‘Worms!’
‘Yes! If you look closely,’ Alice said, pointing the shovel at the level in the compost bin where the food scraps met dirt, ‘you can see some worms wiggling around.’
The group leaned in, no longer grossed out. ‘There’s one right there!’
‘Can anyone think of any other decomposers? I’ll give you a hint, your parents might eat them on pizza.’
‘Eat them?’ The kids traded horrified expressions. Alice nodded seriously.
‘Olives?’
‘Artichokes?’
‘Barbeque sauce?’
‘Mushrooms?’
Alice pointed at the boy who got it right. ‘Mushrooms! Most mushrooms are decomposers, from the kinds that grow on trees high over your head to the ones you can buy at the grocery store.’
‘Woah.’
‘Decomposers are very important,’ Alice said, turning the handle of the compost bin to mix up the green and brown matter. ‘Just like you and I need nutrients to live, plants need nutrients to grow big and strong. Decomposers help put those nutrients back in the soil for the plants.’
‘And then we eat the plants.’ Robin had a familiar expression of awe on his face.
‘Woah,’ the boy beside him said, looking sideways at him and smiling.
Alice beamed at them. ‘Exactly, it’s a cycle. One of the most important cycles in our natural world. So… who wants to learn more about it?’
When Alice ended the lesson, asking the children to look out for any interesting mushrooms around the woods and to report their findings back to her, she noticed Briar leaning against a tree not far away.
The campers dispersed and Alice put her hands on her hips, turning to Briar. ‘Observing my lesson?’
Briar smiled slyly. ‘Don’t worry, you earned full marks. And I’ve got good news, Sierra’s covering your Cook shift. Thought you and I could sneak away.’
Alice felt giddy at the look on Briar’s face, like the two of them were sharing a secret.
‘Where are we going?’ she whispered, though there was no one around to hear.
‘I’ve got some extra work for you,’ Briar said, gesturing for Alice to follow her.
‘Oh, because I haven’t been working enough,’ Alice grumbled, playing along and continuing on the route she now recognized would bring them to the parking lot. According to the schedule they’d created, Briar had the afternoon off to deal with her mom’s estate. Alice decided her choices were either to submit to this kidnapping or to not see whatever it was that Briar wanted to show her. So she got into Briar’s car without further complaint. They drove to the main road, and then in a direction Alice had never been in before.
She stared at Briar’s side profile, the red-gold color of her hair striking in the midday light. Allowing herself to really look for the first time, she drank in the familiar sight of Briar driving.
‘You look good,’ she said, because she hadn’t slept much the night before and therefore was prone to blurting out her thoughts. ‘Better, I mean. Betterrested.’
A blush crept up Briar’s neck. ‘Oh man, these campers are really running you ragged, huh?’
‘Yes,’ Alice said.
Briar glanced sideways at her, smirking, and Alice felt like something had shifted. There was a tension between them which had been there, underlying everything for the past few days, but now felt out in the open. After an agonizingly long silence that Alice knew was probably less than five minutes, Briar pulled into the driveway of a weathered Victorian house. It was a bright lilac that Alice immediately recognized as Susan’s favorite color.
‘Your mom’s house?’ she asked.
‘Yeah,’ Briar said, cutting the ignition.
Alice followed Briar up the stairs, careful to avoid a loose nail jutting out of one of the steps. Briar jammed the key into the lock, and Alice got her first glance at the interior.
