#firstick

Lana soon expected a visit from Mrs. Pack every other week; she suspected that her neighbor was dosing with the herbal tea more frequently than her recommendation, but she shrugged that off. Cinnamon and anise were for taste, and the other herbs hidden inside weren’t likely to harm the nosy woman.

Their conversation at the party had been quiet, but somehow, news spread that the garden was going to be opened. From then on, packs of children were found hovering at the hedge walls, unconcernedly playing ball games and extended games of tag. They all seemed focus on their play, but their bright eyes were constantly straying to the large gate in the hedges. They’d heard the stories from their parents, how the Gellers had thrown a party each year and how the windows on the back of the house were always shrouded with heavy curtains. Snoopers were kindly but firmly turned aside as soon as their itching fingers touched the heavy fabric, so close to lifting it and peeking beyond. Rumors insisted that some succeeded, but those stolen glimpses were always of darkness, with strange lights twinkling softly as if from a great distance, even if it was bright day outside.

The rumors grew and cycled through the neighborhood, and all reached Lana’s ears. She’d laugh in the privacy of her room, and then walk downstairs and step through to the backyard, gazing around in thoughtful silence.

It took a few days, in the middle of spring, before anyone noticed that the large gate had acquired a small hand-painted sign:

Spring Garden Hours

Sunday 10am-4pm

Monday-Friday 6pm-9pm

Saturdays by supervision only

If you climb the trees, you must help weed.

Everyone wondered what “by supervision only” might mean, but the whispers were suddenly silenced when, the following Saturday, the gate opened. Lana walked through and watched the neighbor children who’d been warring on her front lawn for a moment before tying her hair back with a bandana and said, “Well, if your families are interested, I’m going to give a tour.”

All imaginary battles were put to truce, and the children scattered, some shrieking in excitement as they tore down the sidewalk and threw themselves through their own doorways. News of the garden brought the families out in force; a crowd gathered at the foot of 634’s old driveway. Lana pulled on a pair of dirt-encrusted gardening gloves, hefted a shovel, and beckoned the crowd with a smile.

The few steps through the gate took the visitors from spring to the heat of midsummer. The sun hung high in the sky, and the air was warm without humidity; it hummed as heavy honeybees flew sleepily from plant to hive. The path from the gate into the garden was paved with smooth grey rock, intercut with wandering spirals of polished river stones of different colors. Soon, the visitors realized that the shades of color split and would lead to various parts of the garden; the shiny black pointed to extensive flowerbeds that were the source of the heaviest scents. Despite the time of season, the beds were in full bloom. Voluminous orange and white roses and large crimson marigolds ringed the outside of the flowerbeds, which were soon revealed to be interlocking circles that bled from color to color. Lana explained that the raised beds were to separate soil types as needed, and the visitors very quickly lost track of all the flower types she named off. Nestled in each bed were painted clay pots overflowing with bright green leaves that gave off a light mint scent. Lana smiled as she ran her fingers over the frilled leaves. “Catmint. Keeps away most plant hazards, except for cats. We’ll see how they take it if I get any in here.”

The black stones wound into the center of the flowerbeds, where a canopy of ivy had long covered a small pagoda with small windchimes tinkling lightly from its arches. Ornamental rock gardens framed with glass mosaics set in cement surrounded the pagoda, as well as small fountains and ponds framed by miniature, intricately-carved and painted wooden trellises. At cardinal points around the pagoda were benches shaded by ornamental trees; sugar feeders hung from cast-iron hooks were planted nearby. As they watched, hummingbirds with jewel-like feathers hovered and zipped through the pagoda and flowers to stop at the feeders before moving deeper into the garden depths. Butterflies of all shades flitted from flower to flower and lazily sunned their wings.

Trickling water interspersed with the chimes filtered through the air, and the flower’s perfume gave the whole area a lazy, sleepy atmosphere. The cushioned benches looked more comfortable by the second, and even the grass surrounding the stone path seemed to invite the visitors to stretch out and doze like so many sun-drunk cats. Before she lost her guests in the soporific garden, Lana gently shooed them back down the path to the clearer air by the gate.

Back at the head of the path, a light blue path crossed to a grove of willow trees, through which were orchards of fruit trees. Unable to contain themselves and now free from the flower garden’s influence, the kids broke away from the group and started swinging from the lower-hanging branches. The more adventurous started to grapple up higher and higher in the grove, and laughed as Lana called out sternly, “I will remember this! Each of you now owe me weeding time!”

Their laughter echoed through the whispering branches, and the tour paused a while as families dispersed. Parents watched with anxiety as their sons and daughters worked higher and higher, some emerging flush with victory from the top branches. Stronger teens were able to coax the more nervous who clung to the lowest limbs with wide eyes, and with assurances that they would be caught, they would be okay, they settled against the sturdy trunks. No fruit had appeared as of yet, but Lana kept a mental note of which children climbed the highest, as the fall harvest would require an army of helping hands.

Certain of the neighbors wandered through the rows, vaguely wondering how such an extensive orchard could share space with the flowerbeds and still all be contained in the block that the Gellers had taken over those decades ago. The garden had an overwhelming sense of space; all of the pollen from the flowerbeds should have made the air heavy, like too much cologne in a small room. Surely the perfumes would have carried through the hedges to the rest of the neighborhood, but even here in the orchard, the only smells were of bark and the blossoming fruit trees. It was as if all the scents were dispersed over miles of land. Even more strangely, the heat and bloom of the flower garden should have been mirrored by a well-fruited orchard, and yet here, the trees were only yet coming into bloom. Lana’s garden seemed to operate on different time scales.

