No!
“It’s sad times for the world of science when one’s own creations try to attack him,” Dr. Prethorius muttered. “Sad times indeed. I had such high hopes for Specimen 313. Oh well. Plenty of acid to go around.”
He returned his attention to Max and began to dig out more shovelfuls of soil. His eyes were wild and he flung each scoop of dirt as far as he could, hitting several of the other specimens.
Max had never been so terrified. He opened and closed his leaves, figuring that at this point it didn’t really matter if Dr. Prethorius got mad at him, but the doctor kept himself well out of harm’s way.
Behind him, Jenny lay on the ground, unmoving.
“They all laughed at me, you know,” said the doctor. “When I grew the world’s largest pumpkin, oh, they were filled with praise, but when I carved it into the world’s largest jack-o’-lantern, they called me mad! I ask you, would a madman create a cherry tree with fruits that ooze deadly poison? Would a madman develop blades of grass sharp enough to slice off your fingers?” His digging became even more frantic.
Poor, poor Jenny. She shouldn’t have tried to save him.
Max tilted forward as the next scoop of dirt came from underneath his roots. And then he realized that Jenny was slowly rising up again.
Don’t do it! he said. He’ll kill you! It’s too late for me!
Jenny straightened up completely but did not bend forward. Yet she continued to strain at something.
What are you doing?
Be quiet. I can’t concentrate.
Don’t do anything!
Be quiet!
With the next scoop of dirt, Max tilted forward even farther, at about a forty-five-degree angle from the ground. He wondered how it felt to have acid burn through him.
All of Jenny’s leaves were pressed tightly against her stalk as she strained, strained, strained …
One of her roots popped out of the ground.
And then another.
Then a third.
Max’s amazement overshadowed his terror as Jenny pulled herself out of the ground and took an actual step forward.
With the next shovelful of dirt, Max fell forward and almost smacked against the ground.
“What should I use?” asked Dr. Prethorius. “A few drops of acid to make it last, or should I just pour the whole bottle right on—” He let out a yelp and dropped his shovel as Jenny’s leaves clamped down upon his leg.
She straightened again. The doctor dangled upside-down from her trap, struggling desperately but unable to escape.
“Let me go!” he screamed. “I’m your master! Let me go! Please, please, please, let me go!”
Should I let him go? Jenny asked.
I don’t think so.
Me either.
I love you, Jenny.
You’re a good friend, Max. Would you like to share?
Yes.
She slammed the shrieking doctor against the ground, which did not shut him up, and then dragged him to the side. His arm slid underneath Max’s leaves. Max bit down.
Try to get his head, too, said Jenny, stepping forward.
Max did. Dr. Prethorius stopped screaming as they pulled him in two.
Thank you, said Max.
They ate without speaking for a while.
What’s wrong? Max asked.
I don’t think I can replant you.
Oh.
I’m sorry.
That’s okay.
But I can bring humans to you. I’ll leave the greenhouse and get them, as many as you want. You’ll eat and eat and eat until you get healthy again.
That would be nice.
They continued to enjoy their meal. The doctor tasted better than the other humans he’d eaten. Perhaps insanity made meat more tender.
Maybe he didn’t have a lover, but Max had a friend, and he knew that he could be happy for a long, long time.
THE LAKE
by Tananarive Due
The new English instructor at Graceville Prep was chosen with the greatest care, highly recommended by the board of directors at Blake Academy in Boston, where she had an exemplary career for twelve years. There was no history of irregular behavior to presage the summer’s unthinkable events.
—Excerpt from an internal memo
Graceville Preparatory School
Graceville, Florida
ABBIE LAFLEUR WAS AN OUTSIDER, a third-generation Bostonian, so no one warned her about summers in Graceville. She noticed a few significant glances, a hitched eyebrow or two, when she first mentioned to locals that she planned to relocate in June to work a summer term before the start of the school year, but she’d assumed it was because they thought no one in her right mind would move to Florida, even northern Florida, in the wet heat of summer.
