Flower Girl

         She lay there, eyes half closed, and basking in the sun. It was a beautiful day, but a decidedly boring one. All her friends had abandoned her for the day. Off at the mall with boyfriends, or being taken to those family parties they loathed, or just walking around town. Some had extended to her an invitation to accompany them, but she had politely declined. Their voices may have been sincere, but the look in their eyes was anything but. She didn’t mind though. People weren’t meant to be surrounded by familiarity at all times. It made them complacent. And complacency would eventually get extremely tiring. So maybe abandon was a bit harsh. Maybe ‘all her friends had gone off to enjoy their independence without her’ would be a better description. Yes, much better, and nobody could be really offended by it.

         Not like she minded if she were with them or not. It was a beautiful day after all. And the sun was so warm and comforting, it made her feel like she suspected her neighbor’s fat cat did as it purred lazily in the window, drifting in and out of sleep contentedly. She opened her eyes a bit and tilted her head to the side. Her gaze was met with the site of her mother’s garden. A beautiful site with all the gaily colored flowers swaying slightly in an almost unnoticeable breeze and looking fuller than they had in the past week. Squinting, she tilted her head back up to the sky, ignoring the black dots that began dancing across her vision from the brightness of the sun, and her mind lazily told her that the sun was making them so beautiful, added to her father having watered them only minutes ago.

         Closing her eyes, she collapsed back onto the grass, a smiling sliding across her face as the thick carpet of grass tickled her neck. Her thoughts were still on the plants and the sun, and having nothing else to do, she began to dig up the information that had been buried for what seemed like months (and in reality was only a week or two) since school had ended and the summer began. Photosynthesis. The process by which plants (and some bacteria and protista, but that’s besides the point) use the energy from the sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water to produce sugar, which would then be used in cellular respiration and be converted into ATP, the so called ‘fuel’ of all living things, and, of course, would also create oxygen. It’s the conversion of unusable sunlight into useable energy. No. Into useable chemical energy. Can’t forget the chemical. Points will be deducted that. A small laugh bubbled out of her mouth, the last thought had sounded exactly like her last biology teacher. An old hag that loved science more than she did teaching.

         She absent mindedly twirled her fingers in the grass by her sides, completely oblivious to everything around her. A thought suddenly crossed her mind. ‘What would it be like to be a plant?’
As soon as the thought had former, she snorted. A squirrel that had been near by scampered off, deciding that the thing lying by its tree wasn’t that interesting. The girl had had quite a few stupid thoughts (mostly kept to herself, thankfully), but that was definatly in the top ten, top five even. As soon as her amusement had faded a bit more, she gave it a bit more thought. What would it be like to be a plant. She imagined it would be much like being a person. Growing from something very small, some times taking only a few months, others taking many a year. A tree would probably be the closet thing to being a person, taking a long time to reach maturity.

         But what would it be like to wilt in the winter, to actually die in a sense, and be reborn in spring? What would it be like to stay in one place, see everything pass you by, see things occur, and never be able to speak of them? To be cut in half, and be placed in vases far away from where you belong to wilt and die? Dozens of questions raced through her mind, and the more that came, the more tired she began to feel. The sun was so warm and just lovely and the soft grass was so comfortable and, stifling a yawn, she decided that a nap wouldn’t be to bad. Just a little nap…

         Her eyes opened what seemed like seconds later. She reached up her leaves and stret-, Wait. She reached up her leaves? Looking down at herself she realized that she wasn’t. she wasn’t herself that is. She was a plant! She knew that she shouldn’t have stood over her mother’s shoulder as she cleaned the bathroom with bleach, it messed with her head. She closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Opening them, she was only met with the same view she had had before. Suppressing a whimper, she decided that she might as well make the best of it. Pfft, yeah, right. Taking another deep breath, she was able to calm down enough that she could actually, well, feel everything. She felt a small bug on one of her leaves, a worm down in her roots, water flowing through her from those roots, sunlight being absorbed into her- Wait. Holy cannoli, Batman! She was actually going through photosynthesis!

         Concentrating, she felt it begin. She knew photosynthesis had two parts, and the first had just begun. The Light Dependant Reaction is what it was known as. It started in something II. Photoshoot? Photostyle? No. Photosystem! It started in photosystem II! The bits of light strikes the chlorophyll in such a way as to excite electrons into a higher energy of state. The light and water enter her cells through the chloroplasts, into the thylakoid, traveling through the cell tissue she always thought looked like neco wafer and H+ ions moved through the cell membrane of the mitochondrion in the process of ATP synthase to be used as energy for ADP to turn into ATP. She extends her senses a bit more. A series of reactions follow and the energy is converted along a chain, an electron transport chain she thinks. She feels the water split in the process, releasing oxygen as a product from the reaction and back out of her and into the air around her, while little hydrogen ions are left in the thylakoid.  The photosystem I had been activated, and positive H ions were traveling through the cell membrane, coming out after leaving more hydrogen ions in the stroma and then fusing together with NADP and forming NADPH. The ATP, which had been made during photosystem II, and NADPH meet on the other side of the cell, and are used to make bonds in the Light Independent Process, the process her former teacher had told her went by a few different names. Calvin cycle was one and her favorite, because really, between Calvin Klein and Calvin and Hobbs, what was there not to like about the name?

         There she was, getting off track and rambling. She cleared her head quickly, hoping she wouldn’t miss anything. She was in luck. The dark reaction was starting. The stroma of the chloroplast is where it began, well, the cell membrane of the stroma to be more exact and it occurred in the same place as the light dependent reaction did. It began when water and carbon dioxide entered with energy from NADPH and ATP, though it was a very short spurt of energy, and was soon converted into compounds that she soon began using for energy. And it was over as quick as that. And then it started again. She was amazed. It was so simple, yet it had been going on for as long as plants had existed. It was an ancient process, older than human kind itself. She was completely and utterly baffled. She was about to start concentrated on other processes going on throughout her when she suddenly was covered in water and-

         “Ahhhh!” Her eyes whipped open and the grinning face of her older brother wasn’t exactly something she wanted to wake up to. She was soaking wet and though the sun warmed her, it didn’t stop the water from being absolutely freezing. “Mum said I should wake you. You’ve been sleeping out here for about an hour and you haven’t had anything to drink or eat all day. Would want the ickle baby to get dehydrated, now would we?” he said, chuckling slightly as he reached out a hand to help her up, a hose in his opposite hand. Taking said hand, she grinned. Before he could react, she had grabbed the hose from his loose grip, completely soaked him with it, and started for the house. “Why you little-” By the time he reached the house, she was already inside with the door locked and making faces at him through the glass.

Well, she thought, being a plant’s okay I guess. At least they don’t have annoying brothers.