The Vines by Shelley Nolden (ebook and pdf reader .TXT) 📕

“I bet you wish you could’ve been a student here,” he said.

“In a way, I was, for four years. After the war, I would tend the shrubs below the windows. On all but the coldest days, the teachers kept them cracked open. High school English was on the first floor.”

“Ah, your love of grammar.”

“My favorite was sentence diagramming. I’d use a stick in the dirt to complete the exercises along with the class.”

Finn pictured her crouched on the ground, biting her lip in concentration, and felt a sudden urge to kiss her. Shaking his head, he dispelled the unwelcome thought.

Although it would make his task easier, he couldn’t lead her on. Feigning interest in the deteriorating papers underfoot, he bent to decipher their markings.

She turned away and continued down the corridor.

Conversely, he realized, acting like he didn’t care about her would get him nowhere. “It must have been tough, being on the outside,” he said, hurrying to catch up.

She shrugged. “There’s a theater in here. I used to watch their films from outside. I’d love to see a real cinema, and another movie.”

“It’ll happen. Have faith.”

“In your family? Ha.”

She opened a stairwell door, and he hurried to catch it. “Where are we going?”

“The roof.”

He raised his hand. “Based on our last rooftop experience, I’ll take a pass.”

“Fair enough, considering I’m passing on exposing myself to Lyme.” She began climbing.

“That’s not why I’m here.” He followed her. “Well, it’s not the main reason.”

“But you do love your mom?”

“I do.”

“I loved my mother, too. In 1902, she was told I’d died from typhus. How do you think that felt?”

“My family’s done a lot of shitty things to you.” They didn’t deserve her altruism. “I will make them stop; I swear.”

“Sure, you will. Right after I give you Borrelia antibodies. You’ll become just like them. It’s just a matter of time.” She rapped on a door to the second-story hallway. “The science classrooms are that way. It was hard to hear those lectures.”

The men in his family had always known so much more about her body than she had. No wonder she’d lost conviction that any of their theories would work. “Next time I’ll bring some medical textbooks.”

“Next time?” She resumed her ascent. “The nesting season ends in two weeks.”

Finn wasn’t sure why he’d said that. He’d informed his dad that if she said no to the injection today, then he was done. And that he’d do everything in his power to ensure the same held true for them.

Regardless of today’s outcome, Finn knew that every time he glimpsed the East River this winter, he would think of her, cold and alone. At least he wouldn’t have to worry about his family antagonizing her then; Rollie had explained that even with the tunnel, there was far too much at stake to risk being caught trespassing by authorized visitors during the winter.

She stopped at the door to the roof. “Don’t you think it’s a little ironic, your mother having Lyme?”

He narrowed his eyes. “How so?”

“Before Ulrich started his research on the black-legged deer tick, the disease didn’t exist in North America.”

“That’s ridiculous.”

“They really did keep you in the dark,” she said with a sniff of disdain. “One of his projects at Lab Two Fifty-Seven was studying the tick as a vector for Borrelia burgdorferi. It was separate from his work on me, since, back then, Bb wasn’t strong enough to coexist with my immune system. The first documented cases in the United States occurred in Lyme, Connecticut. Interestingly, that town happens to be right across Long Island Sound from Plum Island.” She clicked her tongue. “I guess he should have been more careful with those little buggers.”

Finn pictured the cage of bats so haphazardly positioned on that old, wooden spool. Considering how paranoid Kristian was about the inevitability of a global pandemic, such a reckless action from him didn’t seem plausible. Yet there was no one else they could have belonged to.

Not to mention, Finn now knew Kristian had at least one other host species in his lab. He thought of the vials buried in his pack. As soon as he’d distanced himself from the lighthouse, he should have destroyed those ticks. It seemed farfetched that Ulrich could have brought the disease to America. Then again, Finn’s recent reeducation in the seemingly unthinkable made it difficult to dismiss it as coincidence. “You’re saying my mom deserves to be miserable?”

“No; I like Sylvia. She kept your dad in line. And while I feel bad that Petra died, I can’t help but think that Kristian turned out better because of Sylvia.”

She threw open the door, and bright light flooded the vestibule.

“I love it up here,” Cora declared. “If I could be anyone in the world, it would be Amelia Earhart.” She scrunched her face. “Before she vanished.”

“Have you heard of Nikumaroro?” he asked, shielding his eyes.

She shrugged as she stepped outside, and Finn guessed that she felt insecure about how little she knew about the world today.

“It’s a remote island in the South Pacific. They’ve found evidence that Earhart was marooned there. Apparently, she wasn’t as good at survival as you.”

Stifling a smile, Cora signaled for him to join her.

He exited the stairwell, and a strange sensation washed over him. For the first time while on North Brother Island, the surroundings felt familiar. He was standing in a rooftop garden similar to the co-op Lily participated in above the corner supermarket.

Lily would never see this firsthand, but he could describe it to her. Better yet, he decided, committing the scene to memory, he would draw it.

Despite the suit, he could almost smell the nearby tomato plants, their leaves rippling in the breeze. “You were right: this is far more precious than your story collection.” His stomach growled. “Or any pile of gold.”

“Who says I haven’t come across one of those as well?”

Finn raised his eyebrows. As a kid, he’d dreamed of becoming a shipwreck archaeologist.

She didn’t elaborate, either by design or because the