Even Thistles Bloom, page 3
“How are we going to handle this?”
“By paying a visit to Old Man Caesar,” Adam replied with a grin.
Old Man Caesar’s setup was far less sophisticated than Mrs. Thompson and Noah’s garden center, but Todd had made some improvements over the last couple of years. He weeded, fertilized, and watered the plants well. Under his care, the Ides of March thrived, much to the old man’s delight.
Todd yanked a couple weeds as Adam negotiated.
“If you let us use your shed to store the stuff, we’ll give you a cut.”
“I don’t know.” The scrawny, pale man pawed his scraggly gray beard. “This is getting too complicated for me.”
Adam and Todd had stumbled upon the old man a couple of years ago while avoiding one of their mother’s boyfriends. He grew for his own recreation, but Adam convinced him to let them sell his stuff. Now Adam wanted to use the old man’s shed as his base of operations.
“We’ll handle the complicated. You just give us a key and accept the money.” Adam gave the old man the smile he used to get girls’ numbers.
“You sure I’ll have enough for me?”
“Absolutely.” Adam gestured to Todd. “He may be missing fingers, but he has two green thumbs.”
With that, they spat and shook hands, Caesar’s deal-sealing ritual. The old man truly was batty, perhaps from years of smoking more than he ate or drank. Would Todd become a crazy old man if he maintained his habits? Maybe he should cut back, focus more on selling the Ides of March than smoking it. Better yet, he could focus on growing the marijuana and let Adam handle sales. He doubted pot grower was on Mrs. Moore’s list of post-high school career tracks, but who cared? Any job that earned him enough money to leave his mom’s house sounded good to him.
Todd paused his weeding to stretch. While the old man’s yard wasn’t the garden center, he couldn’t argue with the location. Caesar’s dilapidated house was one of two on a gravel cul-de-sac surrounded by enough woods to allow him to pretend they were in the country instead of near downtown Minneapolis. The remnants of a third house lay burned to ashes. Todd had always wondered what happened to it.
Todd finished his stretching, but a movement in the second house caught his eye. A pale girl peered at him from the second-story window. She caught him looking and disappeared behind a curtain, but her image stuck with Todd, as if she were a ghost warning him of trouble to come.
“It’s all set,” Adam said. Todd jumped as his brother thumped him on the shoulder. “Our financial woes are over. I bet Principal Moron flips when we hand him the cash.”
“Great.” Todd’s words emerged halfhearted as he wondered whether this latest development in their “summer job” was what the girl was warning him about.
Chapter 4
For the first time in Todd’s memory, he and Adam arrived early to school. Other early birds flocked together to chat, but the twins no longer had friends to update on their summer antics. They had each other, of course, but Todd and his brother weren’t starting this year any better than they’d ended last year.
Principal Evans accepted their cash envelope as calmly as he might retrieve a dropped pencil. Todd waited for something—a scowl, a harsh word, anything—but the principal merely said, “Anything else?”
Todd breathed out in relief as they left the office, but Adam seethed.
“Who does he think he is, anyway?”
“Does it matter? We’re off the hook.”
Adam halted. “Respect matters, Todd. You can’t let people walk all over you.” He gripped Todd’s left shoulder, but Todd felt the reminder in his stubby fingers. Todd wouldn’t label Principal Evans’s failure to acknowledge Adam’s criminal genius as disrespectful, but Adam had always navigated the social universe with greater mastery than Todd.
“Whatever.” Todd shook free of Adam’s grip as the bell rang, summoning students to their first classes. He considered sneaking to the old wing for a pre-class smoke, but he didn’t think it wise to risk the principal’s ire so soon after their last encounter. Besides, his first class was his easy A—art.
His decision to forego smoking proved wise, as the art room lay beyond what felt like miles of twisting corridors and down a half-flight of stairs. He held his breath as he entered the room, not sure what to expect. A mix of grade levels sat at broad black-topped tables spread about a room so spacious, Todd wondered why it hadn’t been commandeered for other purposes. Perhaps whoever was in charge had forgotten about this room. It housed every imaginable piece of art equipment, but it showed more signs of neglect than Old Man Caesar’s shack.
