This story was written in two sittings on one day. S.E. Reid asked for prompts and Scoot complied. I accepted the challenge. This is the result.
Prompt: "It was supposed to be a surprise, but..."
It was supposed to be a surprise, but, as usual, Gerry figured out I was hiding something.
"Okay pal," she said, "What's that behind your back?'
I hug my head in shame. And disappointment, if I'm honest.
"It's just something that made me think of you," I admitted. "It just kind of fell into my lap and I knew you had to have it."
I wasn't lying. It did, literally, fall into my lap as I sat on a park bench reading an article about colonies and world peace in a recent copy of The American Mercury. Deep into the thought of a two-bloc world, my thoughts were rudely interrupted by an acorn falling with unusual ferocity onto the page. It seemed an ordinary enough nut, but I felt compelled to put it into my jacket pocket, where I promptly forgot both about the nut and the new world order.
Gerry held out her hand, and I sheepishly placed the acorn in her palm. A shock like static electricity made me jerk back and Gerry did the same. The acorn fell to the ground.
"Ouch!" Gerry exclaimed. "What was that?"
"I have no idea. It was just an acorn." We looked at where it fell. It looked less ordinary in this twilight. Where it should have been camouflaged by the autumn leaves, it seemed to stand out. Not glowing, exactly, but not invisible, either. Gerry bent for a closer look. She had always been fascinated by how things grew, which was why I thought of her when the acorn landed on my magazine. She touched it with her index finger and jumped back again.
"I don't know what that is, but I'm not touching it again," she said. "It's like it has electricity in it, although that's ridiculous. Leave it be."
I wasn't going to argue. I doubted it was electric, but I had just read a new magazine called Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists and I half wondered whether this acorn was somehow connected to the atomic bomb that had ended the Second World War just a few years before. I decided to look at my stack of science magazines later.
In the meantime, it was dark and Gerry and I needed to sneak into the house before Mother realized we were not doing our homework, but were out. Gerry knows all the tricks to getting in the house; as big sisters go, she's a gem. She gave me a boost to the trellis and I climbed to the second story window of my bedroom. She made her way to the cellar door and snuck into the living room from below. We met in the dining room in time for hot soup and cheese sandwiches. With Father working in Chicago, we usually had simple suppers. Mother seemed distracted, and she didn't say anything about our grubby clothes and the dirt under my fingernails. She didn't eat much either. Gerry and I exchanged glances, but kept quiet. I did notice that Gerry's index finger looked red and blistered, like it had been burned. Was the acorn to blame?
The next morning I tucked my copy of Popular Science under my arm. I wanted to reread the story about atomic energy. I turned around the corner of the house and saw Gerry standing stock still, mouth agape.
"Look at that tree," she said, pointing at a spindly oak in the yard. "That wasn't there yesterday."
I looked, but there were so many saplings that I never paid attention to individual trees. Gerry was shaking and pale. "Sam," she said, "That's where the acorn fell." I ran to see where the acorn was; surely it was still there and Gerry was mistaken.
"Don't get too close," she yelled, although she was right behind me. We both stopped short of the little tree, which suddenly didn't look so little anymore. The acorn was definitely not on the ground where it should have been, and this tree had an energy to it that made the hair on my arms stand on end.
By mid-afternoon the tree was nearly as tall as the house and branches practically unfolded complete with leaves, even though it was fall and all the other trees were losing their foliage. Popular Science didn't have any information about energized or atomic trees (although there was an article about photosynthesis that looked interesting.) Day after day the tree grew. It even seemed to go through seasons: new buds, followed by green leaves that turned red and gold before falling to the ground. The cycles lasted only a day or so, and by Thanksgiving there was a mature oak standing where we had dropped the acorn just weeks before.
Father was home for the holiday, and Mother was beside herself with preparations for the Thursday meal. Gerry was stuck in the house boiling gelatin or baking pumpkin or cutting vegetables. Father spent the days in his study, writing something and smoking his pipe. I had forgotten how much I missed the smell of burning tobacco. Everyone was too busy to pay any attention to the tree, or to me. I spent hours watching the tree, charting its growth, and counting new branches as they emerged. They came slower now than at first. Maybe that's why Father didn't say anything about it. Maybe he thought it had always been there, like Mother seemed to believe.
Father returned to Chicago after Thanksgiving. He never talked about his work, but Mother said it was important and that I must have gotten my interest in science from him. Gerry preferred practical science like botany to the unknown possibilities of energy. We both watched the tree. Gerry wanted to figure out why it grew so fast and whether there was a way to duplicate it. I still wondered whether it was somehow atomically charged, and I thought more than twice that we probably shouldn't spend too much time near it. The growth cycles now lasted a week or more, but the tree was also huge. Gerry climbed it looking for details that might show how it was different from the other oak trees in the yard. I thought that was silly. Of course it was different. In three months it had grown from acorn to mature tree and then some.
On a cold and foggy day in February, we heard a truck pull into the yard. It was Father, home from Chicago in the middle of the week. He parked near the oak, not seeming to notice that the tree didn't belong. His fedora, usually at a precarious angle on his head, was pulled low. His narrow tie was loosened, and his pipe hung from his mouth, unlit.
"What do you suppose…" I started, but Gerry shushed me. She pulled me around to the dining room window where we could see Mother fussing over Father, making fresh coffee and cleaning his pipe. We couldn't hear what they were saying, but Gerry and I looked at each other alarmed. Something was wrong. Father shouldn't be home without notice, and Mother shouldn't look so worried. Forgetting about sneaking into the house unseen, Gerry and I went to the back door and entered the kitchen. We tried to be quiet, but Mother came in and told us to stay put. She would give us something for supper but we needed to wait upstairs. "And don't disturb your Father," she warned.
Gerry's room had a view of the yard and the tree, so we waited there and watched, saying nothing. When darkness fell, the tree began to glow, much like the acorn had months before. Roots broke through the grass and bent around Father's truck, trapping it in place. Something popped and a blinding light flashed and when I could see again, the tree was shrouded in mist, moss dripping from its branches. It was like the oak had aged two hundred years in a moment. Gerry just looked at me.
She was old. Ancient even. I watched in horror as her face morphed from teenager through adulthood. In a second she was older than my parents. In a minute she was shriveled with long white hair. I rubbed my eyes. When I looked again, she was gone, replaced by a night-gowned skeleton lying on the floor, quickly turning to dust. I backed away; I had to be asleep and having a bad dream. I slapped my cheeks to wake up. I pinched my arms until they bruised. I ran out of the bedroom and flew down the stairs. I would absolutely disturb Father.
The house was dark and cold. Where there had been hot coffee and light, there was nothing but layers of dust on broken down furniture and decay. No Father at the dining room table. No Mother making supper. The only living thing, it seemed, was me.
That was sixty years ago. The truck is still there, trapped by the tree that never grew again. The house fell in on itself in the 1970s, but the rubble remains. I wandered for a while, taken in by kind strangers for a while, and then added to the rolls of foster care. I had to run away every couple of years and the process repeated. For sixty years I have wandered from place to place. And in every mirror I see the reflection of a 12-year-old boy who still wants to know the secrets of atomic energy.