Chapter One ~ Born in Greenery

Amy secretly believed that Kalicia had been born in a greenhouse, had been suckled by a calathea, and was raised surrounded by dank mushroom-soaked soil and crawling centipedes. That was the only way she could explain how Kalicia came to take up so much space in her novel, and how even her semi-autobiographical fiction was filled with the other girl's life.

If asked, most people in Crooked River would say Amy was spinning a narrative around herself like a caterpillar will spin a cocoon, and that, as her story spread, the more wild it would become. For Amy novelistic sprawl wasn't important. She'd seen the heavy tomes which became the Twilight series. Besides, Kalicia's fate was tied to her own ever since her father had nearly run down the girl running to school. Amy both owed Kalicia a debt and wanted to see herself in the girl's courage.

The townspeople mostly believed that Kalicia had been born in the Crooked River hospital like any other child, and if her mother secreted a few herbs in her pocket to soften the procedure, that didn't mean that Kalicia had been grown by plants or that her first word was "dirt." Amy's story of Kalicia's origin notwithstanding, even the locals admitted that the impact of greenery on Kalicia's life was immediate and profound, and they allowed Amy a certain poetic license, as if they believed that Kalicia's origin was mystical. Because the Vedmak family had moved from elsewhere, the townspeople ascribed the stories of Kalicia's inventiveness to her foreign origin. Later, many of them would claim that they'd been too generous, and that they should have cracked down on Amy's fabulation before it grew out of control.

Elva said to any who would listen that the family was as drab as a dishcloth, and her claim was echoed in more profane terms by Preston, the town cop. Vernon, who ran the café, wasn't so sure. He'd seen lights on at all hours in the greenhouse, as though unnatural fruits were under cultivation, or rituals were being performed meant to pull roots from the ground.

Amy wasn't the type to turn her back on mystery, so she clung to her books as though they would protect her from the journey into adulthood and let her fantasies face her demons. There was more to Amy than her short stature and bobbed hair showed, however. Although she would have been mortified to admit it, her initial short story--which was a slavish imitation of her favourite TV series about girls and vampires--had transformed into an entirely different text. She'd kept going past the implications of the show and began to develop side characters into the show's narrative heavyweights. The many revisions meant that the story was unrecognizable as the one she'd started, and she pulled it down from a fan fiction site--where granted it hadn't received much attention--and removed those characters from the series who seemed insipid now that she had taken control of the story.

Throwing it to one side, Amy began again. She incorporated others who couldn't exist in such a world and then transformed the world they were in. Revision after revision, and finally the beginning of the story began to take a shape Amy could be proud of. Although she didn't know where it was going, she could sense that she was writing her new self onto the page.

The fantasy trappings had fallen away: the male rescuer, the magic which drove the plot, as well as the quest for a secret that everyone in the story was seeking. She left the medieval swords and honour and manners behind and found herself treading the well-known paths of her local park. She wrote about neighbours and friends, the missed chances and sudden fortune of those she knew, and those she imagined. She constructed a main character, Kelly, and fleshed her with attributes from girls at school. Amy had found a voice, and even if it wasn't yet hers, she was at least listening. She had to. She was also the narrator of her first novel.

The more she wrote about Kelly, the more she began to realize she was basing her character on Kalicia Vedmak. Kelly was gradually being subsumed by what little Amy knew about Kalicia. Even when she was still curling her hair by pretending that her fingers were a curling iron, Amy knew that Kalicia was special, and that meant she needed to learn her secret if she were to make her the main character in her novel. That was difficult, since Kalicia's family lived on the other side of Crooked River, and they'd gone to different primary schools. Amy had to rely on gossip, like the stories from old Ann Land who knew the town's history, Elva, who'd been the first to contact the family, and friends Amy had cultivated who lived on the west side of town near the greenhouse.

The Vedmaks lived in the old Frank Oliver place, where the rich old man had gone increasingly mad. He'd endured to well over a hundred--momentarily inspiring stories that he'd located a longevity potion--and he spent those years building and adding onto his massive greenhouse. Strangers to the area would stop to inquire about a museum or City Hall, they were so taken by the thirty-metre dome that Oliver had built. He added rooms with his fortune until it was a sprawling monstrosity, and many compared it to the munitions plant past Baseline Road which fed off government contracts and was so security-conscious that its management didn't employ anyone in town. There was little about Oliver in the local library, but when she was ten, Amy was already haunting the town archives. She was a familiar enough sight that Betty knew her name. The confusing town records were a deliberate subterfuge, according to Amy's notes, and demanded extra patience in order to sort through the piles of pointless paper to find the permits and deeds which discussed the Frank Oliver farm. The town was trying to hide the magic of the place behind its implacable records.

According to the Crooked River Current, the greenhouse had fallen into disrepair and when the Vedmaks arrived they had poured suspiciously expansive savings into replacing broken panes and restocking the shelves with plants. They apparently didn't bother to uproot the local wild plants which had taken over the soil, but merely planted more and let them fight it out. Local farmers were outraged, and some articles described townspeople trying to take them to court for spreading milkweed, wild mustard, and dandelion seeds into the neighbourhood. Such was their commitment to letting nature run amuck, that they let various groundhogs and squirrels root in the ground or sparrows flicker far overhead on the metal scaffolding that was meant to hold the taller vines and support the trees. The broken panes encouraged birds to nest in the rafters, and even Amy's father complained that the place was impossible to insure.

The Vedmaks set up in the adjoining house, built a stall by the road to sell to passersby, and to all appearances seemed to want to become part of the community. When diplomatic relations seemed called for, the townspeople sent Elva to knock on their door with a banana bread wrapped in foil. The best spy to send into enemy camp, Elva was strangely closemouthed with locals, but would spill even her own secrets to a new audience.