The brown stone path led to the ranch house that used to be 634, and stood next to the corner that 602 occupied. It had been converted into a workspace supporting the garden’s operations, with the floors being stripped down to the bare cement base below. The front sitting room had been fitted with extensive shelving that Lana intended to section off for each of her new little gardeners, along with outdoor furniture in case a gardener needed a break. What might have been the dining room held crates of the small stones from the various paths along with various sacks of sod, soil mixes, and mulch. The back bedroom had large double doors that led to the garden itself, and had been completely gutted and served as storage space for pots, pallets, and more gardening tools. The garage was maintained as a carpentry space, with handheld circular saws, hammers, and drills hung above a heavy wood worktable. Any maintenance to the flowerbed walls were supported here; wooden walls could be cut and drilled, and smaller baskets along the back of her workbench held bits for the jigsaw that was currently next to a flat slat of pine.

“I didn’t know you did woodworking,” Edgar Ford remarked, bending close to the pine and tracing the penciled lines and swoops that covered the pine’s surface.

“Not as much as I garden, and not as intricately. This is a bit of an experiment,” she confessed. “I want to try a small lattice cut from a single piece of wood. If it ends up having to be small, that’s fine; I want to put it with the succulents.”

The succulents laid at the end of the green stones, where the grass had been completely stripped out, and the ground was heterogeneous with sand and gravel. The largest of the plants were cacti that had grown to the knee, and were blooming with bright, singular flowers above crawling green pearls and split stone plants. Parents kept firm grips on their children, who were largely uninterested after being told that they could not in fact test the cacti spines. Many huffed and proclaimed that they were going back to the orchards, and teens promised their parents that they’d look out for their siblings. Some of the adults thought that they should turn back and watch the children, but Lana was at the edge of the succulent garden, where the greenhouse stood.

Tall, white-painted railroad ties housed thick green glass in the space where the 604 house had once stood. The top of the greenhouse barely cleared the top of the hedge wall, and the glass itself gleamed dully in the sunlight. Lana put her hand on the doorknob before pausing, and turning to her expectant group. “The greenhouse generally isn’t going to be open to the public,” she warned. “The plants here have to be closely monitored and cared for.”

With a click, she turned the knob and swung the door open. The air was moist and warm here between the shelves, and Lana insisted they follow her instead of wandering on their own. “Please don’t touch.” She seemed a little nervous, and that tension permeated her group, who crawled cautiously through the rows.

Here, it was quiet except for the quiet buzz of colored lamps. The open shelves of seedlings soon gave way to glass cabinets, which had temperature gauges and other digital readouts suctioned to the doors. The cabinets housed the plants which required climates that she couldn’t create outside, or were meant to quarantine any sick plants she found in her garden. Someone noticed tiny cameras hung from the cabinet roofs, and with a satisfied smile, Lana pulled a small tablet from a pocket in the smock she was wearing, and let the reverent group cluster around her as she opened the camera feeds, flicking through view after view. “I can keep an eye on them while I’m at work, adjust the water, and pump in food as needed,” she explained, her shoulders squared with pride. “I spent the winter setting this system up; I have to be out more than my parents were, so I can’t be in this room all the time.”

Against the back glass wall were the shelves and cabinets that she was most eager to show off. Here, she let the group spread a little so they could peer at the various pots kept here. Someone exclaimed suddenly, noticing the little label set in the shelf -- Bridget and Lila Pells, Christmas. “Lana!” Bridget cried, pushing her way to that shelf a little more forcefully than Lana would have liked, but bending forward with the utmost caution. “Lana,” she repeated and met the gardener’s dark eyes. “Is this--”

“This is where my family grows our gifts,” Lana confirmed, grinning as if it were the holidays already.

The hushed whispers gave way to increased excitement as everyone jostled to find their own label. Lana refused roundly to give specifics, but she did give hints to maintenance tips for the miniature trees, maturing bushes, and growing stalks in the clay pots. Soon, though, she ushered everyone out of the greenhouse doors, saying she’d given away too much already.

The breeze carried laughter and shouts from the orchard as Lana pointed everyone on the path signalled by small reddish stones. This one took its divergence from the blue orchard path and led to neat rows of vegetables, vines, and flowering herbs, including more of the catmint that stood around the flowerbeds. Once again, a few on the tour wondered just how large the garden was, for they could see the ivy pagoda and the sturdy succulents, but neither the arid heat nor the heavy pollen seemed to reach the rows and rows of cabbages, squashes, tomatoes (“heavily pruned,” Lana said, shaking her head sternly at the tomato vines waving innocently in the breeze), and herbs. Mrs. Pack was among the tour group, and she thought of the little bag of tea mix in her kitchen with excitement. Since the advent of spring, her sinuses had been blessedly clear, and she’d come to admit privately that she’d likely been reacting to something other than the Geller garden. The air outside the hedges even smelled differently than here in the garden, and she felt more energized than she had in years.

This change wasn’t reserved for Mrs. Pack; Lana encouraged her neighbors to try (“very small!”) samples from the herb garden, and slowly, bothersome aches or old injuries eased. Lana guided Mrs. Exeston to a cluster of tall flowers with short white petals and a large yellow center, and a few sniffs eased the headache that had been plaguing the woman for the last few days. The Kleins’ son had come in to visit his parents that weekend, and as he ran his fingers over the long leaves of the lavender, his anxiety about the upcoming shareholders’ meeting seemed to fade. Mrs. Pack, meanwhile, asked Lana about the components of her tea, and was led to a four-yard-square section where clustered sprigs of white flowers capped the long stalks and the air was permeated with licorice and mint.

