Question Arborfly

This is a work in progress by Dinopsychdoc based on an idea from Someone Else 37. Mostly a writing prompt exercise, but we’ll see how far it stretches. If you like it, let me know. If you have questions, let me know. If you have edits, let me know. I don’t bite.

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Slowly the feet stepped off the bus and the person came to rest at the street corner, with a careful pause and then an even more careful two steps over the side away from the corner. The wrapped white Toms on his feet were worn out, with perhaps more of his toes than healthy pointing out. They were hardly white anymore. The black grit of tarmac and brown dirt had stained them beyond the skills of the wearer to clean them. They were hardly white when they had been bought. These objects were merely things that his mind latched onto in this moment to escape what was about to happen.

The kids behind him didn’t even look at him as they nicked and picked at each other, as young teens are wont to do. They didn’t look at him much, but he didn’t see it. His eyes were on his feet. They were used to this sight by now.

You could have seen him wince as the bus air brakes disengaged. Then he closed his eyes as he heard the engine roar to life, settling into a dull roar that was all too loud. The creak of the old frame of the bus moving forward was barely audible, but he heard it.

The important part, the reason for all this concentration, was the brief intake of breath as the engine pulled away.

He waited.

He was not blue in the face when he let it out, though he felt as if he should be. Like any 5 year old child does to entertain their parents in the public pool, it was merely about half a minute before he gave up. His lungs did not heave nor did he feel any form of lightheadedness. His eyes opened and the colors of the street of houses were the same dull red brick and gray sidings as before.

It was no use though. He could still smell that mistakable smell of burnt diesel additives as he caught his breath. That burnt cloying smell that pinched his nostrils, and caught in his gut and lungs. Something that mixed in insidiously with the rubbery tar of the jet black road. It pulled him emotionally back into the bus that he had just stepped out of. The harsh plastics, the background scent of sheet metal, and the distraction of fifty other Junior High Students jostling around screaming and shouting.

The industrial world was screaming at him, and he didn’t like it.

He could still see that hideous belch of smog, slowly churning away in the air perverting it in little spirals as the wind took it. The wind would not fix it though. He was not young enough to believe that if he couldn’t see it, it wasn’t still a taint on the world.

He watched the wind take up the pollution from the old bus and spit it across the small acreage of a tiny looking house on the corner.

The bus driving by, the noxious gases spreading slowly through the right side of the street. They stopped holding his attention as his eyes ran up the hill and settled on the white walls of the house.

It was by far the oldest house in the area, perhaps in the small township around it too. It certainly stuck out in the style of the side street. It was surrounded by younger single story ranch houses on the left side of the street, staring down fat cut-and-paste two story houses on postage stamp lawns opposite it. This smaller two story home looked like a fortress of green. Two massive oak trees guarded the front with imposing presence, giving it the nickname, Oak house.

It didn’t really need the name, in his eyes. The people around him called it that. To him, it was Mrs. Henderson’s place. They were Mrs. Henderson's trees, who she said she borrowed the land from. Her names for them were Tom and Tym. Tom was older than Tym by twenty years, she would say, which meant that Tom was The Old Man, and Tym was The Young Man. Mrs. Henderson had been living on the block for as long as he could remember, so he never doubted that she knew the trees exact ages when she told him that. When he grew up, though, and he learned about dendrochronology in history class, he sometimes wondered if she had been pulling his leg.

She said a lot of things completely seriously that could not possibly be true.

She never went to work, and she barely left her yard. She said she was retired from all that. She would often be found digging, trimming, weeding around one of the army of bushes that grew up around her house. No two of them were the same, and she named them all. Some were simple as Frank or Andrew, but the Lemongrass had to be called Rana Sandip Frey Cartel Blanko Patel.

If she was to be believed though, they had named themselves. Something about the grin and wink she gave whenever she made the assertion, though, meant that he didn’t totally believe it. That was one of the only signs he got of her playing with his mind. A grin and a wink.

He tried to not to look for her as he turned down the street and started to walk down the hitch road the hill her little house crowned the corner of, going down towards the little stream that ran against the back end of her house, and the trailer park that was tucked in behind the ranch houses on this side of the road.

He didn’t like walking home, but he couldn’t walk to Mrs. Henderson’s house anymore. She was gone, and the worst part of it all is that no one seemed to notice that she was gone. The ambulance had come one day during school, and the only reason that he knew about it was that his mother had called him to tell him that she was… that she wouldn’t be there when he got home. He didn’t even get the chance to say goodbye.

The other kids… the other kids didn’t notice. They didn’t spend much time with her. To them, she was just some crazy old dragon lady on the corner with a sharp tongue when they tried to sneak into her garden in the fall. Johnny the apple tree didn’t mind giving you an apple if you asked, but if you were sneaking in, then you weren’t planning on asking anyone, were you?

He gave a slight smile at the thought of her in the eyes of others. She didn’t have a sharp tongue. She never said anything really cross to anyone really. It was a trick that she used on other people. She would simply repeat that they said back to them how she understood it, and sometimes you didn’t like what you said. You certainly didn’t like the way that she was hearing you. He learned to try and clarify what he meant, and not get offended by how he was perceived by her when she turned that eye onto him.

What it really meant to this young man, as he went to perhaps the nicest looking of the 18 trailers tucked away where civilization could forget about them, was that the person that understood him best in the world was gone.

He walked past the three colors of roses that grew up along the small one car drive his mother’s car was parked in. They were from clippings that Mrs. Henderson had given him every spring, some a few days before she passed. He walked past a few that he saw that his mother had watered.

Something in his heart dropped a bit deeper at the sight of that.

Going inside the house, he was not surprised to see his mother there. She looked at him for only a moment, and then she smiled and tried to wrap her arms around him.

“I got off a little early today, sweetie. I wanted to catch you as you got off the bus. Lost track of time, I guess.”

He nodded as he hugged her, but didn’t speak. He didn’t talk to his mother much. Gracefully, she didn’t try to force him to. She was not a small woman, physically speaking. He couldn’t reach around her that far. Mostly the distance that they kept was that they both shared the same problem, and didn’t know how to do a thing about it. He tried not to think about it, but he knew what their label was.

Fat.

Cecil Rose Jackson. That was his real full name. That was the name his mother had given him. The kids on the street only knew the first and last names, though. He’d only ever told Mrs. Henderson his middle name, and she hadn’t told a soul. Everywhere else though, he had another name.

Fat.

Fatty.

Fatso.

Pudgy.

Lard-ass, when they were feeling particularly unpleasant.

The kids hadn’t said it when they got off the bus, but it had certainly been said when he was on the bus.

It had certainly been said while they were waiting for the bus that morning. No one had mentioned it when he was eating breakfast or lunch in the cafeteria, the California kids preferred to question his mother’s employment status while he got his free meals. Just about every class though… if he didn’t hear that day, he knew someone was there that had said it was indeed thinking it. They had spoken it with a look of disgust. That disgust stayed on their face in his mind. All he had to do is lock eyes with someone, and he knew what his name was. He didn’t look up for most of the day though, but he still felt them looking at him, and thinking it.

Fat.

