Bloom

by Kenneth Oppel

  Against the school was a huge crowd of kids now, and almost all of them had their phones out. Some were talking into them, others were filming.

  Two firefighters with gloved hands used a crowbar to pry open the plant that had eaten Mr. Hilborn. With difficulty, they pulled him out.

  Seth looked at Anaya, and then Petra, still sitting on the grass, arms wrapped around her knees, rocking back and forth. They were safe. Both of them were safe, and completely unharmed.

  Just like him.

  “WHEN CAN WE GO home?” Anaya asked.

  The blood pressure cuff deflated around her arm, and Mr. Sumner noted the figures on his pad. “We want to keep you guys a little longer. You seem fine. Which is a miracle. But the doctor just wants to make sure there’s no delayed reactions.”

  “Did you call my parents?”

  Her phone had been melted by the acid goo inside the pit plant.

  “No answer from your mom,” Mr. Sumner replied.

  “She must be in the air.”

  “And your father’s went straight to voice mail.”

  Dad had warned her this would happen. Coverage around the islands and eco-reserves was always patchy. She swallowed, wishing she could hear their voices. Dad needed to know about these pit plants. What if there were more of them where he was going?

  “Can you keep trying, please?” she asked Mr. Sumner.

  Enviously she watched as he went to Petra and kissed the top of her head.

  “Okay?” her father asked, and Petra nodded mutely.

  Mr. Sumner glanced over at Seth. “We called Mrs. Antos,” he said. “She’ll be over soon.”

  “Thanks.”

  Seth crouched forward in a chair, bony arms and legs jutting from his hospital gown. Anaya looked away from all the red scars on his bare arms.

  The hospital was crammed, and all three of them had been put in the same room. A single bed, two armchairs, and a television mounted high on the wall, silently playing a daytime soap that nobody had bothered to turn off.

  Her memory was all choppy. She couldn’t even remember changing into the hospital gown. She barely remembered how they’d gotten here.

  At school there had been lots of voices, and gloved hands on her, and water sluicing over her. She hadn’t wanted to let go of the chain saw. They kept telling her to let go. She remembered Petra screaming at them not to pour water on her, and in the end they’d dumped some kind of powder all over her. Another thing she remembered: Tereza being lifted into the back of an ambulance. There were only three ambulances on the whole island, and they were all lined up on the school driveway.

  “Is Tereza okay?” she asked Petra’s father.

  In the doorway, he turned. “She’s comfortable now, but they’re transferring her to Vancouver. Fleetwood, too.”

  “But they’re going to be okay?”

  “They were pretty lucky, really.”

  She was aware he hadn’t answered her question.

  “What about Jen Haines?”

  But he was already gone. As the door closed behind him, noise swirled from the hallway: sneezing and coughing, talking and crying.

  “I think Jen might be dead,” Seth said. “I saw the firemen working on her, and she wasn’t moving or anything.”

  “Maybe she was just unconscious.” Anaya tried not to think about how patches of Jen’s hair had melted. “That gas, it puts you to sleep. Did you guys smell it? It was like really bad perfume. It made Tereza super dopey.”

  Petra didn’t say anything. She hadn’t talked much at all.

  Seth said, “Fleetwood was really out of it, too. It’s like they drug you first so you don’t struggle as much when the acid comes. But it didn’t work on us. Not the gas, not that acid.”

  Anaya had worried that when people saw her, unharmed, they’d think she’d saved herself first and let Tereza get really hurt. But she had to climb out because Tereza couldn’t.

  “You were brave,” Seth said to her, as if reading her thoughts.

  “You too.”

  Most kids didn’t even know Seth’s name and thought he was just some weird loner, but he was a hero. She felt suddenly self-conscious in her stupid hospital gown. She worried it might gape open. She wished she’d shaved her legs. She sat with them tightly crossed.

  “Does your dad know about these plants?” Seth asked her.

