Hey all! This is my submission for the #TNTWillContest, which was just launched!.You might recognize the unnamed main character of this story...hope you enjoy this snapshot into her life, and be sure to submit your own entries as well!
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They said the garden would never grow. Never to her face, of course, but in whispers loud enough for her to hear. They said that any green thumb that family'd ever had burned up with her parents in the fire. And that house where she lived with her aunt—it was built on forest ground, rocky and dry. When rain fell it got caught among the leaves.
She was a willowy little redhead with colorful skirts and a crooked smile, and they all thought she was a little strange. She talked about her garden to anyone who would listen (or pretend to), and even sometimes to no one.
"I'm starting with flowers," she told her seat partner at school. "Peonies, bluebells—oh, and sunflowers, of course! My favorite. But eventually, I'm going to grow tomatoes, and peas, and carrots!"
She was eight then, her fingers barely large enough to wrap around the glass of a root beer float. After school, she would sit crosslegged in the dirt beneath the rose trellis her mother had started years before, seeds cupped in her palm and a watering can in her lap, until one day, the first sprouts began to push through the ground.
"They're still babies," she reported to her seat partner. "But by gosh, I know they'll grow."
And they did, slowly, fueled by love and water and the whispers of sunlight that filtered through the trees. And by the time she was nine and a half, the redhead had grown herself a small rainbow.
Every day she told her seat partner about the progress, and every day, his annoyance grew. He was a blonde boy with an angry smile, and he hated anything that made her happy. And one day, finally, when she was ten, she came home to torn roots and smashed blossoms and the disappearing sound of a child's footfalls.
When she arrived at the general store, her freckled cheeks streaked with tears, the owner suggested (gently) that she retire from gardening. She shook her head and held out her hand for another pack of seeds.
She didn't talk to her seat partner about her garden anymore. In fact, she stopped talking much at all. But every day, she came home from school and tended to her garden with indomitable patience. She planted peonies and bluebells and sunflowers and yes, tomatoes and carrots and peas. And that was only the half of it.
When she was fourteen, the redhead found her old seat partner and handed him a photograph of a garden that overflowed with color.
"Thank you," she told him.
That afternoon, she came home to find him at her front gate, tugging at a stubborn stem. His hands had been pierced by rose thorns and his shirt was streaked with dirt. When he saw her, he ran. She didn't chase him. Instead, she stepped into her garden and stood beneath the canopy of flowers, where the sun sent petal-shaped shadows dancing across her cheeks.
