Middle Ground (27 page)

I walked around the side of the house and studied the wraparound porch where hanging baskets overflowed with tendrils of vines and flowers. The colors that burst around me inspired me to open myself up to the elements. My whole life I’ve been taught to curl in on myself, to close myself off, because if you expose too much, you’re vulnerable. But these flowers expose everything. It’s remarkable how much beauty is wrapped inside a single bud. What if plants were like people? What if they were too afraid to open themselves up to the elements? Imagine all the colors we would lose.

Maybe people can learn more from nature than they realize.

I continued to walk around the yard and through Elaine’s flower garden. The rosebushes were beginning to bud with delicate green and red leaves. Pink blossoms on rhododendron bushes peeked through green cocoons. Everything is reborn. It reminds me pieces of myself have to wither once in a while. Some parts need to die in order for new sprouts to open up. You need to trim off dead branches so new ones can grow.

The house is bordered with sharp leaves of tulips reaching for the sun and daffodils bowing their yellow heads. So much life surrounds me here.

I strolled inside and stared at the display of guitars in the living room and mandolins and banjos and an old wooden piano with the cabinet missing, exposing its keys and strings like ribs. The keys are chipped from so much use.

Baskets hang in the kitchen stuffed with papayas, mangoes, and bananas. Others are stocked with potatoes, onions, garlic, and avocados. Food that grows. Food that’s alive. I noticed a picture frame made out of tree branches. A photograph mobile made out of twigs and sticks hangs in the hallway.

I walked out to the back porch, where I saw the ocean flip and roll in the distance. I realized my dream had come true. A wave did come and sweep my old life away. And it was cleansing. But it took more than water. It took a mixture of people and love and friends, and those elements, when combined, are the strongest force of all.

At night we play games. Elaine’s house is full of them. Word games, board games, card games. Thomas taught me how to play cribbage, and Elaine taught me how to play chess. We read stories out loud by candlelight. Some people make up their own stories. There’s no television to turn on. We get more out of the night because we make our own authentic performances.

Tonight we sat out on the front porch and stared at the sky. Science can answer most of my questions—which stars are in which constellation and how far away they are, why they light up, why some shine brighter, why they fade. But I prefer not to know all the specifics. I like to make up my own theories.

I see light everywhere around me tonight. It starts in the sky and ends in the town lights at the bottom of the hill. It’s all starting to connect.

Without telling me I needed this time to unwind, Justin showed me. The next few days I learned how to clear my head. I learned how to enjoy time again. I didn’t need medication to do it; I didn’t need a counter-drug to keep me going. I just needed the right perspective.

Justin and his dad worked on plans for the detention center, and Justin worked with Gabe by video calls to design a virtual display of every floor in the dormitory. They reconstructed the layout of the grounds, the courtyard, and the electric fence. They labored over the subway lines, like doctors looking over a patient, trying to analyze which arteries led to which organs.

He wouldn’t let me work more than a few hours a day, maybe because re-creating the detention center forced me back there, and he wanted me to heal. I had only physically escaped; he helped me to mentally leave.

After three days, I’d nearly forgotten my six-month sentence. It felt like a life removed. It’s easy to forget your problems when you can run away from them. It’s easy to forget other people are suffering when your own life is secure and comfortable and perfect. It’s tempting to stay contained in that safe bubble forever.

It was a sunny afternoon and I grabbed a box of chalk and a few poetry books from Elaine’s bookshelf in the living room. Elaine was planting tulips along the sidewalk at the edge of the yard. I joined her and set the books on the grass. I crossed my legs and skimmed through passages and dog-eared my favorite pages.

I looked up and noticed Elaine studying me from under the brim of her straw hat.

“You’re getting color back in your face,” she told me.

I nodded. “I’m feeling better,” I said. “I’m still trying to get the crazy out of my system.”

“Oh, don’t do that,” she said, and patted soil around a green stem. “Crazy isn’t your problem. One in three people is crazy. And the other two are liars.”

I laughed and told her it was probably true. “You seem pretty grounded,” I said.