  “I don’t know. Maybe. We saw those tiny little ones, but—”

  “Little ones?” Petra asked, sitting up on the hospital bed.

  “Yeah, those little black peas from your water bottle!”

  “What’re you talking about?” Seth asked in confusion.

  “Those tiny peas? They grow into those huge pit things?” Petra demanded.

  Anaya nodded. “I saw a big one at my house. It sent out a giant vine with these weird little sacs that trap animals, and sprigs of berries—”

  “What did the berries look like?” Seth interrupted.

  “Like blueberries, I guess, only smaller and darker.”

  She saw Seth and Petra exchange a look. “What?”

  “He ate some,” Petra said.

  “You did?” Anaya heard the amazement in her voice, but right away remembered the hungry rush of saliva in her own mouth. She’d wanted those berries, too. “They lure animals, and then the sacs open up and trap them. But the biggest traps, those ones grow under the soil.”

  “What kind of plant does this?” Petra muttered angrily.

  “A bioengineered one,” Anaya said.

  “Whoa, wait. Who said?” Petra asked.

  “My dad.” She probably wasn’t supposed to tell, but that was yesterday, and everything felt different now, and much worse. “That’s what all the scientists are thinking.”

  “Wow,” Seth said. “Those things are killers.”

  “Where did you guys see the vines?” Anaya wanted to know.

  “Growing up the trees beside the field.”

  Anaya nodded. That made sense. “The bulb grows underground, sends out vines…” She was thinking aloud, trying to order her jittery thoughts. “The vines grow high and get sunlight, and those little sac things eat small animals—and maybe that’s all energy to feed the bulb underground. It gets big and—”

  “And just waits there,” said Petra. “For us.”

  Anaya’s skin prickled. “That’s why the black grass wouldn’t grow!”

  Seth looked at her, shaking his head. “What?”

  “The pit plants won’t let it! They must send a signal to the black grass to stop it from growing there.”

  “Signal?” Seth asked.

  “A chemical signal in the soil.” Anaya’s thoughts were racing now, tumbling over one another. “All those other places it doesn’t grow…pastures, school field—oh my God, the playground by the marina. Those pit things are growing wherever people walk!”

  * * *

  “YES, ANYWHERE THE black grass doesn’t grow!” Petra told her mother urgently. “You’ve got to close it off!”

  She was making the call from the nurses’ station, phone pressed to her ear, a finger plugging the other so she could hear Mom above the noise.

  “She’s sure about this?” Mom sounded frazzled, and there was plenty of noise at her end, too: shouting, and the urgent blurp of sirens.

  “Yes!” Petra didn’t trust Anaya as a friend, but she trusted her as a brain. “They grow underground so they can trap people!”

  “All right. I’ve got to go. I’m so glad you’re all right. I love you, Petra.”

  She felt a lump in her throat. “You too.”

  She swiped her eyes with a tissue so no tears got on her face, and headed back to her room. They’d given her socks the same gross color as the gowns. The stink of singed shoe rubber was still trapped in her nose. On
her arms were patches of that weird powder the firefighters had dumped on her to neutralize the acid. Which she didn’t need at all, but they hadn’t listened to her. Her skin looked dry and scaly. She wanted to go home and clean up properly. Her father had said he’d try to find her some hypoallergenic lotion, but he was too busy.

  The moment she walked into the room, Anaya asked, “Is she going to close all the parks and playgrounds?”

  “And the pastures, yeah, as soon as they can.”

  Anaya exhaled in relief and slumped back in her chair. “Thanks.”

  Petra’s eyes drifted to the television. She felt like a sleepwalker. Her brain wasn’t working very well. For a few mindless seconds, she watched a ridiculously good-looking man and woman argue silently.

  Seth asked, “Where did you guys learn to use a chain saw?”

  Petra shrugged. “Most people on the island know.”

  Anaya said, “Didn’t you get a ribbon in that log-cutting competition, in grade six?”

  “Second place.”

  “Your mom taught me, too,” Anaya said.

