CHAPTER 17

IGGY PLANTS FLOWERS BY THE SIDE OF THE ROAD

But the best part was yet to come. The best part happened two weeks later. It wasn’t just the best part of that month or that year. It was one of the best things that ever happened to Iggy in his entire life.

Two weeks after Iggy mashed his face in the grass, he was mostly back to normal. Both of his black eyes were their regular color again. He only had one scab, on his forehead, and it was about to fall off. There was a yellow bruise and a tiny cut on his nose. Inside his mouth, all the stitches were gone, and he could chew stuff. There was one raised part on the inside of his cheek, but that was all.

Iggy felt pretty normal.

So, two weeks after wiping out, Iggy was sitting in Ms. Schulberger’s classroom one afternoon, feeling normal. Ms. Schulberger was talking about What a Paragraph Is.

As far as Iggy could tell, it seemed like a paragraph could be anything. One sentence, two sentences, five hundred sentences.

Now Ms. Schulberger was talking about starting paragraphs with topic sentences. Iggy began to feel a little bit sleepy. He yawned. He still couldn’t yawn all the way. He tried to balance his pencil on the tip of his finger.

“Iggy!” said Ms. Schulberger. “Listen up!”

Okay, okay. She talked more about topic sentences. Iggy poked around inside his mouth with his tongue. It was amazing that it didn’t hurt anymore. It didn’t hurt at all. It felt—wait. What was that? He ran his tongue over the inside of his lower lip. There was a lump in it. A long, thin lump.

What was it?

He couldn’t figure it out.

He raised his hand.

“Yes, Iggy?” said Ms. Schulberger.

“Can I go to the bathroom?” He bugged his eyes out so she would know he really had to go.

She nodded. “Scoot.”

Iggy scooted. He scooted out the door, down the hallway, and into the bathroom, where he leaned close to the mirror and pulled his lower lip down to take a look.

And he could not believe what he saw there.

THERE WAS A BLADE OF GRASS GROWING INSIDE HIS MOUTH.

It was growing under his skin, but he could still see it. A tiny piece of it was poking out of his skin, and it was green. The rest of it was in a line right where his stitches had been. It was growing sideways. It looked like it was smiling at him.

It was the coolest thing he’d ever seen.

He ran back to class. “Ms. Schulberger!” he yelled from the doorway. “Look!”

Ms. Schulberger didn’t like it when he yelled. “Iggy! I’ve told you—”

“No! Really! Check this out!” Iggy came to stand in front of her. “Look!” He pulled down his lip. “It’s grass!”

She looked. And then she jumped back. “Oh my gosh!” she said. “It is grass!”

All the kids came rushing up to look. And then they screamed. “OOOOOH!” “IT’S GRASS!” “GRO-OSSS!”

Iggy turned to Ms. Schulberger. “Please, please, please take a picture, Ms. Schulberger. Please!”

Ms. Schulberger was shaking her head with amazement. “There’s grass growing in your mouth, Iggy,” she said. “You’re a biome!” She got her phone and took a picture.

Iggy nodded. He was a biome. A seed must have been sewed into his skin when they did the stitches, and now he was growing grass in his mouth. He poked at it with his tongue.

Ms. Schulberger told him he could go to the nurse’s office to have it taken out. “No way,” said Iggy. “I’m going to leave it in there until it grows out of my mouth.”

But once he sat back at his desk and Ms. Schulberger was talking about topic sentences again, he couldn’t help poking at it. Then he couldn’t help very, very gently biting the tiny green piece between his teeth and his tongue, and very, very gently pulling.

Ms. Schulberger kept talking about topic sentences, but she also kept looking at Iggy. Pretty soon everyone else in class was looking at Iggy too.

Iggy was the only one who could concentrate, and he was concentrating very hard on pulling the blade of grass out of his skin, a little bit at a time.

He didn’t want to break it.

Ms. Schulberger stopped talking to watch.

All the kid turned around in their desks to watch.

Iggy worked on the inside of his mouth.

He almost had it.

Almost.

Almost.

Then, with a squeak only he could hear, Iggy pulled the blade of grass out of his mouth.

“Did it!” he shouted, and held it up for everyone to see.

“Ew-wwww!” shrieked the class.

Arch started to stomp. “Igg-Y! Igg-Y!” he yelled. Owen stomped too, and so did Donal and Nhat and Aidan.

Ms. Schulberger began to laugh. She dropped into her chair and laughed and laughed and laughed. “I love my job,” she gasped.

Aidan waved a dollar. “I’ll buy it off you!”

“No way,” said Iggy, holding his grass tight. “I’m going to keep it. Forever.”

And he did.

He taped the blade of grass in a special book, and under it, he wrote, “The best thing that ever happened to me!!!”

Which it was, until about four and a half months later.

But that’s a different story.