Isadora sat on her window seat, counting all the strangers who came and went from her front door. “It's been nearly 37,” she said with a sigh to her cat, Pumpernickel. She let her head fall against the cool glass, her breath fogging the green panel closest to her cheek. She liked to people-watch through the greens and purples of the stained glass, pretending that passersby were anything but human. She watched as the ridges in the glass distorted their green faces and smiled, pulling Pumpernickel onto her lap.

Isadora’s mother was sick, “sicker than a dog” as her grandmother had told her with pursed lips on the very first cold September night. Isadora wasn’t quite sure how she was supposed to feel, but she knew it wasn’t good—whether that be because of her mother’s illness or her grandmother’s prolonged stay was the indistinguishable part. Occasionally, she would pass by her mother’s room, lingering for a moment in the doorway. Her view of her mother was typically obstructed by doctors from upstate, priests, and any local well-wishers. More than once, she has had the door shut in front of her porcelain face, strangers making shooing motions at her. In my own house, she thought, contempt kissing the tips of her ears a blushy pink. She wasn’t allowed in her mother’s room, nor was she allowed many places besides her own room, but she knew without seeing that her mother was dying. She could feel it in the way her nanny lingered in her doorway for several silent moments after she was dismissed, and she could see it in the way the other school children treated her with caution, always keeping space, always smiling timidly. 

Isadora didn't mind much; she preferred to keep to herself, anyways. She walked to school alone, counting each branch that snapped under her feet on her three mile trek. 127 was her record, and she resented muddy days where her feet sank into the Earth, indistinguishable from the branches. Although troublesome, this natural demonstration of equilibrium made her think of her mother—her mother, who would soon be one with the Earth, just as she is momentarily. Despite this fleeting sentiment, Isadora picked up her feet and kept walking, watching the ground with an increased caution, only stepping on what she estimated to be dry ground. 

She dragged her feet as she approached the schoolhouse, hearing the cacophony of conversations falter as she joined the disperse crowd. A few students offered weak smiles, others just stared. Isadora kept her head down, reluctant to make eye contact with these strangers she calls friends. 

She ate her lunch—a peanut butter and honey sandwich— in the grass, far from the pavilion where her peers gathered. A dandelion sprouted from the earth, wrapping around her ankle like the daisy chains she made with her mother as a child. Ants marched across the week-old rye bread, and Isadora’s appetite vanished. 

“She can’t die during spring. My mother says no one dies during the spring,” said a nasally voice belonging to her classmate, Caroline. She knew beyond a shadow of a doubt that they were discussing her mother in her frail state, and her cheeks prickled with blood. The daisy chain released its grip on her ankle, and Isadora sat breathless. She didn’t understand why this enraged her, or why no one could quite grasp the gravity of the situation, but Isadora knew with every freckle on her pale face that if anything killed her mother, it would be the spring.

Her heartbeat retreated back to her chest, but Isadora wanted nothing to do with Caroline, or anyone who would listen to her, nonetheless. Her honey brown eyes drifted towards her teacher, a tall, lean man in a twill button up and what her mother would call, “good Sunday pants.” He was talking to an older girl, leaning into her words and laughing. He was laughing so much, in fact, he never noticed Isadora vanishing from the schoolyard, leaving nothing but a torn piece of rye bread for the ants. 

She set off from the schoolyard, wandering into the woods without a direction, just as she did as a small child. She would spend days as her own best friend, building cathedrals out of branches and willing pinecones into princes. She had far less time for wandering, much less imagination, but with this forged day off she was determined to unravel her inner child from years worth of cobwebs—perhaps for the very last time. 

In the beginning, she felt silly; the magic of mud pies was far less striking than it had been when she was a child, but as she handled the cool, smooth clay between her palms she felt it pulse as if it was living, too—complete with a heart, brain, and soul. Just as she was admiring this pseudo-life she felt the ground shake beneath her, accompanied by a thump, thump, thump, that increased in volume as it inched towards her eardrums. 

Slowly, she turned away from the clay and towards the crescendoing sound, but when she turned around, nothing was there. She stared into the distance for a while, her eyes darting to every bird and branch within her viewpoint, but ultimately concluded that it was nothing but her imagination. She continued to sculpt the clay, this time making a bowl; however, the thump, thump, thumping continued, shaking the earth beneath her small body. She whipped around and this time noticed a great big oak tree much closer to her than before. Stumbling to her feet, she kept her eyes glued to the oak, afraid if she looked away it would continue gaining on her. Her intuition was correct because as soon as she turned to make a break for it, it moved towards her, the thumping becoming indistinguishable from her own heartbeat, which she could practically taste as it rose into her esophagus. 

