Page 8

A TRIP TO THE TOWN , or the Victor of the Great Flamingo Debate

The next morning, Ros was out of bed before me again. This time, they’d made pancakes.

“Finally, you’re up,” they said. This was perplexing: It was only nine thirty. What the hell did they mean by finally ?

“Your options are blueberry, raspberry, chocolate chip, plain, and every permutation you can think of. Or is it combination?”

“Um. Combination, I think,” I said. It smelled like fifth grade, Saturday mornings at their house, only instead of their dad wielding the spatula, it was Ros. They looked just like him: a towel slung over their shoulder, whistling as they worked; Ros would probably pretend to bop me on the head with the spatula the same way their dad used to. Berries were sitting on the counter in green cardboard shells, berries that hadn’t been there when I’d gone to sleep. “Where did these come from?”

“I went out,” Ros said. “Turns out there’s a farmers’ market in town on Saturday mornings. That’s where I got these. Try them; they’re incredible.”

I popped a blueberry into my mouth. It was delicious.

“I would have gone with you,” I said.

“I was up super early, and I didn’t want to wake you,” they said, their voice oddly upbeat. “Let’s go back into town after we eat! It’s like a ten-minute walk, and there are some cool-looking places to check out. The bookstore should be open by then. What kind of pancake you want? Pick your poison.”

“Ummm,” I said. “One of each, I guess.”

They set about making me a plate while I replayed last night’s fight in my mind. I was floored, mostly, by the briefness of it: The whole episode had had a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it hallucinatory quality, and on top of that, there was this element that seemed staged—like I was watching an elaborate joke playing out, some sort of experimental stage-combat guerrilla theater. I’ll admit, I half expected people to burst into applause when it was all over.

And it wasn’t just the fight that was weird, but the after , too. Ros had disappeared. I looked for them inside and out. I finally found them tucked away by the rope swing, talking to Jess Orlando. It was just a conversation—they weren’t even doing anything—but still, I felt like I’d interrupted. Jess Orlando had her hand in a bag of frozen shrimp. They’d both stared at me with such intensity I felt like I’d startled wild animals: like the best thing to do was back away slowly.

“It’s funny,” I said. “I feel like on Power Jam there’s a fight every episode but, like, it was different, seeing it in real life.”

“I had the same thought,” said Ros. “It was kind of incredible.”

“Was it? It kind of freaked me out,” I said. “What was with the shrimp?”

“I found them in the freezer. I thought it might feel good on her hand,” Ros said.

“That was nice of you,” I said.

They shrugged. “It looked like it hurt.”

“Yeah, I imagine punching someone in the face is painful,” I said.

“You heard what he said. What he called her,” Ros said.

They handed me a stack of pancakes and a frog-patterned cloth napkin. They looked beautiful. Both the pancakes and Ros.

“This reminds me of your dad,” I said, looking at my plate.

“A bit,” Ros said.

“I know it’s been a while now, but I’m still here if you ever want to talk about it,” I said.

I watched their face darken.

“Or not,” I said.

“Sorry—it’s just, I feel like we’ve talked ourselves into oblivion about my dad. I’m more than ready to move on,”’ said Ros. “Let’s go sit.”

We brought our plates to the couch and cut into our pancakes, staring out the picture window. Someone had set up a tent on the far side of the river, a separate life running corollary to the Lily Pad. I resisted the urge to ask Ros if they were okay. Touchstone had been right that I needed to trust that they were doing better, and by all accounts they were: They were awake. They’d gone out to the farmers’ market. They’d made pancakes. There was no real reason for me to be worried about them.

“You know I got in trouble for fighting at my old school,” Ros said as we worked our way through our pancakes.

“No,” I said. “Really?”

“Yeah. That’s why I switched schools. I pushed someone. Harder than I meant to. This guy was kind of hassling me at recess. Like, what are you kinda thing.”

“Fuck that guy,” I said—our standard response for people who’d done us wrong.

“Yeah. Obviously. But I pushed him, he fell, and he hit his head. It was more instinctive than anything else. The pushing, I mean. He was so much bigger than me, and I was afraid. And he was okay but, like—it was scary. To know that I could do that.”

