We’ve arrived at my secret garden at this point. I’m pleased to see it’s remained intact, and better still, no one lurks nearby. Inspiration striking, I set Bulan on a bench, dig into my backpack, and break out my wire cutters, gloves, and folded duffel bag.
“Sabby,” says Bulan with a nervous twinge to his voice, “why do you have that?”
“I came prepared to work. With what you’ve told me about vamps, I’m starting to have a floral vision. A budding wedding concept. So I’m going to nab a few plants while we’re here.” Shriveled-up flowering ones. I’ve a feeling they’ll please my undead couple. It’ll remind them of their coffins, right? So earthy. So dead.
“I see,” says Bulan.
“The flowers here are organic and local, so they should be vampire-ethics approved.”
“Ithasbeen a while since I had legs, so I may not be up to date on human culture at large, but I’m fairly certain florists purchase the items they require, rather than steal them.”
“I’m broke.”
“You could use your down payment for the wedding instead of resorting to theft,” Bulan says.
A down payment? I could’ve asked for one of those? Crap.
“Well, never mind that now,” says Bulan with an over-the-top sigh. “I’ll chirp if I see the police.”
“Thanks a mil.”
The first plant I snip at the stem is wilted aconite. Bulan peers over my arm, brushing his fuzzy mustache and nose against my wrist.
“Is that wolfsbane?” he asks. “It is. Why, Sabby, I suspect you knew that!”
“Every spring and winter break, my mom force-fed me books about her favorite herbs. She called it ‘science class.’ She continued the tradition until she ran off to Mexico.”
“Oh, when was that? After you finished your education?”
“More or less.” I carefully lay the toxic plant in my bag and turn my attention to a pocket of red-leaved New England asters. “Mom put the bills on autopay. I’m super independent, so I was fine by myself.”
It’s mostly true. I mean, therewasthat late August night when Mom’s credit card defaulted, the power got turned off, and the food in our fridge spoiled. And when I opened the freezer, some of her weirder plant seeds had sprouted legs. They were running and sliding around on a half-frozen puddle of Ben & Jerry’s. Which should’ve stopped me from eating them, but I was a starving teen.
They tasted better than you’d think.
Once I left for college, it became easier to rely on myself. I manipulated my course load, cramming in classes back-to-back so I could maximize the number of shifts I took at the hotel. Being a working student meant joining fewer college clubs than I might’ve liked, and I ended up with a social circle very much on the smaller side of small, but my NYU meal plan wasn’t going to pay for itself. Besides, I really didn’t want to fight rats for pizza slices. Or scrounge around inside the dumpsters behind my dormitory hall. People vape back there. They would’venoticed.
Having no home to return to over break was only lonely the first few times. But you can make bank working at a hotel during a peak season, like the holidays and summer. The best part was, I always ended up taking home an absurd amount of leftover turkey and cranberry sauce in Tupperware. By the time I graduated, I’d saved enough plastic containers to build a small airplane, or possibly a boat. On the last night before move-out, I bequeathed it all stealthily to the second-floorhall populated by engineers. It’s quite possible I created a fire hazard. But I like to think of it as me having offered them a hands-on learning opportunity.
Mom didn’t send me a graduation gift, but theoretically she understands I’ve accomplished a milestone and is proud of me for cinching my internship and job offer to EFG. I know this because I call her once a week and she answers about once a month. At times, the connection can be a little shaky, almost like her voice is coming from behind an electronic curtain, but it’s fine. For all I know, it’s a consequence of dropping her phone repeatedly in the resort pool.
In spite of her flakiness, I really thought Mom would make an effort to attend Grandma Rose’s funeral. I can only guess that, like me, she never expected her mom to die. Maybe she hasn’t come to terms with her grief yet.
Or maybe it’s something else. One of her herbs? Is she a cactus juice addict now? Maybe she’s found a form of it that sprouts whole bodies instead of just legs and has made herself a nice big surrogate succulent family.
Bulan coughs, alerting me to the fact that I’ve gone tellingly silent.
“I now see why you had so little sympathy when you found me alone in that closet,” he says.
Is Bulan pitying me? I detect pity. Nope, not having that. Rather than look at him, I survey the withered plant zoo in search of my next moody specimen.
“You were fine,” I say, reshouldering my bag. “You escaped my duffel, didn’t you?”
“Consider the difficulty I encountered! You have arms. I miss arms.”
“They require sunscreen. It gets expensive.”
“Hmm. An interesting point.”
