Invitation to a Bonfire by Adrienne Celt Page A

way when the new semester started and I began my work in the greenhouse, after spending the summer reading horticulture periodicals and receiving daily tutorials from John O’Brien. Yes, it was unusual for a graduated senior to remain on campus, but I was hardly older than the rest of the girls. In fact, most of the returning students already knew me: as a former upperclassman, albeit an unpopular one. In perhaps the last gasp of my socialist-optimist na ï vet é , I really thought this familiarity would work to my advantage.
    The first day was flush with move-ins, slammed car doors. I heard shrieks of greeting as I trudged to and from the greenhouse, carrying sacks of fertilizer and seedling pots from the back of John’s pickup. We were behind our original schedule, still fixing things into place, but were confident about finishing on time, and anyway it added visibility to the project, having us work so vigorously in such plain view. Already that morning we’d scrubbed the glass clean and checked all the window seals, and we’d spent the past two weeks testing how well the space held its temperature when set to various levels: mild, tepid, hot, steaming. I had a hanging basket of spray bottles, some full of water, some nutrient-rich soil enhancers, some a mild dish soap solution to discourage pests. One had nettle tea. Now we were bringing in the plant life, and I felt an unexpected wave of maternal awe. Holding a flat of young tomatoes, I wanted to cry at the great vulnerability there at my fingertips. The spice smell, the fragile stems, the sticky hairs—it all combined, for me, into something quite infant-like, a cold and shivering tray of children being shuttled away from the only home they’d ever known. I wondered what it was like for them to ride in the bed of a truck, en plein air . If it was stunning. If they felt fear. Rocking gently back and forth like children on the deck of a boat in a storm. But never mind.
    After we’d settled the fruit and vegetable selection, the more glamorous flora would be brought in. Some I was planning to start from seeds: a tree called Voon’s banana that I had found in a catalogue, which purported to grow complexly flavored fruit and electric-pink flowers; some blue-tipped asters and iceberg superiors to use in floral arrangements around the school. But the administration didn’t want to wait around for sprouts; they wanted showy color right now. They wanted pop. And who could blame them? Already families were mustering outside the new structure, trying to peer in through the foggy glass. By the afternoon we’d be crowded over, and if everything went to plan, the first impression people had when walking into the greenhouse would be of entering another world, steamy, rich, and bright. Parents would imagine their own young flowers blooming under the care of the Donne School masters, and students would picture themselves in a wild new jungle of possibility. The opening of the greenhouse should, I’d been informed, set the tone for the whole school year.
    By lunchtime I was sweating, my hair tied up in a messy bun. I thought I heard my name called once or twice, but whenever I turned to wave hello I found myself alone, a pack of girls bustling away down the path with their heads pressed together and hands clasped tight. Giggling, punching one another in the arm. It always went that way on the first day, I told myself, with unions resumed and pacts re-sealed; and so if I felt a prickling on the back of my neck or an uncomfortable rumbling in my stomach whenever a set of eyes homed in on me only to divert sharply away, I ignored it. At noon I ran my hands under the greenhouse tap, wetting the blue bandanna John had given me to tie around my neck and wiping the dirt and sweat from my face. I had a year’s pass to the dining hall, and although I’d also bought a hot plate and kettle with an advance on my salary, there was no time to