Greenhouse Gore

CHAPTER SEVEN: MAD BOTANISTS ONLY DRINK TEA

Someone was throwing rocks at my window the next morning and I thought I was having a dream at first because surely no one did such a thing in real life. I was in that in between stage of conscious and unconscious where sleep still lingered in between my eyelids, the sandman still holding on. But the sandman's grip was slipping with each clink! against the window as I eventually realized I was no longer safe in a dream and reluctantly pulled the covers off.

Clink! Clink! Clink!

My eyes were puffy and red from my crying episode in the greenhouse, still warm and tender to the touch. I sincerely hoped that it was just two woodpeckers on the other side of the window playing a prank on me, so no one else would see my bulbous eyes. If it wasn't the woodpeckers, then it was probably the Sids, falling into their newly adapted private investigator/vigilante personas.

Clink! Clink! Clink!

I shuffled over to the window, yanked up the blinds and opened the window. Whatever kind of sleep had been still lingering in my body, evaporated immediately into the morning air when I squinted through my swollen eyes and saw both Axel and Micah staring up at me. Micah had his arm raised, ready to catapult another rock in my direction. Axel grabbed his arm to stop him.

Out of embarrassment, I ducked back inside, grazing the back of my head against the window frame. I looked around for a hairbrush or something that would help me look more presentable. For a moment, I contemplated running to the bathroom and giving my teeth at least a thirty second brush.

"Houston!" Axel's voice floated up through the window, blowing the curtains apart. "We've got a problem."

This was the last thing I wanted to hear. Why was I the one that always had to deal with all the problems? I covered my eyes with both my hands. And then my ears. And then my eyes again. Then my ears. Eventually, I ran my fingers over my hair several times like a makeshift brush and then went back to the window.

I poked my head through the window, my unruly hair falling over my face, and squinted at the pair standing below. "What's the problem?"

"Asa needs a new home," Axel replied, cupping his hands around his mouth so the words would funnel upwards even though I could already hear him fine.

"What?"

"Her tent went kablooey," Micah said. His own hands mimicked an explosion.

"What?"

"Kablooey." Another hand explosion.

Axel put his hand across Micah's chest to prevent a third detonation demonstration, and then looked back up at me. "Can you come down?" His eyes shifted from left to right, glancing at the neighbors' lawns. "This feels like a private conversation."

I sighed and nodded.

On my way down to the front door, I stopped by the bathroom, grabbed my toothbrush with a pea-sized squeeze of toothbrush, and got to work on my teeth while going down the stairs. When I got to the bottom step, I made a beeline toward the kitchen where I spit the foam out of my mouth and into the sink. I tossed the toothbrush into the cutlery drawer because I figured Axel and Micah wouldn't rummage through the kitchen.

Asa needs a new home, Axel had said. As if she was a stray dog adopted by a family that prematurely decided it could take care of it but now needed to relocate the animal somewhere else. But Asa wasn't anyone's pet – except for maybe Daphne's, but I assumed that was now over – and didn't need anyone to feed her or take her outside to use the bathroom or make visits to the vet for annual shots.