After this, the group moved back to the orchard, and parents rounded up their children. The sun was starting the dip in the sky, and many were surprised to realize how much time they’d spent in the garden. Lana refused the many invitations to dinner, saying that she needed to get ready for her work week, but she’d be grateful to take rain checks, if they didn’t mind. One last trip was made to the work shed, where she had a large calendar hung on the inner wall of the front room. Reminding the young people of the sign, she got names assigned to various days to help with weeding and maintenance of the flower and vegetable beds. The parents agreed that this was a splendid idea, privately thinking that if the kids were going to run wild through the neighborhood, at least part of the time would be spent in such a beautiful landscape as the Geller garden. And who knows? Maybe they’d pick up on some of Lana’s personal tricks and apply them to their own flowerbeds, and the fall harvest loomed promisingly on the horizon.

Work day division was followed by shelf assignment, and it turned out that Lana had small, personal gardening shovels and hand hoes to spare for each of her new helpers. The excitement was absolute, and she had to eventually raise her voice and announce that the garden was now closed; she was sorry, but she was very tired and needed to make dinner for herself. Goodbyes were made, and the external garden gate closed behind the last straggler with a decisive click. Families moved slowly to their own homes, subconsciously aware that the air outside was cooler and moister than within, and almost seemed more sterile. “I’d sure like to visit the flowerbeds again,” one said to her husband wistfully, her daughter’s hand firmly grasped in her own to keep the child from turning back.

“I believe I saw pumpkin vines,” another mused to his brother. “The leaves were enormous; how big do you think her take is?”

“Can’t believe they’ve been caring for that themselves all this time. It must have taken years to build up.”

“The greenhouse! My plant looked like a little tree; I wonder what it’ll be!”

“WILL SHE LET US EAT THE APPLES CAN WE MAKE PIE?”

From behind the hedge wall, Lana listened to the voices fade before she pulled off her gloves and shoved them in a smock pocket with a sigh. There at the beginning of the path, all of the colored stones intermingled in bright patterns. There was one path that no one had noticed, and it did not run along through the large, smooth grey rocks split off through the grass that grew among the willows. This path was marked by smaller grey pebbles that she could just see through the tall grass, and curved lazily through the willow grove.

The external gate stood outside the garden’s work shed, and the path ran between the land between that building and Lana’s house on the neighborhood block. The work building itself stood north of Lana’s house, with the greenhouse to the east. In between, the flowerbeds and vegetable garden started and extended out in loose, rather bulbous wedges. The willow groves and orchard served as the outer ring to the whole system, and could be reached by any of the inner garden portions. Some of her visitors had noticed that the willows had completely ringed around the orchard in thick rows, but all were too enthralled with the garden itself to notice the inner hedge wall that stood beyond. It was higher than any of the walls near the house and almost seemed to stand in a haze. She hadn’t drawn attention to it, as she didn’t intend for any of her neighbors to access it. The willows and the orchard served as a practical barrier to that particular hedge, which had been allowed to grow thick and only necessarily maintained with wild briars and bushes. The willows here between the orchard and the wall itself were older, and much interspersed with other tree species that gave the impression of a natural forest, rather than an artificial grove.

She inherited the little house from her parents, who had decided that it’s time for a change of scenery, starting with a cruise. 602 Gulf Way had been her childhood home, so some of the older neighbors were not quite surprised when she moved back in. They remembered her from that childhood, knees perpetually smeared with dirt and grass stains and some flora entwined into her hair. Once or twice, the friends with the pool had called 602 with concern: Lana wasn’t playing with the other kids, but rather messing around in the flowerbeds. “The flowers and everything are fine!” they insisted, puzzled at her parents’ lack of concern. “Yes… yes, they are coming in wonderfully! I never have luck with tomatoes; the insects in this area can be quite horrendous, but I appreciate your help. Thank you for asking! Yes, it’s been lovely talking.”

It was a dreary winter morning that had seen the generations change at 602 Gulf Way, and the cheerful older couple waved as they zipped down the road, excited for saltwater and sunshine. Wrapped in a flannel blanket, Lana waved from the porch and lingered to watch her parents disappear from sight before she retreated from the cold.

Her neighbors on the cross street, at 637 Bramble Street, watched from their lace-draped bay window, peering as intently as they could. They had been a newer family, moving in seven years before, but they’d never quite got along with 602, due to Mrs. Pack’s sensitivity to pollen and 602’s garden.

At the beginning of the 20th century, the block had been divided into neat little lots, and four houses per side. Each small family had their own little gardens, and the lawns were kept pristine. 602 Gulf Way was the corner lot, and the owners had plans for a vegetable garden in the back. Mr. and Mrs. Geller kept to themselves, but were extremely friendly whenever encountered out and about. Their next-door neighbors always commented that Mrs. Geller was usually out in the backyard, weeding and fertilizing, or digging up the contents of the compost bin in the warm summer weather. Whenever they met eyes, she would wave in a friendly way, and often have a short conversation that ending with presenting some bundle of herbs from the flowerpots arranged neatly against the wall of the house. Her garden enjoyed uncommon success, and she sometimes expressed the desire for more room to plant to her neighbors.

Only the Misters Edgar and Kaemon Ford in 557 Gulf Way had memories that stretched to 1953, when the various tenants of the 600 block all picked up and moved into the city. 602 was all that remained, and somehow, it had legally transpired that the whole block was now the Gellers’ to tend and utilize as they pleased. The vegetable garden extended, and while the couple were as friendly as ever, hedgerows began to spring up along the sidewalks. Mr. Geller would spend an hour after work each evening trimming some section, and after a few years, they had grown into a wall that encased the whole block before reaching 602. The front yard was still visible, and the sprightly little flowerbeds were the same demure daisies and bright marigolds, but gave no hint as to what the owners were growing in the backyard.