The teachers didn’t do anything. When his mother had come in to complain about it in elementary school, the principal had explained that he was doing everything he could and that if he saw it he would put a stop to it. Which, Cecil soon learned, meant something else entirely. He wasn’t sure what it meant, but he remembered that, at best, the other kids had only taken a break making fun of him to point out how fat his mother was.

He couldn’t look at her right now, so he walked away, mood continuing to sink unabated like water, rolling down the valleys and looking for crags and cracks in the earth to sink deeper into.

He walked through the trailer, to his room on the sunny south-facing side. He opened up his door, and there all around him was reminders.

There were plants from Mrs. Henderson all over.

In happier times, he had placed as many reminders as he could. They had changed in value. First they had become more valuable, as he thought that she would be home soon from the hospital. They were reminders of vigilance and hope. Then, slowly, after nothing was heard, and no information could be found… they became reminders of mourning and loss.

They were his window shade, mostly, rather than the flimsy little curtain that still hung hooked to the ceiling at the side. Tired the day they moved in and now mostly forgotten. There was a huge planter that had been placed on the shelf there, next to his bed. It had all sorts of beautiful indoor plants.

There was Siccy the Spiderwort, whose triangular purple flowers were already dazzling. Hank the Cholla cactus, who was from down in the Colorado desert. They both understood that while Hank had the middle and largest pot… because he protected the others… that Cecil’s favorite was Angie.

Angie was his Corkscrew Albuca. It was the strange, curly plant that he woke up and saw first thing, every morning. She could be weird and lovely all at once. She sometimes looked like a tight fist of spirals, and other times like his classmate Reba McConnell’s curly red hair.

His favorite time of year… well, one of three of his favorite times of the year, was approaching. Angie was going to flower in a week or so, and he was looking forward to the light yellow downward facing flowers with the flecks of orange at the end of their stigma. It was so pretty.

He laid down on his bed, quickly finding the geographic valley in the old mattress that was there when his mother had bought the place. It now fit his body like a glove as he laid down on his side. He hated to feel the weight come off his chest, and his thighs sag against one another. He could never get comfortable with his legs, particularly as the days got hot. He was a sweaty mess in the mornings, and didn’t ever feel like he could get clean in the little shower in the trailer.

It was his greatest fear to one day be told that he smelled how he looked.

That guilt and anxiety faded as he watched Angie. She had one thick sprout coming up from the middle that was starting to bud. He wondered if this year, he should try and leave her out and see if any of the wildlife would pollinate her. Mrs. Henderson didn’t have a Corkscrew Albuca, so she never told him about them needing that, but she had always thought that all plants should have some level of pollination.

Part of the reason he loved Angie so much was that it was something that Mrs. Henderson hadn’t grown herself. He had to look pretty hard to find a plant that fit that bill, because Mrs. Henderson seemed to grow everything. He wanted to grow something for himself, to show himself that he could without Mrs. Henderson’s help.

There were tears coming down his eyes, as he remembered the day that Mrs. Henderson had come down the hill to the trailer, and his mom invited him into her tea, and she had asked to see his room.

He remembered how embarrassed he was for not telling her, but he also remembered the beaming smile from her face as she walked over to see it. She complimented Angie for being so pretty, naming it like she did everything else. She smiled at him and told him how much Angie liked him, and thanked him for being so attentive and sweet to her. Not too much water, just enough sun, not too many nutrients. Attentive, but not smothering.

Mrs. Henderson had been so proud of him. And she had come over to see Angie every time she bloomed.

But now she couldn’t.

---

He was in Mrs. Henderson’s garden, and it was a beautiful day. He was out by Johnny the Apple Tree, looking at all the fruits on the tree. So plump and ripe. Ready for a harvest.

He turned around, and he could see some storm clouds overhead. Which was… kinda strange. It didn’t rain that much, but if it was, he should probably tell Mrs. Henderson. She would know what to do if it was going to rain.

He turned to see her coming out of the back door, with a basket in her hand. She was talking, but he couldn’t quite hear her.

He tried to walk up to her to hear her, but she was still nearly soundless. He went right up to her, and she gave him one of her rare hugs, and he could feel her lips move, but still there was nothing to hear.

The storm!

He tried to tell her about the storm. The storm that was coming, but she kept walking. She had to hear him about the storm. She had to.

He felt lightning, and suddenly, it was hard to breath, she was still walking out there, and she was getting further and further away.

He had to tell her about the storm, but he couldn’t breathe, he couldn’t run fast enough to catch her.

He was running out of breath. He couldn’t run. He couldn’t reach her.

Then he felt the earth shaking.

Then all there was… was darkness. He took a deep breath and almost flustered around when he heard a voice.

“Calm down, Cecil. It’s alright, I’m here. I’m here.”

Slowly he realized that was his name. He didn’t want to think about what he was thinking it was in what he now knew was a nightmare.

It was his mom’s voice. She was sitting at the edge of his bed, and her hand was stroking his shoulder. He couldn’t really see her for a few seconds, but as his eyes settled into reality, he could see her by the street lights from the houses up the hill.

He realized that he had fallen on his back, and all the weight that was on his chest had made it hard to breathe. He slowly got back on his side, climbing with more effort than he was comfortable with. It was most because he was fighting against the pit of despair that was his bed. His mother slowly got up off the bed, she herself having difficulty standing up. As he moved to his side, he felt his shirt, now completely soaked with wet, drape itself over his body, and pull against his neck.

The slick cool sweat made it obvious that no matter what he did, he was not going back to sleep until he at least put on a dry shirt.

So he moved again, slowly pushing himself to a seated position on the edge of his bed.

“Why don’t you go take a shower, and I’ll see if I can find you some new sheets?” He heard in the darkness. A soft and caring hand reaching over and rubbing his shoulder.

The simple act of the caress slowly opened up to him the means to speak about what he had seen, but in particular, one question that had been silent that applied in both his dreams and his real life.

“Mom, why did she have to go?”

There was a pause as he felt his emotions slowly rising.

“People ask me, Cecil. Because they think that I know through you.”

The emotions broke the levee.

“No one has told me anything. She just… she’s just gone!”

With that quiet yell, forced out of his mouth with bottled up sadness and a teenage crack of voice, the tears started to flow. Many, fat, wet tears streaming down the face and falling on a shirt already too wet to hold onto them.

“I know how you feel, sweetie. I wish I knew why your father had to leave, too. Sometimes, though, it’s just time.”

“But… I…” He took a deep breath, mostly to suck in the snot coming down his face. A hand came up to smear it across his cheeks. “I never got to say goodbye.”

“She would have wanted you to be happy, Cecil. That has to count for something.”

“I don’t know what she wanted me to be. She never wanted me to be anything. She was happy with the way I was! I never had to be… anything to her!”

He couldn’t see his mother's face, but something was there that was breaking.

She understood what he was missing.

She really did.

However, this was one of the rare cases of a parents life where they have to pull something out of their mid-air. They have no experience to use in illustrative sentences to provide their child the proper sympathy that they need. There is no experience that could come to the woman’s mind to guide her words, or encourage him that things will be better, or that the pain would go away.

In short, she didn’t know what to say, or even where to reply to that.

