Bloom

by Kenneth Oppel

  Now they were wide open.

  To Anaya they looked a bit like black sunflowers. The centers bristled with pale pollen. A horn honked at her. She stepped out of the way of a car trying to leave the parking lot, windows rolled up, the driver jerking with sneezes.

  Anaya walked closer to the black grass, staring up at the flowers. The breeze rustled the stalks together. Maybe it was the unpleasant scraping sound, or the big facelike flowers, but Anaya had never felt so keenly that the grass had an intelligence.

  With a faint creak, one of the flowers tilted its head skyward. The long black stem arched and swelled. The flower trembled and then snapped forward. With a loud pop that made Anaya jolt, a thousand tiny grains of pollen exploded through the air.

  A second pop made her turn as more flowers released their mist of pollen. Everywhere, the flowers arched and recoiled as their pollen shot through the air like fireworks.

  The parking lot was chaos now, people shouting and sneezing and hurrying to their cars. Doors slamming. Cars starting. Horns blaring.

  Overhead, the air was heavy with pollen, the sunlight illuminating the golden grains as they danced and swirled higher in the heat of the afternoon, and Anaya thought, That is one of the most beautiful things I’ve even seen.

  Across the parking lot, she caught sight of Seth and Petra. They weren’t sneezing at all.

  And neither was she.

  * * *

  IT WAS WEIRD for Petra, stepping inside Anaya’s house after so long. But right away she remembered the frayed mat, the homemade shoe rack, the wall-mounted coat hooks in the shape of elephant tusks. And the familiar, faintly spicy fragrance of the house itself. She used to spend so much time here, and with a pang she realized how much she missed it.

  “Thanks for bringing them over,” Mr. Riggs said, looking at the bottles of water she carried. “Come on into the kitchen.”

  Her father sneezed again. On the way over, it hadn’t been so bad inside the car, with the windows rolled up. The pollen had swirled against the windshield, forming little drifts against the wipers. Even the short dash from the car to the Riggses’ front door had made her dad’s eyes and nose stream. But she herself was absolutely fine, and she had no idea why.

  Mr. Riggs said, “Cal, we’ve got plenty of allergy meds.”

  Her father nodded gratefully. “Yes, please. What do you have?”

  When they walked into the kitchen, Anaya was already popping a pill from a blister pack. “Might I recommend ten milligrams of cetirizine?” she said.

  “You certainly know your pharmaceuticals,” Petra’s father chuckled.

  “I’m kind of an expert,” Anaya replied, offering him the pill with a glass of water.

  Petra didn’t laugh. So typical of Anaya to show off how clever she was. She loved being smart. Whenever the teachers returned tests, she’d always smile, and leave her paper faceup on the desk so everyone could see her marks. If someone answered a question wrong in class, she’d do this little headshake, and then lift her hand really high. Petra got good marks, too, but she wasn’t so obnoxious about it.

  “Do you want some antihistamines, too?” Anaya asked her.

  “I’m good.”

  She noticed Anaya wasn’t sneezing at all, and seemed kind of smug about it. Her face also looked less pimply and puffy than usual. You could almost notice how pretty her mouth and eyes were—which irritated Petra even more.

  She set her bottles down on the old wooden table, and saw Anaya watching closely, enviously even. Inwardly Petra smiled. Did Anaya have any strange plant specimens? No. Had Anaya figured out the seeds must have come with the rain? No. Take that, smart girl.

  “So, let’s see what we’ve got here,” Mr. Riggs said, bending close to the bottles. “This growth all happened overnight?”

  “Yes.”

  “Okay. I’m just going to dump out the water,” Mr. Riggs said, taking one of the bottles to the sink, where a colander was waiting.

  “Oh!” said Petra. “Do you mind saving it? It’s just…”

  She snuck a glance at Anaya, who raised a curious eyebrow. Petra didn’t care what she thought. She still wanted the water to wash with, even if weird stuff had grown in it. She couldn’t bear the idea of losing it.

  “Right, sure,” said Mr. Riggs.

