Dedication
For the person who carved that tiny
“You can do this” in the study desk at
the Vassar library. Thanks for getting me through.
Contents
Cover
Title Page
Dedication
SOS
Part One: Up
8:17 a.m.
Relaxation Techniques
Unidentified Species
8:19 a.m.
Up/Down
Correction
Zombee
I Promised
Seventh-Grade Pact
Textual Evidence
Past Tense
Ghosted
In the Video
Spoiler Alert
Ian Is Apparently Short For
Mycorrhizal
It Doesn’t Seem So Mutual
Still
Last May
Free BF to Good Home
I Don’t Think I Meant to Hurt Him
I’m a Fun-gi!
When We Got to the Party
After the Kahlúa Ran Out
Random Flashback
Random Flashback Redux
Adaptation
I Have Sloth Envy
Unshedding
Groveling in All Caps
Her Response
Kat in Shining Armor
Junk Food
Relationship Philosophy
The Moment of Truth
Not Sure
8:44 a.m.
At Least Now I Know One Thing About Last Night for Sure
Part Two: Destroying Angel
Invasive Species
What They Have in Common
Classroom Visit
The Nerve
What’s in a Name
The Real Reason
A.k.a.
The Hiking Boots
How to Forage for Morels
Record Haul
Sometimes I Wonder
Signs of Toxicity
Volunteering in the Discovery Den at the Museum
Teacher’s Pet
Tony’s Portrait
When the Light Changed
Common Sense
The First Time
Please Touch
Eradication
Trick or Treat
Destroying Angel Poisoning
Haunted
And in the Morning
Nature on Display
What if Mom Went on Tinder
They
Pinched
Suspicious
Scientific Proof
Part Three: Art History
Clueless
First Impression
Forage Date
The Female Responds
First-Grade Science Fair
On the Ride Home
Showing Ian How It’s Done
My First Spore Print
Artist’s Statement
Ian’s Slightly Different Explanation
Spore Print Fail
Artistic Evolution
Amanita phalloides, by Chris Drury
Tell Him
Birth of the Spore Print Diaries
First I Had to Teach Myself
Pet Food
Maybe Esther’s Right
Channeling
At the Gym
Wayne Loved It
Carbon Sink
Backstory
Wayne Liked This One, Too
Part Four: No Matter What
A.T.B.
The Off-Season
In Common
Keep Trying, Bro
Inspiration
A Different Perspective
BTW, I Never Saw Leo
Without the Context
With the Context
Rage
Elegant Stinkhorn (Mutinus elegans)
Overcompensating
Practice
Laetiporus sulphureus
The Night of the Art Show
When We Turned onto My Street
They Were So Mad . . .
. . . About That?
Excuses
But Why Wait for the Copy
Regeneration
Regeneration, Part Two
The Solution
Part Five: Down
9:06 a.m.
Sloth vs. Ladder
So Long, Conor
Field Instructions for Navigating a Post-Party Bathroom
Bloody Mary
Two Texts
Three Responses
As Much As It Literally Physically Pains Me
They Mean Well
King Bolete vs. Bitter Bolete
Easy Answers
Hard Question
Gazelle Attack
When I Finish the Story
Breakfast Special
The Mycophobe
10:43 a.m.
Mycorrhizal, Revised
Acknowledgments
About the Author
Books by Christine Heppermann
Back Ad
Copyright
About the Publisher
SOS
Either way,
it didn’t seem like
a momentous decision.
I could go.
I could not go.
It was just a party,
not the Titanic.
If it sucked,
it wouldn’t kill me.
And, hey, who knows,
it might even be fun.
8:17 a.m.
Aspen scaber stalk
Blue milky cap
Cloudy clitocybe
Deadly galerina
Notgoingtopukenotgoingtopukenotgoingtopuke
Earthstar
Justbreathejustbreathejustbreathe.
Fairy ring
Gem-studded puffball
It’sokayit’sokayit’sokayit’sokayit’sokay.
Hen of the woods
Not going to puke.
Just breathe.
It’s okay.
Relaxation Techniques
Ian spins a Frisbee on his finger.