There was death and the mourning that much every adult eventually learns of. There was the slow grind of learning to live without a person that held so much worth to her that it felt like she was walking into a new world. There was, however, no context for her in her own harshly judged and pushed aside life to contemplate the loss of someone that flowed entirely against that current. It was as far from her as she wished to have it. She could not speak of a single person that treated her the way that Mrs. Henderson treated her own child. Everyone had an expectation for her.

And she never seemed to meet them.

She saw the same things in those children’s eyes as her son did. They just made a smaller impact in the gaping maw that was her self-worth.

She flubbed a response. She opened her mouth, and realized that she had nothing for her to say. She had nothing to give her son. She had to close her mouth, close her eyes, and squeeze her face for a second, hoping to pull in the tears and pain to give him something that he could actually use. A slight prayer escaping her lips before she spoke.

“Cecil, what she said to you, what she meant for you, she wanted you to carry that. To believe in her opinion of you, and what she saw, not anyone else. She believed in you, but she didn’t think she needed to say it. She let you see it in her actions.”

That seemed to calm him, to reach into him a bit, and twist the dial of the waterworks back one small pitiful notch. The tears continued to flow, the face was covered in sticky snot and sweat, and the sobbing moans combined with the wheezing coughs and harsh intakes of breath to rock the body of the young man uncomfortably.

The worst stinging pain in his heart was gone. That long horrible dart that had been racing towards the heart of his soul was pulled out, and the figurative swinging drunk devil in the child’s mind was screaming in rage at the loss of the effect of the worst of his poisons.

The screaming harsh words of the hundreds of bullying children, that planted all his woes and troubles at him being fat, ugly, and poor over millions of occasions…

Meant nothing in the face of the knowledge of one old lady that sat out front every day, drinking tea, and braving that horrible smog to watch him tumble up her hill to talk to her. To follow her around like a little dog. To help her prune the roses, water the vegetables, and aerate the compost pit. Even when he got tired, even when he fell behind, he would watch her stop, and she would start to tell him a story, some nonsense story about her plants.

Never about him.

She never blamed him for not keeping up. Even when he did.

He wasn’t fat to her.

He was just Cecil.

It was a long minute later as he stood up and slowly gave his mother a hug. He was trying not to rub his face over her clothes. Anyone will tell you that a mother comes expecting this sort of thing though, and as he pulled away, his mother gently held his head and pulled a large portion of her own shirt, she wiped the gross mess off his face. Inadvertently, as any child that had received this treatment will tell you, rubbing the smallest amount of snot into his eye by mistake.

This action caused him to reach up and try to rub it out as she reached down and kissed him on the tip top of his head.

After pulling some clothes out of his dresser walked over to the bathroom to shower and get some level of cleanliness before going back to his bed.

He could feel the creeks and movement of the floor as he walked, which only served to remind the already wounded man of his least favorite part of the house.

Right over the sink, next to the toilet and opposite the shower, was a large mirror.

Like most people, Cecil was well aware of what it contained. He was simply conditioned to hate it.

It was a reminder that stuck with him harder and harder each and every time he tried to look beyond it. Every shrug of the shoulder, every movement of his head, insisting to his face that this was indeed him. There were times when he stared at himself for hours desperately trying to see something that his classmates had missed. Some little piece of himself that he could point to and say, this, this was something…

There was always a little pause in his thoughts as he tried to find the vocabulary he was looking for.

Manly? Masculine? Handsome? He was never sure what adjective that he was looking to fulfill in his search of his face. Sometimes it was in the search of his body, as there were parts of it that he could really only see a mirror. All he saw was round in his face, with drooping lips that were a pale pink that felt almost insulting to something in him. It matched well, in his mind, with the mess of zits and blackheads that generally covered his furry cheeks. He would see the mud brown eyes that didn’t seem to carry any weight, sometimes obscured by brown hair that was too long. He would look at his figure, maybe even break out the scale, and know that no middle schooler should see the other side of 200 pounds. Especially as he had not even seen a single growth spurt yet. Mrs. Henderson and his mother, and all of the girls in school were taller than him.

It was part of the curse that really dug in the jabs of his classmates. He could not chisel away the fat and see something that he wanted to be underneath. No matter how he turned, no matter which way he looked, he wasn’t anything like the popular kids. He wasn’t anything like the kids the popular kids tolerated.

What world was he trying to crack into, who could he be a part of? He didn’t look anything like an athlete, at all. The preps were nastier to him than even the cheerleaders, so that was right out. He had good grades, something that made his mother happy, but the smart kids mostly ignored him. The goths had some kids that were nearly his size, but they seemed to think of him as an annoyance. He could never fit into those boots or skinny jeans. He also didn’t want to think about what those would show, either. His crotch area was something that was nebulous, and he spent more time hearing insulting projections from other children than he did actually looking at it.

They all gave him the same looks everyone else did. The losers even picked on him, throwing him to an outer social circle that no one really wanted a part of in a massive California school. It was a party of 583 students and him.

He would tell himself, the minute he found a place, the minute that he could see that he fit in, he would do everything he could, lose weight, fix his acne, everything to fit in. When he found a place.

His place, after his searches, generally wound up being on the toilet.

Hiding in the section of the bathroom that the mirror would never reflect back at him.

So he was now, there seated on the common throne. He was trying to reign in his crying and snot before he started his shower.

As soon as he felt he was making headway, though, he would crack, and the emotion would reach into him and pull out a slow morning groan. Slowly the water works would start up again, and he would be ruined. He went through the rest of the toilet paper roll next to him, and in his crawl to fetch another from under the sink, he caught just the side of his hair.

Eventually he made the decision that the crying wasn’t going to stop, and stripped down to nothing, and shuffled into the stall, bumping into the sides as he and his mother did constantly. The water was cold at first, which received a reaction of several exhaled breaths as he tried to move away from the stream of water. Suitably distracted by the eventual warmth, he finished his business as best he could. The bar of soap a minty scent was nothing like the freshly mowed grass the packaging claimed.

He stepped out, got dressed, and went by the sink without looking at it. Leaving his toothbrush untouched for the night. The door creaked as it opened, and he walked out, almost happy to have not looked at his face, and seen what he knew was there.

And missing what he didn’t.

---

His mother had surprised him in the morning, by being there and making breakfast.

His mother didn’t make breakfast, and she wasn’t around on Saturdays. She worked Saturdays, taking extra hours at the office to help pay off the trailer. She worked Sundays too, and so generally his meals now were whatever had been left over from dinner the night before, if anything.

It was at this thought of dinner, he realized that he had not had any the night before. The rumble of his stomach was surprised at the thought of eggs and toast that his mother was trying desperately not to burn.

Mrs. Henderson had somehow always found a way to stuff him senseless when she was around. In the spring, there was usually some fresh baked bread, and beans from a can stored up over the winter. Honey slathered on fresh baked bread, fresh as in out of the oven ten minutes ago, is and will always be a food combination of kings.

His mother, though, was playing to a captive audience of a teenager who missed dinner the night before and spent most of the night crying. There was nothing food related that he was not going to enjoy immensely.

“You're up! I was hoping you wouldn’t sleep the day away.”

“I thought you had work today, Mom?”

“Well, I know it’s been a few weeks, but it’s hard to figure out schedules. I’ve been meaning to spend some more time with you, and to do more things with you.”