Although young and agile, her knobby knees could only carry her so fast, so she made a sharp left turn, her feet sinking in the ditch she hadn’t previously noticed. Every muscle in her body strained as she lifted her heavy feet from the mud, and she kept running—running, because she had to get home to her mother and running, because she was not going to die a child. She continued to run, the forest dissipating into a driveway, Farmer Dan’s driveway. The incessant thumping was farther away now; Isadora knew this because her thoughts were now forming words rather than unadulterated panic. She reached his porch, tracking in mud and sweat and maybe a little blood and leaving it on the flaky blue paint of the wooden porch. She rapped on the door as if her life depended on it—no, her life did depend on it. She kept banging on the door, synchronizing her knocks with the thumping of the tree, which was now gaining on her. The screen door finally opened to reveal Farmer Dan, but his eyes were glazed over, and his smile was dopey, like the kind of smile you give when someone you love tries to wake you up, right before mumbling, “Five more minutes.”

She opens her mouth, expecting a wild scream to come out but she is surprised to find she can barely muster a whisper.

“Please help me,” she said, breathlessly and quickly, looking up at Farmer Dan with pleading eyes, but he just smiled, his foggy eyes piercing right through her as if she wasn’t there at all. 

Isadora fell to her knees, the skin casing her patella splintering against the wooden porch. She looked back at the thumping, and the tree ceased to move, its unearthed roots awkwardly sitting above ground. Keeping her eyes locked on the tree, she backed away from Farmer Dan, off his creaky blue porch, down the ivy-covered stairs, and continued off his property, making a backwards journey back to her home, back to her mom.

Soon, the tree, still as a statue, fades from her vision, but she doesn’t dare look away. Her backwards stride is interrupted by her heel hitting something hard, something wooden. She made it home. She unlatches the door and dashes up the stairs, yelling for her grandmother, her mom, anyone, but the house seems as if it is completely empty for the first time since that chilly September night. She ran into her mom's room, but something stopped her in the doorway. Isadora was frozen, unable to take one more step, unable to utter one more word. Her mother’s room was devoid of all her usual guests; however, her mother remained.. Her mother and her blue asphyxiated face, her mother and her swollen, bloated fingers, and her mother’s lifeless body in her bed, a vine wrapped fiercely around her neck and still slithering up the post of the canopy bed, slightly dragging her mother’s limp former vessel with it.

Isadora had no choice but to tear her eyes away from her mother when the floor shook: thump, thump, thump. She ran—hoping that she could make an exit before she ended up as wall decor too, but her feet lost traction at the top of the stairs, sending her tumbling down. She managed to get up; the only thing pulsing through her frame was adrenaline. She slammed her body against the screen door over and over and over, her body prickling with a numb yet persistent pain. The screen door flew open, and she stumbled down the stairs, somehow managing not to lose her footing. 

Her vision was narrowing, and her ears were ringing. She no longer had the coordination to back away from the tree; she had to run, her brain exerting all its effort to make sure her feet fell to the ground one after another. She felt leaves on the back of her neck, and she could no longer tell whether her body was prickling with pain or infested with insects—it didn't matter. Her left foot caught itself on the root of the tree where her tire swing used to be, sending her tumbling to the ground face first. She no longer possessed the effort to hoist herself from the ground. If her bones were made of glass—and at this point, she wasn't sure they weren’t—they had all just shattered. 

Her mouth filled with dirt as she felt a pounding—no, a thumping—on her back, her tears making the mud that streaked her face. She thought back to when she was younger, before last September, before the plants would move at will. She had ran from her mother, who had dressed as a monster to try and spook her. She made it about as far as she did today before she stumbled on a hedge and scraped her knee. She wailed at the sight of the blood, scared she was going to lose her whole leg as an older boy had told her once. Soon enough, though, her mother was at her side, stroking her face and smoothing her hair behind her ears. Isadora cried harder now, not for the blood, but terrified that she would be in trouble for running away from her mom. Her mom just smiled at her, and the smell of her mother’s patchouli perfume filled her nostrils.

“Sometimes to run is the brave thing,” Her mother kissed her forehead reassuringly and helped her up. But now, Isadora was all alone. There was no one to kiss her forehead, no one to help her up. As the thumping continued to crumble her brittle bones and as her vision darkened, for the first time in her life, she wished she hadn’t ran.