A kiln squatted in the far corner. Paint sets lined the wall in the haphazard fashion of kindergarteners lining up for lunch. A row of blank canvases leaned against each other like dominoes too tired to push their companions over. Pastels, charcoal, and crayons were piled unceremoniously in separate bins. Other items Todd wouldn’t have associated with art—plastic bottles, rubber bands, an old pair of shoes—were heaped in a wooden barrel labeled The Pool of Inspiration.
Todd recognized the Gossip Girls sitting in the front right, blonde ponytails bobbing as they whispered to each other. Though his reputation couldn’t get worse, he figured he ought to avoid them. He traversed the dusty floor toward the back left, where an Asian girl he didn’t recognize had pulled her wheelchair up to the table. She crossed her arms over her chest as he sat beside her.
“I know who you are.” Accusation laced her tone.
Great, even people I’ve never met hate me. Todd busied himself digging for nothing in his backpack.
When he didn’t respond, she continued. “I’m Beth Jones’s sister.”
He examined her, trying to work out the genetics behind a Black girl with an Asian sister. She let him bumble for a moment before saying, “I’m adopted, stupid.”
“Oh.” Todd didn’t know what else to say, but the girl plopped her backpack onto the one remaining seat at the table.
“I’m saving this for a friend, so your other half will have to sit elsewhere.”
“He’s not in this class,” Todd said.
She raised an exceptionally articulate eyebrow.
Todd scowled. “We’re not conjoined.”
She looked about to respond, but another girl rushed toward them. Todd froze, thinking he’d seen a ghost. Her face, pale as a blank page, was pinched, and her eyes—which hovered somewhere between hazel, green, and gray—filled with worry. There was no mistaking the mysterious girl who’d spied him at Old Man Caesar’s.
She set her tattered backpack on the table beside the first girl. “Am I late?”
“I told you art was in Timbuktu,” the first girl said.
A half-smile flashed across the blonde girl’s face. “Did you know Timbuktu is a real place? It’s a city in northern Mali that was founded in the twelfth century and later became extraordinarily wealthy. Most European explorations failed, however, hence its use to denote someplace so far away as to be impossible to reach.”
“Cat, it is way too early in the morning for me to discuss etymologies with human encyclopedias.”
The second girl chuckled and moved to sit down, but she flinched when she noticed Todd.
She flinched. Todd had never been as smooth as Adam, but girls usually didn’t fear him. He tried a poor imitation of Adam’s disarming grin.
“I’m Todd.”
“I know who you are,” the girl whispered. She fidgeted with her ponytail and scooted closer to her friend’s wheelchair. “I’m Cathryn Banks.”
“And I’m Minh Don’t-Mess-with-My-Friend Jones,” the other girl said.
Before he could answer, the teacher strolled into the room. His short stature meant his baggy shorts reached below his knees, and the rest of his hairy, muscular legs poked out beneath him. His pale, bald head sported a tattoo of a laughing cartoon rabbit. Instead of striding to the blackboard, he jumped on top of his desk and raised his bulky arms into the air.
“Today, we begin our journey into the arts. I’m Mr. Martin, but my fellow artistes”—he gestured to the class—“may call me Oliver. For our first lesson, explore the various tools of creation around the room. Take paints, pastels, pencils…anything you like, and do anything you want with them. Our goal is to explore their essence like innocent children.” He broadened his arms as though hugging the room, and Todd reconsidered his smoking habits. Forget Old Man Caesar; this must be the long-term effects of pot use. Judging by Cathryn’s expression, she was reconsidering something too.
“I should have stayed in choir.”
“Relax, Cat,” Minh said. “He’s a kook, but he won’t damage your perfect GPA. I’ll help you. Besides, we’re finally in a class together.” Cathryn opened her mouth to object, but Minh cut her off. “Come on, I need to use the bathroom.”
“Why do girls always pee in packs?” The question tumbled out of Todd’s mouth of its own accord. He’d always wondered, but never asked. Perhaps because he wasn’t angling for a date with the younger girls—sophomores by his guess—his subconscious had found them less intimidating.