There was a wordless end to that sentence that she didn’t speak, but both could hear. Cecil knew his mother loved him, and cared about what he was going through.

“So… what are we going to do?”

“I… I don’t know. I thought that we might go to the coast, maybe Santa Cruz. Drive a bit of Highway 1, that sort of thing. You know… talk.”

Breakfast feasted upon, and plans were quietly made and printed off the Internet.

They piled into the small ten year old car, gear in hand. It was a clean vehicle, if, perhaps, a bit worn. You could see in the seat arm rest on the drivers side, where Ms. Jackson had worn away the soft fuzz of the veneer with her arm. She drove nearly half an hour each way to work, nearly everyday. It was uncomfortable to hold her arms up at the steering wheel, so one remained on the rest.

The driver’s seat was another matter entirely, and the ragged seat, while clean, had rips and shreds through the fabric, and showed the yellow foam coming off underneath. Cecil, in his seat, was only a few years behind in discomfort, and pokes of yellow were coming out of the fabric.

However, there were new tires, new oil, and everything else cared for. There were no noticeable smells. The only thing in the trunk besides the spare was the swimsuits they had put together and everything they needed for their beach trip. While Abbie Jackson had little, what little had she took care of.

The car started with ease and then pulled out and began to make its way west over the mountains.

Cecil had no intention of speaking to his mother.

He simply watched as the California plains rolled by, filled with orange and almond trees. He could see with his bare eyes the scars on the trunk of the tree where the planter had grafted a high producing tree variant to a blight resistant trunk. It was, to his eyes, like looking at Victor Frankenstein laughing that his experiment was a success.

These tree scares were as far as he could see. On every tree, for miles. Reaching right up until the mountains stopped the plague, and out of the yellow-green bland grasses came mountains covered with the same. They were massive piles of rock and stone that had been painted over with grassy plains. One might have called them rolling hills, if they had not been far too large and spring up oh-so-suddenly from the flat California valley.

His mother drove on into the mountains. As he looked back, he could see the trees dotted on the western side of the mountains. Outside of the rain shadow that protected the valleys from most of the weather.

The reason that they never got storms.

They went through a small pass in the grass covered mountains. The black road and the small rare dots of deep green trees are the only splashes of color in that green-yellow-brown of the plains grass. Occasionally you would see larger patches of green in the valleys, indications of a hidden spring.

Soon, as they pulled through another brown farming valley, they reached Gilroy, and there Cecil could see the mountains before them studded with trees. Up in these mountains came the rich mansions of who knows who. They were mostly locked away around poor landscaping and columnar trees, but they were still rich. If you were expecting something to show it, you would be mistaken for looking. They were white and gray buildings, in the style of the cookie cutter homes that grew in bunches of 50-100 at a time throughout the country. Just a little larger. Just a little more land.

Soon though, something with real wealth caught his eye.

The ocean.

It would be unfair to think that all Californians have some sort of ethereal connection to the west coast beaches. That they try to plan to spend every weekend frittered away on the beach, clad in tight clothes, drinking lightly alcoholic beverages. It’s unfair, but the fact of the matter is that advertising works.

It is true to say that most Californians on the coast and nearby are in love with the ocean. They love the food, they love the sun, they love the weather, and they love the sand, they love the views.

Cecil felt the ocean though his very core, simply by looking at it. It had been years since his mother had taken him to see the ocean, on a very quick trip to Long Beach when they had lived down in LA. His memory was as a child, but also, now, as someone else, a bit shaded by things that he could now comprehend.

He could remember, and now had new opinions of, the trash and the harsh smell of suntan lotion, the way the structures out in the bay glowed at night. He thought of the things that he learned in science class, about turtles and egg laying, about how much they needed quiet and darkness to do it. How they tried so hard to climb up the beach, and then dig a hole to lay their eggs.

That thought didn’t tint his emotions for long, because the ocean itself rolled out in front of him. This was not that beach, a landmark in a city fit to burst. Before long the sight was lost for all the houses, and he strained his neck at every break in the California sprawl to catch just a glimpse of the big majestic blue.

The sprawl grew wider and wider, though, and the houses and businesses grew closer and closer to each other until they were nothing more than a long strip mall of white buildings adorned with miles of traffic of all kinds. A few people were walking from store to store, shopping, but the majority of it stretched before them on

He could see the hazy heat coming off of the streets and from the exhaust of the car ahead of him. His mother noticed this attention, and, delicately, she phrased the first question of car ride to him.

“What are you thinking, Cecil?”

“I just… I don’t think people get it.”

“What don’t they get?”

“They pull around in cars, trying to get to all these places, but they could just live there.”

“It’s very expensive to live in Santa Cruz, Cecil. If we could afford to live here, I think we would, but my job doesn’t pay enough, and it’s a little hard for me to find a new job right now.”

“Then why don’t they make a place where they live the place that they want to be?” Said the young man.

His mother smiled, but her mouth was silent as she thought about the wisdom that he had, and where it’s obvious origins were. She had tea with Mrs. Henderson a few times, as any mother would do to see who her children were spending time with, but was always struck by the thoughts of the often quiet older woman.

Not paying attention due to her thoughts of the dear old woman, she made a minor error, and took a right at Bay street, rather than the left that would have taken them to the Santa Cruz Wharf and boardwalk.

She had a grand day at the beach planned, or as much as she could make it. Of course, the reality of it would have been different than her expectations.

If she had not missed her turn, they would have gone through what many tourists have learned is the hard truth of California beaches. Advertising works. They are packed with more people per square mile than could ever be healthy.

There are lines, unholy lines in front of the changing rooms. It’s a California tradition to put as much sunblock on in line to change as you can to prevent getting sunburn before you even get into your bathing suit. Then as you walk out onto the beach, you have to find a place to keep your gear, which will invariably be stolen the minute that you walk away. All that to enjoy the water and surf that generally has more flicked cigarette butts in it than you really want to consider and you're hoping that whatever is caught on your toe is less rubbery than you feel it is.

For the two riders of the car, Cecil and Amie Jackson, that wrong turn, in itself, would be life changing.

If simply because when he saw the trees and the sign, his mother could only sigh, and give a small smile as one does in the sheer lunacy of your plans being lost to the strange coincidence of destiny.

“UC Santa Cruz Arboretum and Gardens”

To a young man that had spent so much time and effort with such a master as Mrs. Henderson, he had no frame of reference. He had only curiosity. He knew what the words meant, in a way. Arbor being tree and a garden being self explanatory. He just had no way to reconcile it with the color and attraction of the sign. He never thought to expect words like that to be used as an attraction. Advertising works.

It was like someone who had dedicated years of their life to hand making ice-cream from grandmother’s recipes, seeing a sign for an ice cream parlor.

She didn’t argue, because she couldn’t. Not with his face. Not today. She was lucky that he had never discovered how hard it was for her to disagree with someone, particularly someone like him, that was so important to her life.

Other people picked up on it, her low self-esteem. Her bosses, her coworkers, and many others. It had an obvious tell.