Kat pictures herself by a river
watching her negative thoughts
float by like leaves.
Esther mentally recaps baking shows—
whose meringue flopped,
whose custard froze.
I list common names of
mushrooms alphabetically.
When I was little, other kids
knew the difference between
Ariel and Elsa,
a backhoe and a bulldozer,
a Diplodocus and a T. rex.
But I could tell a tree ear
from a ringed tubaria,
a slippery jack
from a slippery jill.
My favorite bedtime story
was the Audubon field guide.
I’d hug Inky Cap, my blue
hippo, while Dad turned the pages,
pointed to photos, asked me to guess.
(He never stumped me.)
Dad made sure I knew the Latin names,
too, but who wants to snuggle up with
Coprinopsis atramentaria?
Wish you were here, Inky.
Wish I wasn’t.
Unidentified Species
His Name Is Cooper.
Wait, Connor.
No, Colin.
Definitely Colin.
Maybe Carter?
Colton?
8:19 a.m.
Amber jelly roll
Birch polypore
Comb tooth
Dunce cap . . .
I’m all the way to
Pinwheel Marasmius
before it finally feels safe
to sit up.
Up/Down
On the ceiling,
a poster
of Darth Vader
recruiting for his army.
Your Empire Needs You.
(Sorry, Darth. Not much
of a Star Wars fan.)
On the floor,
Cooper/Connor/Carter/Colin/Colton,
rolled toward the wall,
head poking out from the shell
of a green sleeping bag.
On this loft bed,
trapped between them,
me.
Correction
I’m not alone.
Lying beside me
against the rail is
an R2-D2 trash can?
On second thought,
Darth, beam me up
I’ll come over to the Dork Side.
I swear.
JUST
GET
ME
OUT
OF
HERE.
Zombee
When your dad is the director of
the Hudson Valley Nature Museum,
you learn a lot of crazy shit.
Like there’s this parasitic fly,
Apocephalus borealis, that inserts
its eggs into the abdomen of a bee,
and then the bee starts slacking off,
forgetting about nectar, crawling
in woozy circles on the sidewalk.
The introduction of a foreign substance
somehow messes with its system, maybe
the larvae eat its brain?
So many things I can’t remember.
I Promised
What Esther wanted
was to stay home,
go to bed early,
not look more hideous
than necessary the next day
in her peach bridesmaid’s dress
at her cousin’s wedding.
But she could tell I really wanted
to go, that I really wanted
her there. So she said,
okay, she would drive us,
if I promised we’d only stay
at the party an hour,
two at most.
Seventh-Grade Pact
We pulled it from the back
of the cabinet, a dusty bottle
Esther’s parents wouldn’t miss,
supposedly a red, but to us
it looked black—we were twelve,
what did we know? We thought
the date on the label meant
expiration.
I took the first sip.
Definitely expired.
Still, we passed it back and forth
until the taste didn’t matter,
until we couldn’t stop giggling.
Outside on Esther’s trampoline,
we launched ourselves at the moon.
A midair collision forced us
back down to earth. We hid
the bottle in the neighbor’s trash,
pressed ice to the lump
on Esther’s forehead,
and made each other promise
never to drink again.
Textual Evidence
Beside a damp circle of drool,
a miracle—my phone.
Time to start swimming backward
through my texts.
From Esther: Hey where are you?
From Kat: They’re playing Maroon fucking 5
From Kat: My armpit smells like ham
From Kat: Esther’s turning into a pumpkin
From Esther: Jorie??????????
From Esther: MEET AT CAR NOW
From Me: I have a ride
From Kat: Hahaha I bet
From Kat: bye ho bye
Past Tense
At some point
the “have”
changed to
“had,”
and the “ride”
changed to
“did not
go home,”
and the “I”
changed to . . .
Do I really
want to know?
Ghosted
From Me: Hey
From Me: Room spinny
From Me: Did you leave?
From Me: Ian?
From Me: Hello?????????????????
In the Video
Drunk Me
teeters
on the edge of the couch
like a Jenga tower,
bounces,
totters,
almost falls,
spreads her arms,
shouts,
Kat! Hey, Kat!
