The Girl and the Grove

by Eric Smith

  “I’m good, thanks,” Leila said. She pulled out her phone and scowled at the dead battery, the black screen blinking on just to remind her it needed to be charged.

  After a moment, he returned with two steaming cups.

  “I got you a hot chocolate anyway,” he said, sitting down next to her and pushing the cup across the smooth wooden table. “Holding up okay?”

  “I don’t know. It’s been a weird day. My biological mother is a magical creature from mythology. My father is, well,” Leila looked up at the small plaque in the break room, her heart heavy. “How’d you figure it out?”

  “Math, I guess.” Landon shrugged. “The, uh,” he shook his head, “the lady in the woods said you’d been taken away when you were two. And almost everyone who works in the park service, at least the ones who work outside, know the story of . . . should we say your dad? Your father?”

  “What?” Leila asked, her eyebrows arching up.

  “It’s just, you know, I know he’s your biological father and all,” Landon said, his words careful, as though he was walking on eggshells. “Look, I just don’t want to say the wrong word here. You’re adopted now, you have a father, and this other man? I just know it’s a sensitive thing and want to be aware of what I’m saying. If that even makes sense.”

  Leila smiled, and felt a bloom of warmth in her chest. She fought the urge not to reach out and hold his hand. Why couldn’t everyone be this sensitive to her situation?

  “It does. And I appreciate that,” Leila said. “I suppose ‘biological father’ is fine for now. Or just his name.”

  She glanced up at the plaque again.

  In Memory of Jared Blackwell

  June 8th, 1957 - August 17th, 2004

  Service: 1979 – 1999

  The Blackwell Ranger Station was built and established in June of 2005, to honor and remember Jared Blackwell, a member of the Fairmount Park Service for over twenty years.

  In the photo attached to the plaque and in the bronze relief of his face outside the building, she could see it. In his features, his eyes, his cheekbones, and sharp nose. There was no mistaking it, and it shook her every single time she glanced up at that photo.

  “I just wonder what happened to him,” Leila said, gazing at the photo across the room.

  “Yeah, well, a lot of people do,” Landon said, walking over towards the plaque. “It’s one of those things they talk to all the new recruits about. Don’t go into the park alone, be careful at night, things like that. It isn’t just visitors wandering the park at night who can end up hurt or missing. Rangers, too. People with experience.”

  “I just don’t see how that kind of thing happens when, you know, your girlfriend is a magical creature of the forest,” Leila said, shaking her head. “How do you get lost? Wouldn’t some woodland creatures come to save the day or some such cartoon-movie nonsense?”

  “I dunno.” Landon shrugged. “Seems like they’re pretty stuck where they are. Maybe he fell, hit his head or fell in the water. It happens with hikers sometimes. That’s one of the theories. It’s a big park, Leila.”

  She sat in silence with Landon, looking at the photo.

  “I’m sorry, I feel like I’m being too blunt here.” Landon shook his head.

  “No, you’re just being real. Is it weird that I’m mad?” Leila asked, still looking at the picture. She glanced over at Landon, who walked over to her and sat back down. “I mean, I dunno. All my life I thought that if I found some answers, they would be . . . different. Obviously not your-mother-is-a-tree-creature different, but, like, maybe she was a runaway who got pregnant, had to give me up, didn’t know my father. Maybe they were a couple but just too young, and are now living happily someplace with a new family, and they think of me from time to time. Or my birth father was an awful man, a criminal, who forced himself on her.”

  She shook her head, trying not to let the tears come, but failing.

  “That’s what happens, you know? You dream up all these scenarios. Some are grand and ridiculous and you know that they are, like your biological parents are millionaires or celebrities or even just, like, someone in your neighborhood that you’ve never run into before. Or they are tragic and awful, they gave their lives for you, or died in an accident, or got murdered.