Eventually, everyone stopped wondering, and as the years passed and the families revolved, it became common knowledge that 602 Gulf Way was actually the entire block, and most of the other houses ended up being torn down as the hedges grew. Sometime in the 80s, the owners passed the house down to their son and his new bride. By the time Lana was born, the hedgewall was over everyone’s heads and now obscured the greenhouse that had replaced the house at 604. By the time Lana herself, now a tall adult with long dark curls and a job as a nurse at the town’s hospital, was watching her parents trundle away to an all-expenses-paid Mediterranean cruise, the hedges were astoundingly high, and the only other original house left was the erstwhile 634 on the cross-street Bramble Drive. No one had seen the extensive backyard for years, only the tops of a few old oak trees as they towered above the meticulously-trimmed shrubs. Everyone saw Mr. Geller drive in every spring with the bed of his pickup truck loaded with mulch, and then fertilizers, and occasionally a small tree, to unload them directly into the garage before closing the door, presumably to move them to the backyard in secret through a back door.

So the garden still lived on; Mrs. Pack’s allergies came with full force every spring, and she often cast disparaging glances through her windows. Prying eyes had only her suspicions and Mr. Geller’s deliveries as evidence, though. No child had managed to infiltrate the thick bushes, and while the Gellers had hosted an open Christmas party every few years, the festivities began only after dark, and any door to the back was barred to visitors. Google Earth was of even less help, as any view of the neighborhood showed it as it was in the spring of 1953, with all of the little houses still in place and no shielding hedge walls.

So it was of extreme interest when, a few months in, a large white door appeared in the hedgerow directly in front of 634 Bramble Drive, and the driveway up to that little house was paved again. The Packs regarded the area with particular interest, as the door was directly across from their front door. Many hoped that it heralded a grand reveal of the backyard, but as the weeks passed, it remained closed. One or two of the neighborhood teens crept close, hoping to trip the latch open. Despite being a simple catch-lock, the garden remained a mystery, for the door itself was over ten feet tall with the latch near the top, and the hedges branched too thickly around the doorframe for spying.

As for Lana herself, it was some weeks before the neighborhood was able to interact with her; early-risers saw her trudge out to her car at dawn three days a week, bundled in a puffy coat and her long curls tucked into a knit slouch. The rest of the week, she disappeared into the little house and wouldn’t reappear until a day or so later, always around dawn and not returning until several hours later. Finally, the Fords invited the neighborhood for a St. Patrick’s party, and Lana’s arrival sparked a torrents of interest through the partygoers, who queued around her and bombarded her with introductions, inquiries about her parents, and not-so-subtle probes about herself.

She bore every interaction affably, and details of her life were gleaned easily enough. She apologized for not introducing herself sooner, citing exhaustion from nursing shifts at St. Cyprian’s Hospital in the city. Her undergraduate years were at a small, unrecognized school evidently tucked in the Appalachian Mountains, where she’d studied chemistry, joined a sorority, and planned to spend the rest of her life in academia before a rushed and lackluster senior capstone project persuaded her to rethink and apply to nursing school. Despite her new neighbors’ protestations that she was too interesting and lovely to be so, she was single.

“Our little Ricky Klein is a CPA in the city,” Annalise Alden, the maiden great-aunt of Ricky informed her with a wink. “He was engaged last year, but then the woman ran off two weeks before the wedding. Poor boy, but we keep telling him that he needs to get back up on the horse and not let this dim his outlook on love.” Her eyes were sly as she took a sip of her wine and pressed Lana’s arm in her other hand before leaning in conspiratorially, “I remember how you two used to play together when you were younger; you always had him digging and grubbing around in the flowerbeds with you. Perhaps you two might want to meet for a drink sometime? Or come join us for dinner? I’m sure he’d love to reconnect.”

Lana politely demurred, “I’m just trying to get settled in at the moment, and I don’t have much room in my life for a relationship; I’m at the hospital quite a lot. But I can bring a dish for dinner, of course, as long as I can get off work.”

As she moved away, she found herself wrapped in more reminiscing with Mr. Tandy, whose wife had passed away a few years back (“Very sorry about your wife, and I’m sorry I haven’t been in touch since the funeral,”) but had kept the pool kept up for his son and grandchildren (peering at pictures that Mr. Tandy produced, she smiled and cooed at how adorable the babies were). After that were the Fords themselves, who were as lively as ever, and responded with twinkling humor at her teasing suggestions that they were hoarding some secret to youth. “Your parents used to bring us potted bulbs each year,” Edgar told her, his smile warm and sad. “They would bring a pot with some mystery bulb in it and tell us how to care for it, and it would be a lovely surprise every year.”

“They left me with explicit instructions on what this year’s is to be,” she assured them. “In fact, I’m to be around with it in a few weeks."

“You and your parents are so patient with us!” Kaemon sighed; he was the taller of the two, and his words always had a very deliberate quality. “Edgar and I do love greenery and color around the house, but neither of us are very skilled at keeping plants alive for long. In fact,” his voice became confidential, “your mum and dad switched us to annuals very quickly. Very easy to start over every year!”

“My parents were rather unsentimental gardeners,” Lana laughed. “My mother was very stern with her vegetables, and nothing was so important that it had to stay in the garden without obeying the rules.” The Misters Ford were not quite sure what to make of this remark, but they passed it over for an update of the now seaborn Mr. and Mrs. Geller before allowing Lana to be claimed by the next neighbor eager for introductions.

As the various families mingled and all got a chance to talk to Lana, Mrs. Pack eyed her from across the room, nursing a cocktail. She'd approached Mr. and Mrs. Geller a few times over the years, always with a friendly smile, but with the express purpose of finding out what was in their backyard, and to try to convince them to remove it. She’d referenced her heightened pollen sensitivity, mentioned a former neighborhood with strict rules on what could and could not be planted on the owners’ properties, and even had gotten herself involved with the Homeowners’ Association to attempt to gain entry to the Gellers’ property. The other members had viewed her as nosy and entitled, and had gone as far as to threaten her with removal from the association. She’d backed off at the point, but four years later, now that a younger Geller owned the property, she sensed an opportunity to try again 

“Ms. Geller,” she extended her hand as she stepped toward Lana, a wide smile on her face. “So good to meet you!”