As she pulled into the sparse parking lot she saw a young man squirming to get out of his seat belt. She watched as he got out and with more energy than she had seen in him for weeks, he… not ran, but the excitement was there to do so. He walked up and down the beds of flowers that were lovingly planted. The ones by the entrance were lovely reds, planted in nearly perfect beds of gravel. Little spots of geometric color. They had small little bees and butterflies moving from flowers.

It was her happiest thought in nearly a month… that she might not be able to get him out of the parking lot.

That she managed to keep up with him was a matter of some effort.

“They’re beautiful, mom.”

“Well, maybe someday you might help care for them. This is a university, sweetheart, and I bet the students do something to plant or care for the place.”

She wasn’t sure, and it had been years since she had walked on a college campus, but it sounded right to her. It didn’t matter, because when she saw him sit up and look over.

“Can we go in?”

“I don’t know. I thought you wanted to go to the beach.”

The previous plan for the day suddenly came back to his mind, and he realized that his mother had not intended to be here. At the same moment, he wondered if he wanted to be here. Wouldn’t it bring back memories of his lost friend?

“We can definitely check it out if you want.” She said, giving him the excuse that she really wanted him to take.

“Let's go in.” He said, looking at the entrance.

“Lets see what they’re charging.” She said in return, not wanting to look like she was ready to give in. However, she was already sure that even if it was an arm and a leg admission, she might still pay it.

As it stood, when they got into the front building, she looked to see the price and nearly chuffed. It was five dollars for a day pass, and there was a grill to eat at. Compared to the cost of all the driving around to find a place to eat while at the beach, she might be saving money. Cecil would have to be thrown out on the rail on her account.

Then all of her hopes and dreams were made real.

As Cecil waited beside her as she paid, one of the lovely desk attendants looked at him and spoke to him. She had a glimmer in her eye that was happy and carefree, and above all else, nonjudgmental. It was easy for her to look Cecil in the eye.

“So you like plants?”

“I love plants.” He said. Then he realized that he had spoken back to her and turned beet red as he looked at her. She leaned over the counter, and looked right at him, a long smile slowly working across her face.

Abbie’s heart stopped a bit herself, at that very small exchange. She saw the young woman smile, and then watched a glint come from her eye that she couldn’t rightly identify. She didn’t need a primer to know how bad her son was likely already taken by the woman. She had reached into something that he deeply cared about, and gotten a full-hearted admittance into caring for it. He had bought in, and she had more experience with people abusing that than accepting it.

Of course, in Cecil’s world, he had no experience in someone like this paying attention to him. His only protection from her was a general low self-esteem and a lack of confidence. In her favor, she had a face that could hide nothing. Every emotion that bubbled to the surface behind it simply appeared. Her wide and expressive lips could no more hide a smirk than her tall thin figure could hide a car. Her green eyes twinkled with every positive emotion that came through her thoughts.

Cecil looked up to her, after going beat red, and he saw that face close enough to his to see all of it. Close enough that he couldn’t ignore the bright green eyes that reached down and pulled his own in with ease. Something of him was laid to bare, put on blast by that simple smile.

“Your going to love it here. Make sure you go to the Butterfly garden! I just got back from there, and it’s paaaacked.” She made a supremely exasperated face as she said the last part, as she somehow managed to sarcastically mix pure joy into the dramatic act with her eyes. She looked over her and saw Abbie’s questioning look.

“With butterflies!” She said cheerfully, her face coming back to a simple and clean emotion as she pushed her body off the counter, straightening her back with a pinch of youthful exuberance for the insects.

“What kind?” Asked Cecil, his eyes taking in the show and the person.

“I don’t know, I just take care of the plants. Clara here might know.”

Clara was evidently the cheery lady that was handing her back her receipt with a smile. The coworkers wore a similar uniform of tan plants with a t-shirt with the school mascot and colors. Most people, new to the area, would have taken a double-take as they examined the anthropomorphized Banana Slug in rich blue and gold.

Especially because the tall expressive one was wearing a shirt with a tough looking slug that stared down with contempt with his two powerfully muscled arms crossed.

“There’s a variety out there right now, so I could only tell you with a description you brought back to me. If you would like to learn for yourself, there are a few guide books that we sell in the bookstore.”

She looked at Cecil a second, then reached down and pulled up a backpack.

She rummaged into it for a second, then pulled out a small book, and handed it to him.

“Just return it to the front desk when you're done. It’s one of my textbooks, so I need it back, ok?”

“You go to school here?” Said Abbie, drawing up her courage to ask.

Both women smiled at once.

“Yep!” They both said at once, then Clara giggled as the other clarified.

“Plant Science major, this is my Senior project assignment. I’m also working on some of the greenhouse work and planned sections. Shhhhh!” She said. Her expressive face giving weight to her over the time sarcasm as a

She leaned back up to the counter, and looked at Cecil.

“You want to be a Plant Sciences major?”

“Umm, I’m thinking about it. I really like taking care of plants, and my friend said that I’m really good at it.”

“Really? What are you growing right now?”

You might have well slapped the kid with a fish, he had no idea what to say. Luckily, his mother was not looking down the barrel of the face of the expressive and happy young woman.

“What about Angie, your favorite plant?”

He stammered, but looking up, he saw that the woman was still looking at him expectantly.

“Angie is the name I have for… it is my Corkscrew Albuca.”

“YOU HAVE AN ALBUCA! YES! I love those! We have a brace of them that I planted in the South African section!”

“Are they flowering?”

“YES! GO! They’re gorgeous right now! Is yours?”

“Almost, it’s got it stalk it’s about to bud!”

“That’s awesome! I bet you take awesome care of it! How often does it bloom for you?”

“About three times a year!”

Clara could have asked for the young man to go to an indoor voice, but she knew her classmate wouldn’t have it. Once the matter of the South African plant was mentioned, it was only a matter of time for her to lose her mind. A unique person, to say the least.

“You're doing great! What else are you growing?”

“I have a Spiderwort, and a Cholla next to my bed.”

“So you can sleep on the spines? No thank you.” She said with a sarcastic smile.

“It’s got a big pot, but it’s also a big window, so I always think that it protects me.”

“Plants are protecting all of us, all the time. I hope you like the garden, take your time, and if you have any questions about the South African section, tell them your friends with Cathy!”

“We will, thank you so much.” Said Abbie.

Cecil could have stood there, would have rooted in that place, grown through the brick and cement and shot up through the ceiling if he could as he watched the young woman walk back into the door behind the counter.

:Friends with Cathy” bounced around in his head. Bounced around his very being. It wasn’t that she was a girl. It wasn’t that she was a pretty girl with a very expressive face and boisterous personality. It was that she was a woman, with respect, knowledge, and skills that he treasured as much as anything else in his life, and she had called him her friend.

Mrs. Henderson was not alone in his life anymore. There was a face right beside her, much younger, with more exuberance, and, though he didn’t realize it at the time, a path.

Moving to his mother’s thoughts, she was noticing that she was shaking. She dearly loved her only son. She loved him for all that he was. She desperately hoped that he could figure out a better future than she modeled for him, and the way that he looked as he walked away from the two women, deep in collegiate studies gave her heart a warm and fuzzy feeling.

They eventually found their way out of the door. Cecil looked back at Clara a few times, only to see her smile back at him.

Clara looked as her friend came out with a backpack.

