Chapter 1
They accepted me because I asked. Sometimes that was all it took. But Liadan had been asking all her life, and they never accepted her.
We ended up in the same place, but that was not what Liadan wanted, and not what she deserved. She walked in through the front door with a masters degree, and they sat her down in a stale, ventless room with her PhD supervisor, who leered down on everyone like a condescending candy cane.
“Yes, yes,” said Rob, the ancient curator, “Liadan can be a volunteer.”
“Not an intern?”
“We don’t take interns.”
The very next day, I walked in through the back door with no supervisor, and a flimsy letter of recommendation from my second-year ecology lecturer who had spelled my name wrong.
“Yes, yes,” said Rob, “You can be a volunteer.”
“Not a research assistant?”
Rob laughed.
It was not as hard as people thought, working in a museum. You didn’t have to know anything besides how cardboard boxes worked. Every box came with a label, which told you what was inside.
“That’s a Glossopteris,” I told Liadan once, “A type of plant from the Permian Period. It goes in aisle four.”
She looked at me, then at the shard of khaki rock in my hand, then back at me.
“How do you know?”
“I can tell by the veins,” I said.
She squinted at the rock.
“Those are… interesting veins.”
I asked my brain for something about Glossopteris and drew a blank, so I made something up.
“The veins are telling,” I said, “That’s why they are called Glossopteris. ‘Gloss’ for shiny, and ‘opteris’ for…” Damn, ‘opteris’ didn’t sound like a word, now that I said it aloud.
“Veins?” Liadan said.
“Yes,” I said, “Veins.”
She was smiling. I couldn’t tell if that was a good thing.
“So,” I looked around, “Aisle four?”
She pried the rock gently from my hand, and laid it back in its box.
“We had better leave it here,” she said, “Rob will kill us if he finds a cicada wing in aisle four.”
I pointed to the label. She laughed.
“I wouldn’t trust those,” she said, “These blue boxes are old. See?” She showed me the torn edges, “This one must have held a Glossopteris a long time ago. We don’t bother with their labels anymore. We just throw them out once they expire.”
My cheeks were hot for the rest of the day, but I learned two important things. Never lie to Liadan, and never trust the labels on old, blue boxes.