She shook her head. “Your only normal friends are the ones you don’t know very well,” she said. “But I always tell Justin, I’d rather be off my rocker than in one.” She smiled, Justin’s smile, wide with dimples. “You just need to unwind, that’s all,” she said.

I lay on my stomach in the grass and started to write poetry on the sidewalk, just like I imagined doing when I was in the DC. Elaine helped me. We dug through poems by Frost, Wordsworth, Rumi, and Shakespeare. We pointed out our favorite passages. We wrote words on the sidewalk with red, yellow, and green chalk until our fingers were as stained as paintbrushes. I didn’t notice Justin walk up to us until he cleared his throat. I blinked up at him and squinted through the sunlight.

“Here’s your birthday present,” he informed me. “Sorry it’s a little late, but I couldn’t really bring it to the DC.” His hand was wrapped around a plant standing next to him. It was almost as tall as him, and its roots were wrapped tightly in a burlap bag.

I picked myself up and examined my gift. The trunk was thin enough for me to curl my fingers around. It looked scraggly and weak. It was real, that much I could tell from the thin texture of the tiny leaves and the earthy scent of the roots.

I looked from him to the plant and back. “This is for me?” I asked.

He watched me with amusement and nodded.

“Um, thanks,” I said, and tried to take it from him, but its shape made it too awkward to lift. I scratched my head. “Should we put it inside?” I asked.

Elaine snorted.

“It’s a tree,” Justin informed me. “I thought you could plant it,” he said. “Leave your mark.”

I nodded slowly and walked around it. “What’s wrong with it?” I asked. “It looks like it’s dying.”

“Dying?” he asked.

“It’s so small and skinny. Is it sick?”

Justin tried to fight a smile.

“Hey, I didn’t take botany in high school,” I reminded him. “Not much use for it these days.”

“It’s a sapling,” he said. “This is what they look like.”

“Wow.” I tugged on one of the branches. “No wonder people run out of patience planting them. They must take a lifetime to grow.”

He ran his hand through his hair and Elaine snorted again.

“Believe it or not, they begin as seeds,” Elaine said.

Justin grabbed the gangly trunk. “This is how they’re supposed to look—not like the full-grown God-awful plastic monstrosities people get shipped to their homes and then tack into the ground like chintzy lawn ornaments,” he said.

“Well, it’s a good thing you’re not bitter about it,” I said.

I studied the tan, smooth trunk and the thin branches spilling over the top speckled with small mauve-colored leaves. The longer I observed it, the more I felt a connection to this tree, like we were both waiting to be planted, to land somewhere solid and let our roots unwind.

“Can we plant it right now?” I asked. Justin nodded and picked the tree up by the base.

“Pick a spot,” he told me. He followed me back to the house and I examined the lawn like a critic evaluating a painting, looking for textures and depths and shades. I walked around the entire yard before I made a decision. I tried to imagine the best place for it to grow, an area where it would thrive. I chose a spot east of the house, a sunny space where the ground rose slightly and the ocean was visible down the slope of the hill. You could still see the road and observe who was coming and going from downtown. You could people-watch or stare at the stars. If I had to plant roots anywhere in the world, this is where I would choose to be.

“Here,” I said, and pointed with my foot.

Justin set the tree down and jogged to the garage, coming back with a shovel and some work gloves. He stood next to me and talked me through it, but he made me do all the work. I pierced the ground with the shovel, and the grass gave way to thick brown soil, the texture of clay. I had to stand on the shovel in order to dig through the stubborn ground. Justin was patient (since my muscle strength was lacking these days) and explained how deep to make it. Once I was done digging, he showed me how to score the sides of the hole by making grooves in the dirt with the edge of the shovel. He told me it would give the roots a place to expand.

My muscles ached in my shoulders and all the way down my back. For the first time in months I was growing instead of deteriorating. Sweat dripped down my forehead and nose and I licked it up with my tongue. I could feel toxins seeping out, and sunshine flowing in. It was the best medicine I’d ever been prescribed. It was a relief to use my hands and legs and muscles for a purpose. I loved the ache and the burn in my arms. Why have a body, why have this collection of muscles and tissue, if you don’t put it to use?

