Rose watched as the shadow of her grandmother stretched across the countless trays of seedlings and fully grown plants that were flourishing out of season. Plants that did not appear to know their proper time. But then again, Rose was beginning to doubt what proper time was.

She thought once again of the seemingly scattered contents of her grandmother’s mind. The point of a Rubik’s Cube was to get all the surfaces to show only one color. In short, for everything to line up. But how boring that would be—a world or a time where everything lined up. Who knew if proper time would be as interesting as time out of time?

She heard the ding of her cell phone. A text message. Ever since the dreadful text about her mother, it was all Rose could do to look at her phone. But this was from Susan. Susan had never texted her before. Maybe the Mean Queens had gotten ahold of her phone, or even worse, maybe they had converted her! It was awful to live in such dread. To flinch at the very sound of a text ding.

Hey, want to go to those vintage, secondhand shops I was telling you about?

Rose decided to be safe and called Susan back.

The phone rang twice. It was definitely Susan’s voice that answered.

“You just sent a text, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Uh, sure, I’d love to go. When?”

“They open at eleven. I checked.”

“But school . . .”

“Did you forget? No school tomorrow. It’s Indiana State Teachers’ Conference.”

“Oh wow, yes. Let’s go.”

“I can walk over to your house, say around ten thirty. We can get to almost all of them just walking. We might have to take the bus to one downtown. But most are pretty close by, in Broad Ripple.”

“Great, see you tomorrow.”

After they hung up, Rose looked at the pictures she had taken of her grandmother and herself. They were good. Maybe she would start a little project where she’d photograph the trays for her gran, documenting the progress from sproutlings to seedlings to full bloom. She bet Rosalinda would like that. She decided to post the pictures on her blog, along with a close-up of the tray of pixie snouts and a caption: