Page 6 of Bloom and Burn
She fans her long eyelashes, doing her best impression of an innocent puppy. “Quality control? I’m making sure it’s edible.”
She’s such a dork, and I love her so much. Shaking my head, I plop on the couch and grab a handful of the popcorn she’s already made from the bowl she’s balancing on her lap. “Uh-huh. How very thoughtful of you to taste everything.”
She waves me off and uses the remote to dim the lights so we can start the movie. As tradition stands every time a new installment is released, we first have to watch the prequels. It’s no wonder then that we mouth along the lines as the two leads meet for the first time. It’s my and Emily’s favorite part, so I wait until the action sequence starts before I let my mind stray.
Overall, my day was very productive. Busy as hell too, but that’s to be expected what with the move. I already called my legal team and they are preparing the contracts for the land, the studio and the café, so these will be ready and finalized sometime next week. If I can manage to get Ryan on board tomorrow, I can go to the mayor and kick off the process for the facility’s approval. The plans are ready since the terrain and size are more or less exactly the same as the plot I was originally going to buy in Sandy before the deal broke off, so I can start building the moment I get my documents stamped.
I lift my glass of coke and stare at the swirling liquid. Realistically, and if everything goes well, the approval process will take between two to three weeks, whichmeans construction can most likely start in a month and a half or so. I’ll take it.
Satisfied with my plan of action, I refocus my attention on the movie. We get to the part with the corrupt government stealing funds from the people, and as usual, Emily and I can’t help but draw parallels to real life. Greed rules it just like in the movie, but the one silver lining is that our multibillion-dollar company, JE Pharmaceuticals, directs a big chunk of its profits not only to the research I am doing, but also towards various programs which try to make the life of the average person better.
I know it’s not enough to fix all the evil that people in positions like mine do, but I believe it’s a start.
We take a bathroom break after the first movie. I watch Emily wheel herself out of the lounge as I gulp down the rest of my coke and fight off a cramp in my leg. A familiar feeling of disappointment twists my stomach, getting so bad I need to step out for some fresh air.
Holding my hands with the palms up, I count the lines there. Usually, it calms me down, but tonight I’m having a hard time keeping the worry and impatience at bay. I just wish things would move faster so that I could deliver on my promises. It’s taken me years and countless called-off deals to get here when it shouldn’t have, patents, permissions, inspections… While I understand that it’s just how the world works, it doesn’t suck any less. I’m close, sosoclose. All I need is for Ryan to agree to sell the flower shop’s stake of the building to me, then for the approvals to be issued, and I can finally build the facility for experimental stem-cell treatment of paralysis.
Buzzing with nerves, I inhale the chilly night air. We wasted an entire year trying to make things work in Sandy. The truth is that if not for Emily, I wouldn’t haveeven looked at Estacada. My memories from here aren’t the fondest, but I was also not willing to wait any longer when she found a suitable location here. Besides, she said she was tired of the cities, that she wanted to try a quiet town where she could be a bigger part of the community.
And what better place to try that than our childhood town, right?
I shudder as the memories start to flood me, but they hurt a lot less than I expected them to. It’s like they’ve been dulled by the years I spent away from this place, even though it changed my life forever. Gazing up at the starry sky, I squeeze the patio’s railing.
It was a night just like this one. Calm, quiet, uneventful. I was in high school and my new buddies were going bowling and had invited me. I was on cloud nine, so proud to be considered worthy to be part of the cool kids’ gang. So I went, of course I did, even though I was meant to drive my little sister to dance lessons. But this was more important, the chance of a lifetime to Jack from back then, so I asked a friend to drop her off for me. She’d call me when she arrived, and we’d go about our evenings until it was time to pick her up.
Except that it wasn’t her that called me. It was my mom, from the hospital, crying and screaming because Emily had gotten into a car accident.
I dig my fingers into the cold metal, heaving as I struggle for air. My skin feels like a prison, a cage I cannot escape. If only I had been the one to take her to dance class. If only I hadn’t been so stupid back then, prioritizing fake friends to my sister’s safety… None of it would’ve happened.
I’m spiraling down, I can tell. I can feel the tendrils pulling me toward the bottom, but I can’t stop them. Idon’t want to. The guilt is too much sometimes, like a vise around my neck, squeezing and squeezing until I surrender to it.
Everyone said it wasn’t my fault. That it was a sad and unfortunate accident and that the drunk driver of the truck was the one responsible. I never believed that, because if I had been the one with Emily on that night, maybe I would’ve been able to do something. To prevent the accident from happening.
Anger rises within me, mixing in with the regret and the disappointment. Emily lost more than her legs that night—she had to give up her dream of becoming a professional dancer. I clench my teeth so hard my jaw hurts. Our parents didn’t have the kind of money Emily and I enjoy now, but still, they relocated us to Portland and paid for the best doctors. They did what they could so Emily could have as normal a life as possible, but I never really saw the spark return to her eyes. She missed dancing so much she cut it entirely out of her life.
I didn’t say anything, I couldn’t because what good would it do? But I stayed by her side, I watched over her, and over time, we grew to be the best friends we are now. We finished high school, then went on to college together. We were smart in different ways—she’s a wizard with money and I’m a chem-bio & neuroscience nerd—which complement each other, so eventually the start-up we founded exploded. It’s how we got here, even though I haven’t even officially graduated yet. The experimental work we do at JE is based on seven years of hard work; it’s the culmination of my MD/PhD. thesis.
“Yo, Jack, the fuck you still doing outside?” Emily shouts from inside over a laugh. “Get your ass over here and let’s continue.”
There is no guarantee my experimental treatment will work, I know that. The facility needs to be built first, then it’s tests and tests and even more tests until we can do human trials. But I won’t give up either way, I will see this through to the end. And if I fail? Then I’ll just start over. I’ll try and keep trying until one day Emily can walk again.
3
Ryan
Ican’tstopthinkingabout Jack Keller on the way back to my parents’ house. He’s two or three years older than me, and if I thought he was handsome back then, Jack Keller now is even hotter. Plus, he’s a bit of a dork.
To be honest, my memories from high school are a bit blurry because I didn’t have the best of times. The cool kids made fun of me because of my love for plants, and I’m pretty sure he was part of that crowd.
I remember because I might or might not have had a tiiiiny crush on him. But it couldn’t be helped—he was kind of cute and we’d chatted a few times about the flowers in the schoolyard before he decided he wanted to be part of the assholes’ club. If I am being completely honest, I don’t blame him—if I had had the chance, I’d have joined them too. The perks and benefits definitely seemed worth it to fifteen-year-old me. Anyway.
I pull up our driveway and turn the engine off. But I don’t step out of the car just yet. My chest alternates between fluttering and trying to crush my lungs as I replay my encounter with Jack at the Orchid. God, he was positively gorgeous. Definitely well-off too, not that I am surprised. Despite his aspirations to be buddies with the bad boys, he always had a brain, unlike them.
Now that I think about it, I don’t remember much of him bullying me. Name-calling and teasing were commonplace in school, but that I could tolerate with gritted teeth even though I wanted to punch their ugly faces. ‘Be the bigger person’ and all that crap that mom instilled in me. I still regret not standing up for myself to this day.
Jack though… I don’t remember him ever getting physical. He hung out with the assholes, hovered around them every break, but he was never there when the nastier stuff happened. Like the textbook ripping and the water buckets… Had he moved away by then?
As I lock the pickup, I wonder if he found a new clique of bullies to hang out with after he abruptly left Estacada, and then I try to remember why it was that he did leave. I can’t find an answer to that though, other than a fuzzy memory that it had something to do with his sister.