Kaemon Ford watched as the two chatted, and he couldn’t help himself from edging closer to catch their conversation. “My parents tell me they’ve been a bit of an unintended nemesis for you,” Lana was saying, her tone seeming apologetic.

Mrs. Pack waved her hand. “I’m afraid I was a thorn in their side, and I only wished to be as friendly as possible. I did quite like your parents,” she insisted. “They were always so cheerful, and absolutely wonderful people. It’s just, you know,” her smile seemed to sadden a bit, “one hears tell of that garden, and for something so apparently wonderful, it makes me dread springtime. Pollen allergies, you know. I asked them to consider the neighborhood at large, because whatever is back there makes the whole area quite a nuisance every year.”

“Well, if you want, I can recommend a doctor to help treat your allergies,” Lana offered. “I know of a rather talented one who runs a clinic downtown, and I’m sure they could help you with treatment.”

Mrs. Pack’s smile seemed just a little cold, and she patted Lana’s hand between her own as she said, “That’s very kind, but it seems to me that I must not be the only person affected around here. It was never this bad until Alan and I moved into the neighborhood. Therefore…” she trailed off meaningfully.

Lana tilted her head, considering her neighbor, and then gave her an impossibly warm grin. She withdrew her hand and rummaged in the bright, quilted purse slung from her shoulder. “I thought we might be having this conversation,” she mused, rooting energetically amongst the purse’s contents. A few feet away, Kaemon thought he heard the tinking of glass against glass before she withdrew a gauzy drawstring bag stuffed with dried leaves, bright brown pods, and bits of fragrant cinnamon. Wherever the conversation was to go, his attention was abruptly pulled to the opposite end of the room, where Annalise was attempting to scrub her spilled wine from Mr. Tandy’s sweater as energetically as her stiff elbows would allow.

Mrs. Pack’s eyes began to pull to the commotion, but Lana stepped forward, and Mrs. Pack found herself staring into Lana’s wide, dark eyes. “Mrs. Pack,” Lana said lightly, “I don’t want to make a fuss, and I don’t intend to have to deal with this again. Nothing is so important that it has to stay in the garden, but I’m afraid that the garden itself must stay.”

Indignant, Mrs. Pack sputtered a bit, but Lana cut her off, “This is a peace offering,” and pressed the bag into Mrs. Pack’s hands. As the dried contents of the bag crinkled between her fingers, Mrs. Pack didn’t realize that the sounds of the party faded just a bit, and she stared harder into Lana’s black eyes. “This will help less your reactions every year; I want us to get off on the right foot,” Lana went on; she hadn’t blinked yet. “Modern medicine has its benefits, but nothing works quite the same as the natural remedy.”

The scent of cinnamon drifted into the air between them, as well as something just a little bitter. Mrs. Pack chewed her lip, conscious for the first time in years that she’d been selfish all these years, and maybe not the most considerate neighbor to the Gellers. “Well, you’re very kind,” she offered quietly. “What… what’s in it?”

“A mix of herbs, but you’ll mostly taste the cinnamon and anise,” Lana said with a smile. “Boil a teaspoon of it for tea, and a dose every other day will help. As I said, I want us to start well, as it’s about time for the garden to be shared as needed.”

“Shared?” Mrs. Pack glanced over to the Fords, who were attempting to console Annalise. “The flowers for the Fords… your parents usually gave some form of plant as gifts. To those that they thought deserved it,” she added with a sniff, attempting to regain some of the superior attitude she’d began the party with.

“Those were from the greenhouse,” Lana corrected with a sober shake of her head. “These herbs come from the garden.”

Mrs. Pack wasn’t sure what set her on edge about that statement, but she waved it away as she considered the bag in her hands. What, after all, had bothered her so much about the Gellers’ garden? Her itchy eyes and dripping sinuses were extremely bothersome every year, but she’d also never been fond of secrets. At least not ones kept from her. If Lana was willing to be more open with the garden…. She straightened and set her shoulders, gazing into Lana’s eyes once again. “Well, it’s possible I have not been as accommodating as I could have been. Thank you, my dear.”

A few weeks later, Lana answered a knock to find Mrs. Pack with the empty bag clutched in her hand. “This tea!” Mrs. Pack was gushing. “I haven’t had to restock on Kleenex, and I’ve just been sleeping so well! You must tell me what’s in it.”

The mortgage had long been paid for the little two-story, two bedroom house on the corner of Charcoal Street’s 200 block as it intersected with Hawk’s Flight Drive. The neighborhood had started as a cluster of houses that had sprouted back when immigrants had established the little town. As the town had grown into the city of Firstick, nourished by the expansive and fertile soil and many lakes, the neighborhood watched small stores grow into large businesses, and schools that had networked off of town churches soon fed students into a little college. Some of the larger businesses looked at the land beyond the neighborhoods and started to build factories, becoming as self-sustaining as their great-grandparents had been on their farms.

Years later, only the university’s archivist was clear on how historical 281 Charcoal Street was. The 200 block was one of the only sections of original houses left, as various old neighborhoods had sprung up and then died, falling either to the endless appetites of corporate real estate or to the ravaging patience of time. Old families either moved away, drawn to other opportunities, or intermarried with the new blood brought in by business opportunities.