In fairness, Abbie LaFleur would have scoffed at their stories as hysteria. Delusion. This was Graceville’s typical experience with newcomers and outsiders, so Graceville had learned to keep its stories to itself.
Abbie thought she had found her dream job in Graceville. A fresh start. Her glasses had fogged up with steam from the rain-drenched tarmac as soon as she stepped off the plane at Tallahassee Airport; her confirmation that she’d embarked on a true adventure, an exploration worthy of Ponce de León’s storied landing at St. Augustine.
Her parents and her best friend, Mary Kay, had warned her not to jump into a real estate purchase until she’d worked in Graceville for at least a year—The whole thing’s so hasty, what if the school’s not a good fit? Who wants to be stuck with a house in the sticks in a depressed market?—but Abbie fell in love with the white lakeside colonial she found listed at one-fifty, for sale by owner. She bought it after a hasty tour—too hasty, it turned out—but at nearly three thousand square feet, this was the biggest house she had ever lived in, with more room than she had furniture for. A place with potential, despite its myriad flaws.
A place, she thought, very much like her.
The built-in bookshelves in the Florida room sagged. (She’d never known that a den could be called a Florida room, but so it was, and so she did.) The floorboards creaked and trembled on the back porch, sodden from summer rainfall. And she would need to lay down new tiles in the kitchen right away, because the brooding mud-brown flooring put her in a bad mood from the time she first fixed her morning coffee.
But there would be boys at the school, strong and tireless boys, who could help her mend whatever needed fixing. In her experience, there were always willing boys.
And then there was the lake! The house was her excuse to buy her piece of the lake and the thin strip of red-brown sand that was a beach in her mind, although it was nearly too narrow for the beach lounger she’d planted like a flag. The water looked murky where it met her little beach, the color of the soil, but in the distance she could see its heart of rich green-blue, like the ocean. The surface bobbed with rings and bubbles from the hidden catfish and brim that occasionally leaped above the surface, damn near daring her to cast a line.
If not for the hordes of mosquitoes that feasted on her legs and whined with urgent grievances, Abbie could have stood with her bare feet in the warm lake water for hours, the house forgotten behind her. The water’s gentle lapping was the meditation her parents and Mary Kay were always prescribing for her, a soothing song.
And the isolation! A gift to be treasured. Her property was bracketed by woods of thin pine, with no other homes within shouting distance. Any spies on her would need binoculars and a reason to spy, since the nearest homes were far across the lake, harmless little dollhouses in the anonymous subdivision where some of her students no doubt lived. Her lake might as well be as wide as the Nile, protection from any envious whispers.
As if to prove her newfound freedom, Abbie suddenly climbed out of the tattered jeans she’d been wearing as she unpacked her boxes, whipped off her T-shirt, and draped her clothing neatly across the lounger’s arm rails. Imagine! She was naked in her own backyard. If her neighbors could see h
er, they would be scandalized already, and she had yet to commence teaching at Graceville Prep.
Abbie wasn’t much of a swimmer—she preferred solid ground beneath her feet even when she was in the water—but with her flip-flops to protect her from unseen rocks, she felt brave enough to wade into the water, inviting its embrace above her knees, her thighs. She felt the water’s gentle kiss between her legs, the massage across her belly, and, finally, a liquid cloak upon her shoulders. The grade was gradual, with no sudden drop-offs to startle her, and for the first time in years Abbie felt truly safe and happy.
That was all Graceville was supposed to be for Abbie LaFleur: new job, new house, new lake, new beginning. For the week before summer school began, Abbie took to swimming behind her house daily, at dusk, safe from the mosquitoes, sinking into her sanctuary.
No one had told her—not the Realtor, not the elderly widow she’d only met once when they signed the paperwork at the lawyer’s office downtown, not Graceville Prep’s cheerful headmistress. Even a random first-grader at the grocery store could have told her that one must never, ever go swimming in Graceville’s lakes during the summer. The man-made lakes were fine, but the natural lakes that had once been swampland were to be avoided by children in particular. And women of childbearing age—which Abbie LaFleur still was at thirty-six, albeit barely. And men who were prone to quick tempers or alcohol binges.