Are you ready
to capture this moment
of inspiration?
Drunk Me
L
E
A
P
S
Spoiler Alert
Gravity:
It’s legit.
Ian Is Apparently Short For
Inertia,
the property of matter
by which it remains
slumped in its chair,
staring at its phone,
while
Cooper/Conor/Carter/Colton
helps me up, and I limp
out of the frame, laughing,
and Kat says, Damn, girl,
you’re indestructible!
The video ends.
I watch it again.
Mycorrhizal
What it means is,
the tree and the mushroom
have a mutually beneficial relationship,
that they are separate yet
connected, roots and hyphae
intertwined to help each other
thrive, though new research
shows that when nitrogen is scarce
the mushroom may hide this
vital nutrition from its partner,
while the tree, continuing to share
carbohydrates, starts to shrivel.
It Doesn’t Seem So Mutual
for the mushroom to sit there,
pouting, watching Drunk Tree
stumble off with a stranger.
At the bare minimum,
the mushroom should probably
get off its symbiotic ass and ask
Drunk Tree if she’s okay.
Isn’t that the literal definition
of friends?
Still
I get why Ian’s mad.
He was being nice, inviting his ex-girlfriend
out so she can escape her ridiculous home life,
and how does she repay him?
By getting wasted and jumping around
on the furniture like an out-of-control toddler
who thinks she can fly.
By hanging all over . . .
Calvin?
Christopher?
Cormorant?
Crustacean?
Ugh.
Last May
Ian thought nothing had to change,
even though he was moving on to college,
and I was stuck for two more years
in the stagnant swamp of THS.
He’d still be in Poughkeepsie. We could
see each other all the time. Jorie, it’s like
the opposite of a long-distance relationship.
But I said that all depends on
whether you’re measuring in miles
or in all the girls he would meet at Marist.
According to my calculations,
we’d be about as far apart as we could get.
Free BF to Good Home
You don’t have to worry,
he told me. All men aren’t
dogs, Jorie. I’m not
your dad.
It’s true, Ian’s more of a
puppy. Gangly. Sweet. Never
meaning to do anything
wrong, and when he does,
you can’t get mad becaus
e
he’ll look at you with those big
wounded eyes, and then
you’re the monster.
Sure, he can say he wouldn’t
cheat, but how does he know?
Besides, it’s not like I dumped him
in a bag of rocks and tossed him
off the Mid-Hudson Bridge.
I said we could still be friends.
I Don’t Think I Meant to Hurt Him
A few years ago, Ian broke his thumb skiing.
It healed a little crooked.
If it’s cold out or if it rains,
it aches. He wanted me to
help him toughen up before
Ultimate season, so he challenged
me to thumb-wrestling matches.
He told me not to go easy
on him, and I didn’t, but he
always won, except that one time
I pinned him fast and hard
and felt a small, mean glow
when he winced.
I’m a Fun-gi!
That’s tacky, and it’s not even
grammatical, Mom argued.
It should say Fungus. Singular.
But I had already decided
that the smiling cartoon king bolete—
Dad’s favorite species—was
the best T-shirt ever.
For years Mom buried it
in the laundry hamper, but Dad
dug it out and dug it out
until it practically disintegrated,
and then one day last year
I was back at Crazy Dollar, shopping
for Father’s Day gifts with Esther,
not expecting to find anything
that awesome again, but, hey,
Shitake Happens.
When We Got to the Party
I didn’t want Ian to think I was
clingy, so I dragged Kat and Esther
into the kitchen, where we hung out
in an awkward clump, and I was ready
to admit I wanted to leave, when this girl
Luna—like the moth, she said, and I instantly
loved her—came in and started making
these yummy brown drinks called White
Russians, the name of which she said was
racist bullshit, since the Kahlúa does all
the work, so why should vodka and milk
get all the credit? and I said we should
rename it, and then Ian came in,
and he was all, Cool, you met Luna
and she’s like, You’re friends of Ian’s
from high school? That’s awesome!