IVORY POVTwelve days after Gabriel planted the roses, the cuttings put out their first two leaves.I knew because I checked every morning before dawn, on my way to the clearing, kneeling in the wet grass in the half dark just to see whether anything had changed. Two small, crumpled, bright green leaves, the size of a baby's fingernail. Gabriel had come out to check, too, and he had looked at them for a long time without saying anything. Then he had patted my shoulder so hard I almost fell into the flower bed.I took that as a good sign.My body was changing as well, in ways I didn't talk about. The three laps around the lake had turned into five, and I no longer threw up behind the pine tree. I could hold a plank for four minutes. I could hear Mom's footsteps from the porch before she opened the door. When I woke up at night, I sometimes found my hands curled into tight fists on the quilt, with the faint, half-moon marks of my nails pressed deep into my palms.Mom noticed. She never
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