“Talia Sanchez?” This time Sammie pops up on his elbows. “Wesley’s Talia? I didn’t know you guys were friends.”
“First of all, she’s not Wesley’s,” I reply harshly before I catch myself. “And yeah, we’re friends. I’ve told you we have gov together.”
“Yeah, but I didn’t know you were, like, friends friends.”
“It’s not a big deal; she was just helping me out.” I’m grateful the darkness conceals my hot, lying face. “I was thinking of asking if she wanted to join us for prom pictures.”
“Noooo,” Sammie whines, falling back onto the grass. “Then Wesley is going to want to come.”
“Wesley is already invited.”
He springs right back up. “What? Since when?”
“What do you mean ‘since when?’ Sammie, we sit with him at lunch almost every day. The invitation was implied! And he’s obviously closer with Talia and Zaq than he is with us, so I might as well invite them too.”
“When did you become such a Wesley apologist?” Sammie turns his face toward me and frowns. The moonlight casts shadows over his features, turning his eyes dark and sunken.
“I’m not,” I insist. “But Talia is cool, and I think it would be nice if she and Zaq joined us. If Wesley happens to benefit from that, then so be it.”
“Whatever,” Sammie says. “Honestly, I wish it was just the four of us snapping pictures with those pride roses the way we’d always planned.” He waves floppily toward the white roses growing along the back wall of the yard, the only roses of mine that aren’t corralled into a makeshift garden fence. Dad built a crisscrossed, white wood arch in front of them that I plan to decorate with fairy lights, just for our pictures.
“They’re actually called Honor roses,” I correct, and Sammie smiles like he already knew that. “And I get you wanting it to be just the four of us like the old days, but it’ll be fun having a big squad. It’s our last dance, like, ever. So the more the merrier.”
“You did not just use the word squad to convince me Wesley Cho’s presence will improve my senior prom.”
I give up. “It’ll be good practice for graduation.”
“Ugh, he’s going to be in those pictures too?”
I roll my eyes. “Yes. So behave yourself, please. For me?” I give him a pouty face, and he huffs loudly, telling me I’ve already won. If Wesley doesn’t come, I doubt Talia will.
I stand up, brushing grass off my butt before offering Sammie a hand.
“You’re lucky you’re my best friend,” he sighs before taking my hand. He does most of the work pulling himself up though; the hand-holding is all for show. “Whatever, I promise to behave. Scout’s honor.”
“You quit the Scouts in fifth grade.”
“I guarantee you half my troop grew up to believe fishing is a personality trait. I think I’m better off.” He cracks his neck. “I did tie a damned good knot though.”
“That you did.”
He pulls me into a hug and kisses the top of my head. It’s sloppy and a bit awkward, but I squeeze him tighter regardless. “Thanks for being my favorite ear.”
“You’re stuck with me.”
“No matter what,” he says, smiling. He hops over the wall again, with more flair this time, his goofy bravado returned. But as I head upstairs to get ready for bed, I wonder if he actually feels better or just decided he has to pretend to be.
FIVE
Gardening is all about routine. Monotonous, repetitive routine. Because roses don’t care if you’re bored of watering every single plant with approximately one and a half inches of water every Sunday while your friends are sleeping in. They don’t care if rotten banana peels gross you out or if you ruin your manicure collecting tree leaves for mulch. Roses care about surviving, and if you care about their survival, you have to be prepared to love a routine.
My friends claim they’re joking when they call my routine excessive and weird, but I think they genuinely don’t understand why I subject myself to this. I always want to point out that Lindsay runs around in circles every day of the week during track season and Ags spends hours measuring and cutting and pinning patterns before she can even start sewing. But sure, I’m the weird one.
There’s something about the way my mind numbs when I garden. I can let my thoughts wander or allow my head to fill with white noise and not worry about overwatering or missing any leaves when clearing the dead ones off the bushes. I’m most at peace when I’m gardening. Sometimes, it’s just what I need to keep it together.
It’s also nice to feel needed by someone—or I guess something. Disastrous past experiences, like Dad overwatering my roses when I slept over at Ags’s or Mom throwing premature compost down when she got tired of the smell, prove my roses don’t just need attention, they need my attention. No one gets them the way I do, and in a cringeworthy way I’d never admit to anyone else, no one gets me the way they do either.
Basically, I’m seventeen with no license and the inability to cook anything more advanced than a quesadilla, so it’s a nice change of pace to know that without me, they would die. So I spend three long hours every Sunday feeling needed by something beautiful. I don’t think that’s so strange.
My garden takes up an entire half of our already smallish backyard, and the lawn takes up the rest. While the white Honor roses get to line the back wall more freely, all my other bushes are corralled behind a white picket gate, organized in five rows that started out much more precise than they are now. Some of the bushes have grown tall enough to pour over the edge of the fence, colorful bulbs bobbing above the grass, Sammie’s Tequila Sunrises among them.
I pop in my headphones, then click my bubbler attachment onto the hose, once again wishing I could just leave it on all week long. But Dad is a hose purist and hates using the softer stream on the grass and trees. I let the water run over my hands, shivering with the crisp coolness of the flow, before opening the gate and beginning my watering routine, letting muscle memory take over.
I water Sammie’s Tequila Sunrises, then Agatha’s gorgeous lavender and ruby Paradise roses before moving on to Lindsay’s Fragrant Clouds. Once my friends are all settled, I take care of the rest.
All my roses are hybrid-tea breeds, the easiest to grow, because like I told Talia, I’m not actually an expert. Like, I’m not the Gordon Ramsay of roses, but I’m definitely not the Gordon-Ramsay’s-victim of roses either.