The Ones That Lean Away

The rec center had been closed for two summers, and the garden behind it had gone feral. Sunflowers everywhere, taller than either of them, going brown and heavy in the September heat.

"They're paving it Monday," Maya said. "So we might as well take the seeds."

Soren tugged at a stalk. It came up with a whole clot of dirt, roots and all, a wet tearing sound underneath. He shook it and looked at the tangle hanging off the bottom.

"Weird," he said.

"What."

"These two." He held up his sunflower next to one still standing beside the hole. "Their roots were braided together. Like completely mixed up. But look at this one." He pointed at a third plant, half a step away. "That one keeps to itself. Its roots go straight down and away."

Maya crouched. She had already stopped listening to the paving and the seeds. She was looking at the dirt.

"Do it again," she said. "Pull another one."

Soren pulled another. Same thing. Some pairs came up with their roots knotted into each other. Others came up clean, roots angled apart like the two plants had been politely ignoring each other underground the whole time.

"That doesn't make sense," Maya said. "They're all sunflowers. They all want the same water. They should all be fighting for it. Everywhere."

"They're not, though."

"I know they're not. That's what doesn't make sense." She sat back on her heels. "If I'm a plant, and there's water down there, I grow roots at the water. I don't care who's next to me. I just grab."

"But these two didn't grab from each other." Soren laid the two braided plants side by side on the path. "They shared. And those two," he nodded at the clean-rooted ones, "raced."

Maya went quiet, chewing the inside of her cheek. Then she started walking the rows, looking down.

"Come here. Look at where they are."

Soren came.

"The braided ones," she said. "They're always close together in a clump. Like they came up from one spot."

"One seed head," Soren said slowly. "One flower drops a whole ring of seeds in one place. When it dies. All the seeds from that flower land in a little circle."

"So the braided ones are from the same parent." Maya's voice sped up. "They're like a family. And the ones that lean away, that race, those blew in from somewhere else. Different plants. Strangers."

Soren stood there holding a sunflower by the stalk and did not say anything for a moment, because the garden had just rearranged itself in front of him. It was not a field of plants all doing the same greedy thing. It was families, sitting in little rings, being gentle with each other. And strangers between them, elbowing.

"That can't be right," he said, which was what he said when he wanted something to be right so badly he had to test it before he let himself. "Roots don't have eyes. How would a root know who's family?"

"I don't know," Maya said. "But look at the dirt and tell me I'm wrong."

He couldn't. He walked the rows himself, and every clump of siblings had roots grown loose and shared, staying shallow, leaving room. Every stranger pair had roots driven down hard and separate, each one trying to get under the other.

He crouched at a boundary where a family ring ended and a stranger began. On one side, the roots relaxed. Six inches over, they turned into a war.

"Same water," he said. "Same dirt. Same sun. The only thing different is who's next to who."

"They're telling each other apart," Maya said. "Underground. In the dark. With no eyes."

"How."

"I said I don't know how." She wasn't frustrated. She was almost laughing. "Something in the roots. Something they let out into the dirt and something they smell back, maybe. Chemicals. A name written in chemicals."

"You're guessing."

"So guess with me. What else could it be?" She held up a braided pair, dirt raining off it. "These two grew slower on top so they could grow together on the bottom. They gave up being tall so their sister could drink. Why would a plant do that unless it knew?"

Soren took the pair from her and turned it over in the light. The two root systems had grown into each other so completely that he couldn't tell where one plant stopped. He pulled, gently, and they held on to each other.

"My little cousins do this," he said. "They share the good snacks with each other and hide them from me. Because I'm not theirs."

"Plants have cousins," Maya said. "Plants know their cousins."

They looked at the whole feral garden then, the same way, without saying anything. All of it. Two summers of sunflowers nobody planted, sorting themselves in the dark into families and strangers, deciding who to feed and who to fight, on a lot that was going to be a parking lot on Monday.

"Nobody knows this is here," Soren said. "All of it. Happening. Under a garden behind a closed building."

"Everywhere," Maya said. "Not just here. Every yard. Every crack in the sidewalk with two weeds in it. One of them might be helping the other one, and we just walk past." She pressed the heels of her hands into her eyes. "How much of this is going on that we never dug up."

Soren pulled out his notebook and drew the two shapes, the braided roots and the racing roots, next to each other on the page. He wrote something under each one and turned it so Maya could see.

Under the braided pair he had written: sisters. Under the strangers: not.

"We should take these two," Maya said, picking up a braided pair by their tangled feet. "The sisters. Plant them somewhere that isn't getting paved."

"Next to each other," Soren said.

"Obviously next to each other."

They filled a plastic bag with dirt from the clump so the sisters would come up in soil that already had their name in it, and carried them out through the gap in the fence, roots still holding on to each other, all the way to the corner where the light turned green.