“At some point, the university is going to have to pay you for recruiting.” She said in her quieter, sarcastic humor. She got a tongue pointed at her.

“I would pay to do that for someone like him.”

“Really, you feel a personal connection?”

“Oh, I was once almost as big as he was.”

Clara looked at the taller woman with a bright smile, she looked up and down the figure of her, seeing nothing but the blade-like sharpness of the legs and body, the thin chest of which now slightly more on display in a loose fitting canvas white long sleeve shirt. She could have seethed at the woman’s carefree style, from the open collar buttons showing the clear skin around the neck to the open buttons at the waist showing a suggestive hint that the legs really did go all the way up in jeans that seemed to be painted on.

“You’re kidding.”

“Not in the slightest. I was a hundred and ninety pounds coming out of seventh grade. I had broken my leg in fifth grade and I ballooned up.”

“What happened?”

“Oh, I had another accident.” She said with a smile. She looked at her work mate, as she walked around her and checked out on the timetable in the tiller. “I couldn’t eat for a bit, so I lost some weight, and I decided to lose the rest.”

“That’s all it took.”

Cathy looked up from her writing. She knew that her contacts in her eyes made them look several shades duller than the nearly effervescent green that they usually were. She didn’t like to lie, but the information was not really something that she could just give out to even someone she worked with everyday. She deflected, then, but with something that she believed.

“You never know what’s going to sink in as the thing that changes you. Where your rock bottom is going to be. That’s why when I see someone that’s still looking, I give them the best I can.” She finished signing out.

“Plus, he had really pretty blue eyes. I’m a sucker for blue eyes.” She said as she walked out the front of the building.

Clara could only smile, and go back to her paperwork. She wouldn’t be one to talk about that. Three boyfriends ago, maybe, but three blue-eyed boyfriends in a row tells a person something about themselves, sometimes.

-

Cecil Jackson had died. Metaphorically.

As he stepped foot into the entrance area to the gardens, the old Cecil became a figment of the imagination, and a new one stood in his place. It was like the opposite of a portal into another world, it was the same world, but a different person walked into it.

He had taken an equitable conversation with a confident young woman as one does a bullet to the head. It still bounced around, every one of the words she had said repeating. If such a woman could wield the force of evil peer pressure to strip him of his dignity with only a word, then the full conversation that he had just enjoyed dropped the equivalent of a three ton building cornerstone on his head.

Men were known to have died after making the mistake of driving after kissing a pretty woman, drunk in the head with wedding bells, long walks on the beach, and “other things”. Cecil was lucky there were no steps out of the back door, because he would have tripped and brained himself on the way down. As it was, his mind was awash with something he had only dreamed of having.

That being dreams. Actual dreams.

Cecil Jackson was lost in his dreams, the first time in a long time.

He had barely even looked outside to the first new area of the Arboretum and he was set. He would do everything he could to come here, to be at this university. His brain was going fast paced through everything that anyone had ever said about going to university. From test scores to grades, he was changing his outlook on everything. He even had his birthday present all picked out.

He wanted a shirt with a slug on it. Specifically, the one with the muscles.

He wasn’t the same person anymore. The old Cecil was gone.

His dreams had changed. What used to be merely a plan to escape the places that he felt most tortured, turned into a much more grand goal of achievement. To have a place like this that demonstrated the glory of what he saw. To bring together the best and most gorgeous plants and show the world that they were worth the time and effort. His small conversation with his mother earlier on what he saw in people had some level of effect on him.

His classmates wouldn’t know it, and a small part of him still hung on like a parasite that whispered still some of the self-doubt that was instilled in him. There was still something that held back the entirety of his joy, and was looking for a way into the deeper parts of his emotions to turn them back around to what he was used to.

That gnawing gnashing presence in the back of a mind known as depression.

But it hadn’t found any such opening yet. It would likely have to wait until the classmates gave it a hand in a few days to bring him back down. It was fighting something a bit too bright today. It might drag him back later. If it did, though, it would be a man that had more reason to claw, scream, and fight for his life than ever before.

His mother could only see him vibrate in place as he looked around. She made a pretty accurate guess as to what else was on his mind.

Including the birthday present.

Abbie Jackson was a mother. She worried more about Cecil than she would ever admit to his face. She worried nightly about his birthday presents, because her own presents growing up had never been that great. However, this year, she suddenly felt ahead of herself. She felt like she had taken a step forward as a mother.

She was actually a touch afraid that he would wear himself out in his excitement.

That thought alone would curl her up in her bed tonight, wrap itself around her personal insecurities and tell them to take a hike. She had done good. Inarguable good.

Of course, she was not as entranced by the jewel-like quality of the exhibits as her son. She knew that. Today she was perhaps closer to understanding a piece of what he saw emotionally in the world of plants than ever before.

The sheer variety of colors both on the flowers were stunning by itself. There were reds, yellows, bright purples, liquid blues, and pure whites. They were at every level, with some colors directly at eye height, some littered on the ground in a variety of patterns.

The flowers were not alone in their bountiful display. Their deeper purposes acting as rest and relaxation point for the small little helpers in the air.

Perhaps even more astonishing was the sheer number of butterflies that could be seen, that were making their way up and down the many layers of the foliage with their fluttering movements. They danced in the air with their smooth looping motion.

Abbie Jackson, and most others, they could appreciate the differences in the colors. They could appreciate and like the art of nature in the mirrored patterns on the wings of the creatures from flecks of orange and yellows. Sometimes she saw one that was particularly gorgeous, or different, or that just seemed to be where her eyes wished to rest, and she watched it, slowly going about it’s business.

To Cecil, the butterflies were perhaps best akin to an old friend. They could be found in the valley, and Mrs. Henderson went out of her way to make sure that she had many different flowers that drew them in.

There were her little helpers, she said. She couldn’t pollinate her garden by hand, and she didn’t trust the winds to do everything. The butterflies had been at this a long time, she said, and such, should be respected in their work. She had been adamant when saying that, with a touch of extra furor that Cecil had noticed, and remembered.

That made them more akin to old witnesses to that friendship. They had benefited from it as much as the plants had. If he had the words for it, he might have called them stakeholders in that friendship. Those to stand to gain by it and for it.

He didn’t exactly know what he thought about that at this moment, because he had a list of things that were more important to him to debate internally.

His mind was not totally on the creatures, or on the pretty flowers that they danced between. They were just the foreground to the reality of the full diversity of greens, browns, and grays of the plants in question. The dazzling array of variety was more than he had ever seen in his life. That array of color was a background in the painting of the scene, still not the focal point of his mind.

That focal point was not the plants, or the flowers, the butterflies, or any other concrete object. His own mother was more of a focal point, the people around him, the sign that he had seen from the road, the beautifully appointed sign as they drove in. This was a place where they discovered what was to him a simple truth, instilled with love by a friend of his that there was more to see outside of your cars and homes than you could possibly imagine.

It was not really an organic order, or one that he could immediately see, but he drank in all of the lovely trees, shrubs, bushes, perennials, annuals, and everything else he could imagine. He felt the attention of the people around him, the hope built into a place like this that there might be some little small change.

It was actually slightly intimidating, there was an edge to it that settled into him. Looking around, he could see the variety of people that were slowly moving through. He was alone in his particular interest, as he could see.