Minh’s glare taught his subconscious otherwise. “I wouldn’t leave my dog alone with you, much less my friend.” She wheeled away with a cocky toss of her inky black hair. Cathryn followed, ironically resembling an obedient puppy.
Todd retrieved a piece of charcoal, but he didn’t know how to use it. Explore its essence? What did that even mean? He hoped Minh had spoken the truth about the kook of a teacher not hurting their GPAs.
He rubbed the black stick between his fingers, smudging them. His mood darkened. Though he was used to soil sticking beneath his fingernails, the charcoal stain seemed more ominous, as if representing last year’s unforgivable sins.
“She doesn’t have a dog.” Cathryn appeared a table and a half away. Her eyes flitted to the door, but she’d directed her comment at Todd.
“What?”
“Minh. She doesn’t have a dog. I just…I figured you’d want to know.”
“Right, thanks.” He didn’t know how to transition into his next question, but this might be his only chance to catch her without her tough friend. “Could you not tell anyone you saw me at Old Man Caesar’s?”
She wrinkled her forehead. “Anyone could tell you smoke, Todd.”
“Huh?”
“You smell.” She stepped backward as if afraid her insult would trigger something. Todd kept his seat, even though her honesty made him cringe. He couldn’t afford to scare her off. The Ides of March was making Todd and Adam good money. If word got out about their source, they’d lose their monopoly and have to ask their mother for gas money.
“Okay, true, but I’d still like to keep my…after-school project to myself.”
Cathryn wove her skinny fingers into the end of her ponytail. “Idon’t care what you do with my neighbor’s marijuana, but stay away from my house, okay?”
“Deal.” Todd gave her a warm smile, but she fled the room, no doubt rejoining her friend in whatever girls-only rituals took place in the bathroom. When the pair returned, Cathryn behaved as if their conversation never happened. She picked up a colored pencil and wrote something.
“Think beyond typical use,” Oliver said, peering at her paper. Though he stood next to where she sat, his head rose only about six inches taller than hers. “Like your friend.” He gestured to where Minh was doodling with her own art pens. Todd blinked. How had she drawn that so quickly? Her ink-stained fingers were already adding the finishing touches to a fire-breathing variation of the teacher’s scalp tattoo.
Mr. Martin—Oliver, Todd reminded himself—skipped to the next table like a little girl playing hopscotch. Todd exchanged a glance with Cathryn as the bell signaled the end of the period, glad he wasn’t the only one who’d be completely lost in this class.
He checked his schedule as the room emptied. Next came honors economics—on the opposite side of the building. He raced up the half-flight of stairs and charged through the hallways, glad his summer of greenhouse labor had kept him in even better shape than football. Even so, the bell rang just before he crossed the classroom threshold.
“Look who it is,” Beth Jones said from the front row. Her eyebrows weren’t as articulate as her adopted sister’s, but she held herself with a similar defensive posture. Guess genetics isn’t everything.
Saafi sat beside her, notebooks organized atop her desk and one of those ten ton mom-purses tucked underneath it. As the future valedictorian, she’d have nothing to fear in an honors class, but she shifted her position as Todd passed. Claire, who sat behind Saafi, didn’t even spare Todd a glance. Until he sat next to her. Then her green eyes flashed.
“D-don’t you want to save a seat for Adam?” She gestured to the back row, where two seats sat empty.
“We’re not conjoined,” Todd said for the second time, wishing he’d tried harder to keep the annoyance from his tone.
The teacher began class before Claire could respond. He introduced himself as Mr. Patel, emphasis on the Mr., and stood erect behind the podium, the exact opposite of the art teacher. Where Oliver was short, stocky, pale, and hairy everywhere but his head, Mr. Patel was tall, slender, amber-skinned, and hairless apart from a head of thick black hair, which he wore in a fashionable cut that matched his classy attire. Todd guessed they wouldn’t be “exploring the essence” of economics in this class.
“Now that you know me, I’d like each of you to introduce yourself as if you were a businessman or woman meeting with potential investors.”
Todd had no clue what that meant, but Saafi demonstrated it perfectly. She rose to her feet gracefully.