  He put a big pot under the colander, and drained the first bottle. He brought the colander back to the table, lifted out the two black stalks, and placed them on a plastic cutting board. Everyone crowded around.

  “Okay, this is definitely the same grass we’ve got everywhere. What’s impressive is the seeds germinated in water and didn’t rot. These dudes are very adaptable.”

  “They don’t look very healthy, though,” Petra said. “In the ground, that stuff grows four feet overnight.”

  “True,” Mr. Riggs said. “He definitely prefers a terrestrial home. Okay, next.”

  He drained the second bottle. Inside was the plant with the bat-shaped leaves, which were plastered against the plastic sides.

  “You want a pair of chopsticks?” Anaya said.

  “Good idea,” her father said. “I don’t want to tear them.”

  Using the chopsticks, Mr. Riggs delicately gripped the plant and eased it out through the neck. Seeing it spread flat on the cutting board, Petra was surprised how big the leaves were. All this, just overnight, in the darkness of the medicine cabinet. She looked at their fine black veins, the tiny hairs.

  “The leaves are quite fleshy,” Mr. Riggs said, handling them gently. “Perfectly symmetrical. And see.” He touched a small bulge in the plant’s center. “I think this might be a flowering stem beginning here. It reminds me of a water lily.”

  “Same black color as the grass,” Petra said. “You think they’re related, Mr. Riggs?”

  “Possibly. Let’s have a look at this last one.”

  At the sink, he poured out the third bottle and returned with the colander. Resting on the bottom were the three black peas. Petra frowned. The tiny shoots looked longer than they had inside the bottle.

  “These guys,” Mr. Riggs remarked, “look a bit like very tiny bulbs.”

  “Does that mean they’re flowers?” Petra asked.

  “Could be. A flower bulb usually has multiple roots at the bottom, though. These guys just have a single shoot growing from this bud here, right at the pointy end.” He picked up one of the bulbs. “They’re very young. The shoots are still undifferentiated.”

  “Undifferentiated?” she asked, and was sorry she did, because Anaya answered.

  “They haven’t started forming leaves or branching off yet.”

  Petra caught Mr. Riggs give his daughter an approving nod, and tried not to roll her eyes.

  Her own dad asked, “Have you seen anything like this, Mike?”

  “No. And it’s hard to know what this one’s going to become.”

  As he held it close to his face, Petra saw a bead of fluid leak from the bulb onto the pad of his thumb.

  “Huh,” Mr. Riggs said, setting down the bulb and sniffing the liquid. He rubbed it between his fingertips, then frowned. Abruptly he stood up and hurried to the sink.

  “Dad?” Anaya said worriedly.

  Mr. Riggs turned on the tap and held his hand under the water.

  “That has a nasty sting to it,” he said over his shoulder. “Don’t touch it.”

  “Let’s take a look,” Petra’s dad said.

  When Mr. Riggs turned, Petra could see the angry blisters on his fingertips.

  “Hard to tell if it’s an allergic reaction, or an acid burn,” her dad said.

  She looked back down at the bulb, and gave a cry as its shoot twitched.

  “Holy crap! It just moved!”

  “I saw it, too!” Anaya said.

  Their eyes met, and for just a secon
d it was like they were friends again.

  “You sure, Petra?” her dad asked.

  “Yeah! It was like it just…grew. Does it look a little longer to you guys?”

  She didn’t know much about plants, but you weren’t supposed to be able to see them growing.

  “Anaya,” Mr. Riggs said, “could you get some ziplock bags and wet paper towels to pack these things up? Put on gloves before handling the bulbs.”

  “Sure thing.”

  “Thanks for bringing these, Petra,” Mr. Riggs said. “This is incredibly useful.” He pointed at the bulbs and the bat-leafed plant. “I haven’t seen reports of these varieties yet.” He shook his head. “Three new plant species in one sample of rainwater—seems like quite a coincidence, doesn’t it?”

  “So, you think it’s possible?” she asked him. “The seeds were actually in the rain?”

  “Hard to dismiss,” Mr. Riggs said.

