Instantly the vines spiraled up, reaching for me. One vine lassoed my arm.
“Oh hells,” I said. I yanked my arm out of the tightening pumpkin noose and ran, but a vine coiled around my ankle. I thunked to my knees. Another vine plonked over my shoulders, and its leaves thumped on top of my head. “Let me out!” I shrieked.
“If you’d studied your self-defense spell, you could stop me now,” Sarmine said.
I clawed and tore, but more vines coiled around my limbs, rolling me into the middle of the pumpkin patch. My shoulder hurt where the demon had kicked me. A small green pumpkin bonked my nose. “Get back here!”
I think she said something like “It’s clime you faced up to da tooth,” but I couldn’t hear very well with the giant pumpkin leaves stuffing my ears.
My flailing hand struck an overripe pumpkin and smashed into pumpkin guts. “Sarmine!” I shouted, and then a huge wad of leaves stuffed my mouth, and I choked and stopped yelling. At least I had an airhole for my nose, or I’d really be in trouble.
The vines rolled me over one more time and my nose smashed into dirt. I arched, stretching my neck out of the dirt to breathe, snorting out compost and probably bug bits. I tried not to panic as mulch clung to my nose with my inhaled breaths. Why did my life suck so hard? Flunking algebra, falling for a demon-boy, and finally, smothered to death by a rabid pumpkin.
I wasn’t going to save the world from the witch. I couldn’t even save myself. And who would slop out poor Moonfire’s garage now? Catch the witch doing it. Oh, she liked having the dragon milk and scales around, but what about the dragon herself?
I loved my dragon. I was the one who took care of her. We were going to fly away some day and find both of our families, by hook or by crook—
At this point I realized I was getting light-headed. But the image of me flying dragonback grew stronger and more appealing. Flying through the air, just flying, flying, flying. Air. Blue sky. Abyss. So … pretty—
Hands grabbed my ankles, dislodging my nose from the dirt. I sucked in great snorts of air, and then coughing, muffle-shrieked through the leaves. I kicked, and then whoever was grabbing my ankles sat on my shins. A shearing sound, and then my arm was free, and then I realized that someone was letting me out, so I stopped trying to kick whoever it was and concentrated on that lovely stuff called air going in my nose. I tensed my fist, just in case.
The leaves stuffed into my mouth pulled apart and I spit bits of chlorophyll and gasped whole mouthfuls of lovely, lovely air. “Who—?” Choke, sputter. “What—?”
“Sssh,” said a familiar voice, and then the leaves blinding me were cut away and I saw it was Jenah, holding a pair of hair-cutting scissors, now dripping with green.
“Jenah. Thank goodne—I mean, I told you never to come here,” I said. “Why didn’t you listen to me and go home?”
“Ohmigod, seriously?” Jenah said. Her chic black haircut was straggly around her face, clumpy with pumpkin leaf juice. I had never seen it untidy. “I was walking down the street, unloved and unwanted, when I felt a sudden shift in the world, like a magnetic force drawing me back. I looked through the fence and saw the mother of all great pumpkins rolling you up like a veggie wrap. And then I had to duck behind your stupid thornbushes until your aunt drove off before I could climb over the fence and cut you out of the squash. My favorite shirt is stained with pumpkin pulp, my fishnets are torn and!—I think your fence tried to eat me. At the absolute-most-subpar least you are now going to say: ‘Thank you, Jenah.’”
“Thanks,” I said. “I’m very grateful. Now will you get out of here before Sarmine comes back and catches you?” I brushed prickly bits of vines and leaves from my jeans.
Jenah folded her arms and eyed me. “No,” she said.
“Funny. Get.”
“I’ve been chill long enough,” said Jenah. “Whatever’s going on here is different—I mean different—and it doesn’t have anything to do with the color of your aunt’s bedspread. You are straining our friendship, Camellia.”
The walls of my privacy were tumbling down around me. “Can’t I have my space? What does it hurt you?” I backed away from the patch.
“Friends help each other when they have big troubles. If you can’t trust me—”
“If you weren’t so nosy! Who watches their friends through the fence?” I was being so unfair but I couldn’t stand the thought of explaining my life, sharing the secrets I’d protected for so long.
“—then you don’t think I’m really your friend,” Jenah finished. She brushed back sticky strands of hair, and her eyes were reproachful. “Nosy? Really? I mean, obviously I am. But am I really off base here? Something’s wrong and I want to help you.”
And you’re nosy, I thought, but I didn’t say it. Jenah did want to know everything about everyone. But … she also meant it when she said she wanted to help. I knew that.