The archivist had a map of the city hung up in their office, marked up with various neon highlighters. Outlined in a faded green were the areas of Firstick older than the 20th century: the 200s on Charcoal Street, the 600s-800s on Gulf Way (which stood on the original ground of the house and barn of the extensive Berkovitz farm until the family had disappeared from church and society in the fall of 1903; the ensuing investigation turned up the mangled and tortured corpses of the family in their beds, and with no will discovered and no known relatives, the estate had sold to the city); the Goldbergs’ law office, Tante Lina’s grocery (which had grown to swallow a neighboring building so that one of Lina’s Groß-neffen could open an adjoining hardware store with his wife), the Popov family print shop, and the history building on the university campus (funded and provisioned for by the grandsire of the same murdered Berkovitz). There was also the little park on the edge of the university grounds, which had been marked a historical site in 1948 and was where the archivist worked; little shells of original stores and a church were maintained in the park, and volunteers, guided by the archivist, gave classes on life in the 1800s, held festivals, and worked on the grounds’ upkeep.

And then, there were the cemeteries.

Young cities buried their dead in out-of-the way corners of their land, and many residents could not tell you where to pay respects without having to Google the gravesites beforehand. Once visited, and once respectful obligation had been fulfilled, these places often faded from memory. Firstick, however, was not one of these young cities, and the little park held forgotten stories older than the furniture factory that had grown from the extensive forests nearby. Charcoal Street shared a corner with the old paupers’ graveyard, and crumbling headstones dotted the stubborn grass behind the little park’s churchyard. More sites maintained by the many churches in the city, and each were outlined in green on the archivist’s map. Many were in the city proper itself, though they were so familiar to residents by this time that they went as ignored as the billboards and flickering LED advertisements on the sides of the largest buildings.

The students of the university noticed when they first ventured off-campus. It was often an accident, stumbling out of a bar and ending up against the smooth stone wall of a chapel. In a haze of liquor and dancing, they might think that they see shadows flickering amongst the memorial statues of angels. It unsettled and penetrated through the smoky shots they’d ingested, and suddenly it would seem hard to swallow, and their hearts would pound just a little harder. Then they’d be found by friends, laughing and slurring, and the feeling would flee in the sight of familiarity. Maybe they’d avoid that particular bar for a while, but soon midterms would arrive, and by the end of the semester, the streets would be empty of students past midnight. They’d opt to drink in their rooms, close to the books and away from the curling mists of the Parish of Saint Cyprian of Antioch.

Firstick’s many hotels and skyscrapers were new, having torn down their predecessors to make way for bright, shiny, and new. Firstick Furnishings was responsible for a new office building every twenty years or so, and new tech firms started by eager graduates of the university’s STEM programs took up residence in the aging structures left behind. The interiors would often be gutted and remodeled, helped along when Popov Prints expanded into Popov Interiors and Design in 1978. With the company’s assistance (running out of the same brick office building it had built up originally), an internet startup might realize an office in the ultra-modern style of sci-fi space fantasies on one floor, and the doctor’s clinic on the floor above would attempt to soothe the nerves of patients with gentle pastels and inoffensive paintings of flowers. Whatever the rotating insides, the facades of the buildings weathered; no one floor seemed inclined to bring the outside into the 21st-century.

It seemed, therefore, that downtown Firstick was a hodgepodge of decades of design. Townies might catch themselves staring at a building as they never had before, noticing that the sign of the Crowne Plaza seemed just a touch garish, the letters too thick and their color too faded. The apartments on Central Station Boulevard were all the glass and was-polished steel of the late 2000s, clashing with the theater across the way that had been built in the 1930s with all the great gilding pomp inspired by the architect, who had visited the 1904 World’s Fair as a child and had been inspired since. The Fairchild Theatre needed to be repainted every few years, and either stood out for being too bold amongst the minimalist steel, or edging a little too uncomfortably close to decrepit.

Walking down the streets, once the incongruity of the buildings was noticed, a resident couldn’t escape it. Students of the university’s architecture program found a wealth of material in the city to help round out their studies, but residents could sometimes be jarred. It couldn’t be helped: if you saw it, you knew that they didn’t all fit together. As the years passed, the styles became dated, and there were some that, if you were pondering it, did not age well. Colors washed out with the rain, and on an overcast day, the entire city seemed to fade just a bit.

The only places that seemed to escape this were the historical sites, ringed in green on the archivist’s map. On such rainy days where the city muddled together in a dreary mess, the Parish of Saint Cyprian seemed to resist, insisting on sharp relief through the rain. The little stone shops in the historic sector of the park stood as solid as ever, and the mists from the graveyards cleared. In the neighborhoods, 281 Charcoal Street stood unique from its neighbors as the houses of the next street over faded into mirrored lines. 602 Gulf Way’s gardens bloomed just a little more brightly, and an old apartment building five blocks down from the university’s history building shrugged off the water from its dark stone.

No matter the weather, Tante Lina’s grocery never failed to bring in deliveries, and had resisted every attempt to be bought or muscled out by the chain health food and grocery stores that moved in as the city grew, though Lina Pfeiffer herself was long dead (buried in the middle of Saint Cyprian’s cemetery). Birthdays, weddings, and promotions were celebrated with feasts purchased from Tante Lina’s aisles, and deaths, breakups, and dismissals mourned with her alcohol. Chain stores may have boasted cheaper prices, or attempted to dismiss the store as selling inorganic vegetables or non-cruelty-free meats, but no one could quite pin down where the deliveries came from. Eventually, they learned to coexist, as the store proved to be as stubbornly resilient as its namesake had reportedly been.

The city brought in fresh blood, new families, and many found themselves settling down, looking up after ten years to see a life that they’d built. With all its disparate parts, Firstick hungered for new stories to make itself whole and build upon the lives long past that didn’t survive in legacy. Refugees found safe harbor, and mosques and temples grew quite peacefully (provided no one disturbed the cemeteries). Weathered diners sheltered the drunk, the despairing, and the sleepless, and the schools grew with families. Firstick survived where many frontier towns had faded back into the prairies and forests from which they fought their way from.