If you had been to any major national park or similar facilities, you would know what the population curve for this is like. Newly Weds and Nearly Deads, either they were young couples on a romantic date or an older couple on a romantic date. Nothing in-between. This was a special dating location, someplace that could be found with a simple internet search for something romantic to do in the area for under 25$. However, there was often the effect that one or the other of the romantic couple wanted to take a piece of what they saw and make it part of their home, with a gift shop and greenhouse sale that fed into Cecil’s desire to make a difference.

The entrance to the vast complex of plants and trees was dedicated to California natives. The plants that could be found throughout the state, from down on the beaches to high in the Sierra Mountains. From the deserts around San Diego to the snow capped lonely peak of Shasta. Cecil knew these, as Mrs. Henderson kept all of these wildflowers in her own garden.

The long orange-red flowers of the California Fuschia. Mr. Henderson called hers Sami.

The white blobs flecks of pink were the characteristic California Buckwheat. Beverly.

The bright round and yellow flowers of the California Brittlebush. She called this one Atum.

It was at a delicate round and pink flower that he stopped. Casitas. They had Casitas. Cassy. Something rolled down his cheek and then he noticed he had started crying again.

Looking around, he noticed that not a single person was looking at him.

No one was commenting on the tears coming out of his eyes.

Any brief explanation of mourning should begin with an explanation that it is not an emotion, but a state of being. It comes at a person like a law of the universe, like some harsh truth that energy can neither be created or destroyed.

It starts with the creation of something unique, something that could never be replaced, something that has a well-defined and well-padded place in a person’s interior reality. Sometimes they don’t notice how people worm their way into other’s lives, and the energy of their actions and emotion become matter in those small personal realities at the steady rate of the speed of light squared.

When these people have reached a place where they will never return, where they will never be there for you again, it is like that place they carved out is suddenly empty in your body. No other piece of your reality will fill it, and people tell you that you should move on. You have to walk around with an arm that will not work, but you still feel it, and remember how it works every time you have to pick something up. You cannot forget. Those people that tell you to move on are idiots. Screw them and their meaningless pity.

Then there are special people.

Special people like his mother, who was still close enough to see him starting to tear up.

There were no words she could give him, and she didn’t bother to try to give him something she didn’t have. She could only reach over and give him a slow rub on his back. He didn’t look up, and she didn’t make any moves to take his attention.

What she was doing was already done. She had given him her pity. She had fought for a day off, and with a touch of luck, had brought him to a place that unarguably gave her support to what he loved. She had taken him somewhere showed that what he loved was something real. That it had a purpose that he had never seen before. Suddenly, what he loved had something with a future in it beyond even what he would have guessed.

Pity by action, not by word, is inherently deadly to the sadness of mourning. It ties into the person with a big fat rope and points them back to the light. The state of mourning will not leave by such things alone, but as the person slowly begins to start growing again. When they start going out and making more relationships, adding more knowledge, understanding into that strange inner realm of being, the hollow that remains of a past love one remains, but around them expands out into rich depths of character.

The old loves are never forgotten. They’re the brightest gems on the crowns of our existence.

Cecil did then what some people fail to do. Something that people with mountains of strength and far more friends than he had failed to do in their own lives. Something that someone with real knowledge of character would have seen and said was an act of true courage.

He kept walking.

He kept walking through the batches of yellow, blue, pink and purple. His eyes were watery, but such was his knowledge that even so impaired he didn’t fail to recognize a single one. Many had names which ate into him, and would continue to eat into him for the rest of his life.

Soon, however, he reached some that he didn’t know. For those, he had to clear his eyes. Rubbing them dry with some level haste as he tried to figure out what he was looking at.

With the effort it took to clear his eyes and pay attention to colors slowly dancing in the wind in front of him, his tears slowly cleared up. His attention diverted from what had driven him to tears, the tears started to dry.

The flower had a waxy thick leaf with a thick stalk leading up to a red-orange flower that looked like more of a ball of fur than anything else. The little placard underneath the bloom told him that it was a Blood Lily from South Africa.

He took in a breath and committed this plant to memory, and took it in, entirely.

This was one of Cathy’s plants, in his mind.

He walked slowly into the South African section of the garden, and it was, for him, like stepping into another world. Sure, there were some plants here that he had seen or heard of before, but to see the thing in itself being laid out, and each piece of it being the best example, and very well cared for.

He could think nothing bad about his friend. He looked at it all and it tied to her in his mind. He thought about what the work it would take to plant, water, and care for so many plants.

Even the exhibit of the Corkscrew Albuca was stunning. Three plants taller than Angie in full bloom. He would have taken a picture and framed it. The little butterflies that worked so hard to figure out the upside down flowers bobbed around the stems.

He took in so many different colors and styles, and multiplied again by the little butterflies that danced around the place. They were indeed nearly swarming on certain plants. He felt his hands go to the guide, and he started to identify a few.

There were Swallowtails, Sulfurs, and Skippers.

Then there was the royalty. Monarchs and Queens dressed in orange. Ladies and Viceroys littered about. He had to take his time to really see the differences, and to really identify them. He didn’t dare catch one, as he felt that would be wrong.

However, as he put more of his curiosity into it, he started to really enjoy it. He liked to watch the character of the small creatures as they went about their work. The colors on their wings are only a small addition to their personality.

With his shorter stature, and the nature of the size of some of the plants, he didn’t have to bend over to have an eye-level view of a bunch of flowers that the butterflies would slowly move through. Individual after individual would move through, with slightly more uninterested butterflies landing on them in route to another flower. They would flutter a bit, then take off, and pull his attention to a new flower or plant.

Deep down, each and every thing that he saw slowly added another fine stroke to the promise he had for himself to someday be a part of this.

He thought of Cathy, and thought of how she had looked. That confidence. He wished he had that. He wished he could look up and talk to people like that. He wished he could work a place like this, and spend his days learning about it, like she was. He wished he could wear that uniform, with even only a pinch of her zeal and zest for life.

Slowly he made his way through the sections. He paused for a while at the New Zealand collection, taking in species in a place that all the smart girls in school seemed to like. He took in the various and sundry evergreens that the arboretum was known for, in both their shade and with the sheer shock of their dark green.

Cecil would have never thought he would be impressed with how definitive a collection of pines could be. Sure, it was one thing to say that they had almost an entire order of plants represented in such a small area, but he knew what these species were. He looked at some of them as if they had no business being south of the Arctic circle. For a Californian kid who had only gotten out of LA four years ago, something like a Douglas Fir from Canada was exactly that.

He was enjoying every minute of it. He lost track of time and place. His mother waited at the grill near the entrance, waiting for him to eventually get hungry and find her, but she wasn’t surprised when he didn’t come.

This was his place. She was quietly starting to enjoy the atmosphere herself, though she placed it down for being one of the few times that she had gotten out in a long time.

Cecil, though, was having a hard time keeping his head on straight with all of the motion that stopped suddenly when he knocked into someone.

“Hey, watch it.”

