Page 16 of Leaving the Station
“To Seattle.”
“Even better,” he says. “I’m on the next train too, so we’ll beseeing alotof each other.”
I smile politely—if all the coffee on the train is being held hostage by Edward, I at least have to try to make nice.
I slink back to my booth with the coffee and Kettle chips I didn’t want, then stare out the window yet again.
Now the only company I have is myself, who happens to be one of the people I don’t particularly want to spend time with.
Day Eleven of College
Randall handed me a broom. “You know what to do with this, yeah?”
“Pretty much.” I pantomimed sweeping.
He laughed and patted me on the shoulder, a paternal gesture that stirred unwanted emotions inside me.
Sweeping in the greenhouse was a futile effort; once I dumped a batch of leaves in the compost, a new layer would fall. But it was gratifying for the brief moments in which the floor was clean.
Being in the greenhouse was an escape from everything else in my life. Randall told me on my first day that I was allowed to listen to music, but I never did. I loved hearing how the outside world bumped up against the glass.
When I made it over to the corpse plant, I leaned the broom on a bench and examined the future misshapen penis. The giant pot had a prized spot, one with easy access to the overstory and the sun beyond.
“Hi, little buddy,” I said to the empty pot.
Except it wasn’t empty.
In the center of the soil, barely visible, was a gnarled ball. It looked almost alive—it was a mostly submerged dark green orb covered in stringy white roots.
But it was there—what could’ve been the first sign of a bloom. An event so rare that people came from far and wide to see it.
And that’s when I started feeling so protective of the plant that it made me almost sick with worry. I wanted to watch it day and night, to nurture it so that it flowered.
But on the flip side, Ineverwanted it to bloom, because I knew that when it did, it would last for less than a week.
It was a corpse plant no matter what it looked like, but there was only one stage of its life during which people traveled to see it.
I loved it like this, alone and underground.
I turned my attention to the other plants then, and wound up by the machine that sprayed mist throughout the room. The mister in the tropical section went off on a timer; it sat next to the vanilla vine and across from the coffee plant.
I closed my eyes and breathed in the warm spray, allowing myself to feel like one of the plants.
“How’s it going in here?” Randall asked as he carefully opened the heavy door into the climate-controlled room.
“Great,” I told him, clearing my throat and sweeping the area around my feet.
He laughed to himself. “It’s all right to take a break. You don’t need to be working all the time.”
“That’s okay,” I told him. “I like it in here.”
“So do I,” he said. “But the plants are hearty. Tea?” He noddedto his office, and I followed him across the hall.
“I like to dry my own leaves.” He filled the kettle and set it to boil. “All the teas in here come from the greenhouse.”
“That’s so cool,” I told him, meaning it with every fiber of my being.
He worked methodically, the same way he did with the plants, weighing the dried leaves and then placing them in the strainer. When the tea was ready, he handed me a mug.
