When I was eight, a girl named Tabitha Douglass dared me to eat five bright red berries off a low-hanging tree behind our elementary school. The fruit was sour and stained my lips and tongue, but I did it. I ate all five. Tabitha ate six just to one-up me. By the time our teacher came to bring us back to class, Tabitha was curled in a ball, screaming in agony, puking her guts up. We were both rushed to the hospital. Mom burst into the emergency room like somebody told her I was at death’s door, hollering and crying with Mo at her side, but I was fine. No stomach cramps, no headache, no irregular heartbeat. Tabitha had uncontrollable diarrhea for a week and couldn’t eat anything other than soup and Jell-O.

The doctor concluded that I hadn’t ingested as many berries as Tabitha. Technically, that was true. I’d eaten exactly one less than her. But I should have had the same symptoms. I should have felt something.

The incident stuck with me. I thought of it every time I handled anything even slightly toxic—ragweed, poison ivy, jimsonweed. They all made me feel like I’d stuck my hand under a cool tap, and a similar cold feeling had spread from my stomach the day I ate those yewberries in second grade. I hadn’t explored every aspect of this strange gift yet, but that piece was always at the back of my mind—the poison plants.

A burst of excitement rippled through me as the memory swirled in my mind. That was the only other thing I had to look forward to this summer—tending to a very specific, very toxic plant. I grabbed my bag, went down to the shop, and stuck my head in the door.

“I’m going to the park for a while,” I said.

Mom’s face grew tight. “The park?”

The fear in her voice was too subtle for anyone but me to recognize. For her, being in a place as green as the park with all its open fields and trees and wildflowers was too much of a temptation, or maybe a threat. She worried that I’d push myself too far and make something happen that couldn’t be ignored or fixed. Mo wasn’t sure I needed to be so careful all the time. She and Mom bumped heads over it. They both wanted me to be safe, but there was always fear—of what might happen, of what the limits of this power might be, of where it came from. They didn’t have answers and neither did I. Not yet.

“Got your phone?” Mo asked as she wrapped a dozen parrot tulips in gold foil paper.

“Yup,” I said.

“See you at dinner then.”

CHAPTER 2

CHAPTER 2