I shrugged. “It’s the best. Anyway, I’m surprised you don’t see even more racism here.”
“There are a ton of microaggressions,” he said. “Stupid stuff, you know? Like people being surprised that my parents, and my grandparents, too, are comfortably middle class, or people assuming the scholarships I was offered were all ‘diversity’ based. Little things. I ignore them.”
“Those little things chip away at you, though. Like with Juniper’s YouTube harassment. Comments that mean nothing on their own can snowball inside.” I shifted and hugged my knees up to my chest. “It sucks we have to deal with this.”
He nodded. “It does. But my dad says carving out safe spaces in these places is an act of resistance, and that people like us are changing the landscape. Let them hate—we’ll just keep going.”
It wasn’t peoplelikeRowan who were going to change the landscape; it was literallyhim. In a big way, or in a small, profound way, the world was going to be a more beautiful place because Rowan Johnston wanted it to be. The world was so incredibly lucky.
I shifted again and stretched my legs out next to his.
“I’ve been doing this forever,” he said, indicating the dark sky. “My parents used to find me asleep in the backyard in the morning all the time when I was a kid.”
“You slept out here?”
“Yup. Once I woke up to a skunk smelling my face.”
“Oh my God, gross.” I shook my head. “You won’t be able to do this if you’re living on campus in Toronto. If the raccoons don’t get you, the drunk students will.”
“Yeah, but you can’t see nearly as many stars there, anyway.” He lay back completely on the blanket. “Is that why you don’t stargaze? I have a hard time believing you’ve never lain down outside to look at the sky.”
“Of course I have. It’s just...” How could I explain this? I bit my lip. “I mean, it’s not that I’m scared of stars or anything, it’s...it’s just really hard to focus on them. They’re just dots in the sky, and there’s usually too much going on in my head to look at just that. I worry that I’m not appreciating them right.”
“C’mon, Tahira. Lie back.” He patted the area on the blanket next to his head. “I suspect the problem is thecitysky. No way you’ll be bored looking at this one.”
I lay back and exhaled. After one second of looking at the sky, I had to close my eyes again. I hadn’t been completely honest there—it wasn’t that I worried that I wasn’t appreciating the sky right, but more like...seeing so many stars together made me feel...alone. And I didn’t like that.
But I wasn’t alone now.
I opened my eyes again. In the city, when you looked at the sky, you could realistically count the stars. Here, that would be like counting the grains of rice in a gigantic bowl.
“It makes me feel small,” I said quietly. “It makes me wonder if I’m actually not important. Like all the hard work I do, and my mind racing all the time with what I should be accomplishing, or my Plan or whatever, maybe it doesn’t matter in the universe. I feel...untethered. Like there’s nothing grounding me to the earth anymore.” My fingers gripped the blanket tightly. “I feel like there’s nothing to hold on to.”
“I never would have pegged you for an existentialist,” he said.
“It’s not that I—” I made a frustrated noise as I turned away from the sky. I was fine—I was sure all the work I was doing was right for me. The Plan would succeed.
But when I saw that sky with thousands and thousands of stars, it forced me to think. Who was I really workingfor? Was it worth it?
Rowan’s hand suddenly covered mine. He loosened my grip on the blanket and intertwined our fingers together.
“What are you doing?” I asked.
“I don’t doubt for a second that youwillaccomplish all the things you want to do on your own, but...” He paused. “Tonight, I think you need something to hold on to,” he said softly.
I smiled, holding his hand tightly as we stared at the bright night sky.
18
PLANT-BOY IN HIS NATURAL HABITAT
With the Bloom only three weeks away, we all wanted to get our design finalized so we could start building the frame, so Gia, Juniper, and I walked downtown to meet Rowan at Hyacinth’s the next morning for the grand judgment on our designs. It was pretty early for a Saturday, but June and Gia were working at 9:30. Rowan and I both had the day off, but he claimed he had some errand to run before the meeting, so he didn’t drive us. I didn’t mind walking, but that little anxiety gremlin in my head wondered if Rowan was avoiding me after last night.
We’d held hands out in the backyard for an hour, and if I tried, I could still feel his hand in mine now. Calloused, which was no wonder, considering all the manual labor he did, and probably dirt under his fingernails. We talked about Bakewell, about Toronto, about his silly shirts. He admitted he wanted to buy some nonbotanically oriented clothes for university. I offered to help him do some online shopping before the summer ended. We talked about why I wanted to go to FIT, and how he still hadn’t decided if he wanted to be a licensed landscape architect or work as a landscape designer, but he figured the landscape architecture program would be useful either way. We laughed, teasedeach other, and sometimes were just silent. We stared at the stars the whole time, our hands tightly connected.
It was the nicest night I’d had in Bakewell.
Everything seemed fine when we got to the coffee shop. Rowan was outside on one of the bench seats, and he greeted us like normal. He’d done his sketch digitally as well, so he AirDropped it to my iPad. June and Gia very ceremoniously took my iPad inside to show Hyacinth. They said we weren’t allowed to come in and influence her decision. I sat in the seat across from Rowan. He was wearing hisICAN’T, IHAVE PLANTSshirt and had a Wynter’s tote bag next to him.