  Petra cut a sidelong glance at Anaya. She couldn’t help gloating. Maybe she was the first person to come up with the idea—the first person who wasn’t crazy, anyway.

  “So, hang on,” said her father. “If the seeds were all delivered together, it means someone’s doing this, right? Bioterrorism?”

  Mr. Riggs nodded gravely. “I’ll be calling the Ministry.”

  Petra watched Anaya packing the plants into ziplock bags. “Is it safe for me to keep washing with the water? Because of the seeds, I mean.”

  Mr. Riggs considered her question. “Well, it hasn’t hurt you so far. But probably best not to.” He held up his red fingertips. “You don’t want anything like this getting on your skin or eyes.”

  “Okay.” She nodded, trying to hide her disappointment. “So, what happens next?”

  “I’ll transplant these seedlings at the farm,” Mr. Riggs said, “and grow them in controlled conditions. We need to know what else we’re facing.”

  * * *

  SETH BROUGHT THE tractor around in a one-eighty turn, still a little sloppy, but he was definitely getting the hang of it. In the late-afternoon light, row by row, he cut down the new crop of black grass. Even after the burn, the very next morning the field had bristled with new stalks. Today they were as tall as Seth.

  When he’d visited Mr. Antos in the hospital earlier today, Seth had promised him he’d keep the grass under control.

  “Thanks, Seth,” Mr. Antos said. “But this is ridiculous. Why am I still here?” He turned to his wife, who had just had a coughing fit. “You sound worse than me, Marta.”

  “You’re inside,” his wife told him in annoyance. “And on oxygen!”

  Seth could tell her new allergies infuriated Mrs. Antos, even if everyone on the island was suffering equally.

  “Still,” Mr. Antos said stubbornly. “I’m fine. I don’t know why they’re not releasing me.”

  Mrs. Antos blew her nose and glared at the tissue. “The doctors said your lungs were scarred—and I believe them. I only got a couple of mouthfuls, and that smoke seared all the way down my chest.”

  “They want to keep you in a few more days,” Seth said. “Just to be safe.”

  Mr. Antos gave a mighty sigh, which started him coughing. “I want to get back to the farm.”

  Seth wanted him back, too—and he was surprised by how much. A father was not a difficult thing to imagine, even if you’d never had one. Seth had spent a lot of time watching other people’s fathers. From a distance: a dad smiling and calling good-bye as he dropped his kid off at school; a dad lifting a boy onto his shoulders; a dad frowning when his daughter dropped her ice cream, then buying her another one.

  Until now, Seth had never thought he might have a father of his own. It scared him, hoping for something.

  So here he was, cutting down the black grass, getting sunburned on his bare arms, feeling the hot rumble of the engine beneath him, hearing the blades whirling—and loving it. Mrs. Antos knew how to use the tractor better than him, but she was sticking indoors mostly. Like everyone else now.

  Except him and Anaya and Petra. He remembered how, outside the community center, everyone else had been sneezing like crazy, and the three of them had met each other’s eyes. No one said anything, but it was like for that one second, they were all communicating, and an electric thrill had gone through him.

  Seth brought his attention back to the plowing. He’d keep the farm in good shape until Mr. Antos came back. Then maybe they could make another start later in the summer. They’d have discovered some new herbicide by then, and everything would be back to normal.

  At the far end of the field, he made another turn, nice and tight this time, and headed back in the direction of the farmhouse. Mrs. Antos was hurrying down the porch steps, waving at him, and sneezing and dabbing her eyes with a tissue. He brought the tractor to a jerking halt, stalling the engine.

  Hopping off, he ran, and he knew he was running toward bad news.

  “AND WE’RE DONE,” ANAYA said.

  She hit Send, and the last of the yearbook files were on their way to the printer. It was after school on Monday, and she and Tereza had stayed late to make their deadline.

  With the pollen still flying outside, half the kids and teachers had been absent today. Crumpled tissues littered the hallways and overflowed the garbage bins. Finding toilet paper in the washrooms—rare at the best of times—was now impossible. Snuffling, coughing kids slumped around the halls like zombies.

