Page 8 of Evergreen Conservatory
My jaw nearly fell open at his playfulness as well as the message.Meghostinghim? More like the other way around.
“The magic has eluded me. But it’s not for a lack of trying. Maybe I’ll surprise you when you least expect it.”
The corner of his mouth twitched. “I have no doubt.”
He swung the truck around a corner, and my car came into view, abandoned and looking like the forest was going to overtake it at any moment. A cloud had settled in front of the low sun, and I was extra grateful I hadn’t had to walk out here alone.
“Thanks for the ride. Hope I didn’t take you away from the midsummer celebrations for too long.”
“You did me a favor in that regard.”
I hesitated before broaching the next topic. “Is everything okay here? When you said things were ‘kicking off,’ what did you mean?”
Callan spoke slowly. “The Board of Regents is trying to exercise their control even more this year. They say the faltering of the shield last year is proof they need to have greater influence. Professor East is pushing back. As you can imagine, that is not going over too well.”
I swallowed. None of that sounded good. “Is there anything I can do to help?”
“Just promise me you’ll stay out of trouble until school starts? No more unsanctioned trips onto campus?”
“I’ll do my best.” I saluted him, and he rolled his eyes, but aslight smile played on his lips, and I decided that this entire trip had been worth it.
He reached over and felt the ribboned strands hanging in my hair from the flower crown.
I shivered at the feeling of his hand so close to my face.
He met my eyes once before turning back to the front window. “Happy midsummer, local.”
Chapter Four
The following day, I took up my friend Maci on an invite for a lake day, deciding it might help me unwind from the previous day’s events.
I lay on my stomach on a flower-print towel, flipping through a biography on Renaissance painters. The discovery that I was related to Leonardo da Vinci at the end of last school year was a bombshell that I hadn’t fully processed.
But my eyes glossed over the words on the page as I thought about the encounter with Callan the night before. I had never been more desperate to figure out the secret of the leaf messages, if only to prove to him I could do it. I’d taken Calculus to impress him, and now this. He brought out an ambitious side of me I hadn’t leaned into before I met him.
Beside me on a purple polka-dot towel, Maci was toned and svelte in her yellow swimsuit, her Laotian skin always a lovely tan. Meanwhile, I was rubbing sunscreen on my arms and legs every few hours, wishing that the fern students at Evergreen Academy had already finished developing the plant-based sunscreen pill they’d been working on last year.
“You’ve been on the same page for ten minutes,” Maci saidcasually. “Why are you reading a biography anyway? Is it for one of your summer classes?”
I snapped the book shut. “Yep, and my brain is not processing it right now. Want to swim?”
She nodded, and we stood and raced each other into the water. Lake Siskiyou was beautiful on clear days like this. Mount Shasta, the fourteen-thousand-foot mountain, loomed nearby like a steadfast friend, its brilliant reflection cast across the deep blue water.
As we swam farther into the lake, my awareness of the aquatic plants below my feet grew. I could feel them performing gas exchange and swaying as their roots clung to the soil. But I pushed the allure of them away, trying to focus on my nonmagical friend.
The intrusion of plant sensations had increased over the summer, as if urging me to notice them and get more practice in. I’d been reluctant to do so outside of my visits to the Wildflower Trail, nervous about causing something irreversible.
Last winter, I cast a Floracantus on my aunt’s poinsettia to make it bloom longer, and it had worked so well that I’d had to secretly whisk it away in May and tell my aunt that it had finally died. Now, I didn’t dare experiment on the flowers on Aunt Vera’s balcony.
“How are things going with Alex?” I asked, flipping onto my back and gently kicking my feet.
“I’m not really sure.” Maci’s voice was hesitant, and I instantly tensed.
“Did something happen?”
“Not really. He’s just kind of gone MIA. We’ve texted a few times, but part of me wonders if he has a summer fling going on back home or something.”
“Hmm.” I wasn’t sure what to say. It sounded like red flag behavior, but Alex had been a little hard to pin down from the start. He was extremely friendly and likeable, but then he would do something that signaled things weren’t what you thought they were. Is that what he was doing to Maci?
