Free Bright Lines by Tanwi Nandini Islam

Fulton Mall, and even made her a shirt based on one of theirpurchases. Ella hadn’t even gone with her, but all the clothes fit perfectly.
    Ella looked at the garden, everything heightened by her father’s glasses. Four Benadryls, or sleeping candy, as Charu called it, didn’t work. She yearned for company, for someone to talk to, but there was no one she could think to call.
    A beeping sound came from her bedroom window. She switched back to her own glasses and went inside to investigate.
    She slid open the door and tiptoed through the kitchen and living room, trying not to creak the floorboards. She went into her bedroom. The alarm clock read quarter past six. The beeping had stopped. She cracked her bedroom door open and saw Maya whispering her prayers, knelt in prostration. Remarkable, how Maya set her alarm for so early. As Ella took a step backward, she heard:
    “Ella?”
    “Don’t let me interrupt you.”
    “No, wait. I’m almost done. This is the part you ask for stuff.”
    Ella waited for her to finish. After a few more whispery requests, Maya turned her head to the left, then the right, then clasped her hands once more. As she rose up her knees popped like bubble wrap, and she laughed.
    “Eighteen going on eighty,” said Maya.
    “I’m going back outside.”
    “Can I come?”
    “Uh . . .”
    “I’ll take that as a yes.”
     * * * 
    “So this is what you spend your nights doing?” Maya shook her head at the mess of soil, flowers, empty packets of seed, and puddles of hose water on the patio tiles.
    “I’ve got something of a sleeping problem.”
    “A summer job might help with that,” said Maya. “I still can’t believe Charu and you aren’t working.”
    “I should be helping out Anwar, but I haven’t been . . . in the mood. Is that what you do during the day?”
    “Yeah, I work over by Fulton Mall, at Finish Line, the sneaker store. Now I’ve got an outrageous collection of kicks.” She lifted upa foot—they were polka-dot Nike Air Force 1s, but that was about as much as Ella knew about sneakers.
    “Shouldn’t you be asleep if you have work?”
    “Today, your sister and I are taking a beach day. Haven’t been once this summer. You should come.”
    “I’m not a beach person. Not a water person at all, in fact,” said Ella.
    “Then just sit on the sand.”
    Long, wispy leaves budding with tiny purple flowers burst out of a crack in the tiles. Ella looked closer. It was a mugwort infestation. “Since you’re awake, grab a shovel and shears,” she said, kneeling on the ground in front of the weedy overgrowth. “Loosen the base with the shovel, then pull, pull, pull.” She demonstrated but the mugwort stem broke in her hand. “Sometimes . . . it takes more . . . effort,” she grunted, yanking harder and falling back on her rear. “Then, just shear it as close to the root as possible.”
    “What is it?”
    “It’s called mugwort. These little purple yellow flowers are pretty, but too much of it isn’t. You’d be surprised; if you press oil out of mugwort, you get a pretty good herbal remedy for anxiety, cramps. If you let it simmer in ninety-proof vodka, it makes a tonic. It’s got thujone in it, same chemical compound as absinthe,” said Ella. “It’s good toxic, psychotropic toxic.”
    “You get drunk?”
    “Not really. Sometimes.”
    Maya grabbed the shovel from Ella and thrust it into the ground, loosening the mugwort from the tile. She did this a few more times, squatting as she did so. “It’s not as easy as it looks, but it’s all in the legs,” she said, snipping the mugwort free. She glanced at Ella. “You could do this all day, huh?”
    “Yes, I think so.”
     * * * 
    Above them the sky lightened to a more luminous gray and they resembled gravediggers, undiscovered in the morning, uprooting weeds that collected at their bare feet. Neighborhood sounds broke the silence between them—the halt and screech of sanitation trucks and