“I can’t believe you’ve never told me that before,” I said.

“Not the sort of thing you want to tell people, is it?” They bit off a piece of their nail. “The scary part was that even though it felt bad, it also felt good. Like, to know I could do that. Protect myself. Maybe it even felt good to hurt him; I don’t know.”

The pancakes were sticking in my molars. What was Ros trying to say? That they were like Jess Orlando, maybe—that they understood not only the impulse to protect oneself, but also the impulse to hurt. That they were both fighters—and I was a softy who couldn’t possibly understand the appeal of a well-thrown left hook.

“I bit Touchstone once,” I said.

“What? Really?!” Ros was giggling.

“Yeah, I mean. We were little. I didn’t draw blood or anything. But I chomped down fairly hard. According to my mom.”

“Damn, Celia. I didn’t know you had it in you.”

“He stole my My Little Pony, and he wouldn’t give it back.”

“That is so not what happened,” Touchstone yelled.

“It moves!” cried Ros.

“Yeah, because you two won’t shut up, and Celia won’t stop telling lies !”

“We’re not relitigating this, Andrew!” I yelled upstairs. “The really funny part,” I said to Ros, “is that then my mom bit me .”

“Wait,” Ros said. “Clare bit you?”

“Clare bit me,” I confirmed. “Lightly. But yeah. I mean—I never bit anyone ever again, so.”

It had been so completely, utterly ridiculous to both of us—my mom, who would cup her hand around spiders to release them outside—that we were quickly convulsing with laughter.

“I guess everyone has it in them,” Ros said.

“Maybe so,” I said, though I didn’t like the idea of that one bit, no pun intended. I didn’t need any more disruptions this summer, certainly not in the form of kicks and bites and punches that lay dormant within us. I wanted a soft, gentle summer, but after last night, I was already worried the texture of it was changing—to something scratchy and harsh and suffocating, uncomfortable and hard to throw off.

The day was beautiful, and the town was so painfully charming it made my teeth hurt. Though Touchstone and I had driven through it, taking a closer look felt like injecting dopamine straight into my eyeballs: a baby being fed a biscuit outside a breakfast place; handsome, bandanna-necked dogs tied up and waiting patiently for their owners who were grabbing coffee. There were pride flags hung on nearly every storefront, and a handful of queer couples, and posters for Arden’s upcoming shows, the first of which, Into the Woods , premiered Thursday, June 26, in just under two weeks. On the side of the grocery store, someone had painted a map of the surrounding trails in the woods and local sites of interest, including the Lovesick Falls spring, for which guided tours left hourly, for an exorbitant fee.

“We should do one of those tours,” I said. “The next one leaves in an hour, which should work.…”

“Do you actually have to drink the spring water?” Touchstone said.

“If you want to fall out of love you do,” I said.

“Oooh, can we go in here?” said Ros, tugging us into a thrift store.

I let myself be dragged inside, even though in my opinion, we didn’t need the thrift store: Our outfits were already fire. I’d debuted my denim shortalls that I’d bought specifically for the trip, with my glitter socks and my boots. Touchstone had on his customary, but still very respectable, solid-color T-shirt and shorts combination, this time pale blue on top and olive on the bottom, muted tones that brought out the penny-red shades in his messy hair and ensured that endless freckles were the stars of the show. Ros had on their tie-dyed PIZZA ROLLS, NOT GENDER ROLES T-shirt, and their signature gold chain, which they always wore. I’d been there when they bought it years ago, and to this day I found its omnipresence comforting: It was almost liquid, serpentine, and when Ros had put it on that first time, they’d studied themselves in the mirror for a long time, longer than I’d ever seen. Typically, they avoided their reflection—at some point in middle school, they’d taken their mirror off the wall and turned it around—but when they put that necklace on, they actually liked the way they looked. I remember standing in the store with them, watching them look at themselves, turning this way and that, admiring the angles of their jaw, their collarbone. They never took it off: swimming, showering, if they layered on other necklaces. We’d actually bickered about it when we went as flamingos for Halloween: I said the necklace distracted from the authenticity of the costume, and Ros said it was a fucking flamingo Halloween costume and no one was going to be thinking about it that hard anyway. 5 Flamingos aside, I loved that chain on Ros—it reminded me that they were still them, in spite of all the changes they, and we, had gone through.