  “It’s messed up and I know it’s messed up but I can’t help it, we all do it.” Leila choked back a sob and Landon tentatively moved closer to her. “But this? A tree? A missing person? It’s like everything has just been taken from me and replaced with something so outrageous that no one will ever believe it.”

  “I believe you,” Landon said, looking right into her eyes.

  “Sure, because you saw it all.” Leila buried her face in her hands. “Oh my God, how am I ever going to tell Sarika about this? We’d talked about the voices. About ignoring them. She’s going to think I lost it. And how are we supposed to save the tree people, or whatever?”

  Leila laughed.

  “At least I got one cliché,” she said, shaking her head.

  “What’s that?” Landon asked.

  “My birth mother finds me, and what does she want? Help.” Leila stood up, pushing her chair out. “It’s one of the things everyone warns you about. There are a million Lifetime movies about it. Your biological parents could come back and end up being terrible. Maybe they’ll want money or want to use you. Need an organ or something. Be careful. Blah, blah, blah. And now here we are.”

  “Well, it feels a little different than that, no?” Landon asked. “I mean, it’s not about her or her tree pals. It’s everything around them. It’s you. Your new family. Your friends. She could let the city die with her, all these humans who forgot about her and the system that didn’t believe your biological father, who let him just disappear. But instead here she is, reaching out.”

  Leila paused for a beat and took a deep breath, nodding.

  “Hm,” she muttered. “You might be right on that. Still. I know it’s hard to understand, but it’s like something was just taken from me. Now there’s this responsibility. And I don’t know if I want it.”

  Silence hung thick in the room.

  “I should get home,” she said, looking at Landon. “This was . . . you were great. So great.” Her heart started to pound in her chest as she looked up at him. “I wish we’d met under normal circumstances. Maybe again at the Raptor Trust, or catching you trying to help Milford fly again. But, well, it is what it is.”

  “Eh, I’ve had worse,” he said, shrugging with a little smirk.

  “You have not.”

  “One time, this girl I went out with, her mother was a mermaid. Lived in the Schuylkill River, I kid you not. Her uncles were sturgeons. You’re not the first mythological-creature-human I’ve spent an afternoon with.”

  “Landon.”

  “You sure you have to leave?” Landon asked. “I don’t mind, you know, making more hot chocolate and giving you some time to collect yourself in here.”

  “Thanks, really, but no.” She pulled her phone out and waved it about. “My phone’s dead, so Jon and Lisabeth are going to be worried sick. Sarika is probably exploding by now.”

  “I’d say ‘let’s do this again sometime,’ but maybe come by to just see the birds instead?” Landon suggested, smirking again.

  “Sure.”

  “Come on,” he said, standing up. “You can charge your phone in my truck. I’ll take you home, and I’ll be there for whatever other adventures await after today.”

  He reached out his hand.

  Leila took it.

  Sarika Paprika

  @TheSarikaPaprika

  Coffee lovers! I’ll be at @AdamsPhillyCafe a little later today, around 11-ish. Come say hello! #SarikaTheBarista

  8/23/17, 7:47AM

  16 Retweets 47 Likes

  Ali @YohananAliQ9m

 
; @TheSarikaPaprika @AdamsPhillyCafe yes!

  Leila @WithouttheY7m

  @TheSarikaPaprika @AdamsPhillyCafe see you soon!

  XV

  “You sure you don’t want to wait?” Mr. Hathaway asked as Leila handed him a dollar for a small coffee. He plucked the dollar from her hand, stuffed it into the already-open, totally broken cash register, and made his way over to the coffee station. He started pouring the thick, black liquid into the contrasting white mug.

  “I mean, she’ll be here in fifteen minutes, a half hour tops,” Mr. Hathaway continued as he pulled the mug away from the coffee machine, and started filling it with an amount of sugar offensive to most coffee drinkers. Just how she liked it.

  “It’s not like you’re in your thirties, balancing graduate school, a full-time job, and a family,” he went on, talking as he stirred away, the metal spoon clinking about merrily in the cup. “I think you can live without all this extra—”

  Leila interrupted, holding up a hand, “Not right now, okay? I just need to, like, clear my head.”