Further, one must never, ever swim in Graceville’s lakes in summer without clothing, when crevices and weaknesses were most exposed.
In retrospect, she was foolish. But in all fairness, how could she have known?
Abbie’s ex-husband had accused her of irreparable timidity, criticizing her for refusing to go snorkeling or even swimming with dolphins, never mind the scuba diving he’d loved since he was sixteen. The world was populated by water people and land people, and Abbie was firmly attached to terra firma. Until Graceville. And the lake.
Soon after she began her nightly wading, which gradually turned to dog-paddling and then awkward strokes across the dark surface, she began to dream about the water. Her dreams were far removed from her nightly dipping—which actually was somewhat timid, if she was honest. In sleep, she glided effortlessly far beneath the murky surface, untroubled by the nuisance of lungs and breathing. The water was a muddy green-brown, nearly black, but spears of light from above gave her tents of vision to see floating plankton, algae, tadpoles, and squirming tiny creatures she could not name … and yet knew. Her underwater dreams were a wonderland of tangled mangrove roots coated with algae, and forests of gently waving lily pads and swamp grass. Once, she saw an alligator’s checkered, pale belly above her, until the reptile hurried away, its powerful tail lashing to give it speed. In her dream, she wasn’t afraid of the alligator; she’d sensed instead (smelled instead?) that the alligator was afraid of her.
Abbie’s dreams had never been so vivid. She awoke one morning drenched from head to toe, and her heart hammered her breathless until she realized that her mattress was damp with perspiration, not swamp water. At least … she thought it must be perspiration. Her fear felt silly, and she was blanketed by sadness as deep as she’d felt the first months after her divorce.
Abbie was so struck by her dreams that she called Mary Kay, who kept dream diaries and took such matters far too seriously.
“You sure that water’s safe?” Mary Kay said. “No chemicals being dumped out there?”
“The water’s fine,” Abbie said, defensive. “I’m not worried about the water. It’s just the dreams. They’re so …” Abbie rarely ran out of words, which Mary Kay knew full well.
“What’s scaring you about the dreams?”
“The dreams don’t scare me,” Abbie said. “It’s the opposite. I’m sad to wake up. As if I belong there, in the water, and my bedroom is the dream.”
Mary Kay had nothing to offer except a warning to have the local Health Department come out and check for chemicals in any water she was swimming in, and Abbie felt the weight of her distance from her friend. There had been a time when she and Mary Kay understood each other better than anyone, when they could see past each other’s silences straight to their thoughts, and now Mary Kay had no idea of the shape and texture of Abbie’s life. No one did.
All liberation is loneliness, she thought sadly.
Abbie dressed sensibly, conservatively, for her first day at her new school.
She had driven the two miles to the school, a redbrick converted bank building in the center of downtown Graceville, before she noticed the itching between her toes.
“LaFleur,” the headmistress said, keeping pace with Abbie as they walked toward her assigned classroom for the course she’d named Creativity & Literature. The woman’s easy, Southern-bred twang seemed to add a syllable to every word. “Where is that name from?”
Abbie wasn’t fooled by the veiled attempt to guess at her ethnicity, since it didn’t take an etymologist to guess at her name’s French derivation. What Loretta Millhouse really wanted to know was whether Abbie had ancestry in Haiti or Martinique to explain her sun-kissed complexion and the curly brown hair Abbie kept locked tight in a bun.
Abbie’s itching feet had grown so unbearable that she wished she could pull off her pumps. The itching pushed irritation into her voice. “My grandmother married a Frenchman in Paris after World War II,” she explained. “LaFleur was his family name.”
The rest was none of her business. Most of her life was none of anyone’s business.
