question, but then she glances down at them.
“Just…some starters I picked up at the nursery,” she says with a sigh, cradling her hands around her elbows. “I came out here to say uh…sorry.”
She pauses for a minute, and I must stare in confusion for long enough that she realizes I have no idea what she’s talking about, because she shrugs and continues. “For…your arm.”
“Oh.”
I don’t hold it against her. I know cats aren’t easy to control. It’s why dogs are better. Al they want to do is eat and play. I can relate. Unless…this girl sicced her cat on me? Or, for al I know, she might’ve been trying to flirt with me. I’m historical y bad at realizing when someone’s flirting vs. messing with me.
“It’s fine now,” I lie with a smile. “Had time to recover. Enough to take up planting these guys. I was just out here talking to them, by the way. You ever talk to yours?�
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“Nah.” She smirks. “Mine are too young. Don’t think their ears have grown in yet.”
No idea what she’s talking about. They look like they’re bursting right out of the planter box like a miniature jungle.
“They look almost ready for harvest to me,” I say, craning my neck to get a better look at them. “What is that, basil?”
“That was a joke,” she says, a bit coldly. “Why are you so interested in my plants anyway? Thought you had your own to worry about.”
“Wel , I think that joke was pretty corny,” I say, with the hol owest silence between us in reply. “You know, because…I thought you meant you were growing…ears of…corn…Never mind.”
“Anyway, I just came out here to apologize,” she says, turning to pul the window closed. “This doesn’t mean we’re friends.”
“Doesn’t it?” I ask, before she can leave, “Or…wait…ohhhh, I get it.”
This seems to pique her interest.
“What?” she asks with a frown.
“You must be intimidated by my awesome gardening skil s,” I say.
Playing with her is strangely entertaining. It’s like poking a bear that’s stuck in a building at least ten feet away, a bear that I’l probably never see again after today if I keep poking her like this. Al the entertainment with zero risk.
“I don’t get intimidated,” she says, a hint of a smile playing at the corner of her mouth for the first time today. “Certainly not by someone with such awful taste in pets.”
Ouch.
I mean, not real y. Oscar is awesome. I don’t need nobody to tel me that.
But that’s a personal attack right there. That’s my son she just dissed. I can’t sleep tonight if I don’t strike back—what, and miss an opportunity for free entertainment? Not I.
“Wel , what if I don’t get intimidated by cat people who sit around reading al day?” I ask.
Her face goes flat with horror.
“So you’ve been spying on me,” she states. “I’ve never heard someone insult someone by admitting that.”
“Like some kind of creep? Nah, I just happened to notice, you know? It’s like living in a house by the beach and not expecting me to marvel at the view on a clear day.”
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