O'Malloy's School for the Horticulturally Advanced

Chapter 6 - Ash

Ash opened his eyes to a new day. The sun was creeping into the room, illuminating a few plants sitting on the windowsill. He remembered that he hadn't tried to talk to them yet. Kicking the blankets to the foot of the bed, he sat up on the edge of his bed and stretched, wincing at the pain in his side. It felt like a large bruise.

William was still in bed, although he was awake.

"Morning." he said.

Ash smiled and pointed to him. That was supposed to mean "You too", but William still had his eyes closed. He shifted his attention to the plants. There was one with circular leaves he particularly liked. Each of its leaves had a lighter dot where the stem connected to it. The leaves were a pleasant green and had a waxy feel to them.

Hello. My name is Ash.

The plant's leaves visibly twitched. Ash raised his eyebrows. He'd never seen one do that before.

What do you want?

Ash was taken aback by the plant's rudeness.

I just wanted to talk to you. Are you William's plant?

Yes.

Is he taking good care of you?

Yes.

Ash paused for a second, trying to think of another question. While he was thinking, the plant said,

Well, nice chat. Goodbye.

Wait, what?

The plant remained silent. 

Ok, then, Ash thought. He moved along the windowsill, trying to talk to each plant. Each one was rude and cold to him. His stomach grumbled. He knocked on the headboard of William's bed.

"Hmm?"

William opened his eyes and looked over at Ash lazily.

Ash mimed eating.

"You wanna eat?"

Ash shook his head.

"Oh, breakfast!" William sat up ramrod straight in his bed. 

"Shoot, we missed breakfast!" He climbed out of his bed and began dressing as fast as he could. 

"I'll take you down to the cafeteria in a minute." Ash stared at the clothes William was dressing in. They were fancier than anything he owned.

When he was dressed, William motioned for Ash to follow him. 

"I don't know if there's going to be breakfast. We might have woken up too late."

You mean you might have woken up too late. Is woken even a real word?

Sure enough, the cafeteria was deserted. William looked at a clock, then said,

"We better hurry or we'll be late for class." William hurried outside and took a complicated path through the gardens. Ash realized they were heading towards a greenhouse, which wasn't much of a surprise since they were everywhere. He squinted to make out the sign. "Marine". It was in the same old-timey font as the other signs he'd seen. Ash guessed that all the signs were as old as the school, which would explain the font.

William and Ash jogged to get to the greenhouse. They saw through the glass panes that class had already started. Ash quietly opened the door and he and William slipped inside. There were aluminum tubs lining the side of the greenhouse that seemed to hold most of the plants. They were like very tall raised planters, but filled with water instead of dirt and sided with aluminum instead of wood. Somehow, the side of the greenhouse they were grown against wasn't covered up by aluminum. It was probably an engineering work of genius, but Ash didn't care much about that.