In the thrift store, Ros found a pair of trousers they liked: a kind of plaid mustard check that would’ve looked hideous on anyone else, but on Ros they looked slouchy and effortless, a throwback to the ’70s.

“Very used-car-salesman chic,” said Touchstone.

“They’re kinda long,” Ros said, kicking up fabric where it puddled around their feet.

“I can hem them for you,” I said.

“I can just—” Their lace-up caught in a rip in the fabric, and they stepped and pulled. They repeated the same thing on the other side in spite of my loud protests that we hadn’t paid for them yet, that we couldn’t alter clothing we didn’t own. To get me to shut up, they launched themselves at me in more of a tackle than a hug, and Touchstone wrapped his arms around both of us and squeezed.

They liked the trousers so much they wore them out of the store after we paid, ragged bottoms and all.

“Let’s go to the bookstore before we do the tour,” Ros said, linking their arm with mine. “I’m betting you’ll like it.”

Ros was right: I loved the bookstore.

In the first place, there was a literal tree in it. In the second place, it was small, but their selection was incredible , the best combination. So many good books by authors I hadn’t heard of, and then the books by authors I knew but hadn’t realized they’d written other stuff, and as my stack grew, a bookseller noticed me and gave me a few different recommendations based on what I was reading, and I just about died of happiness.

“I want to live in this place,” I said.

“Same here,” said Touchstone, who loved to read as much as I did.

“I knew you’d like it,” said Ros.

“You should ask if they’re hiring!” I said. “And then I can use your discount.”

“This would be a good job for you , not for me,” Ros said with a smile.

Touch and I hunted feverishly for books in the twenty minutes before the next Lovesick Falls tour began. Though I truly could have stayed in the bookstore forever, I eventually crammed the books into my mini backpack, and we walked out into the sunshine to catch the tour, only to run into Phoebe and Audrey. Audrey held an iced coffee in one hand and was walking a unicycle beside her, her curls swept up into a messy bun; Phoebe was wearing a black denim jacket that had faded to the perfect shade of gray, the kind that came only with consistent, ritualistic wear.

“Oh, hi!” Audrey said, and she seemed excited to see us, or at least to see Touchstone. “You guys left so quickly last night. I’m so sorry. Things got totally out of hand.”

“Jess Orlando,” Phoebe said, rolling her eyes. “Classic.”

“What are you talking about?” Audrey said. “Jess did nothing wrong. Dennis started it. Called her a dyke.”

“Yeah, did he also start the bazillion other fights she’s gotten into over the past few years?” Phoebe shook her head. “Dennis is a dick, but Jess is pugilistic at best and an asshole at worst.”

“Good word,” I said.

“Asshole, or pugilistic?” said Phoebe.

“The latter,” I said.

“I’m on Jess’s side,” said Audrey. “And Jess’s brother is the asshole.”

“A whole family of assholes, then,” said Phoebe.

“Their Christmas card must be quite something,” said Touch.

“Ros was talking to her,” I said.

Everyone turned and looked at me then. Then they looked at Ros, and back at me, like they were waiting for me to say more. Only I didn’t have anything more to say. In my head, the fact that Ros had been talking to Jess had sounded helpful, like pertinent information that might be useful to the conversation; out loud, it sounded like tattling and had brought the conversation to a screeching halt. I could feel Ros staring at me, and my face felt hot.

“I just meant that maybe you knew something we didn’t. About the fight. Or assholes,” I joked. No one laughed.

“We only talked for a second,” said Ros.

“It looked important,” I said. “Whatever it was.”

“It wasn’t,” Ros insisted.

There was a long pause where I became extremely aware of how heavy the books were in my backpack, more like stones than literature. Someone pushed by us on the sidewalk; Ros stepped out into the road. I resisted the urge to tell them to be careful.

“What are you all up to?” said Audrey, and I was grateful to her for changing the subject.

“We’re thinking about going on a tour of the spring,” said Touchstone.

Both Audrey and Phoebe groaned.

“Oh no, is it bad?” said Touchstone.

