“Tatum.” He just nodded.
“So what’re you in for?” I laughed at my own joke, quite sure he hadn’t been court ordered to this.
“Um, college applications. I like plants, did really well in bio class. My counselor thought I needed some service on my résumé, so here I am. You?”
No use in lying about it. He probably already knew anyway and was just being polite. “The commonwealth attorney thought I needed some service on my criminal résumé.”
“No kidding? Huh. I heard something about Ashlyn Zanotti getting in trouble, but never would’ve thought you were involved.”
I sighed. “Thanks for thinking that, because I wasn’t actually involved. I happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time with the very wrong people.” I sat down in my chair, feeling somewhat vindicated that Hunter had thought the best of me.
“It happens,” he said, and shrugged like it was no big deal. Amazing. My impression of Hunter went up a few notches for his lack of judgment.
A couple more kids filed in, and we all stared at the ceiling silently, waiting for whoever was in charge to hurry up and get this party started. Just when the awkward silence was building to a frenzy, for me anyway, a tall, earthy-crunchy woman in a parks authority T-shirt and hiking boots appeared in the doorway. She seemed to be counting us.
“Hi, everyone, my name is Alicia Tilner. I’ll be your supervisor this summer on the Invasive Plant Removal Team. Looks like we’re waiting for just one more. Is everyone in the right place?”
“I definitely am,” I said loudly. Hunter snorted. The other kids looked up, surprised at my faux enthusiasm. One or two laughed.
“Oh, excuse me, I think I’m supposed to be in here,” came a voice from behind Alicia. My one and only client, Abby Gold herself, stood there, waiting to be let through the door.
“You’re late.” Alicia eyed her warily. I made a mental note to heed Belén’s advice and always be on time for this shindig. Abby gave Alicia an apologetic smile and pushed into the room. She saw me and her smile widened, her eyes crinkling. I returned it, happy to have an ally.
“Right, so again, this is the IPRT. I’ll be your supervisor and will be showing you what you’re going to be doing. It’s fairly simple—you just need to know what you’re looking for.” Alicia flicked on a projector that lit up a large screen on the far wall, and clicked through photographs of the invasive plants we’d need to be on the lookout for. “The biggest perpetrators”—I flinched at the term—“are sometimes the prettiest. This summer we’re looking to take out English ivy and honeysuckle.”
Abby raised her hand, but didn’t wait to be called on. “Honeysuckle? Really? But it smells so good.”
Hunter laughed and chimed in. “And tastes good too. How can it be bad? Eating honeysuckle in the summertime is like a rite of passage around here.”
I shuddered, recalling a time when I’d stuck my tongue on the tiny drop of liquid from a honeysuckle blossom, one of the few things my mother had taught me to do. Belén had brushed it out of my hand so forcefully, you’d have thought it was poison, saying it wasn’t good for me to eat it. Terrified of ending up in the hospital with some scary honeysuckle disease, I’d never done it again.
“Right!” Abby offered Hunter her fist to bump across the table, and he knocked his with hers. Alicia’s face stiffened.
“Let’s take this seriously, okay? Invasive plants suck up the resources needed by native plants to survive and maintain our local ecosystem.” She went back to her slides, and when she was done, she turned to face us once again. “You’ll be in teams of two; we rely on the buddy system.” She quickly divided us up, and I found myself, thankfully, paired with Abby. Hunter got stuck with a tiny boy, probably a middle schooler, who kept sneezing. Alicia led us out of the building and out into the “backyard,” which was one of the city’s larger parks. I squinted at the vast field bordered by patches of forest, and spotted a huge swath of honeysuckle along the tree line right away.
Alicia rolled a large wheelbarrow behind her, stacked with handheld pruning tools, gloves, and a gigantic box of plastic garbage bags. When I saw how small some of the tools were in comparison to the enormous plants I knew I’d be working on, my heart sank. Why couldn’t I have picked the animal shelter?
Abby nudged me. “At least we’ll be getting a tan, right?” I looked at her pale skin dotted with freckles and held my arms up to hers. I was at least three shades darker. Abby chuckled. “Or maybe not.”
Alicia cleared her throat, and we stopped talking. “Grab a tool, some gloves, and a bag and get going. Make sure you’re clipping the branches as close to the root as you can get. Try not to remove anything other than what we discussed. Ivy and honeysuckle. If you’re not sure, come find me, and I’ll identify it for you. Questions?” No one raised a hand. We were all too intimidated to say anything. “Okay, go for it. Have fun!”
I scoffed. “Right.” Abby and I took off in the direction of the honeysuckle I’d spotted, the sweat already forming in my elbow creases and on the back of my neck. “So, why exactly are you here?”
“Because it looks good on my college applications.” She didn’t sound convinced.
“Really? You’re a columnist in our award-winning school newspaper, you’re in, like, a million AP classes, and you’re about to launch your own website. I don’t think you need this.”
She gave me a guilty look and then leaned in close, not that any of the other pairs were near enough to hear us. “Truth? You know Hunter Hansen?”
I looked over to where Hunter and his partner had landed, in front of a large tree covered in ivy. “Yeah, I know Hunter.” Abby’s cheeks flamed, and I connected the dots. “Oooooh, you like him?”
“It’s so embarrassing, but I couldn’t stop myself. We were in AP Bio together, and I may have been carrying on about saving the environment, and he told me about this project, and before I knew what I was doing, I’d put my name on the list.” She covered her face with her gloved hands. “Totally mortifying, right?”
I laughed. “It’s not any worse than being ordered by the courts.”