  “Oh, right.” Petra didn’t really want to be reminded of the days when they hung out all the time.

  “I think it was the same camping trip she acted out how you survive a bear attack,” Anaya added.

  Petra couldn’t help smiling at this. The memory was comforting. It seemed like such a long time ago.

  “So, how long have you guys been friends?” Seth wanted to know.

  “Um,” said Petra, not knowing what to say next. She glanced at Anaya.

  “That was a while ago,” Anaya said, sounding like she’d been the victim of a terrible injustice.

  Which was so unfair! Petra could tell Seth was looking at her, waiting for more of an explanation.

  “It wasn’t my fault, okay?” she said. “We just don’t hang out anymore.”

  Anaya sniffed. “You dumped me.”

  That was such a lie. “I didn’t dump you!”

  It was ridiculous even to be talking about this right now. In a hospital. In disgusting green gowns. When people had just been melted by plants.

  Anaya said, “You started hanging around with Rachel and all those guys. And you stopped inviting me because I wasn’t pretty enough.”

  Petra’s heart pounded with indignation. “No, Anaya, that is not why I stopped inviting you. I stopped inviting you because you told people about my tail.”

  She hadn’t uttered that word in a long time—and it was probably a mistake. But it was out and actually she felt relieved, letting it hang there, stinking, in front of Anaya. See what she said now.

  “Um, what?” Seth said, looking totally confused.

  “Tell him,” Petra said with a shrug.

  She loved seeing Anaya squirm. Anaya’s eyes fell to her knees. She crossed and uncrossed her legs. She always got to play the wounded bird: the tragic, smart, good girl rejected by all the pretty, mean girls because she was homely. It was all a big fake.

  After a while, Anaya said, “Okay, I did tell, but only after you dumped me.”

  “Before.” She looked at Seth. “I was born with this weird little tail, a couple of centimeters long. The doctors removed it. Anaya was the only person I ever told, and she promised she’d never tell anyone. Then, at lunch one day, in front of everyone, she goes, ‘It’s so weird Petra’s allergic to water when she’s half reptile.’ And then people asked what she meant and she pretended to look all guilty.”

  “You had a tail?” Seth asked, looking at her intently.

  “You don’t need to look so fascinated, Seth. Lots of people have them!”

  “Not lots,” Anaya muttered.

  Petra rounded on Anaya. “And then you told Sal Nuñez how the tail was a foot long, and when the doctors hacked it off, it flopped around on the floor for a few seconds.”

  Seth saw Anaya smile to herself. Petra punched her on the arm.

  “Ow!”

  “And you also told Barb Mueller I kept it in a jar under my bed!”

  “Because you didn’t invite me to your birthday party!” Anaya said.

  “Yeah, because you told everyone I was a freak! And by the way, you didn’t invite me to yours either.”

  Anaya was looking at Seth now, shaking her head. “It’s because I got ugly after my allergies.”

  “I didn’t dump you because you got ugly, Anaya. I dumped you because you were a jerk!”

  Petra remembered everything. Where everyone was sitting at the lunch table. What they were wearing. The egg-salad sandwich half eaten in front of her. Anaya had told everyone about her tail—and Petra had been so shocked she hadn’t denied it. It would have been so easy. All she’d needed to do was lie; it wasn’t like Anaya had pictures or proof or anything. But she’d just sat there in silence, so everyone knew it was true. Then she’d gone to the bathroom and cried.

  People talked about it afterward for a long time, and it was terrible. But eventually they forgot. What Petra couldn’t forget was Anaya’s betrayal—and the fact she never apologized. So Petra started making mean comments about Anaya being a snotty mess, and that was the final nail in the coffin of their friendship.

  “Hey,” Seth said, looking past them. “We’re on TV.”

  It took Petra a couple of seconds to understand what she was seeing. It was phone footage of their school field. The image was shaky and pixelated as it zoomed in on the three of them with Tereza, Fleetwood, and Jen off to the side. And right in the middle, the struggling deer.