“It’s fine,” said Phoebe, drawing out the i in fine . “It’s just cheesy. We’ve been on it a million times for school field trips.”

“‘ At the height of the gold rush, miners passed through our town pining for their beloveds back home, and they found the cure to their lovesickness deep in our woods ,’” Audrey said, with pitch-perfect tour-guide intonation.

“Wait,” I said. “The cure to their lovesickness was just to forget about the people back home? Why couldn’t they just wait to go home and be reunited?”

“The miners weren’t very patient people,” Audrey said. “Honestly, I’d skip the tour if I were you. It’s kind of dull. Sort of a waste of time and money.”

“It’s kind of interesting,” Phoebe said. “You learn that they used Lovesick Falls as a measuring stick for things in the woods. It was an important landmark for them as they tried to cross through the forest—everything was some number of miles from the spring.”

“What was I saying about it being dull?” said Audrey, and Phoebe laughed good-naturedly. “ And it’s expensive to take the tour. You can hike it on your own for free if you take the steeper route; that’s the best advice I can give you. The hike is pretty, and the spring is, too, though Lovers’ Lagoon is better for swimming.”

“There’s also a gift shop where you can buy Lovesick Falls water for like five bucks a pop if you’re feeling desperate,” said Phoebe, and though she sounded disparaging, like Who on earth would buy that water? , I confess I would have paid quadruple that if it meant my feelings about Ros would just go away. Ros, for the record, was still standing in the street, looking at their feet, inspecting the ragged hems of their new pants.

“Where are you guys off to?” Touchstone said.

“I’m headed home,” said Phoebe.

“And I’m going to go practice,” said Audrey, indicating her unicycle. “You’re welcome to come if you want, Andrew. We’ve got a clown unit coming up in Young People’s Workshop.”

At this offer, Touchstone shot a glance at me and Ros.

“We take a rain check on the spring?” he asked.

“Fine with me,” I said, though part of me was still hoping I might be able, at some point, to take a drink from the spring and solve my Ros problem. “Ros?”

They nodded, and so Touchstone bid us farewell and walked off with Audrey and Phoebe.

“Well, good for Touchstone,” I said. “Honestly it seems like a match made in clown heaven. Clown heaven. Cleaven. ”

“Why did you say that?” Ros said.

“Why, you think hown is better? Hown is definitely better.”

“Celia. Why did you tell everyone that I was talking to Jess Orlando?”

“Because you were talking to Jess Orlando,” I said.

It was so odd saying her name: like it was someone we already knew, someone we were intimately acquainted with. Someone we’d already been arguing about for months.

“Yeah,” Ros said. “But it was, like… the way you said it. Like you were mad.”

“I’m not mad,” I said, readjusting the straps on my backpack. “Why would I be mad?”

This was, of course, the very question I’d been asking myself the second I started feeling mad. Because of course I was mad that Ros had been talking to Jess Orlando. I didn’t like that I was mad, and it didn’t feel right, and I wasn’t about to tell Ros that I was mad, but that didn’t stop me from being mad. I was mad, and I didn’t know what to do with it. So I’d eaten some pancakes and bought a whole bunch of books and waited for the feeling to go away, which I was still waiting for it to do.

“I don’t know,” Ros said slowly. “You tell me.”

“Not mad,” I said. “Should we get ice cream or something?”

They put a hand to their stomach. They looked so cool in their new pants. “I feel like we just had pancakes,” they said.

We had just had pancakes. “Yeah,” I agreed. My backpack was heavy, and I sort of wanted to go home, but somehow that felt like it would be quitting. I wanted to get the joy back that we’d felt earlier in the day. I couldn’t get the tackling hug out of my mind. I wondered if there was a way I could get another one, or even something better.

“Let’s do one more store, maybe?”

“Sure,” they said. “How ’bout that?” They nodded across the street to a place called the Hidden Fern—a plant store by the looks of it, with lots of big green plants towering in the window, some varieties of which I recognized from the Lily Pad. As a place to visit, it wasn’t necessarily my first choice—we had enough plant life back where we were staying, and I did sort of want ice cream, in spite of what we’d just said about pancakes—but it didn’t matter to me that much. What I really wanted was to go wherever Ros went.

