I will never forget the night you met me in the greenhouse. Wet dirt has always been my favorite smell but that night I first really smelled it, in all its varieties, more than I've ever been able to smell it since.

After weeks of not really talking, when I was mad at you for ignoring me and you were mad at me for something I can't remember, you'd stared at me across the table in the science lab and said Fine, let's talk about it, and I threw my petri dish at you and it cut your face and we'd both landed in the dean's office. Something had snapped across that table in the science lab and I don't know what it was but the dean thought we'd just been worried about the lab results and our grades and he sent us out with a demerit each. And you paused outside the door after and you looked at me with a new look and said Meet me in the greenhouse, 9:45 and I knew it was then or never.

I didn't know quite what was coming but I made Tammi help me during study hall when the prefect wasn't looking and it took forever. I owed her big time, for that, too, because Tammi already had three demerits and a presentation to prepare for the next day but I said, Look, I hooked the screen back in for you after Jon nights two through six and then Steve nights six through eleven, and also you've been borrowing my grey boots the whole time, and she knew it and just nodded and said Okay. So she showed me how to do my hair and stuff and even lent me her jeans and her special map of how to get back to the room before curfew no matter what. And every time the prefect looked in I was holding up flashcards for her to study Greek.

The bell finally rang at 9:45 and I knew you knew I wouldn't be there till at least 9:47 so I booked it as fast as my grey boots would go. I had sprayed myself with deodorant so I wouldn't sweat but I was nervous and I hoped so badly you wouldn't notice that my shirt was damp, but I was afraid I'd just been thinking you liked me but you didn't. Then there you were and you looked like I felt, like maybe you were sweating a little, too, and suddenly I couldn't remember how I'd gotten through the trap door by the compost heap. There'd been bananas and eggshells and coffee grinds — I know because I saw them later — but I couldn't see them then, I could only see you looking so much taller than usual with the lamplight from outside coming through the overhanging trees and lighting up the one side of your face.

There were tables in the greenhouse, three tables covered in dust and old trays with dirt and dead plants in them, because nobody used the greenhouse anymore, so you were the biggest thing in there that was clean and alive and you seemed so big, but so high up, like the headlights of a car in the dark when you're lying in your driveway checking to see if you need to replace any bulbs. And I reached up like I was going to touch you like the car, only my hand was shaking and you seemed both too close and too far away, and you took my hand and you pulled me in and just when your wet hot mouth opened mine we fell backwards and the spikes on Tammi's jeans tore open the bag of peat moss and an old bucket of water knocked over but you kept kissing me.

And you must have been on your knees because your belly was against mine as my shirt moved up and I could feel the wet hot peat on my back and your hands through my hair on my face on my stomach and I touched your cut face and you bit my lip and I was rolling with you on the floor crying because we hadn't spoken in three weeks and now the world was ending. You held your breath as you touched Tammi's zipper and our eyes met and we could feel in our spines that the bell would ring in minutes but each second was a pulse and then everything stopped and felt dirty and terrible because the zipper wouldn't budge. You muttered something I'd never heard as you left through a side door I hadn't known about and I had to pick myself up off the concrete floor and hobble towards the trap door because I couldn't go your way, and that's when I fell in the compost and smelled new dirt, the kind of dirt that is dirtier than dirt because it's just garbage at the moment and hasn't become something better yet.

The lamplight was full on me then and I looked down and realized I was covered in shit. I could feel the sob in my throat and my face getting hot with humiliation when suddenly you were pulling me up and dusting me off. I don't know where it came from but something in my gut told me maybe you were sorry and then you looked at me and apologized, saying you shouldn't have grabbed my pants and I said they weren't my pants and you looked so relieved I kissed you and that's how we smelled the other dirt, the pine dirt, because one of us tripped on a pine cone and pulled the other one down the hill and now we're both in therapy, learning how to walk again.

And I swear that it must be real love because even though they say you now have no working memory, every time they have us in the rehab pool together and our eyes meet you give me that same look you gave me across the lab table, except this time I think you're going to throw the petri dish at me.

- Olivia Ciacci

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