“I’m Saafi Khalif, and I’m delighted to make your acquaintance. I’m sure we’ll have an excellent semester.” She returned to her seat, earning herself an approving nod from Mr. Patel.
Claire stood next, meeting the teacher’s eye with a defiant glare. “I’m Claire P-peterson. I ssssss-ssssstutter, but you’ll get used to it.” She dropped into her seat without looking for a response from her teacher.
Attagirl, Claire. When they’d first met, she’d shied away from speaking in class, but something changed last year. Though her speech had improved—she’d given entire speeches without stuttering—she put the onus on her teachers to learn to listen instead of constantly exhausting herself to avoid stuttering. Todd couldn’t help admiring her spunk.
Mr. Patel must have thought otherwise, because he frowned before gesturing to the student behind Claire to introduce himself. After the class introductions finished, he led them through the usual drivel about behavioral expectations.
Todd’s mind drifted, and he snuck glances at Claire. Given the choice between the identical twins, girls always chose Adam. Whether they did so because Adam was more charismatic or because he had all his fingers, Todd didn’t know. Claire had been the first to choose him, and though she lacked other girls’ looks, her selectivity alone attracted Todd.
At first, she’d smiled and nodded through conversations and passively accepted his advances, but after the incident with Saafi, she transformed. She stood as firm as an ancient redwood and fought with more intensity than a lightning storm. She’d told Todd she never wanted to see him again, but her backbone only made her more attractive. He hadn’t known what he’d had until he lost it.
When Mr. Patel reached the end of the syllabus, he raised his voice, as if ensuring anyone who’d drifted off started paying attention again.
“A significant portion of your grade will derive from a year-long partner project in which you will develop a business. We’ll start with market research next week, but for tomorrow, begin brainstorming ideas. Your partner is whomever is sitting to next to you.” He gestured down the columns, and Todd’s hope parasite did a back flip. He sat beside Claire, and Mr. Patel had paired them together.
Claire’s hand shot up. “C-can’t we work in a group of three?” She gestured to Beth and Saafi, probably wishing Maite were in the honors courses instead of Todd.
“No.”
“But—”
“No buts. I am the teacher, which means I am in charge.” A grin plucked the corners of his mouth. “Don’t worry. You’ll get used to it.”
Claire glowered at Todd, but her anger did nothing to quash his good feeling. He thought of the marigold plant in his room, which was still alive despite several days in his care. Maybe that was a sign. This was his chance to win her back.
He just had to keep Adam away from her.
Chapter 5
Fifi’s claws clattered behind Todd as he hefted the hose to the register.
“You can’t start your own greenhouse,” Noah said as he added the fall clearance discount. “Then you won’t help here anymore.”
Todd offered him a reassuring grin. “You won’t get rid of me that easily.”
If anything, Todd’s involvement with Old Man Caesar’s marijuana plot necessitated more time in the garden center. Noah wasn’t much of a teacher, so Todd had needed to pay close attention to learn the plant whisperer’s secrets.
Todd offered Fifi a scratch before hauling his hose to the car and driving to the derelict cul-de-sac. Shadows fell over Caesar’s house, a sign of the shortening days. Adam was talking with Big Brody and a couple other guys Todd didn’t recognize. He didn’t bother greeting them before reaching the spigot and removing the old hose. He hated that thing. It was thin, kinked easily, and always tangled no matter how carefully he coiled it. Perhaps Noah had spoiled him, but Todd decreed Old Man Caesar was due for an upgrade.
“What are you doing?” The old man’s eyes flitted between Todd and Adam’s group, clearly uncomfortable about relinquishing control.
“Relax, I paid for it.” Todd fitted the new hose to the spigot and set up the reel, which would allow him to coil it neatly after he finished watering the plants. Without another word to Caesar or Adam, he strolled between the rows. Sometimes, Todd preferred leaves and stems to flesh and blood.
He glanced at the other house’s second-story window, but he didn’t see Cathryn. He finished watering a row, and she burst through the trees across the street. She raced toward her house, but tripped near the dumpster, dropping something. Gravel rumbled down the road, announcing a car’s arrival. Her already pale face blanched, and she rushed to her front door without picking up whatever she’d dropped.