  Petra ran to the television and turned up the volume.

  The camera jerked over to Mr. Hilborn, flailing in a pit plant. Shouts and screams came from offscreen.

  An unseen news anchor was saying, “Again, we warn viewers some of these images are disturbing. This is Salt Spring Secondary School, where earlier today several sinkholes opened up, swallowing first a deer, and then a man we assume was a teacher from the school….”

  It was like watching one of those joke hidden-camera videos, the way Mr. Hilborn got slurped up so suddenly, arms waving. She worried she might start laughing—it was like a cartoon—and then realized she was shivering so hard her teeth were chattering.

  “Maybe turn it off, Seth,” she heard Anaya say.

  “No,” Petra said. “I want to see it.”

  The fact was she couldn’t remember very much. Her short-term memory had been yanked out like a flash drive.

  The news announcer was saying, “You can see some of the students on the field running in panic….”

  Like a stranger, Petra watched herself run clumsily with the chain saw and topple into a sudden hole. Seth struggled to pull her out, then went down after her.

  She felt dizzy as the camera ricocheted around the field from one person to another as they got swallowed up.

  “According to local authorities, these sinkholes are actually underground plants that seal their victims inside….”

  On-screen, a whirling chain saw blade came jabbing up through the earth, over and over. And then Petra watched herself come scrabbling out, smoldering.

  “Some of the students—we can’t release their names as they’re minors—escaped uninjured, and, as you’ll see, went on to heroically free the others….”

  “We’re heroes,” Seth said dully.

  Petra didn’t want to look anymore. Right now, on the screen, she was sitting by herself on the field, doing nothing while Seth and Anaya helped free Tereza and Fleetwood and Jen. She’d completely fallen apart. Her cheeks burned with shame.

  Seth started clicking channels. On the next three, it was just the usual stuff: people renovating houses, and calling out answers on game shows, and telling each other to drop their guns. But then Seth clicked again, and she was back at the school field, watching it all over again.

  “Turn it o
ff,” Anaya said. “It’s making me feel sick.”

  The television went dark. And then finally Petra asked the question that had been banging around inside her head, like a wasp against a window.

  “So, why didn’t the three of us get hurt?”

  * * *

  “WE’RE THE SAME,” Seth said.

  He didn’t know why he said it out loud. He usually kept things to himself. But with these two, he felt a closeness that was new for him. Anaya and Petra felt important. On the school field, he wasn’t being a hero. He just didn’t want anything bad to happen to them.

  “How do you mean, same?” Petra asked, her face wary.

  “Well, we’re not like anyone else,” he said. “None of us is allergic to the black grass. We didn’t get knocked out by the sleeping gas. Or burned by the acid.”

  Anaya said, “Maybe it’s just a fluke. We can’t be the only ones.”

  He glanced back at Petra, who sat very still, looking down at her hands. Her fingernails pressed so hard into her skin that they left red marks.

  “I shouldn’t have washed with it,” she said. “The rainwater I bottled. Maybe that’s why I’m different.” She looked up with panicked eyes. “I even drank a little!”

  Seth tried to sound reassuring, like one of his social workers. “Well, I didn’t drink any of the water, so—”

  “Yeah, but what about those berries!” Petra said. “How many did you eat?”

  “I don’t know—”

  “Maybe they changed you, too!”

  He remembered the rush of power he’d felt after eating them. They’d definitely made him feel stronger and faster.

  “Okay, hang on,” Anaya cut in. “I didn’t eat berries, or drink the water. So it can’t be that.”

  “Then why’re we like this?” Petra demanded.

  Haltingly, Seth said, “I didn’t just mean how we are with the plants. There’s other stuff. It’s like you were born with a tail, and I was born with…” He wasn’t quite ready to say the word “wings” to them yet, so he pointed at the scars on his arms. “I had surgery when I was about three. I had all these bony growths.”