  Mr. Hathaway scowled and slid the coffee mug across the surface of the countertop.

  “Fine, fine,” he said, returning to the register and fussing with the door. “I’m just saying. She’ll be here soon, you coulda waited for her to make it. She’s the master, not me.”

  “It’s alright. I need some ‘me time’ for a bit.” Leila grabbed the coffee and carried the mug over to a table in the back. She had her choice, the place was utterly barren, though it was only a matter of time before it filled up.

  She sat down and the chair squeaked as she pulled it across the hard floor. She wrapped her hands around the hot mug and sighed. The warmth was comforting against her palms.

  How was she going to explain all of this to Sarika?

  She blew at the steam rising off the hot coffee as her thoughts wandered, playing the scenarios in her head over and over again.

  Hey, so yeah, I ended up hanging out with Landon. We explored the woods, scoped out this abandoned historic mansion, and oh, I found my birth mother and biological aunts, who are trees living in the grounds behind the mansion, and they’re in danger, and we need to save them in order to save the entire city.

  Yeah.

  That was going to go over well.

  The door to the café swung open, and the small bell above it chimed out loudly in the empty place, the happy sound reverberating off the walls. Sarika bounced in, a satchel over her arm, and jumped over the coffee counter to wrangle herself into position behind the bar.

  “Let’s do this!” she shouted in a silly, overly deep voice, flipping on the giant espresso machine. Leila put her elbow up on the table and leaned into her hand, watching her get things set up. Sarika poured milk into the steamer and plucked old espresso beans from inside the machine. She made quick work of the thing, her movements precise and meticulous, much like the machine itself. For Leila it was a joy to watch her best friend, someone she’d been through so much with, be truly at home.

  Especially now, knowing what she knew about herself. Or, at least, sort of knowing. There were so many unanswered questions. How did her father even meet her mother? Why hadn’t the dryads spoken to anyone other than her? And how was she supposed to save them? No one was going to believe that there were these mythological creatures living in the woods and that the fate of the city’s breathable air basically depended on them. Landon had already expressed as much, as they wandered away from the forest and mused over text messages throughout the evening.

  Leila scowled at the thought.

  Most boys texted with girls long into the evening about other things. Flirting. Long discussions about life. Flirting. Talking about the future. More flirting. Instead, that option had been ripped away from her, replaced with conversations about conservation, government officials, and environmental justice groups. She wasn’t even sure she wanted those warm and fuzzy discussions with Landon, especially after the disaster that was Shawn. But the option would have been nice.

  How was she going to tell Sarika?

  And Jon? Lisabeth? Or the B.E.A.C. club or the message board? She couldn’t tell them the real story, just that they had to save that section of the park. Was there a way to talk about saving the grove without giving the real reason why?

  Even she’d made assumptions about the crumbling, old building. Would she have cared if it hadn’t been for the dryads? How could she make anyone care about this?

  Sarika looked up from what she was busy fussing with and caught Leila’s eye. She smiled and waved excitedly, leaping over the coffee countertop again to hurry over.

  Leila breathed. One thing at a time.

  “Tell. Me. Everything,” Sarika said, swinging a chair out from under another table and whipping it around to the one Leila sat at. She straddled the chair and put her elbows on the table, her head in her hands in an exaggerated fashion. “When you left enrichment, I thought it was to, like, go home and unwind, not run off into the woods with the gorgeous park ranger. Was he into you?”

  “Maybe,” Leila said, smirking with a shrug. “Things got a little weird, but—”

  “Shawn weird?” Sarika asked, standing up and moving the chair around to sit normally.

