about whether animals have souls.

We decided they did,

because we didn’t want to go to heaven

if dogs and cats couldn’t go there, too

(even though neither of us have a dog or cat

because our parents won’t let us).

Then Lizard asked if plants have souls,

and we decided maybe not all plants,

like maybe not broccoli or lima beans,

but probably flowers have small fragrant souls

because in heaven beautiful flowers

would be blooming everywhere.

So I was surprised to find out,

at our first rehearsal on Tuesday,

that the flowers in Alice in Wonderland

are not flowers who are going to end up

in any heaven I’d want to go to.

They are snobby, snooty, mean flowers

who make fun of Alice

because her petals aren’t curly enough

(they think she’s a flower, too,

only one with a strange shape),

and they call her names like stupid

because she doesn’t understand

anything about Wonderland yet

and she doesn’t fit in anywhere.

I don’t know how I feel now

about being an extra mean flower.

But maybe the extra flowers in Wonderland

don’t have as much reason to be snobby and snooty,

and so aren’t as mean

as the flowers that have actual names

and get to speak actual lines.

More about Mean Flowers

The mean flowers in the play

are clearly supposed to be like

the cool, popular girls

in books about middle school,

who sit at the cool, popular lunch table,

where the less-cool, less-popular girls

are dying to sit but can’t,

because they aren’t sufficiently

cool or popular,

at least in the eyes of the

reigning cool, popular girls.

But at Southern Peaks Middle School,

we don’t have a lunch table like that,

or if we do, I am so uncool and so unpopular

that I don’t even know which one it is.

Lizard and I wouldn’t want

to sit there anyway.

The Language of Flowers

Mr. Delgado says

all of the extra flowers

are going to be roses.

I’m going to be a yellow rose.

Zoey is going to be a pink rose.

When I tell my parents at dinner that night

(relieved that my mother is at dinner that night)

that their daughter is now a yellow rose,

my mother gets a dreamy look on her face.

“When I was in high school

my friend Alison read somewhere

that if a boy gave you a rose,

the color of the rose meant something special.

A red rose meant he loved you passionately.

A pink rose meant he loved you, but not as much.

A yellow rose meant he just wanted to be friends.

Yellow was supposed to be the color of friendship,

at least when it came to roses.

So when my high school boyfriend gave me

yellow roses for my birthday, I burst out crying,

to his great bewilderment and disappointment.