Greenhouse Gore

CHAPTER ELEVEN: GARDENIAS FOR DINNER

We took refuge behind the mahogany sofa that stood in the first room that Siddo and Sidney explored. The sofa seemed to be taunting us, as we silently lunged into the living room, tripping over scattered ink pens that, in rolling across the carpet, gave proof of our trespasses. Miraculously, the sofa concealed all seven of us. Siddo and Micah had their hands clamped over their mouth, trapping any sounds of nervous breathing that may have escaped from their throats. We did our best to keep a lid on our collective pot of bubbling anxiety, boiling as Mrs. Coffin's mild movements vibrated through the floorboards, each footstep knocking up the degree of heat underneath us.

The knot inside my stomach tightened and turned as I stared at the seaweed wall, shuddering against the fleeting internal crisis that made me realize, to my horrid disbelief, that the color green was making me sick.

Annette Funicello's singing was abruptly stopped and left an air of silence in the house. Our choppy breathing became more audible, but, fortunately, the echo of Mrs. Coffin's movements hinted that she was moving farther away from us.

Sidney moved onto his feet, still crouching, and indicated that he would slink along the wall to peek out into the hallway to see if we were in the clear. Not that a reliable escape path was clear to any of us in that moment. He started to move but was pulled back down by Asa who got up instead.

"Let the professionals do the sneaking," she whispered.

Nobody argued with her.

Slick as a cat, Asa moved quietly across the room, her experience as Lockpick Larry working in our favor. For what seemed to be a considerable long time, we heard nothing, thinking maybe she'd abandoned us. Slowly, we raised our heads over back of the couch and saw that she was still in the room, looking down the hallway. After a minute, her arm motioned us over, waving with extraordinary composure.

It all happened so quick. We escaped out the front door and immediately broke into a sprint, making a beeline past the fountain and down the driveway, kicking up clouds of dirt and dust in our wake, until we reached the road where there was enough trees and shrubbery to hide us. We stopped, dropping our garden gloved hands to our knees, huffing in exhaustion from the sprint except for Sid and Micah who were both athletes and huffed from panic instead. Axel starting coughing.

"She went out the backdoor," Asa said finally. "Someone knocked and she opened it and didn't look surprised to see them. I think she invited them over."

Siddo shook her head, hands on her hips as her breathing evened out. "The party planning committee is hosting the Halloween party in the Coffins' backyard? With her permission? What on earth is going on in this town?"

"We can't go back to the greenhouse if everyone in BV will be crawling around that house in a couple of days," Sidney said. He looked over at Asa. "You need another place to stay."

"The Hi-Ho?" I offered, looking back at the massive brick house. I wondered if Mrs. Coffin had seen us booking it down the driveway, leaving the scene of the crime.

"No way," Axel said. "That place is not for the living at night, and I think it's going to storm again this week."

Ultimately, we found ourselves going to Axel's, the safest place for now, hiding Asa as best as we could like bodyguards. Mr. and Mrs. Barnett were out of town again on business. Micah asked what Axel's parents did for a living. This kind of conversation was common in BV amongst the kids; everyone always wanted to know where the money came from and whose parents had the cooler jobs. Asa was an outcast in this regard. Axel shrugged his shoulders and went ahead to open the backdoor while I told Micah that no one really knew what Axel's parents did, although in 8thgrade, we started referring to them as spies because they went on frequent excursions out of the country. One day, we had to write about our parents' professions for a class assignment and Axel called his dad to ask for information because he had no clue what his parents did for work and all Mr. Barnett said was, "Just put down that I work for the government."