15-05-2021-052358It-Ends-with-Us

Atlas is the first friend I’ve ever had that’s ever been inside my house. He’s
also the first friend to know how much I like to garden. And now he’s the first
friend to ever ask me why I garden.
I reached down and pulled at a weed and started tearing it into little pieces
while I thought about his question.
“When I was ten, my mother got me a subscription to a website called Seeds
Anonymous,” I said. “Every month I would get an unmarked package of seeds
in the mail with instructions on how to plant them and care for them. I
wouldn’t know what I was growing until it came up out of the ground. Every
day after school I’d run straight to the backyard to see the progress. It gave me
something to look forward to. Growing things felt like a reward.”
I could feel Atlas staring at me when he asked, “A reward for what?”
I shrugged. “For loving my plants the right way. Plants reward you based
on the amount of love you show them. If you’re cruel to them or neglect them,
they give you nothing. But if you care for them and love them the right way,
they reward you with gifts in the form of vegetables or fruits or flowers.” I
looked down at the weed I was tearing apart in my hands and there was barely
an inch left of it. I wadded it up between my fingers and flicked it.
I didn’t want to look over at Atlas because I could still feel him staring, so
instead, I just stared out over my mulch-covered garden.
“We’re just alike,” he said.
My eyes flicked to his. “Me and you?”
He shook his head. “No. Plants and humans. Plants need to be loved the
right way in order to survive. So do humans. We rely on our parents from birth
to love us enough to keep us alive. And if our parents show us the right kind of
love, we turn out as better humans overall. But if we’re neglected . . .”
His voice grew quiet. Almost sad. He wiped his hands on his knees, trying
to get some of the dirt off. “If we’re neglected, we end up homeless and
incapable of anything meaningful.”
His words made my heart feel like the mulch he had just laid out. I didn’t
even know what to say to that. Does he really think that about himself?
He acted like he was about to get up, but before he did I said his name.
He sat back down in the grass. I pointed at the row of trees that lined the
fence to the left of the yard. “You see that tree over there?” In the middle of the
row of trees was an oak tree that stood taller than all the rest of the trees.
Atlas glanced over at it and dragged his eyes all the way up to the top of the
tree.