I hope you are having a wonderful summer. I received your request to enroll in City College’s Introductory Botany class, but unfortunately, the class requires participants have a GPA of 3.0 or better. It’s a college-level course for college credit. Your GPA was 2.70 at the end of the semester, so I’m afraid you don’t qualify. However, you are a wonderful environmental science student, so let’s make a plan to raise your GPA so that you can take this class at a later date. Please don’t give up hope, Briseis. Keep pushing. You’re going to do great your senior year.

Best,

Cassandra Rodriguez

Academic Counselor

Millennium Brooklyn High School

I closed my computer and shoved it across my bed, biting back tears. The baby’s breath puffed up, the snapdragons twisted around, and the ivy gripped the metal frame of my bed so hard it groaned in protest. I took a deep breath and the plants settled.

Nothing went right this past school year. Being really good at environmental science and botany workshops didn’t get me out of PE. I tried to convince Mom and Mo that running laps and playing badminton was a form of torture, but I still had to dress out and be within smelling distance of dudes who thought wearing deodorant was optional. But PE was the least of my issues with school. The fear that I carried around with me that someone would discover what I could do—or worse, that I’d lose control and get someone hurt—was heavy.

I glanced at my desk, which was little more than a wooden shelf propped on top of some plastic crates Mo had found at a thrift shop. My microscope sat there with my research journals and notepads, colorful Post-it notes sticking from between the pages. The botany book Mom had given me lay open, its pages worn and dog-eared, entire passages highlighted and underlined. I didn’t want to make a career out of being a scientist. I just wanted to understand myself better, and something I’d come across in my research struck me in a way nothing else had—raised the hairs on the back of my neck.

Near the back of the botany book was a section labeled Poisonist—a subdiscipline of botany that involved the study of poison plants. It piqued my curiosity and stirred something deep in the pit of my stomach—a mixture of fear and excitement.