Cecil looked up to the man that he had run into, and saw someone that was in the same uniform that Cathy and Carrie were in earlier. He looked to be about the same age, though he was also really tall. He was not skinny, but it was easy to see him still as a mop of brown dreads on a surfer body. He gave Cecil a look that brought him down to earth, and caused him to stammer. It wasn’t as harsh as Cecil felt it was, but it was questioning. The face had an eyebrow raised almost as high as the banana slug on his t-shirt.

Eventually he got the words out.

“Sorry, I was…”

“Distracted?” The young man cut into his already unsure voice.

He nodded. The man looked around.

“Are you here with a date or something? Where’s your parents?”

“I… ummm…”

“You're here alone? Really? You must be a pretty big nerd for this stuff then.”

Cecil felt the accusation cut a bit deep, though he would have noticed a smile start to form on the young man’s face.

“Dude, it’s fine to be a nerd. Just freaking own it.”

The young man walked away, and Cecil could only sweat at the encounter. The day was getting to him, but after a minute, the sarcasm of the man started to come through to his head. As scared as he was, he didn’t really understand what the man had said.

Cecil gave the man’s words as much weight as he gave Cathy’s. False equivalency is a mistake that young people make all the time, and Cecil would hardly be the first to fall into trouble for it. However, the words had a purpose and reason that mostly escaped him, and were only committed to memory for later.

Mostly he kept on, and went back to watching the various banks of flowers covered in butterflies, in this case, Milkweed Butterflies like the Monarch. There were hundreds of them moving from flower to flower.

He looked over to a couple that were having a time holding their hands out, such was the number of butterflies that they would land on anything not moving.

Eventually, when he was sure no one was looking, he slowly copied the motion. Slowly, after a few seconds, he watched as a few of the beautiful orange creatures rose and landed on his hand.

They tickled as they walked around, and he could sometimes feel the faint flap of their wings as they would take off. They were like little eyelashes brushing against his skin.

They would move around his hand or arm for a few seconds, and then went on.

“Oh look, honey, he’s made a few friends.”

He looked over to see one of the couples speaking. It was an older lady and an older gentleman.

“If he lost some weight, he might get a few real ones.” Said the old man. “Come on dear, we have other places to be today.”

Cecil could only feel the hurt of the comment deep in his soul. It reached down and kicked him, hard. The fact that it was so assumptive didn’t pass his mind. That he didn’t know this old man at all, and it was impossible for this old man to know him, was not a thought he had at all. It felt like the old man knew him, knew far more about him than he would ever want anyone to know.

Slowly, and with some degree of ethereal defeat, his head slowly dropped.

Cathy was deleted from his memory. In this place, even pieces of Mrs. Henderson seemed to be far away. There was no protection for the hurt that was intended by the thoughtless and careless statement.

Cecil had heard it more times than he could count. From coaches, from more than a few teachers, and at least one doctor. Same tone, same veiled implication.

Horribly, it was the other parents that were often the first to stop in their judgment. They stopped blaming him whenever they met his mother. He had heard it spoken to their children, that it was her fault.

They all acted like he intended to be this way. That he had not tried his best to be otherwise. That he had not starved himself to lose weight. That he didn’t work as hard as he could for Mrs. Henderson.

All they saw was the appearance, and nothing beyond.

As Cecil walked out of the Butterfly garden, he walked along the path. The book of butterflies held to his side, forgotten as one of the best parts of his day. He was dejected, and rejected.

Just a few little words had made it appear so much harder for him. Like he would never, ever, have a real chance at doing any of the dreams he had just minutes before.

Heavy were the footfalls he made as he looked up to find the path back to the entrance. He would go home and get ready for school-

The very thought of school turned his stomach. Monday seemed so close now, and with no respite at the end of the day, he was going to be back into it before he could know it.

Looking up, he could see the day was starting to fade away into orange as the hours drew it to a close. He had no idea where his mother was, but he also knew that she wouldn’t leave without him.

Suddenly, he heard something, something touched his chin.

It felt soft. Impossibly soft.

He looked around, and he saw nothing. Then he saw a butterfly fly off with a glimmer of gold.

Gold?

His mind raced with that fact. That seemed impossible. He looked at the book, then realized that he hadn’t gotten a proper look at it, so he followed along a path that he hadn’t really been down before.

He chugged along until he saw a sign. Another simple sign that caught his attention. Pulling him away from his search, and into simply reading it.

“Primitive Flowering Plants”

It had been several weeks since his best friend had left him. Since he had started to accept her passing. It was just long enough, in the throes of his sadness, for the most powerful emotion in him to take over.

His curiosity.

He walked into the shaded area, and drew in the variety of trees, some of which he knew, some he didn’t. Some of which sounded more familiar to him as condiments. The peppercorn and Nutmeg trees were certainly not what he expected.

Yet there they were, with a stunning magnolia that simply stole the show with it’s massive flowers.

He looked at it for a moment, until he heard something that he hadn’t in a while. Something that was hard to notice for noticing it.

Silence. There was not a sound that penetrated into that small grove of trees. Quiet reigned, and looking down, there didn’t seem to be that many people that had entered besides.

The strangeness of the place gripped him for a minute, but he also loved it. It felt strangely personal, and had a hint of something powerful with it. These trees were old. Very old. If the signs were to be believed they were some of the first flowering plants to have come onto the scene of evolution.

The first.

He could hardly wrap his head around a world without flowers. What else would it be without? Lacking such a surprise of color, would happiness even exist?

Cecil looked at the Nutmeg flowers on a tree that felt like it was always drawing nearer to him.

Then he saw it. It was the motion that caught his attention first. He had been surrounded by the quick and fluttery actions of hundreds and hundreds of butterflies, with a spread of color that dazzled the eyes.

In this area, there were not as many butterflies. In fact, as he could see, there was only one.

What about this particular butterfly held his attention so strongly was a mix of factors. One might have been the color. It was practically grey to his eyes, but… it might have been a trick of the light, but the grey shimmered as the wings seemed to breath with the light California wind. As if it were metal silver, not grey. He certainly also saw no other butterflies on the nutmeg tree before him. The most basic identifier didn’t come to his mind until later. Plant focused people often make that mistake, because what is often so basic to us is not all that determinate to plants.

This was the only Butterfly he had seen with a foot-wide wing span. With a body that was a inch wide and half a foot long. He stared at it, blue eyes transfixed on both the plain colors, yet the pure magnificence that it held.

Inexplicably, He felt his hand come forward, and reach forward. He didn’t know why, and certainly didn’t have reason to. It certainly was a reach beyond himself, and who he was, and what he knew he presented himself as. Butterflies loved flowers and well-tended plants. Clean smelling, healthy things.

Something in him wanted to be part of that world though. He wanted to be here, to be something like that butterfly.

To his shock, to his astonishment that he would remember for the rest of his life, the massive insect took flight from its perch and with a loop, and a motion that looked almost Alien with it’s wings, it landed perfectly on his fingers.

He could only feel himself breathe for a few minutes, staring at the antenna, the face, the eyes, and the wings that covered his hand from view. He could feel the weight of it. The weight of a butterfly!

Then he felt the marvelous feeling as the wings brushed against his flesh as they pulled the creature up… and up… and up…

Before he could really see where it was going, it was gone, and the world around him faded back into focus.

All that was left to Cecil was that he wished to follow.