  “Another year of precious memories,” Tereza said sarcastically, blowing her nose yet again. “Thanks for doing those last layouts. My eyes are literally streaming. You’re way better with the computer anyway. You saved the day.”

  “No problem,” said Anaya.

  “I woke up with my eyes glued shut,” Tereza said.

  “Same,” said Fleetwood, who was slumped in a chair, waiting for them to finish.

  “I know that one,” Anaya said.

  She felt almost guilty, because her allergies had really eased up. Hardly any sneezing or nose-blowing. This morning, when she’d looked in the mirror, she didn’t feel the usual pang of disappointment. Her face was hardly puffy at all and she didn’t even sound like she had a cold. Today in class, when she’d answered a question, her voice sounded normal. A couple of kids had actually turned around to see who was talking.

  And her skin! There were way fewer pimples. Finally, all those gross creams were starting to work, just like Mom promised. She decided she was almost—not quite, but almost—a little bit pretty. It was a lovely warm feeling.

  She’d even done gym today. For the past three years, she’d hated gym. Today, though, she’d done indoor laps and squats and wall push-ups, and hadn’t even needed to use her puffer. What was most amazing was the high jump. Usually she just crashed through the bar, but this time she cleared it, even after Mr. Hilborn raised it twice. It was like she’d finally figured out how to use her legs. They felt strong as they pushed her into the air. Afterward in the changing room, Anaya had poked her thighs with her thumb. Normally, they were a bit squishy, but today they were hard.

  Despite everything happening in the world, today had felt like a good day. And now here she was, a seasoned yearbook pro, basking in Tereza’s praise and friendship. But her thoughts kept turning to Petra and Seth, like she wished they were hanging out with her, too.

  It had been so strange, having Petra in her house last Friday. A couple of times during the visit, she’d almost forgotten they weren’t friends anymore, but then she felt guilty and angry all over again. Mostly sad, though, at how she’d lost a best friend.

  She shut down the computer. “Did you guys hear about Mr. Antos? He had a heart attack Friday.”

  “Is he going to be okay?” Fleetwood asked.

  Seth had told her about it earlier today. She’d found him sitting alone in the stairwell, his sketchbook closed in his lap, an uneaten s
andwich in his hand.

  “They don’t know. He’s still in the ICU.”

  “Those friggin’ plants,” Tereza murmured, and it was the first time Anaya had seen her look genuinely worried. Normally, all she had to do was raise an eyebrow, say something witty, and scary things evaporated.

  “They’re going to figure it out,” she said, wanting to reassure her friend.

  “Your dad know anything about those new ones?” Fleetwood asked.

  She’d already told them how he was studying the seedlings from Petra’s water bottles. After he’d transplanted them at the farm, they’d started to grow. Over the weekend, Anaya had seen them inside their terrarium.

  “The ones that looked like little peas, they’re becoming vines. Dad thinks they’re developing little clusters of berries, and there’s these tiny bulges along the stems that have acid in them.”

  “Same stuff that burned your dad’s fingers?” Fleetwood asked.

  “Yeah. And the other one’s definitely an aquatic plant. Dad put it in some water. There’s a flower bud that’s about to open. And they noticed that the water’s changed.”

  “What do you mean, changed?” Tereza asked.

  “It’s become a tiny bit more acidic. Like the plant’s changed the water’s makeup.”

  “All these plants come from the same place,” Fleetwood said. “I told you. It’s some kind of bioweapon. We’ve got to figure out how to kill these things.”

  Tereza’s gaze drifted to the window. “Not looking forward to going out there.”

  Outside, pollen glittered in the air. Beyond the school field, the black grass grew tall, but the field itself was still green.

  Anaya said, “It’s just so weird there’s no black grass on it.”

  Fleetwood said, “Maybe the earth’s too packed down or something.”

  “We should take a sample,” Anaya said. “I’m serious. If the grass isn’t growing there, maybe there’s a reason. Like, a chemical reason, in the soil. My dad was telling me about it.”