Zera and the Green Man by Sandra Knauf Read Free Book Online Page B

whispered, “It’s okay. Go back to sleep.” 
    Zera’s eyes opened and her rigid body slowly relaxed. Her breathing returned to normal. She turned on her nightstand light. The room was empty, her thin cotton blanket knotted around her legs. She untangled it, smoothed it down, turned off the light. Closing her eyes, she imagined she saw two stars twinkling in the distance. Her mother and father. Gone forever. She thought about the river accident, a tragedy she did not witness but always experienced so vividly in her nightmares.
    This time, for the first time, she didn’t cry when she woke. Her heart didn’t continue to pound with horror. Turning again to her nightstand, she gazed into the darkness. She saw the outlines of her plants. Sunny, in the terrarium, and five others now surrounding her. Zera’s fingers brushed the gray-green surface of one of them. She plucked a few soft, elongated leaves, held them to her nose. Lavender. Smells so good. It helps. Soothed, she drifted back into sleep, the leaves cradled in her palm, her nightmare receding.              
     
    * * * .
     
    “Wake up, Zera. Up and at ’em.”  The Toad knocked on her bedroom door, croaking, “Time to get ready for school.” When Zera didn’t respond, he opened it. Zera opened an eye; the room was dark, the windows still electronically tinted dark for night. 
    She squinted in the direction of his voice. From the hall light she could see the shadow of his head, spikes of bed-head going out in all directions.
    “Ughhh,” she groaned, pulling the covers over her face. 
    The Toad flipped the wall switch. “Rise and shine. You missed the alarm. It’s late.”
    The room lit up in harsh forty-watt-times-seven light from the chandelier. With the activation of the light switch, the darkness on the tinted windows faded, revealing sunny skies between the ruffled curtains. Zera groaned again. 
    When the door clicked shut, she threw off the blanket. She rubbed her eyes, sat up, and stuck her tongue out at the door. She got up, went to the window. The Village Glen lawns were all the exact shade of green, with about a third just slightly different. She could spot the fakes easily, they had a sheen that stood out to her like neon. The latest and greatest fad in home improvement: plastic lawns. People had been ripping out their grass all spring because of climate change; in Colorado’s case, drought. All the better to look pretty, have zero maintenance, and save water. Who cares that they are fake and will never have that fresh grass smell? Or give off oxygen? She saw a few garage doors open and the cars leave. To work. To school. Everything so much the same. Yet, it was a shiny, early June day, and Zera’s spirits began to lift, like the trilling of bird song in the tree near her window. She noticed a few nice touches. Just across the street a real rose bush bloomed, and on two small porches, pots of petunias. Real ones! Directly across from the condos, a vibrant pot of purple flowers on a porch caught her eye. The blooms were moving, jiggling, almost as if trying to get her attention. That’s weird. What is doing that? A cat, maybe a bird? She squinted. The pot seemed to glow brighter in hue, and the movement stopped. No animal came out, no bird flew away. Zera shook her head and turned away from the window.
    It would be a nice day if it wasn’t the last week of ninth grade. I can’t take another summer here. A lot had changed since her birthday. She and Abby had fun that spring break week celebrating her birthday — they had a sleepover, hung out, surfed the Internet, listened to music and skateboarded. But after break, Abby got a boyfriend, a 17-year-old named Thor. He was even more extreme than Abby, two years older, with two piercings (tongue and eyebrow), dyed black hair, and all-black clothes like Abby. Almost instantly they were inseparable. Within a few weeks Abby had abandoned Zera almost completely. Now summer was coming.