According to Ann Land, Elva was greeted with an eye behind a door which only opened a crack. Once she'd declared herself, she was met with more hospitality, although she emerged with stories of the greenhouse tour which most people thought were lies meant to increase her standing in the neighbourhood. Amy wondered if Rastlina had really been careless enough to set the banana bread on a stool and by the time she'd taken the tour it was swarming with ants, but she believed that Ann Land's version had left out precious details. According to Amy's interpretation, Rastlina merely cut off a piece and ate it absently, as though the formic acid added zest to an otherwise sweet snack. Ann Land had smacked her lips over the story, and that was enough for Amy to regret that she hadn't brought something for Ann to taste with the memory.

The Vedmak stall was mostly frequented by curious locals, but when they found a sign indicating the price of the vegetables and potted plants instead of an attendant they could dig into with questions, they paid and left without their curiosity satisfied. Their prurient interest was the initial draw, but they returned for the strangely voluptuous produce. The tomatoes were large enough to encourage rumours that Ralph from the slaughterhouse was seeding the soil with blood, although when asked, Ralph couldn't explain where they might be getting it. Carefully noting every social misstep, Amy began to get a better sense of Kalicia's story.

Amy knew that high school girls had won awards for their writing, and some famous journalists had started by reporting a house fire or a dead cat. She was determined to follow in those illustrious if diminutive footprints. She would tell the story of the Vedmaks, how they'd left their home country to grow strange plants in a mysterious old greenhouse. She could already picture herself walking up to receive her award, ducking her head in modesty at the honour. Amy was nearly to the stairs when she ran into the half wall which separated the hallway from the bathroom. "What happened?" her mother called from downstairs.

"Just dropped something," Amy hollered.

"What?"

"Dropped the ball," Amy pursed her lips at her cleverness. She'd have to exercise those muscles if she were going to be worthy of awards.

A few days later, Amy had the brilliant idea of complaining about her period to her father. Her mother was at work. She wanted to see Dr. Morehouse and she knew it would happen a lot quicker if she pled with her father.

Everyone from Ann Land, to Elva, to her own father, told Amy that the Vedmaks had transformed the old greenhouse, and that fecundity had been visited on the naïve couple. Rastlina had apparently visited the doctor complaining of weight gain and nausea and Amy wanted to get to the bottom of the matter. Once she talked about her rather ordinary cycle with Dr. Morehouse, she pressed him for details.

"Surely she must have known." She looked toward the door where a waiting room of restless patients shuffled through hunting and fishing magazines.

Even as he passed on the gossip, Dr. Morehouse shook his head over Rastlina's naiveté. "How someone in this day and age doesn't understand how that works. Should have come to me. Should I have explained what comes easy to a hog?" He seemed to remember who he was talking to for a moment, so Amy threw him back into the story with a question.

"But the childbirth was normal. Like, no problems with gestation." She was proud of the word. It was newly minted, as far as Amy was concerned, straight from biology class.

"Sure, Rastlina attended her appointments. Nothing unusual. And before long--right on schedule--she was ready to birth her child." He seemed to guess what she was looking for. "Her husband brought a book. Read aloud from it while his wife screamed. Damnedest thing I ever saw. And I see lots, let me tell you. There was the Porter birth--"

"Why did he read to her? To calm her down?"

Dr. Morehouse shrugged. "Who knows? Competing for attention, or delivering some important message. You don't need to worry about anything like that, unless you've been . . ."

Amy's face grew hot. "No, I haven't. And no plans to."

"OK. Send your father in."

Dismissed, Amy sat in the waiting room with her feet on the lower shelf of the coffee table where the magazines and children's books were kept. She wondered what her dad was saying, although she was soon distracted by the image of a screaming and sweaty Rastlina, naked from the waist down, giving birth while staff shuffled around the gurney and her husband mumbled the words from some mysterious book. If she were to get her hands on the book, the mystery would be solved. She'd know why Kalicia wasn't afraid of anyone. That would provide the next piece of the puzzle which would explain the girl's disdain for teachers and the principal.

Once the Vedmaks took Kalicia home, Amy imagined the townspeople watching as the new parents went through the greenhouse before entering the house. Later, Amy figured, that would be used as evidence that Kalicia had endured an uncertain start. For most of the residents of Crooked River, that would set the tone for what Kalicia called her interest and what Amy would come to label as an obsession.

As her father was driving home, Amy leaned her head against the window and peered into the past. The greenhouse had become Kalicia's favourite place. She grew up with her mother taking her from pot to planter, and even as she learned to distinguish the ferns from the flowers and the tubers from the vines, her mother inculcated her into the mysteries of the plants. Her father was more pragmatic. While he acknowledged that the plants brought income to the family where other jobs had not--he said that growing vegetables wasn't synonymous with the miracle of the greenhouse's rich dirt or a seed's acknowledgment of the perfect conditions to send out a shoot.

"Feeling better?" Her father began to slow the car.

"Not going to puke in the car, if that's what you're worried about."

"All squared away?" That was as close as he could come to asking about Amy's doctor visit, although Amy imagined he'd listened when the doctor said there was nothing wrong with her.

"A normal period." She looked at him. "That's coming from a man."

Her father kept his eyes on the road.

"Watch your driving. Could be dangerous out there." To a stranger the admonition might sound like teasing, but she had suddenly remembered, just as he had, when he'd slammed on the brakes and Kalicia had nearly been hit. Amy could still see Kalicia's face, dour with a slight grin, and her eyes looking at Amy instead of her father, as though she'd been responsible. Her chest still clenched at the thought of that vague disinterest.

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