“Okay,” I said finally. “Whatever you like.”

The Hidden Fern turned out to be pretty beautiful. A bell rigged to the door rang when we walked inside, and we were instantly plunged into a miniature indoor jungle. From the green depths, a voice of an employee called “Hello” and asked if we needed any help; Ros assured them we were okay, just looking. They slowly began a loop through the store, reverently touching the plants’ green leaves while I followed behind, trying not to feel antsy. Plants were pretty, but they weren’t exactly my thing.

“This is the same one that Henry has,” Ros said, touching a leaf. “Theirs looks like it’s in much better shape.”

“We’re already killing his plants? Perfect. We’ll be kicked out by July.”

“I’ll double-check how much watering we’re supposed to do,” Ros said. “We’ll come up with a way to fix it, don’t fret.”

In spite of the plant’s troubled health, I was thrilled to hear Ros reassure me that it would all be okay—it sounded like they were already feeling better, my Jess Orlando–shaped gaffe on the sidewalk already forgotten. We passed through the green to a back patio, where all sorts of different planters were grouped. There seemed to be millions of terra-cotta pots heaped together, and cheaper white plastic ones, and some beautiful, enormous ceramic ones, which Ros tried to lift just for the hell of it and found they could not.

“I had no idea houseplants were such a heavy business,” they said. “I’m feeling bad about how weak I am.”

“We can start doing push-ups before bed,” I said. I myself could do only one before my body collapsed and I fell onto the floor. “Touchstone can be our coach. He’s actually weirdly strong.” One time he’d helped me and Ros rearrange their bedroom and shocked us all with how easy it was for him to move heavy objects.

“Perfect,” they said.

They paused to study a handwritten sign that was taped to the back door. Someone had taken a Sharpie to cardboard and written:

THIS WAY TO THE FERNERY –

“Should we go? Or do we think it’s an elaborate hoax?”

“Only one way to find out,” I said.

We followed the hand-drawn arrow. Up the hill was a small greenhouse, which we guessed was the Fernery in question. We made our way up the slope in the land to the greenhouse’s front door. I wondered whether we were really allowed to open it—the sign marking its existence had been a little suspicious—but Ros swung it open, and we were swallowed by a hot, humid world of green, and I forgot my worries entirely.

If I wanted to spend more time in the bookstore, I wanted to spend my whole life in the Fernery. It was the kind of place you found only in storybooks: a life-size jewel box with ferns carpeting nearly every surface except the path we were on. We started on a small balcony from which we could see nearly everything: the waterfall in the back that tumbled into a reflecting pool, a wooden footbridge that spanned its length, the koi ponds on either side of us, a little grotto scenario that you could walk through. All around us, a multitude of ferns spilled from the walls and sprang up from the beds. It felt like the sort of place that asked you to believe in magic.

“I feel like I’m in one of our fairy houses,” I said.

“Ours were better,” Ros said, and with that, all the awkwardness from earlier seemed to disappear. They looked at me and smiled, and for one measly second, both of us haloed by green, safe in this jewel box of prehistoric plants, I thought that they might take my hand, or—I’m almost embarrassed to admit—I thought that they might kiss me right then and there, on the balcony of the Fernery. That everything I dreamed would come true; it had just been a matter of finding the right place.

“C’mon,” said Ros, “let’s look at these ferns.”

I followed them, reading the names of ferns aloud to them. I had no idea there were so many different kinds: bird’s-nest fern, which grew even taller than we were. Bear paw fern. Tasmanian tree fern. I never spent much time thinking about ferns, but the Fernery seemed to suggest we do just that: to study the different kinds of leaves and fern structures, to ask why some of them were as flimsy and delicate as watercolor and why some of them were as robust and strong as marble sculpture.

We stayed as long as we could before we overheated—me before Ros. We made the full loop three separate times and took pictures of both of us coming through the stone tunnel, shrouded in ferns. Eventually we passed through the door again—outside now felt lusciously cool compared with the heat in the greenhouse—and went back into the store.

“That was gorgeous,” I said.

“It was beautiful,” said Ros as we weaved through the greenery inside, making our way toward the door.

