What the Jaguar Told Her by Alexandra V. Méndez

Author:Alexandra V. Méndez
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Levine Querido

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Chloe bounded up to the car when they drove up to her place the next morning. She was wearing jeans, like Jade, with an elegant little black purse strung across her, and pleather ankle boots. She looked like she could be in high school.

Chloe pulled on the door handle before Jade’s dad had a chance to unlock it. Jade loved when Chloe was like this—when she didn’t mind showing how excited she was about something, didn’t care if she looked a little silly. It usually happened when no one else from school was around or when she was surrounded by people she seemed to trust.

She got in and greeted them, and as they drove off, Chloe asked, “So what is this place again?” She was clutching the little purse in her lap. It looked entirely too grown-up for her, with its elegant silver clasps, and Jade thought it must belong to her mom.

“Well,” said her dad, glancing at them in the rearview mirror, “it’s a big house, really, with plenty of land, from before the Civil War. Now they’ve converted it into a museum and gardens. The man who owned it for a while was—well, he was a rich person who liked to collect things. They have this funny smattering of objects. You’ll see.”

Jade wondered what this eccentric rich man from long ago had decided to get his hands on.

“They hired me to grow their native plant garden,” her dad added.

He turned and the museum came into view. It was indeed a very large house, two stories tall, with a wraparound porch and a grassy lawn in front. Fiery marigolds bloomed at the feet of perfectly rounded hedges that lined a brick walkway leading to the stairs at the entrance. Her dad was right—the flowers’ explosions of color stole the spotlight.

Jade knew immediately, though, that her dad didn’t work in these gardens. Despite the exuberant marigolds poking their feathered heads out over the grass, these gardens were too trim, too contained. Her dad’s special talent was his ability to coax plants to grow as tall and as curly or stretched out as they wanted to. He liked to wait patiently and see what a flower or a vine was capable of, and then give it little nudges along the way. He didn’t beat back his plants to make them look a certain way, and he only ever trimmed them if it was to help them grow again.

Sure enough, when they had parked, her dad headed toward a winding dirt path to the side of the house.

Jade started to follow after him and Katerina, but Chloe lagged behind, fiddling with something in her purse, and Jade waited.

“I have to tell you something,” said Chloe softly, when Jade’s dad and Katerina were a little ways away.

“What’s up?” said Jade.

Chloe opened her purse for Jade to see inside. She looked in and saw a couple of Maxi pads. Jade had seen them in the store before and in people’s bathrooms, but she had never seen any so close up.

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