Inside, it was cozy and cool, decorated in a cottage-core style, and Ramona couldn’t keep her jaw in place. Dylan paid for two tickets at a tiny glass booth, and the wide-eyed teenager working there handed Dylan a museum guide in the shape of the quintessential red-and-white fly agaric mushroom. She handed it to Ramona, who spent a good ten seconds marveling at the details on the glossy front cover.
“I think there’s even some information inside,” Dylan said.
Ramona laughed again. “Sorry, it’s just so pretty!”
Dylan’s shoulder pressed against hers. “So…you like it?”
Ramona locked onto those icy eyes, and her breath did something bubbly in her chest. “Yeah,” she said quietly. “I love it.”
Dylan exhaled, a sweet smile on her lips. “Good.”
Ramona nodded. “Yeah. Good.”
She had to look away then, Dylan’s gaze too intense and her lungs too lighter-than-air to get a decent breath. Instead she took in the museum, which was two stories and all honey-colored wood, from the floors to the guardrails by the displays to the ceilings. This first level was mostly one large open room, and all around the perimeter were glass cases full of local flora and fauna and, of course, fungi.
Ramona opened the guide, searching for some of her favorites.
“Oh my god, they have a basket stinkhorn!” she said.
“They have a what?” Dylan asked.
“And aCordyceps!”
“Okay, why don’t we—”
“Holy shit, a violet-toothed polypore.”
Dylan laughed, then Ramona felt her take one of her hands, twine their fingers together. Ramona’s breath caught, but she couldn’t seem to move her eyes away from the mushroom guide.
“Let’s walk,” Dylan said.
As Dylan started to lead her into the main room, she noticed the teen in the glass booth had their phone surreptitiously pointed in their direction.
“Dylan,” she said, but Dylan just kept moving, and so Ramona let herself be led inside the magical world of mushrooms. She still couldn’t believe this place existed, not an hour from her own house, and that Dylan had found it.
Forher.
Ramona’s stomach had joined her chest in that bubbly feeling—Dylan had researched, remembered that Ramona loved mushrooms, and found something that was purelyRamona.
She couldn’t think of the last time someone did something like this for her. Truly just for her, because Ramona didn’t think Dylan was also obsessed with fungi.
Her throat felt impossibly thick all of a sudden, her fingers growing sweaty around Dylan’s. Still, Dylan held on, leading her to the first display and stopping.
“Tell me about this one,” she said.
Ramona focused on the mushroom behind the glass, a brilliant orange yellow growing from the trunk of a tree that the building itself seemed to be built around.
“Chicken of the woods,” Ramona said.
“Did you saychicken?”
Ramona laughed. “Isn’t it cute?”
“It looks like a brain.”
“It’s edible! But don’t eat a bunch at first, because a lot of people have stomach issues with them.”
Dylan snort-laughed. “I don’t think you have to worry about that.”
