I left the Ravine with the bagged plant hidden in my backpack and walked home. I peeked in at Mom and Mo, who were busy loading premade arrangements into the floral cooler, before heading up to my room.

I’d debated cultivating the hemlock for months before I actually worked up the nerve to do it. I worried about being in the park and not being able to keep the other plants from noticing me. On top of that, I was scared my parents would find out. I was pretty sure that growing a poisonous bush in the park wasn’t what they had in mind for how I should spend my summer. They wanted me to hang out with the few friends I had and do whatever it was they thought other kids my age were doing. Except I didn’t think they understood how hard it was for me to balance friendships with the need to be near my plants, keeping what I could do a secret, and navigating the world in a way that didn’t draw the attention of every single blade of grass, every tree, every shrub.

In my room, I closed the door and set my backpack on the bed. I thought about locking the door, but I pictured Mom taking it off the hinges and decided not to. I flipped on my microscope and sat at my desk. I switched out my glasses for a pair with a built-in magnifier and pulled on a pair of plastic gloves. Removing the hemlock from the bag, I broke off a sprig and tossed it into a metal tray on my desk. I opened a notebook to write down my observations.

The taller plants could grow up to seven feet tall, but this sample was only about a foot, its leaves six inches long with alternately arranged oval leaflets. It was sharp-toothed and its leaf veins terminated at the bottom, not the tip.

The root was the deadliest part. Over time, as the blossoms grew taller, the poison pooled in the bottom third of the plant, leaving the leaves and flowers fairly harmless as long as they weren’t ingested.

I pulled the roots apart. They looked like small, pale carrots and smelled like them, too. They oozed a thick straw-colored liquid as I sliced into them with a scalpel. This was the substance that would bring on nausea, vomiting, seizures, and ultimately, death.

A set of hands clamped on my shoulders.

The scalpel slipped and sliced through my glove. Into my thumb.

“Oh shit, Briseis! I’m so sorry!” Mo blurted out. “I was trying to scare you a little. I didn’t know you were studying.”

I ripped off my glove. The gash on my thumb bloomed like a rose. Blood trickled into the palm of my hand and down my arm in thin ribbons.

I looked up at Mo. I couldn’t think straight. “I—I need—”

“I’ll get the first aid kit.” She hurried out of the room.

Fear gripped my chest. My breaths came in quick, shallow bursts. A cold ache pushed its way from my thumb to my wrist and up to my forearm. I looked at the time on my phone.

Seconds ticked by.

Mo came back with the first aid kit and reached for my hand. I jerked away from her. She couldn’t get the poisonous liquid on her or she’d die, the same way I was about to.

“I need to see it, love,” she said.

“No—no, it’s—Can you hand me some gauze?”

She handed me a few pieces and I pressed them against the cut. I didn’t care about the wound or the pain. The poison was already working. There was no stopping it, no way to reverse it. I couldn’t form the words to make her understand. She didn’t even know what I’d been doing. A rush of guilt swept over me. When I died, she’d blame herself.

The ivy suddenly burst from its clay pot, shattering it with a loud crack. Mo jumped back as the plants doubled their length to reach me, encircling my ankles.

“Hey, Mo,” I managed to mutter. “I—I love you. A lot.”

She sidestepped the tangle of vines at my feet. “You okay, love? It’s only a little blood. I don’t even think it’ll need stitches. Wait.” She touched my cheek. “Are you in shock?”

I shook my head. “Can you get Mom?”

“Uh, sure,” she said, still looking confused. She left and I checked the clock again. Three minutes had gone by. The poison only needed fifteen minutes to kill me. This was my own stupid fault. I’d given into my curiosity instead of being careful the way Mom and Mo had taught me.

Four minutes.

All the plants in my room had turned toward me.

Mom came barreling into the room. “Let me see—Oh, God! Is the finger cut off? Where is it? If we put it in ice, they can reattach it!”

Mo came in behind her. “Thandie, it’s a cut, not an amputation.”

Five minutes.

I stared at my hand. The tingling had stopped and was now confined to the tip of my thumb. I tried to breathe slower so I could take stock of how I felt.

I couldn’t tell if my pulse was faster because of the hemlock or because I was scared. Still no sweating, no seizures, or blurred vision. The scalpel lay on my desk. The blood smeared on it had begun to turn black. That was the poison acting on the cells, breaking them apart. If it was doing that inside my body, I should’ve felt something by now.

Six minutes.

Mom knelt next to me. “Bri, baby, are you okay?” She eyed the tangle of ivy around my ankles.

I held my hand away so that she couldn’t touch it. “I—I think so.” I actually wasn’t sure at all.

“Let’s take a deep breath and calm down,” Mo said. She took Mom by the arm and guided her to my bed. She turned to me. “Briseis, love, I am so sorry.”

“No, it’s my fault,” I said. “It’s okay.”

Nine minutes.

Something was wrong, but not in the way I expected. Nothing was happening.

“You scared the crap out of me,” Mom said to Mo.

“You sit there and breathe,” Mo said. “You look more shook up than Briseis.”

Mom shot her a pointed glance, then turned to me. “You sure you’re okay, baby?” I nodded. “Put a Band-Aid and some ointment on that.”

Mo came over and cupped my face in her hands. “I’m gonna get you a sign to put on your door that says Future Botanist At Work so I know not to walk up on you like that.”

I forced a quick smile.

“Love you,” she said.

She and Mom left. I disentangled myself from the ivy and bandaged my finger. I swept the plant parts and the bloody scalpel into a plastic bag, shoved the whole thing into an empty shoebox, and dropped it down the trash chute in the hallway.

I sat on the edge of my bed in a haze of confusion. Thirty minutes had gone by and . . . nothing.