Many had thought that Firstick was an uncreative homage to the once-extensive forests that had helped establish the logging town. If you asked the archivist, though, they would remind you that many of the founding families had been German, and would show you the words etched into the doorframe of the archivist’s office: Sich zu erinnern, was verborgen war.

You’ve been living in the same apartment building in a busy section of downtown for years now. At least long enough that you shrugged as you noticed the nail holes in the walls as you readjusted your new shadowboxes -- meant to hold the shells from your recent vacation with your family to St. Augustine. You’d lucked out and managed to snag the corner apartment when you’d arrived fresh from college and ready to plunge into the Real World with your Adult Job and Responsibilities. The windows were a must, as you lived for summers and thought very seriously of getting a timeshare for the winter months. They gave you a view of the park a block over, the mom-and-pop bakery that had become your go-to spot for coffee and bagels on the way to work, and a straight-shot view of the city’s university several blocks down.

Your building is far enough away that rent is fairly reasonable for a college student in debt, and so while you build friendships with the long-term residents (Sr. Muñoz always comes by with extra sauces from the care packages his son ships him, and Ms. Geltzer is ever eager for visitors so that she can show off her extensive collection of artwork gathered while she toured with the ballet), you also witness a revolving set of perpetually young, perpetually exhausted twenty-somethings haul their cardboard boxes into and out of the building’s large, double-paned glass doors. On occasion, you’ve helped, but for the most part, they have a caravan of friends to laugh and yell with as they lug ratty couches and Home Essentials desks and coffee tables up the stairs.

There’s one apartment in particular on your floor that seems permanently reserved for the students. Unfortunately, it shares a wall with your own kitchen and living room. Some years, you luck out with a quiet person who seems just to skulk back and forth from the staircase and their door, weighed down with books and binders. Other years, your sleep is interrupted by more social denizens with time and money to spend on parties. For a semester, you’d found yourself sharing the wall with an engineering student. She was nice enough, and her socialization was limited to a few friends and a girlfriend (boyfriend? You were never quite certain, but after all, it wasn’t really any of your business, and more importantly, they seem to treat each other with respect), but the muted explosions and increasingly strong odor of smoke and burnt electronics eventually had drawn complaints. You’d thought that this particular student is not the worst of the bunch, but there was the constant concern that she would light the place on fire while trying to complete her homework. So she moved out at semester, right after finals, and the relative normalcy ended.

This is when she moves in.

It’s a cold evening a week before Christmas when you bump into a parka with legs. To your surprise, the parka squeaks and starts apologizing, and then a knit cap is being pulled off what you find out is a head, and a young woman of small-to-medium height is staring up at you. She has very large eyes, and your stutter comes back just a little bit as you brush off her apology. She doesn’t seem to notice the stutter. She has a duffel bag slung over her shoulder and a box of plants in her arms. You chat about plants for a while, and then she ends up walking with you to your hallway. Upon realizing that you two are neighbors, you exchange introductions, and you offer to help her with the rest of her belongings. She declines with a weary smile and says she’s almost done.

You sense that she wants to finish, and the conversation ends with empty promises to hang out. You’ve never hung out with any of the students. She gives you another tight, tired smile, and then disappears through her doorway. You head back into your own apartment, but remembering that you wanted to check the mail, head out again. Out of habit, you glance through the doorway of 2E and see the woman, coat now shed, walk the opposite way with a box from your personal favorite computer store in her arms. You keep walking, reminding yourself not to peer through doorways you aren’t invited to.

That night, you hear a faint buzzing whine at the edges of the darkness around you, and after staring at the ceiling for a few minutes, trying to trace the noise, you give up. Your new neighbor has been quiet, and the smell of smoke has finally cleared.

A few days later, you come home, your date’s arm slipped through your own and with her pressing laughingly against your side. You are both a little drunk, alcohol filling you with false warmth and maybe not-so-fake affection. It’s still early, so you invite her in, curious about where the evening and her company will take you.

The two of you have settled on the couch, and you’re considering her legs and tracing the sheen knit of her nylons when she straightens, eyebrows knit together and an inquisitive smile on her face. “Is that…” her head inclines to the wall, and you hear a voice through the walls, sometimes humming, sometimes singing. “Oh my god,” she laughs, fully facing the wall now. “Your neighbor is singing ‘Breaking Free’.”

Memories of watching High School Musical when it first released on television trickle back to you, and you laugh as well. “That’s a movie I haven’t thought of in forever,” you say, taking the opportunity to lean in just a little, as if to tell a secret. “Kind of glad I didn’t. It wasn’t a great movie.”

You don’t notice as the lights seem to flicker just a little -- they do that, as the wiring is kind of old -- but your date pulls back, looking wide-eyed at the wall. The singing has stopped. “How thin are your walls?” she asks, still giggling because of the wine from dinner.

“Somewhat.” A thread of guilt starts to snake its way through you. You’re a little worried that 2E heard you, but a few seconds later, she starts up again at the same volume, starting a new song from the same musical. “Ah, see? She probably had to go pee or something.”

Your date seems to believe this, and the two of you get closer and manage to drown out the looped performance from next door. She stays the night, and you lend her a phone charger. Your bedroom is on the opposite side of the apartment. Both of you forget about 2E.

This is the last time you see your date in person. She leaves the following morning considerably more disgruntled. Your phone charger didn’t work, she says, staring down at the screen disgustedly. You apologize and offer to try another, but she waves this off. She didn’t sleep well, she says, citing dreams interrupted by a strange whine. She sniffs the air as well, and coughs. Starting to say something, she catches herself and instead gives you a glassy smile, saying that she had fun but that she wasn’t feeling well and just wanted to get home. Your offers of a ride and then cab fare are rebuffed, and she leaves. Weeks later, you pass by her, and she’s with someone else. You don’t mind at this point.