I wiped the sweat from my forehead with dirty gloves and we took a break to drink lemonade before we planted the tree.

He handed me a pair of shears and showed me how to cut the rope and remove the burlap bag. I tugged the bag free and there was a tight mound of roots held firmly together. I handled it delicately, like a surgeon transplanting an organ from one body into another. I lowered the roots into the ground and Justin helped me mix fresh soil and fertilizer with the rest of the dirt we dug up. I filled the hole slowly and carefully like I was wrapping the roots in blankets and pressed my feet around the base to pack it down. I couldn’t escape the idea that I was planting a piece of myself that day.

We stuck two stakes into the ground and attached them to the trunk using rubber chains, to keep the tree steady in wind gusts. I stood back and studied my first planting project.

“You left your mark,” he told me.

I leaned my arm on the shovel.

“We just have to water the soil so the roots can settle in and we’re done,” he said. I arched my eyebrows in surprise. This wasn’t so hard. A little time-consuming, but not in a bad way. My fingers were gritty with dirt and my arms and face were flushed from the sun and I felt more of a sense of accomplishment in that afternoon than I’d felt in all my years in digital school.

“That’s it?” I said. “Why don’t people plant trees more often?” I wondered.

Justin shrugged and reminded me it took time. “It takes ten or fifteen years for them to grow up,” he told me. “That’s like five thousand years in digital time. There’s no instant gratification.” He pointed to the trunk. “There’s nowhere to hang a wall screen or plug in a cord. Makes it pretty useless to most people these days.”

We pulled off our shoes and Justin stretched a hose from the side of the house and we sprayed the ground until the soil was dark and saturated. I stood back and admired it. I liked the idea it would get stronger every day.

I lay down on the warm grass and I stared up at the tiny dark leaves, like little hands waving to the sky. Justin flopped down next to me and held my hand against his chest.

“Thanks for the present,” I said.

“You like it?” he asked.

I nodded. It was the best gift anyone had ever given me. “I love that you show these things to me.”

“I love showing you.”

I asked him why.

“Because you absorb it. Most people let experiences bounce right off them. But you soak it all in. And that’s the only way it stays.”

***

We sat in Thomas’s basement for our last conference call. The wall screen projected several scenes: one was of Gabe and Clare talking to us from a flipscreen in the basement of the detention center. She’d stayed in Los Angeles to help Gabe, since he didn’t know how to use the computers to contact us.

Another screen showed Molly and Scott sitting around an apartment with a roomful of recruits, all young kids in jeans and T-shirts. Pat was on another screen, in his apartment in Hollywood, with a few more volunteers.

Riley and Jake sat in the basement with us. Riley and Justin would fly a plane down to L.A. tomorrow afternoon to transfer half the students. I’d drive down separately with Jake.

Clare had organized the hideouts in three different sites: one outside Santa Barbara, one at a retired airport on the coast, and one in a valley south of Sacramento. We separated ourselves into teams responsible for transporting groups of students.

“You think they’re ready for this?” Molly asked Gabe.

“You kidding?” he said. “It’s a zoo in here. Eight staff members can’t handle eight hundred squirrelly teenagers. One kid already figured out a way to hack through elevator security. He got about thirty guys onto one of the girls’ floors before they broke it up.”

“And the staff meeting is still scheduled?” Justin asked.

Gabe nodded. “Vaughn flies in tomorrow morning. I heard some doctors talking. Rumor is he’s introducing a different drug in this place. He’s caught on that the current one isn’t working anymore. They’ve suspended all the counseling sessions.”

Gabe and I discussed the details of how to move around in the DC, since we knew the layout. I dictated who I wanted, where, and when. I showed them how to make our move inside and how I wanted people situated. I told Gabe how I needed him involved. No one questioned me; everyone was busy taking notes and listening. It wasn’t until a half an hour into my speech I realized I was calling all the shots.

Justin did a final recap to make sure the counter-drugs were ready and the transportation was set.