Catch a Glimmer of Your Star

A place from a dream

"And what proportion of the peas would be green instead of yellow in the second generation?"

The rest of the class was silent. Marie was on a roll answering the teacher's questions, as usual. Few wanted to call attention to themselves by raising their hand to answer a question in case they got it wrong. But in spite of Marie's insistent hand raising, the instructor really wanted someone else to provide the answer.

Basil raised his hand. "One third?"

"That's correct!" his biology teacher replied approvingly. "Great work, Basil."

At least I don't have to explain how I got my answer...

Having earned his participation credit for the day, Basil leaned back in his seat to relax, watching Marie answer the rest of the questions for the class.

He kind of felt bad for students who raised their hand to attempt the problem but got the answer wrong. Marie would then provide the correct answer, her hand being the one the teacher inevitably fell back on.

Their instructor gave them some time to review among themselves at the end of the class.

"Think you're ready for the test this Friday?" Marie asked Basil.

"Yeah, I don't think it'll be that hard."

"This unit must be easy for you since you're a gardener."

Basil smiled even though that was quite an erroneous assumption. Marie made lots of strange connections. "No..."

"Why not?"

"It's not like I'm running experiments to see what alleles are in my plants." Basil laughed a bit at the thought of himself doing that.

Come to think of it, grandma told me she once owned a much larger garden in her old family home before she moved to Faraway.

She left a lot of her favorite plants and memories behind when she moved.

It must've been such a wonderful garden, with so many different kinds of plants and flowers to look at.

A scientist studying botany would have loved that garden.

"I like science, but not that much," Basil said lightly.

"Guess I shouldn't have assumed," Marie admitted.

Basil normally didn't push topics but this one just felt funny to him. "Sorry, but didn't you say you do a bit of gardening yourself?"

"I do," Marie responded.

"So...did the thought ever occur to you about conducting experiments on your plants?"

"That's not me," Marie said, lowering her voice. "Alice does that."

Basil blinked.

Well, I guess that's the end of that subject.

The bell rang signifying the end of class.

As they packed up, Basil looked forward to the busy schedule ahead of him this afternoon. Today, manga club, where he'd be getting his first drawing lesson. Then they'd go over to Clear Skies Conservancy to do some additional autumn volunteering. With the weather turning cold, Mrs. Li needed some help moving many of her potted plants indoors and Mincy wouldn't be able to handle all of it with the small remaining cohort of volunteers.

He looked forward to all the time he'd get to spend with Sunny.

Basil saw Bethany and her crew of bullies pass by his classroom outside. He tried to hide his face, hoping they wouldn't stick around for long so that he could get out of class with minimal disturbance.