Now, though, you watch her leave and wonder wildly what could have brought the change. As you start to analyze everything from the start of dinner the previous night, the scent of coffee starts to tickle your nose. You haven’t made coffee, but you are tired. You check your own phone and see that it is dead, which is puzzling because you too had charged yours. Maybe it was that faulty wiring; you’ll get the landlord to look into it.

Two weeks later, you come back from Christmas with your family to see a small rectangle just a little wider and longer than your hand sitting neatly in front of your door. It is wrapped in the funnies page, with a thin ribbon tied in a limp bow. The tag reads “To: 2F”, but the From field is blank. You tuck it under your arm just long enough to unlock your door and drop your duffel bag on the ground before opening the present, and your eyebrows knit together.

You have been knocking on 2E’s door for a few minutes when Sr. Muñoz’s door opens across the hall, and he informs you that 2E still isn’t back. She’d left a few days before you after asking the landlord to look after her plants, of which there were apparently several. He nods at your hands, and asks who gave it to you. You shrug, a DVD copy of High School Musical in your grasp.

The landlord tells you that the wiring isn’t faulty, but your phone and now your laptop refuse to charge in the apartment. In fact, your laptop refuses to turn on as soon as you set foot on your floor. A few hours were spent testing the exact limits, but as soon as you hit the top step, it switches off. The manufacturer is bewildered as well, and after several diagnostics sessions and even a trip to the store, no one has any conclusions. Your laptop is replaced, but seems to be exhibiting the same behavior. Your friends all start to report problems with their devices while at your apartment, but thankfully, the Chromecast seems to work just fine, as does your Wi-fi. Your friends start carrying extra battery packs around with them when they come to visit, as do you. You start reading more to save power for phone calls and other important things.

When the semester starts up, the smell of coffee becomes even more pervasive, especially whenever you pass the woman from 2E in the hallway. She is usually in some state of bedhead and grogginess, though there are a few occasions where she actually smiles with lipsticked lips, her hair styled and a skirt flowing around her legs. One such Friday evening, you say, “You look very nice,” and she says, “Thank you,” before bundling up in her parka again. You’re not sure when she gets back, but suddenly, your phone is at 100% charge. This lasts only a few days, but you get through several seasons of Angel on Netflix while it does. Your computer still doesn’t turn on.

As the semester progresses, you still occasionally hear singing from her side of the wall, though you’ve taken to working late at the office since your laptop still refuses to power on at home. You start coming back very late, and start finding yourself walking back with her as she’s returned from the trudge from campus. A memory of burnt coffee seems to press at your brain as you walk, but your eyes are fuzzy with sleep, and you want only to get to bed. You two never speak, but while you start to get ready for bed, you hear a light tapping of computer keys. You make a mental note to ask her if she’s having computer issues; somehow, you know that she’s studying computer science. Maybe she’s experienced something like this in the past, or studied something like it. Perhaps, but you never remember the next time you see her. Her eyes are always wide and red these nights.

Some nights, other students come over, and if you’re home early from the office or the gym, you hear them laughing as you make dinner and prep a Tupperware of food for lunch the next day. Their laughter is just a little bit forced, maybe desperate, but you remember school. It’s a Thursday night; many of them probably have projects and papers coming up. You reach for the Tupperware lid, and your heart starts pounding and adrenaline floods your limbs. You snap the lid on, and you remember the deadline: Friday at 11:59PM, no late submissions accepted, and you are certain that your paper is going to get you the failing grade you’ve been dreading since failure became a sin. As you turn to the fridge, your heart rate is normal, and you are relaxed. What paper?

Sometimes while you sleep, you hear tapping keys in your dreams. As you hover on the edge of consciousness, you feel your fingers twitching, typing out things in unknown languages. You date more, and start asking if you can go home with your dates instead of the other way around. You sleep well these nights. Your phone charges. Your laptop, which you start bringing with you, powers on like it’s supposed to.

You even start a relationship, and for a few months, you are rarely at your apartment. You are in the office less. The air of your lover’s small apartment smells like candles or detergent or take-out. The lights do not flicker, and phone chargers do what they are supposed to. By April, you are considering moving in, but the night you suggest it, you end up back at your apartment, single and with a black laptop screen that refuses to change. You’ve been crowding your lover, and it’s odd that you never want to be at your place. After all, it’s larger and closer to work. You were moving too fast.

You sleep fitfully that night, but this time, it is because you keep waking up, hoping for a text message or a phone call that makes it all right. When day breaks, you resign yourself to be awake for good. Your phone is at 75%. While at the apartment, it never falls below that mark anymore. “At least something is going right,” you mutter hopelessly to yourself the next free evening you get, slumped on the couch and watching old Forensic Files episodes. During episode loading, you hear that the music through the wall is slow and sad, and a tightness grows at your chest, insistent and cancerous. Tears run down your cheeks, and a desperate, hopeless, disgusted feeling fills you. The next episode starts, and the music and your body’s strange response gets drowned out in a story of a serial arsonist.

Sunday evenings, you can hear her wailing through the walls. You were concerned at first and considered knocking and checking, but eventually decide against it, wanting to not be the creepy neighbor. Not that you’ve been watching, but she usually comes home alone. You’ve gotten the impression that she actually has a roommate, but the roommate looks exactly like her, only happier. You don’t see the roommate often. You had thought 2E was a single bedroom. If she has a roommate, then she should be taken care of. The wailing is like clockwork, and you always feel an itching in your fingers and the need to finish it, finish it and hopefully it’s not too late to turn it in. The taste of coffee is as familiar and unnoticeable as your own skin. You try to fall asleep these nights, but your eyes don’t close. It’s only after you buy earplugs that you can sleep.

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