“You could write a poem about that,” I said gently.

“Maybe,” Ros said, which I took as a small victory. Normally when I suggested material for a poem, they shrugged and told me they’d think about it. “Are you ready for some ice cream?”

“Definitely,” I said, at which point Jess Orlando emerged from behind some hidden shrub and ruined everything.

She was shorter than I remembered—she barely came up to Ros’s shoulder. She had glossy strawberry-blond hair that was held up in a ponytail, and ears that stuck out slightly, and snow-pale skin with a wash of freckles across her face. She was dressed plainly, in a navy-blue HIDDEN FERN T-shirt that she’d half tucked into cuffed jean shorts that I couldn’t help but covet (I was always on a mission to find the perfect jean shorts, which, so far, had eluded me) and a pair of lace-up work boots. She was holding a medium-size cactus with a bright poppy-red desert bloom on top. I could only assume she was going to use it as a weapon.

“Are you finding everything all—oh—it’s you.”

She was looking right at Ros, happily, I might add, though Ros seemed too stunned to speak.

“Hi,” I said.

“Hey,” said Ros, with a kind of new softness in their voice. “You work here?”

“When I’m not punching people in the nose,” Jess said. “Sorry, too much?”

It didn’t look like too much to Ros. Their face wore a crooked grin I’d never seen before. What. Was. Happening.

“It seemed like he deserved it,” Ros said.

“That’s the story I keep telling myself,” said Jess.

“We went to the Fernery,” I said, piping up.

“It’s gorgeous, isn’t it?” said Jess, though it seemed like she was speaking to Ros rather than to me. I should never have let them buy those cool pants.

“I’ve never seen anything like it,” Ros said.

Jess smiled. “It’s the only one like it in the country. It was built right around the turn of the twentieth century. The woman who built it was obsessed with ferns because they’re one of the only plants that don’t flower. Sorry,” said Jess. “Am I boring you?”

“Not at all,” said Ros.

I racked my brain for facts about ferns but came up short.

“What do you mean, ferns don’t flower?” I asked.

“Most plants reproduce by creating blooms that then attract bees or other pollinators. But ferns don’t produce flowers, or seeds. They reproduce by spreading spores, which are usually on the underside of their leaves.”

It seemed incompatible that the girl we saw deck someone last night would know so much about the sex lives of ferns. Who was this plant sorceress? And how had she so obviously enchanted Ros?

“Weird question,” said Ros. “You’re not hiring, are you?”

“Not officially,” said Jess. “But we tend to bring on another person as the theater festival really kicks into high gear. Have you ever made bouquets before?”

“No,” Ros said, sounding already disappointed to have not gotten the job.

“It’s not a huge deal,” Jess said. “I’m a pretty good teacher, actually. I can put in a good word for you. And I can give you an application.”

“I can fill it out right now,” Ros said.

“You don’t have to,” I said. This was all happening far too quickly for my liking. “You could take your time.…”

“Celia, you don’t mind waiting, do you?”

“Oh—I guess not,” I said.

While Ros filled out the application on the desk by the checkout and Jess started putting together a bouquet from the flowers kept in the freezer, I wandered around the store, pretending not to be distressed about the potential change that was afoot. So Ros wanted a job here. Big deal. They needed a job; that had been part of the contract. And so what if Jess Orlando also worked here? So what if she knew about ferns? So what if she could reach into the freezer behind the desk and make a bouquet that moved someone to tears (I was speculating wildly at this point)? In the first place, the Hidden Fern didn’t seem to be hiring officially , whatever that meant; in the second place, Ros had no history working with plants, unless you counted using moss and stones to build little fairy villages in someone’s backyard. There was no guarantee they’d get this job.

I came upon a display of terrariums and stopped to study them. Though I’d made up my mind that I now disliked the Hidden Fern, they were actually kind of beautiful: gorgeous little antique-looking glass boxes, like miniature ferneries, filled with plants that made me feel like I was in The Secret Garden . No two were the same: some tiny, others larger; some were paneled with pieces of colored glass; some featured distinctive ironwork—a metal bird that roosted on top. One had a stained-glass window, with a green so beautiful it made my heart burst.