“Oh, I see,” Millhouse said, voice filled with delight, but Abbie saw her disappointment that her prying had yielded nothing. “Well, as I said, we’re so tickled to have you with us. Only one letter in your file wasn’t completely glowing …”
Abbie’s heart went cold, and she forgot her feet. She’d assumed that her detractors had remained silent, or she never would have been offered the job.
Millhouse patted her arm. “But don’t you worry: Swimming upstream is an asset here.” The word “swimming” made Abbie flinch, feeling exposed. “We welcome independent thinking at Graceville Prep. That’s the main reason I wanted to hire you. Between you and me, how can anyone criticize a … creative mind?”
She said the last words conspiratorially, leaning close to Abbie’s ear as if a creative mind were a disease. Abbie’s mind raced: The criticism must have come from Johanssen, the vice principal at Blake who had labeled her argumentative—a bitch, Mary Kay had overheard him call her privately, but he wouldn’t have put that in writing. What did Millhouse’s disclosure mean? Was Millhouse someone who pretended to compliment you while subtly putting you down, or was a shared secret hidden beneath the twinkle in her aqua-green eyes?
“Don’t go easy on this group,” Millhouse said when they reached room 113. “Every jock trying to make up a credit to stay on the roster is in your class. Let them work for it.”
Sure enough, when Abbie walked into the room, she faced desks filled with athletic young men. Graceville was a coed school, but only five of her twenty students were female.
Abbie smiled.
Her house would be fixed up sooner than she’d expected.
Abbie liked to begin with Thomas Hardy. Jude the Obscure. That one always blew their young minds, with its frankness and unconventionality. Their other instructors would cram conformity down their throats, and she would teach rebellion.
No rows of desks would mar her classroom, she informed them. They would sit in a circle. She would not lecture; they would have conversations. They would discuss the readings, read pages from their journals, and share poems. Some days, she told them, she would surprise them by playing music and they would write whatever came to mind.
Half the class looked relieved, the other half petrified.
During her orientation, Abbie studied her students’ faces and tried to guess which ones would be most useful over the summer. She dismissed the girls, as she usually did; most were too wispy and pampered, or far too large to be accustomed to physical labor.
* * *
But the boys. The boys were a different matter.
Of the fifteen boys, only three were unsuitable at a glance—bird-chested and reedy, or faces riddled with acne. She could barely stand to look at them.
That left twelve to ponder. She listened carefully as they raised their hands and described their hopes and dreams, watching their eyes for the spark of maturity she needed. Five or six couldn’t hold her gaze, casting their eyes shyly at their desks. No good at all.
Down to six, then. Several were basketball players, one a quarterback. Millhouse hadn’t been kidding when she’d said that her class was a haven for desperate athletes. The quarterback, Derek, was dark-haired with a crater-sized dimple in his chin; he sat at his desk with his body angled, leg crossed at the knee, as if the desk were already too small. He didn’t say “uhm” or pause between his sentences. His future was at the tip of his tongue.
“I’m sorry,” she said, interrupting him. “How old did you say you are, Derek?”
He didn’t blink. His dark eyes were at home on hers. “Sixteen, ma’am.”
Sixteen was a good age. A mature age.
A female teacher could not be too careful about which students she invited to her home. Locker-room exaggerations held grave consequences that could literally steal years from a young woman’s life. Abbie had seen it before; entire careers up in flames. But this Derek …
Derek was full of possibilities. Abbie suddenly found herself playing Millhouse’s game, noting his olive complexion and dark features, trying to guess if his jet-black hair whispered Native American or Hispanic heritage. Throughout the ninety-minute class, her eyes came to Derek again and again.
The young man wasn’t flustered. He was used to being stared at.
Abbie had made up her mind before the final bell, but she didn’t say a word to Derek. Not yet. She had plenty of time. The summer had just begun.
As she was climbing out of the shower, Abbie realized her feet had stopped their terrible itching. For three days, she’d slathered the spaces between her toes with creams from Walgreens, none helping, some only stinging her in punishment.
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