Phytoremediation

I'm gripping the grass, and I'm pulling up daisies

Basil ran towards his new home as he saw Polly's car pull into the concrete driveway.

He thought he saw something weird in Sunny's pants earlier, and all it did was make Basil think stupid thoughts.

Come on Basil, even if it was, it wasn't from you. People just get those randomly anyway.

Basil decided to push the thoughts away from his mind when they began thinking unsavoury things about Sunny.

We're just friends, nothing more, and... never anything more...

Basil pushed his now less suggestive and more depressive thoughts away again, and greeted Polly.

"Hey, sorry! I was at Sunny's house!"

Polly raised an eyebrow at the book at in Basil's hand. Basil answered her question before she needed to ask it.

"He showed me the library, I got it from there!" Basil smiled at Polly.

She smiled back, and unloaded some grocery bags. "I got some things for us on the way here!"

Basil began to carry a bag in, but Polly stopped him. "I actually had a surprise in here for you, Basil." She smiled and passed him two seed packets.

"Y-You didn't need to get me this, Polly! I-" Basil got cut off.

"It's okay, Basil! You were having a hard time at your old school, I know, so I just wanted to get you something to cheer you up, and make everything feel happier for you, even if we're having to start over with all your plants."

Basil had to leave all his plants in Faraway when he moved. He planted them in Kel's garden and his own before he left, hoping the next owners of his house wouldn't get rid of them, at least.

His parents tried to "make up" for it by making his monthly allowance $5000 a month instead of $2000. It wasn't about the money they cost, it was about the memories they held. The sunflowers he grew in Grade 2, the first flowers he grew with grandma. The pretty white tulip Sunny got him for his 10th birthday that he took care of for years. Even the sesame seeds that Kel bought him on his 12th birthday, though Kel didn't really know that he couldn't grow a plant with those. They still had been in a lot of his older flower pots, sitting in the dirt as a permanent memory of their friendship.

Basil smiled at Polly, a lot of excitement tried to escape his mouth but instead he just spewed a jumbled collection of words and pauses.

Polly laughed a bit, before assuring Basil, "I'm glad you're excited, go plant them, I unpacked all your gardening equipment. I'll bring everything else inside for us.

Basil couldn't contain his excitement, noticing the box currently sitting next to the mostly empty patches of dirt in front of the house, the proof someone had attempted and failed to create a garden before him. He brought over the bags of seeds had been in to the dirt patches.

The bag was heavier than expected, and when Basil looked inside he saw garden shingles too.

"Thank you so much Polly!" He said with a huge grin.

Polly gave a small smile back with a tilt of her head, as she headed back inside with another bag from the car.

Basil got to work, first stabbing into the dirt using the trowel, making a box shape to sever any grass roots, then sticking in the garden shingles to keep them out.

Basil would carefully dug into the dirt with his fingertip, and place a seed from either bag, then covered the hole back up. He repeated this process several times, before moving to the other side of the walkway to his house.

Basil used his trowel again to cut the square shape, and stuck the garden shingles in the ground again. Once again, he began planting the seeds careful not to put any too close together.

Eventually the bags were empty. He wished there were more to plant, but he knew he had money to buy his own seeds with later.

He used the rag he left in his box of gardening tools to clean his hands from dirt. He still had to go to the bathroom to get rid of the dirt stuck under his fingernails.

As he came inside, Polly greeted him with a Twix bar, one of Basil's favourites.

"So, you were at Sunny's house?" Polly asked as Basil fumbled with the wrapper.

"Yeah..." Basil tried doing the chip bag trick.

"How close is his house?" Polly questioned, taking the chocolate bar from Basil's hands, and opening the wrapper effortlessly before handing it back.

"Its right at the end of that little road, just a block away." Basil answered, slightly embarrassed, before taking a bite of one of the four Twix inside of the wrapper.

Polly looked out the window, then turned to Basil with a confused look. "Green is an odd colour for a house..."

Basil corrected her, "It's blue, Polly."

Polly's cheeks flushed. "A-Ah, sorry."

"It's alright, I can't blame you for it."

Polly felt ashamed of her colour blindness.

Basil felt a bit afraid his parents would change their minds about letting her stay in spite of it, and kick her out after being here this long.

They would always switch caretakers when Basil was really young, they seemed to switch on a whim, without any reason. Polly told him that she knew one of his ex-caretakers, who was sent away for "cooking too much ethnic food" according to his parents.

Of course, Basil liked Mexican and Indian food, so whatever his parents thought would happen by keeping him away from food from other ethnicities clearly didn't work out.

What confused Basil more is why they moved him from his white-majority birth country of Australia, up to China if they didn't like "ethnic food." China, the world capital of ethnic-ness, with all their variety of foods, cultures, races, and religions.

Well, Basil knew why. After the collapse of the USSR, Basil's parents began worrying deeply about the economy of Australia. China was taking USSR's place in the economy, and they had closer relations with Brazil than Australia, making them more likely to buy Iron from there.

The logic of his parents made less sense to him than the politics surrounding it.

Regardless of their concerns around the economy, they found fortune in China, another reason he was made fun of in school.

His father, an ex-lawyer, became the vice-president of an insurance firm. He always got called leech, or a family of parasites.

His mother wasn't much better. She was the CEO of a mining company. Even if it wasn't a major one, her company was big enough for people to mock him for his seemingly ironic love of nature.

I'll never be like my parents.

Basil took a bite of his Twix, deep in thought.

I hope nobody will know me when school starts.

Except Sunny, that is...