  “No, few things are Shawn weird.” Leila laughed uncomfortably. She took a deep breath, and looked up at Sarika. “Look, there’s something I need to talk to you about before your rush comes in, and I just . . . I don’t think it can wait. There’s something I have to do, and I need to know we’ll be okay because it’s weird, Sarika, alright? It’s really weird, and if I don’t have you here, I’m not sure—”

  “Whoa, whoa,” Sarika said, reaching out across the table and grabbing Leila’s hands. Leila hadn’t realized they were shaking. Her breath had gone quick, her heart hammered in her chest. “Relax. I won’t go anywhere. Come on, what could be so awful that—”

  “I followed the voices, Sarika,” Leila said. The color seemed to drain out of Sarika’s face, and she let go of Leila’s hands. She blinked and took a short breath before looking around the café and facing Leila again.

  “Why . . . why would you do that?” Sarika asked, sounding almost angry. “We spent, like, years trying to bury all that. What if, what if the voices, which are all in your head, led you somewhere that got you hurt? Or killed? They aren’t real, we both know that, you know that, and—”

  “They are real,” Leila said. “Or at least, she’s real. The woman who has been talking to me. It’s always been only one.”

  Sarika blinked, her expression full of worry.

  “Leila, you can’t—”

  “She’s my mother, Sarika,” Leila said. “My birth mother. All those jokes and dreams about our birth parents being millionaires or whatever are definitely thrown out the damn window.”

  Sarika looked around the coffee shop, her eyes wide, expression panicked. She turned back to Leila, grabbing her hands again.

  “Do we need to go to the hospital or something?” Sarika asked. “Because I’ll go. I’ll be there all the way.”

  Leila squeezed Sarika’s hands harder and closed her eyes, feeling the tears welling up.

  “It’s not like that,” Leila said. She opened her eyes and looked at her friend. “I’m here. One hundred percent. And I need you to believe me.”

  Leila took a deep breath, and let it all pour out.

  The way plants had rustled around her, the voices on the bike ride home, the phone call to Landon, the walk through the woods and down the darkened path to the bursting, brilliant light after the canopy cleared. The old mansion, the grove, the three dryads, and finally the ranger station named after her missing birth father.

  Sarika stared at Leila through all of this, her eyes unwavering.

  She squeezed her hands and let go to fuss with something inside her jacket. She plucked out her smartphone, her fingers nimbl
y jabbed away at something unseen, and then she put her phone back.

  “Don’t worry, I canceled on my adoring public, just for you.”

  Leila’s phone buzzed. Sarika smirked as Leila turned hers on.

  “How do you already have nine retweets?” Leila asked, turning off her phone and wiping away a stray tear.

  “What can I say? I’m popular on the Internet.” Sarika grinned. She stood up and pushed the chair in. “Well. I’d like to see all this for myself, so let’s get out of here.” Before Leila could protest, Sarika darted her way over to the barista station to grab her satchel.

  “Sorry, Mr. Hathaway, something’s come up!” Sarika shouted as she made her way to the front door. She looked at Leila and motioned for her with her hand, mouthing “hurry up.”

  “I’ll be back next weekend or during the week sometime, sorry!”

  “Wait, what?” Mr. Hathaway shouted from the kitchen of the café, pans and pots clattering as he made his way out and behind the counter. “Where are you going? Sarika!”

  “I’ll make it up to you, I swear!” Sarika shouted as she swung the front door open, holding it for Leila, who hurried through as the bell chimed above them.

  Outside, Philadelphia was already bustling, even in a neighborhood that generally didn’t have a lot of people walking around or commuting here and there.

  “Wait, wait,” Leila said, rushing up to Sarika, who was making her way over to the bicycle rack outside Adam’s. With a pang she looked at the empty spot next to Sarika’s bike, where bits of yellow paint chipped against the black metal, left over from scrapes with Marigold. Her bike was still a mangled mess in the backyard, and she’d left Liz’s bike at the house. It had taken forever to clean after going to the park to meet Landon and its ride in the back of his truck on the way home. She wasn’t in a rush to dirty it up again.

  Sarika was fussing with the locks on her bike when she looked up at Leila.