The Sunflower Seedlings
by Flynnie Roth 

The grass was scrapey as it struggled to escape the ground and clawed at the legs of all who ran through it in tiny shorts. In tiny shorts on this occasion were the two little girls. Biffy was frail and waif-like, a gentle sunflower stretching to grow in a dark wasteland; a fragile girl of 12, timid of things she didn’t know, yet possessing a phantom experience that somehow guided her, gave her an advantage over all the other girls—somehow she knew things about the world, though her moon-like blue eyes and thin, cupid-bow smile never betrayed that truth. Peg was taller.

They ran across the grass field, jumping and bounding like little girls, which they could pull off convincingly. But in a few years, that youth would be gone; Biffy was faintly aware of this, and made the most of her jumping and bounding years. She jumped and bounded with fervor, falling into the grass and laughing artificially.

“You fell!” shouted Peg, giggling girlishly and leaping forward to land on her face. Blood poured from her nose.

“You broke your nose!” squealed Biffy. Peg nodded solemnly, agreeing. “We should take you to a hospital. Or your mother.”

“Forget it! I hate hospitals!”

“What about your mother?”

Peg shrugged. “I’m ambivalent. Still, let’s play! We only have a very little while left—until the sun sets, I mean, literally. Do you like boys?”

Biffy thought about it. It was true, she supposed, she did like boys. Especially Tom Wopat from The Dukes of Hazzard. She imagined having sex with him in the back of the Duke boys’ car, or maybe the jail set. She was young and didn’t really know what sex was, but had a hidden suspicion about it. Years later someone would tell her how it actually happened and she would throw up.

“Yes, I like boys.”

“Do you have a crush on anyone?” asked Peg, bright-eyed and childlike hopeful.

“I like one boy. He shoots arrows with dynamite tied on them.”

“Do you like anyone at our school?”

This was a brand new, challenging question. Biffy considered it. There was one boy, Eric, who was always a little dirty and greasy, tall and freckled, but with a smile on his face. His clothes were always shabby. She knew if she told Peg who she liked she would think she was crazy.

“No. I don’t like boys at the school.”

“Me neither! I hate them!” yelled Peg, then pulled out a copy of Lillian Hellman’s The Children’s Hour to read from.

Peg had become inconsequential. Biffy laid back in the grass, her hands tucked up under her head, and stared at the sun. It hurt her eyes and she decided to stare at the clouds. She thought about Eric, and how he would wave at her when she saw him at school. He would talk loudly about how dirty the school was. Sometimes she would go into the bathroom and he was in there, cleaning the toilets, and yelled at everyone to leave. One time a boy threw up and he came to clean it up, and he was very angry. It was then Biffy realized he was a janitor and not a sixth-grader, but she still liked him.

Was there any rule that said girl couldn’t be in love with a janitor? Yes, probably, at least rules about janitors being in love with the girls. But a girl is a tiny and breakable thing, like a sunflower seedling, growing from the ground only to become bent and twisted by the sun.

For more of this great story, buy Flynnie Roth’s novel
The Sunflower Seedlings The Tell-Tale Cellphone
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