They were like little works of art, just like our fairy gardens.

I brought the one with the green stained-glass window up to the front, where Ros was still scribbling.

“I’m almost done,” they said.

“Look at this,” I said. “It’s cool, isn’t it?”

I was downplaying how attached to it I was: It was so beautiful, I felt it in nearly every part of my body, even the parts I didn’t think about, like the curves of my ears or the backs of my knees. The terrarium itself was simple—a rectangle with a steepled roof, and a clever latch that meant you could prop the roof open, creating a kind of escape hatch you could peer into, without anything separating you from the plants within. The inside was even more beautiful: The back side was covered entirely in moss that looked so soft I wanted to lay my head against it. The plants that flourished within were a deep green, their leaves ribbed with white. I didn’t just love that terrarium; I wanted to zap myself with a shrink ray and live inside that terrarium.

“Those are beautiful, aren’t they?” Jess Orlando piped up. “A local artist makes them.…”

Ros finally put their pen down and looked at the terrarium.

“That one’s actually one of my favorites,” said Jess.

But it wasn’t her validation that I wanted.

“Should we get it?” I said.

“For who?” asked Ros.

“For us,” I said. Who else did they think it would be for? “For the Lily Pad.”

“We have enough plants at the Lily Pad,” said Ros. “And I’m sure it’s expensive.”

“At least with these ones you don’t have to take care of them,” said Jess. Why was she suddenly on my side? Was she just trying to make a sale, or was she being sincere? It was distressing how nice she was.

“Get it if you want,” said Ros. They put their pen down and handed their completed application over to Jess. “Hey, thanks.”

“You’re welcome,” Jess said back. “What do you think about the terrarium? Should I ring you up?”

I considered the terrarium. I still loved it, but Ros was right; it was expensive. I had a little money—my parents had given me some before I left—but it wasn’t like I was making bank at the internship. Even so, I would have willingly handed over all my money if it meant I could look into that terrarium every night. But Ros’s indifference had poked a hole in my enthusiasm. When they looked at the green of the stained-glass window, they didn’t see the same wondrous thing that I saw.

“I’ll think about it,” I said to Jess.

“No problem,” Jess said. The bouquet she was working on was stupidly gorgeous, a brilliant array of hot oranges and pinks. “I can put it back for you. Don’t worry about it.”

We left the store empty-handed, strolling slowly down the sidewalk.

“I hope I get that job,” Ros said.

“Don’t be disappointed if you don’t,” I said.

“Why would you say that?” Ros said, stopping suddenly in their tracks. “Don’t you want me to get it?”

“Of course I want you to get it,” I lied, and my voice sounded stringy and thin.

“It sounds like you’re rooting against me,” Ros said.

“I’m not,” I said, even though of course I was rooting against them. I didn’t want them to get the job. I didn’t want them to spend more time with Jess Orlando. My crush on Ros often made me a bad friend, and the ugly truth was I was so afraid of losing them—to Jess, or to anyone—that I wasn’t being the sort of friend Ros needed.

“Should we get ice cream, or…?”

“Sure.” Ros shrugged. “Ice cream sounds fine. Maybe we’ll run into Oliver Teller.”

We walked up the street, and I babbled on and on about how good this ice cream place was supposed to be—I’d read all about it back home—how they partnered with a local dairy, how they’d gotten written up in so many magazines, how their waffle cones were not to be missed. Ros nodded, half listening to my ice cream spiel, but it didn’t take a rocket scientist to sense that they were elsewhere. They’d left a piece of themselves in the Hidden Fern, with Jess Orlando and her fern spores, and there was nothing I could do or say to bring them back to me.

After they were hired—because of course they were hired, how else was this going to go?—periodically throughout the summer I would pop in to say hi to Ros, and I would just check to see if that terrarium was still there. Ros taught me the name of the plants that grew within, like the nerve plant that grew amid the moss, its green leaves latticed with tiny white traceries. I greeted each new leaf with excitement—a tiny new bud would send me over the moon. It wasn’t just that I thought of it as mine, so much as it was mine. It was so deeply for me that it seemed impossible that it could be anyone else’s, until the day that it was gone.

Footnote

5 They won.